I. L. B.
NOTES ON PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN URMI[26]
A sketch of Urmi would present few features of general interest if it did not embrace an outline of the mission work which is carried on there on a large scale, first by the numerous agents, lay and clerical, male and female, of the American Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, and next by the English Mission clergy and the Sisters of Bethany, who form what is known as "The Archbishop of Canterbury's Mission to the Assyrian Christians."
Besides these there is a Latin Mission of French Lazarists, aided by Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, which has been at work in Urmi and on the plain of Salmas for forty years.
Urmi, the reputed birthplace of Zoroaster, and in past ages the great centre of Fire Worship, was made the headquarters of the American Mission to the Nestorians in 1834, which, with the exception of the C.M.S. Mission in Julfa, was the only Protestant Mission in Persia up to the year 1885.
At present there are four ordained American missionaries, several ladies, and a medical missionary working in Urmi. Under their superintendence are thirty ordained and thirty-one licentiate pastors, ninety-three native helpers, and three Bible-women. The number of Nestorians or Syrians employed as teachers in the College and the Fiske Seminary for girls, as translators, as printers, and as medical assistants, is very considerable.
The whole plain of Urmi, with its innumerable villages, and the eastern portion of the Kurdish mountains, with its Syrian hamlets, are included within the sphere of Mission work.
This Mission has free access to Syrians, Armenians, and Jews, but for Moslems there can be no public preaching or teaching, nor can a Moslem openly profess Christianity, or even frequent the Syrian services, without being a marked man. Hence, while all opportunities are embraced of conversation with Mohammedans, and of circulating the Bible among them, the mission work is chiefly among nominal Christians.
The Americans own a very large amount of property at Urmi. The Fiske Seminary—a High School, in which a large number of girls receive board as well as education—is within the city walls, as well as some of the houses of both clerical and lady missionaries. About a mile outside they have acquired a beautiful and valuable estate of about fifteen acres, plentifully wooded and watered, and with some fine avenues of planes. On this are the large buildings of the Urmi College, the professors' houses, the Dispensary, and the Medical Mission Hospitals for the sick of both sexes.