Urumia mission station range (square area)

The Americans of Urumia

Iran's First Americans and their
Mission to the Assyrian Christians

Book by Hooman Estelami

Urumia mission station missionaries and family members in 1904

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Urumia Plain (c. 1892)

A view of the city of Urumia (c. 1890s)

Turco-Persian Border to the west of Urumia (c. 1907)

American missionary Benjamin Woods Labaree in the field with Assyrian Christians (c. 1900-1904)

EDITORIAL COMMENTS

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)

 

"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)

Asahel Grant, the second American to reside in Iran (c. 1840s)