In the year of the Hegira 1223 there came to this city an Englishman, who taught the religion of Christ with a boldness hitherto unparalleled in Persia, in the midst of much scorn and ill-treatment from the moollas as well as the rabble. He was a beardless youth, and evidently enfeebled by disease; he dwelt among us for more than a year. I was then a decided enemy to infidels, as the Christians are termed by the followers of Mahomet, and I visited this teacher of the despised sect, for the purpose of treating him with scorn, and exposing his doctrines to contempt. Although I persevered in this conduct for some time, I found that every interview not only increased my respect for the individual, but diminished my confidence in the faith in which I was educated. His extreme forbearance towards the violence of his opponents, the calm and yet convincing manner in which he exposed the fallacies and sophistries by which he was assailed (for he spoke Persian excellently), gradually inclined me to listen to his arguments, to inquire dispassionately 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 moollas. The result of my examination was a conviction that the young disputant was right. Shame, or rather fear, withheld me from this opinion; I even avoided the society of the Christian teacher, though he remained in the city so long. Just before he quitted Shiraz I could not refrain from paying him a farewell visit. Our conversation, the memory of which will never fade from the tablet of my mind, sealed my conversion. He gave me a book; it has been my constant companion; the study of it has formed my most delightful occupation; its contents have often consoled me. Upon this he put into my hand a copy of the New Testament in Persian; on one of the blank leaves was written, ‘There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth. Henry Martyn.’
The memory of Henry Martyn was borne by Mussulmans to Northern Africa, and south to India again. The late Rev. Mr. Oakley, of St. Paul’s, Onslow Square, London, when travelling south of Algiers, met Mohammedans who asked him if he were of the same tribe as Henry Martyn, the man of God whose controversy at Shiraz and books they knew. A Persian of gentle manners, who had a surprising knowledge of the Mesnevi, that inexhaustible fountain of Soofi philosophy, received a copy of Martyn’s Persian New Testament. After fourteen years’ study of it, in silence, he applied to the nearest Christian, an Armenian bishop, for baptism unto Christ. Fearing the consequences, the bishop sent on the catechumen to the Armenian priests at Calcutta, who, equally afraid that the news would reach the Persian authorities, handed him over to the Rev. E.C. Stuart, then the Church Missionary Society’s secretary there, and a Persian scholar, now Bishop of Waiapu. Mr. Stuart took him as his guest, found that he delighted in instruction in the New Testament, and baptized him. Ultimately the convert went back to Persia as one who ‘had gained a sincere faith in Christ from the simple reading of H. Martyn’s Persian Testament.’
In 1842 the learned Bombay chaplain, George Percy Badger, visited Tokat on a mission from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London to the Nestorian tribes of Koordistan. He was guided to Henry Martyn’s first tomb by the Armenian priest who had performed the rites of Christian burial. While Mrs. Badger sought out and planted wild flowers around the stone, her husband, recalling the fervent zeal and ardent piety of the departed, ‘lifted up a secret prayer that God in His mercy would raise up many of a like spirit to labour among the benighted Mohammedans of the East.’[93]
Adopting the report of their missionaries in 1830, the American Board at Boston sent out Dr. Henry J. van Lennep, who first visited Tokat fourteen years after them, and thirty-two years after Henry Martyn’s death. The first object of his attention was the grave, which then he had great difficulty in discovering and identifying. It was this experience, and not any earlier facts, that must have led to the publication of these lines:
No stone marks the spot where these ashes are resting,
No tear has e’er hallowed thy cold, lonely grave,
But the wild warring winds whistle round thy bleak dwelling,
And the fierce wintry torrent sweeps o’er it with its wave.
In his Travels in Little Known Parts of Asia Minor,[94] Dr. van Lennep writes:
The Armenian burying-ground, where he was laid, is situated just outside of the town, and hard by the wretched gipsy quarter which forms its eastern extremity. It is a most barren and desolate spot, overhung by lofty cliffs of clay slate. Its only verdure, besides the rank weeds that spring up between the thickly set graves, consists of two scraggy wild pear-trees nearly dead for lack of moisture. The sexton of the church near by could give no information, and I was left to search for it alone. Beginning at the graves lying at the outer edge of the ground nearest the road, I advanced towards the hill, examining each in its turn, until just at the foot of the overhanging cliffs I came upon a slab of coarse limestone, some forty inches by twenty, bearing the following inscription:
Rev . Vir .
Gug[95] . Martino .
Sacer . Ac . Miss . Anglo .
Quem . In . Patr . Redi .
Dominus
Hic . Berisae . Ad . Sb . Voc .
Pium . D . Fidel . Q . Ser .
A.D. MDCCCXII.
Hunc . Lap . Consac .
C. I. R.
A.D. MDCCCXIII.
It was just ten years after this first visit that I was again in Tokat, not on a transient visit, but with the purpose of making that city my permanent abode. A little party of us soon repaired to the hallowed spot. Guided by my recollections and a drawing made at my previous visit, we were soon at the place; but in the last few years it had undergone a remarkable change. Instead of the slab of stone with its inscription, which we expected to see, we only found a smooth surface of pebbly and sandy soil overgrown with weeds, without vestige of stone or mound to indicate the presence of a grave; but the identical surroundings were there, too well remembered to be mistaken. Could it be that, as happens in these lawless regions, the stone had been removed by some ruthless hand and incorporated in the wall of a neighbouring building? We could not accept that unpleasant conclusion, and, calling the sexton, we directed him to dig where we pointed. It was at a depth of two feet from the surface that the stone came into view: the soil and rubbish accumulated upon the grave were then removed, and we hoped the place would hereafter need little attention. But, to our surprise, we found it again, the ensuing spring, covered to the same depth as before. The soil was washed upon it by the rains from the whole mountain side, and we found that were a wall built for its protection, the gipsy boys, who made this their playground, would soon have it down.