Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Azam Fooladi_Panah ¹
• Bagher Ali Adelfar ²

¹ PhD Graduate, Department of the History of Islamic Culture & Civilization, Faculty of Theology, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

² Department of History, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Imam Khomeini International University, Qazvin, Iran.

Abstract

The apparent tolerance of government leaders with Christian missionaries in Iran goes back to the Safavid period. The Qajar kings, who followed the Safavids in religious practice and profession and were famous for religious orientation, did not oppose the presence and activities of individual Christian missionaries such as Henry Martin, Joseph Wolf, etc. in Iran from the beginning. The presence and activities of foreign missionaries in Iran during the Qajar era is one of the important topics in the social and religious history of Iran. Qajar Iran was the destination of many Christian missionaries, and during this period, French, English, German, Russian, etc. missionaries spread Christianity in many areas of Iran in different ways. Now, in this Period among the evangelizing groups that entered Iran from the middle of the Qajar period, the American evangelizing missions were the first Protestant missionary groups that started evangelizing in Iran. One of the most important issues about the American missions has been the way the Qajar government officials deal with the members of these missions. The current research seeks to investigate the encounter of Qajar courtiers, including kings, ministers, local governors, military leaders, princes, etc., with the American missionaries and their activities, relying on the the descriptive-analytical method and citing library sources. The results of the research show that the confrontation between Qajar leaders and American missionaries is divided into two types: interactive and confrontational. In this way, each of the Qajar officials showed different behaviors and supported or opposed them according to the prevailing conditions, interests, interest in modernity, the type of action of the American missionaries towards the Muslims, etc. Also, the level of interaction and cooperation of the Qajar officials was more than their opposition and confrontation with the American missionaries. This caused the expansion of the activities of the American mission and their long-term presence in Iran.

Keywords

• American missionaries
• interaction
• contradiction
• Qajar officials
• evangelism
• modernism

Main Subjects

• History