'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎506] (565/714)

PERSIA
unparalleled in Persia, in the midst of much scorn and ill-treatment from
the mullahs as well as the rabble. He was a beardless youth and evi
dently enfeebled by disease. He dwelt amongst us for more than a year.
His extreme forbearance towards the violence of his opponents, the
calm yet convincing manner in which he expounded the fallacies and
sophistries by which he was assailed (for he spoke Persian excellently)
gradually inclined me to listen to his arguments, to inquire dispassion
ately into the subject of them, and finally to read a tract which he
had written in reply to a ' Defence of Islam ' by our chief mullahs.
The result of my examination was a conviction that the youno' dis
putant was right.
Binning, in 1850, made inquiries as to the alleged convert at
Shiraz, but finding no trace of him, said, 'it is probable that the
account is a fiction; a conclusion which, considering the lapse of
tlme —forty years—between the incident and the inquiry, and in
spite of my own vie<vs upon converts from Islam, it seems to me
far from fair to adopt. Martyn having died, the next comer, in
lb29. was Mr. Groves, who, however, soon gravitated from Persia
to Baghdad. Some Germans, named Dietrich, Zaremba, and Haas,
opened Christian schools at about the same time in Shisheh and
labriz. In 1838 the Rev. W. Glen arrived in Persia, and even
tually completed a revised edition of the New Testament transla
tion of Martyn, having already spent three years in translating the
Old testament at Astrakhan. In the same period the Frenchman,
Lugene Bore, created much excitement and uproar by his preach
ing in Isfahan. I shall, in my chapter upon the North-West
Provinces, narrate the foundation of the American, the French, and
the English Missions to the Nestorians of Urumiah and the border
distiicts ot Azerbaijan, and the extension of branches of the first-
named mission to Teheran (1872), Tabriz (1873), Hamadan (1881),
Resht (188-)). In a later chapter I shall mention the flourishing
Church of England Mission, established by the Rev. Dr. Bruce
undei the auspices ot the Church Missionary Society in Julfa, the
suburb of Isfahan. I am here concerned rather to discuss the
attitude of the Persian Government towards Christian missions in
general, and the success or the reverse that attends the missionary
piopaganda among the Persian Mohammedans.
The Persian Government must be credited on the whole with a
libeial and conciliatory policy towards the Christian elements
among its population. As I have said, the Nestorians have few