Asahel Grant (August 17, 1807 – April 24, 1844) was one of the first American missionaries to Iraq.
Asahel Grant | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | August 17, 1807 |
| Died | April 24, 1844 |
| Known for | one of the first American missionaries to Iraq |
Asahel Grant was born at Marshall, New York, studied medicine at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and practiced in Utica, New York.[1] In 1835 he went as a missionary with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to Iran.[2] He settled at Urmia and worked among the Nestorians there and elsewhere in western Asia. He died in Mosul in the Ottoman Empire.[3] He was a daring adventurer throughout the Middle East, but had little success in converting the fierce Nestorians, whom he considered among the "ten lost tribes" of Israel.[4][5] He wrote The Nestorians[6][7] and an appeal for Christian doctors to engage in missionary work.[8] Like David Livingstone before him (although not as famous), Grant thrilled western audiences with his adventures, inspiring a number of biographies, including those cited on this page. His success as a physician not only saved his life on several occasions, but opened the way for missionary successors.[9]
Books
edit- The Nestorians, or the Lost Tribes (1841)[7]
- Memoir of Asahel Grant, M.D.: Missionary to the Nestorians (1847), ed. A. C. Lethrop[7]
- Gordon Taylor, Fever and Thirst - A Missionary Doctor amid the Christian Tribes of Kurdistan, Academy Chicago Publishers 2005
- The Americans of Urumia (2021)[7]
References
edit- ^ Taylor, Gordon. Fever and Thirst. An American Doctor Amid the Tribes of Kurdistan, 1835-1844. Academy Chicago Publishers, 2008. p.6.
- ^ Taylor, Gordon. Fever and Thirst. An American Doctor Amid the Tribes of Kurdistan, 1835-1844. Academy Chicago Publishers, 2008. p.9.
- ^ New international Encyclopedia, Volume 8, edited by Daniel Coit Gilman, Harry Thurston Peck, Frank Moore Colby, Talcott Williams. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1903.
- ^ Taylor, Gordon. Fever and Thirst. An American Doctor Amid the Tribes of Kurdistan, 1835-1844. Academy Chicago Publishers, 2008.
- ^ Laurie, Thomas. Dr. Grant and the Mountain Nestorians. Johnstone & Hunter, 1853.
- ^ The Nestorians; or The Lost Tribes; containing evidence of their identity; an account of their manners, customs and ceremonies; together with sketches of travel in ancient Assyria, Armenia, Media and Mesopotamia and illustrations of scripture prophecy. London: John Murray, 1841.
- ^ a b c d Author page at WorldCat
- ^ Lathrop, Rev. A. C. Memoir of Asahel Grant, M.D., Missionary to the Nestorians...containing also An Appeal to Pious Physicians by Dr. Grant. New York: M.W. Dodd, 1847.
- ^ "Grant, Asahel, M.D." The Encyclopedia of Missions: Descriptive, historical, biographical, statistical. Edited by Edwin Munsell Bliss, Henry Otis Dwight, and Henry Allen Tupper. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1904. (Cornell)
- Graves, Dan. "Asahel Grant's Romanticized Nestorians". Christianity.com. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
- Grant, Asahel (1847). Memoir of Asahel Grant, M.D.: Missionary to the Nestorians. M.W. Dodd. Retrieved December 29, 2013 – via Internet Archive.
Asahel Grant.