The missionaries who served in the Ottoman Empire arrived in the mission field without the benefit of any formal preparation, language training, or cultural orientation. Some of them left behind wives and children when they accepted the call to serve and then traveled alone for several months on the adventurous and sometimes perilous journey from the United States or Europe to Anatolia (Asia Minor). They traveled by steamship, carriage, horse, mule, and foot, braving ocean storms, seasickness, precipitous mountain paths, and occasionally bands of robbers. They typically arrived at their assigned destination nearly penniless, surrounded by a bewildering array of unfamiliar languages and customs and without an acquaintance to greet them, help them settle in, or explain how and where to begin their labors. Edward Robinson provided this poignant description of his arrival in Aleppo, Syria, after an arduous journey:

It was last October when I arrived in [Aleppo] alone, with no idea of where I should find a church member, and with only 15 cents in my pocket. For three days I had followed my drunken guide along the rocky mountain trails and over the grassy plains, both mute and sullen, for we knew not each other’s language.[1]

To get funds, missionaries often “sold drafts,” which is similar to writing and cashing a check against one’s bank account today. For missionaries, they would sell these “drafts” against their own bank accounts back home or against the mission’s account. This gave them access to desperately needed cash in local currencies. There were also adjustments to unfamiliar Middle Eastern foods and customs, such as sitting on the floor and using one’s fingers to eat from a common dish, and also going to the local Turkish hamam (bathhouse) to socialize, which for Latter-day Saints sometimes included holding an informal Church meeting there. Another cultural adjustment was the segregation of men and women in social gatherings (even among Christians). Most of the Latter-day Saint missionaries were not highly educated but came from humble working-class backgrounds, their primary qualifications for missionary service being religious faith and a desire to share their belief in a restoration of pristine Christianity wherever they could. Jacob Spori, a German-speaking convert from Switzerland who was the first missionary in the Turkish Mission, exemplifies this background and outlook in a letter written shortly after his arrival in Constantinople on December 31, 1884.

Some of these people are in earnest in seeking for the truth, and I do not feel very big, knowing my weakness, and seeing what they expect of the “man sent from the Lord.” . . . If the Turks and Armenians must have a man that makes a big show, then I am not the kind for them. If you only want to find out who I am, I will tell you in a few words. During the summer I am a wood-chopper, and now a modest man sent to preach the Gospel. If you, as I suspect, are not a wealthy man, I may go and eat with you, and what I must spend here will feed us both, and I can sleep in a blanket in some corner. And further, when people are not satisfied with a humble man, let them get somebody else to preach what they like.[2]

Travel in the Ottoman realms, especially in the early period of the mission, was risky and painstaking. Because of the remoteness and ruggedness of the mountain terrain in eastern Anatolia, Mount Lebanon, and Palestine, few railways existed and carriage roads were rare and poorly developed. Janne Sjodahl, an Arabic-speaking Latter-day Saint missionary and a prolific chronicler of local culture in the Ottoman Empire, reported “wretched conditions” on the road from Haifa to Nazareth: “The previous rain had so softened the road in places that the horses sank down to their knees [in mud]; and while the animals were doing this, the riders had to display considerable acrobatic skill in order to keep themselves in a dignified sort of position.” In other places the road was “so stony that even goats would have hesitated to use it. . . . It was perfectly astonishing to see how the horses managed to move on without breaking their own legs or the necks of their riders.”[3] Caravans of donkeys, mules, horses, or camels were still the most common means of transportation for the missionaries and members. Ferdinand Hintze described a journey in Asia Minor from Sivas to Marash as “perfect donkey speed, slow and tedious” and then observed:

The roads which connect these principal cities of the interior of Asia Minor are no more than trails located in the nearest possible mountain passes. . . . When, therefore, two caravans meet on a dugway winding for miles around on the tops of high mountains, where the trail only admits of a single file, our mule drivers have a hard time in passing; not only because of the narrow road, but also because they seem to have imbibed somewhat of the mule nature. No one will move to accommodate a passage; thus by force of much quarreling a passage is made, often resulting in one or more of the animals moving off the dugway, and animal and burden going to the bottom of the ravine.[4]

Because lawlessness and brigandage were common in outlying areas of the Ottoman domains, the government often required that an armed soldier escort all foreign travelers. Despite this regulation (which was frequently ignored in practice), several of the missionaries reported being attacked or robbed of personal belongings as they made their way along isolated trails in the mountains and deserts of the Ottoman Empire. Hintze observed in 1889 that “traveling [in southern Anatolia] is still quite dangerous, and few risk the trip alone. People are yet at times stripped and killed and the animals of the caravan run off to Aleppo or other large cities for sale. The government has some stations at certain places, and in order to secure peace” had erected a fort and recently conquered the notorious brigands in the Mount Giaur region.[5] Charles Locander, traveling alone by land to Haifa the same year, was robbed of his shoes by a police officer in a small village, and later that year Bedouin Arabs in Palestine stole his belongings, including his Bible.[6] In 1905 the caravan in which Wilford and Reba Booth were traveling came under intense attack by armed robbers in the mountains near Sivas (see “From Marash to Sivas: Rugged Trails and Armed Bandits” in part 1).

The missionaries were constantly on the move, frequently camping at night along the road or staying in the homes of villagers or in small inns (Turkish, khan) because they were cheap. The best-known travel guide of the time contained a vivid description of these places and a warning to travelers to avoid using them:

The khan, or caravanserai, and the huts of the peasants, which are generally built of mud, should never be resorted to, except in case of absolute necessity, as they swarm with fleas and other vermin. . . . The tents of the Beduins are free from these insects, but, on the other hand, are terribly infested with lice. Scorpions abound in Syria, but they seldom sting unless irritated.[7]

After a long day of preaching to a bedroom full of interested locals, Hintze observed that he “was not in so good a trim for talking because of fleas bothering us so at night, we slept but little. Brother Locander killed 53 fleas. I also killed many.”[8] Edgar Simmons spent a miserable night camping in a small khan on the road between Alexandretta and Aintab:

We had been in bed only a short time when we were attacked and completely defeated by a tremendous band of bold, barbarous mosquitoes. The noise of the ‘advancing hosts’ came faintly to the ear on the still night air, becoming more audible as they drew nearer, and presently swooped down upon us. They were really ‘hornets in disguise.’ We wrapped ourselves in blankets, overcoats, etc., and still were lanced most horribly! Without exaggeration, I had at least one hundred and fifty marks on each foot, to say nothing of my face, arms and hands. It is needless to add that I failed to obtain one moment’s sleep during the whole night.[9]

Maintaining personal health, particularly during extended periods of travel and work in remote or rural areas of the Ottoman Empire, presented constant challenges for Church members and missionaries. Outside of large cities, access to medical personnel and hospitals was scarce, and records indicate that treatment for injuries and illnesses was hard to find, causing the infirm to resort to temporary stopgap measures, folk remedies, or medical charlatans.[10] In addition, the practice of faith healings (Booth generally uses the term administering) as a means of dealing with the ubiquitous physical pain and suffering was commonplace. The missionaries reported recurring cases of intestinal tract ailments such as diarrhea and dysentery caused by ingesting contaminated food and water; there were also recurring epidemics of infectious diseases such as cholera, typhus, malaria, smallpox, consumption (tuberculosis), and trachoma in both urban and rural regions of the Middle East.[11]

Booth’s journal contains a graphic description of his own agonizing struggle, in January–February 1900 during his first mission, to survive a smallpox epidemic in Aintab (see “Booth’s Near-Fatal Bout with Smallpox” in part I); in 1924, during his third mission, he also contracted a serious case of malaria. During that time he mentions using quinine pills frequently as a medicine for treatment of fevers, including malaria.[12] Sjodahl reports an epidemic of dengue fever in 1889 in major cities like Constantinople, Damascus, Beirut, and Jerusalem. Later, in Haifa, he contracted the disease (transmitted by mosquito bites and called Abul-rukab, “father of the knees,” by the local Arabs), describing it as “a kind of paralysis of the extremities” accompanied by excruciating headaches.[13] Mission president Albert Herman suffered a severe attack of typhoid in Haifa on his way home from his mission in 1903. Missionary chronicles contain frequent mention of widespread deaths among the Ottoman populace from these epidemics and government-imposed quarantine and disinfection procedures, in both seaports and large cities of the interior.[14] The gravesites of five Latter-day Saint missionaries, including Booth’s, provide a solemn reminder of the persistent, virulent nature of the health challenges that were a prominent aspect of life in the Ottoman realms.[15]

During the first months after arrival, missionaries spent many hours each day in their rented rooms, usually studying Turkish at first (the main language of the Ottoman Empire) but also trying to acquire some capacity in two of the other commonly used languages: Armenian (if working in eastern Anatolia) and Arabic (in Syria and Palestine). One observer expressed the frustration that many of the missionaries felt:

Another drawback in the Syrian part of the mission is the language [Arabic], which, extremely difficult of itself, is made still more so by the many other languages a missionary is continually coming in contact with. The length of time spent in this mission is scarcely enough in which to master the language under existing circumstances, and when an Elder is released he is succeeded by someone totally inexperienced regarding the tongue and customs of this ancient and peculiar people.[16]

Often the elders would trade lessons in one of these languages with a local native speaker for lessons in English, French, or German and walk about town striking up simple conversations with shopkeepers, artisans, rug weavers, and people in restaurants and government offices to practice speaking and make friends.

Booth studied Turkish, German, and French when he arrived in Istanbul on his first mission. Later he studied Osmanli Turkish (written with Arabic script) in Aintab with a Muslim friend, and local Armenian converts helped him with Armeno-Turkish (Turkish written with Armenian script). Eventually he learned to speak Turkish fluently and to read, write, and speak Armenian fairly well. He also acquired some ability in reading Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew during his missions. Vahan Hindoian, grandson of one of the first Armenian converts in the Turkish Mission, described the complicated linguistic environment:

It was forbidden in public, but not at home, in Aintab to speak Armenian. Therefore, Armenian was not a fluent language for our father and grandfather [Abraham and Moses Hindoian, respectively]. I spoke Turkish with father at home in Aleppo, but Armenian with my mother who was from Urfa, not Aintab. In Aleppo after World War I, the schools taught Arabic, Armenian, and French, and after the French Mandate, English.[17]

Because public proselytizing by non-Muslims was forbidden and religious literature was routinely confiscated by the Ottoman authorities, missionaries used a variety of methods to contact people and share their religious message. Typically there were only a handful of missionaries working in the entire mission at one time, and they would therefore often work alone in different cities far apart to optimize their coverage.[18] Living in remote areas of the Turkish interior, working without a companion missionary, and going long periods with little or no communication from family or church members (the postal system was slow and unpredictable, especially in rural areas) made missionary work a lonely enterprise in the years before the first congregations of native members were established. Spori, for example, spent almost an entire year by himself in the Ottoman Empire before another missionary arrived, and Frederick Stauffer, also a native of Switzerland, labored for more than two years in the interior villages of Anatolia without the benefit of association with other Latter-day Saint missionaries.

Working in the political tinderbox of the Ottoman Empire, in an environment fraught with cultural taboos, religious sensitivities and rivalries, and legal restrictions, missionaries struggled to find converts to their foreign religion and labored constantly under threat of arrest and imprisonment. For example, Stauffer was arrested in Marash in 1890 on suspicion of inciting unrest among the Armenians, and Albert Herman was banished from Damascus in 1893 for teaching Muslims.[19] One of the most common means of generating interest was to write articles about Church doctrine and history for the local newspapers and include an invitation for “callers” (visitors) to come to the missionary’s room for further discussion. Since there was virtually no Church literature in Turkish except the Bible during the first twenty years of the mission and no standardized system of teaching the gospel, the elders had to translate sections of Church religious literature from English, French, or German materials in order to teach investigators. The missionaries taught anyone whom they could engage in conversation, regardless of religion or nationality. Booth, for example, often mentions his habit of “talking on the Gospel” while out walking, getting a haircut, shopping in the market, or doing other daily errands. Although most of the early members came from the Armenian Christian community, the cosmopolitan population of the Ottoman Empire eventually yielded converts of various religions, ethnicities, and nationalities: German, Jewish, Arab, Turkish, Austrian, Greek, Russian, Serbian, and Bulgarian.

It was common for the missionaries in the Turkish Mission to adopt an itinerant style of ministry, traveling alone or in small groups from city to city, staying a few days or weeks in a rented room, and entertaining callers who came to discuss religion. Stauffer observed that Middle Eastern customs and government restrictions prevented door-to-door contacting:

It is impossible for us to travel from house to house, or from city to city, or to preach as freely as missionaries in other countries, so we have to stay in one city and talk . . . to those who may be desirous of hearing us. We are denied the right of holding public meetings, but by renting a room and inviting people there, we are allowed to talk upon any subject. The people generally are anxious to hear what we have to say.[20]

Stauffer also noted that the Latter-day Saint missionaries were quite well known in the villages and cities of Anatolia’s mountainous interior, where strangers always attracted notice and word of their arrival spread quickly.[21] While touring the mission, Anthon H. Lund, one of the Twelve Apostles in the Church, wrote a colorful account of the missionaries’ approach to sharing their message in a new city:

Our coming had been heralded from the pulpits. The people had been warned against us. This had the opposite effect to the one intended. The people filled our meeting house weeks before we came, and when we did come our room was filled from morning till evening by eager enquirers. . . . It was interesting to watch the crowd of people sitting on the floor listening to what was said. Sometimes they would all want to talk and then there would be a babel of voices. . . . Every evening there were gatherings in different parts of the city and we divided up the brethren and sent them to the different places to answer questions and explain the gospel.[22]

Even though this peripatetic approach to missionary work yielded a few converts, it was generally not highly effective in bringing people to baptism. The majority of native members lived in larger cities—like Zara, Aintab, and Aleppo—where missionaries had served consistently and had gradually built up a branch of the church, and most of the converts came from among the relatives or friends of these established members. The missionaries understood the drawbacks of the itinerant preaching method, but as J. Alma Holdaway explained, their goal was to make contacts and lay a foundation upon which others could build.

We have encountered some opposition from opposing sects, but have made many warm friends. With only stopping one or six weeks in a city, we hardly expect to convert and baptize any, as it takes some time to bring people up to the standard necessary, before taking them down into the water; but we hope to continue as we have been doing, in making friends to the Gospel of both Christians and Islams, and perhaps sow seeds that those following after may reap.[23]

Hintze acknowledged that missionary work in the Middle East “required a great deal of patience” but warned missionaries against thinking that “we are of no use” or measuring success solely by numbers of baptisms: “We are sent out to warn the nations as well as to reap the souls of men, and in patiently performing this duty we shall have performed a great work, though we may not baptize a soul. . . . Here [in the Ottoman Empire] we must sow and cultivate and patiently await the fruits.”[24]

Notes

[1] Robinson letter to Church and Farm, July 5, 1895, in “Manuscript History of the Turkish Mission,” Church History Library, Salt Lake City (hereafter cited as Turkish Mission).

[2] Spori, “Turkish Mission,” 27–28.

[3] Turkish Mission, February 19 and March 14, 1889. On one occasion, Sjodahl wrote a letter from Jaffa, Palestine, to the Deseret News describing his method for keenly observing the local people and culture: “I very naturally mingled with the crowd, pencil in hand, watching for anything that might turn up.” Turkish Mission, September 11, 1889.

[4] Hintze, “Notes from Turkey,” 75.

[5] Turkish Mission, May 8, 1889.

[6] Turkish Mission, February 28 and September 25, 1889. Sjodahl, in prose redolent of nineteenth-century hyperbole and stereotypes about the Orient, describes Palestine and Syria as “swarmed in every direction by Bedouins”—nomads who “wander from place to place” and are considered “cunning” and “thievish” but not fanatic. “On our road we met several of these dark sons of the desert, and it was not always with a feeling of pleasure that we viewed their long guns or spears.” In his experience, however, these encounters generally ended well: “To one friendly greeting, Saba-el-khair or Mar-haba, we always received a friendly answer.” Turkish Mission, February 19, 1889.

[7] Baedeker, Palestine and Syria (1912), xvii.

[8] Turkish Mission, April 8, 1889.

[9] Turkish Mission, August 8, 1889.

[10] For example, in 1861, during an epidemic of dengue and other fevers in the Beirut region, the enormous surge in patients “attracted and encouraged a number of quacks and self-proclaimed physicians to practice their medicine in the city; various deaths resulted from malpractice.” The provincial government issued a warning that “malfeasance by charlatans” was punishable according to Ottoman law. Sharif, Imperial Norms and Local Realities,35.

[11] For graphic descriptions of the panic caused by cholera epidemics and reflections on issues of disease and public health in the Ottoman Empire, see Jessup, Fifty-Three Years in Syria; and Salibi and Khoury, Missionary Herald: Reports from Ottoman Syria, vol. 5. For a detailed discussion of Ottoman efforts at the national, provincial, and local municipal levels to deal with public health issues, such as infectious diseases, quarantines, and vaccinations, see Sharif, Imperial Norms and Local Realities, chap. 7; and Sharif, “Missionaries, Medicine and Municipalities.”

[12] Quinine, a substance taken from the bark of a South American evergreen called Cinchona, was used to treat malaria and other fevers that were common in the Middle East due to poor sanitation and the general climate. For a discussion of the common diseases in Palestine and Syria, see Masterman, Hygiene and Disease in Palestine, 13–23.

[13] Turkish Mission, November 27, 1889. Jessup explains that Arabs used this term because of the “severe pain at the knees” caused by dengue fever. Fifty-Three Years in Syria, 238.

[14] Andrew Jenson, an assistant Church historian, embarked in May 1895 on an around-the-world trip to visit the foreign missions and gather historical information. See Reinwand, “Andrew Jenson, Latter-day Saint Historian,” 37–38. Upon his arrival off the coast of Beirut, he wrote to the American consul asking for help to get him off the ship and avoid the ten-day quarantine imposed due to the cholera epidemic in Egypt where he had been traveling, but to no avail. For a detailed description of Jenson’s quarantine experience in Beirut, see Jenson journal, Turkish Mission, June 11 and 14, 1896.

[15] The five missionaries are Edgar D. Simmons (from Salt Lake City, Utah, died in 1890 of smallpox, buried in Aintab, Turkey), Adolf Haag (born in Stuttgart, Germany, died in 1892 of typhus, buried in Haifa, Palestine, now Israel), John A. Clark (born in Farmington, Utah, died in 1895 of smallpox, buried in Haifa, Palestine, now Israel), Emil J. Huber (from Zurich, Switzerland, died in 1908 of typhoid, buried in Aleppo, Syria), and Joseph W. Booth (from Alpine, Utah, died in 1928 of cardiac arrest, buried in Aleppo, Syria). For more on missionary deaths and burial sites in the Middle East, see Draper and Jackson, Missionary’s Story; and Toronto, “LDS Missionary Work in the Middle East.”

[16] Don C. W. Musser, “In the Holy Land,” 749.

[17] Interviewed by James Toronto, Salt Lake City, March 15, 2003.

[18] Between 1884 and 1928, the period covered by the Booth Journals, only about forty-four missionaries served in the Turkish Mission, and the highest number serving at one time was nine in 1908.

[19] Palestine-Syrian Mission, 8; see Musser, “From Various Missionary Fields,” 834.

[20] Stauffer, “Correspondence,” 157.

[21] Evidence of this is the fact that the mailing address for missionaries typically consisted of their name followed only by the city and country. Apparently, everyone in town knew who the foreigners were and where they were staying.

[22] Lund, “Word from the Far East,” 683.

[23] Holdaway, “Abstract of Correspondence,” 540.

[24] Hintze, “Letter from Turkey,” 50.