"Here for the first time is a comprehensive
history of the first Americans in Iran. With fairness, deep
scholarship, and attention to detail, Hooman Estelami tells the
story of the Urumia Mission from hopeful beginnings in 1835 to its
tragic end amid the carnage of World War I. This is a book that has
long been needed, and I am grateful for it."
(Gordon
Taylor, author of Fever and Thirst: An American Doctor Among
the Tribes of Kurdistan, 1835-1844)
The Americans of Urumia
provides a rare and much needed academic study into the arrival
and works of the first Americans and their families into Iran as
well as providing much hitherto unknown information as to the
state of Iran’s northwest during the Qajar era. The political
and military weaknesses of the Qajars in being able to safeguard
their frontiers against the Ottomans and Imperial Russians
(concomitant with their fecklessness in maintaining security
within their own borders) are duly documented as well as the
state of affairs among the Muslim and Christian communities in
northwest Iran, notably the role of the Kurdish movements of
Bedir Khan and Obeidollah Khan notably the latter’s efforts to
recruit British support for his cause. The context of these
affairs is expostulated within the philanthropic activities of
Americans in Iran at the time such as Justin Perkins, Joseph
Plumb Cochran and William Ambrose Shedd. Several Americans were
to be born and raised in Iran including Joseph Plumb Cochran for
example who was born in the village of Seir in northwest Iran.
Cochran, who was fluent in Persian, Turkish and Syriac,
selflessly provided medical treatment to thousands of Iranians
during his lifetime and was to prove instrumental in the opening
of a modern medical college and hospital at Urmia. Also of
interest is the description of the opening of the very first
American embassy in Tehran in 1883. This book is highly
recommended for scholars and laypersons interested in the recent
history of Iran of the 19th and early 20th centuries and
especially the virtually unknown history of the adaptive role of
the small American community in northwest Iran during this time
period. (Dr. Kaveh Farrokh,
Langara College; author of Iran at War, Sassanian
Elite Cavalry, The Armies of Ancient Persia, and
Shadows in the Desert)