Chapter 4:
Legal and Political Work

The Christian citizens of Persia were not recognized by Persian Law as possessing legal rights on a basis of equality with the Moslems. The most honored Christian might be subject to the grossest personal insults by Mohammedans without any right of redress. The author gives an example of a Christian minister being spat upon in a public square – he could offer no self-defense nor had he the legal right to make a complaint. Another example is of a prominent Syrian of the Protestant faith from whom 400 tomans (about a dollar) were extorted by the Government on a trumped up charge without any opportunity being given to state his case.

Another incident involved the accidental killing of a Mohammedan near one of the largest Christian village. Some Mohammedan camel drivers were stealing grapes one night in a vineyard belonging to a Syrian. The alarm was given and in the altercation near the village, one of the camel drivers was shot and killed. In the darkness it was not evident who fired the shot. Investigation showed that it was most likely fired by one of the camel drivers. The Government officials took up the matter not with the purpose of investigating or punishing but the intention of getting out of it all the could for themselves. In Persia the village nearest the crime is held responsible, the fine for the life of a Christian being 30 tomans and the life of a Mohammedan 1,000 tomans. The Governor demanded 5,000 tomans of the village – after much arguing this price was greatly reduced. The villagers appealed to the foreign Missions to intercede for them. The American, English, French and Russian Missions were about to make a protest against such a fine on the ground that the country was already unsafe and the course being taken by the Government put a premium on stealing. The Russian Vice-consul took up the matter. He called representatives of the four Missions to meet with him – he was finally responsible for reducing the fine.

Cases in which Moslems were a party must of necessity be settled in the Persian courts. There was a need for a court where litigation between Christians could be settled. These cases were mostly disagreements over accounts, personal and family matters, and divorce cases. If these got into the Persian courts the Moslems seized the opportunity to extract bribes and bringing dishonor to the Christian Church.

The legal Board of the Evangelical Church was organized for the purpose of settling these cases and so preventing them from getting into the Moslem courts. Members of the Board were chosen by the Synod. A man named Dr. J. P. Cochran served on the Legal Board and gained great prestige. In 1898 the Crown Prince who represented the Shah of Azerbaijan, at the request of Dr. Cochran issued an order which gave full recognition to the rights of the legal Board to adjudicate matters in the Protestant Church. Mr. Shedd says, “The fundamental reason for this remarkable state of things is that Eastern jurisprudence in general and Moslem jurisprudence in particular regard Law as a religious institution and so accept as being within the bounds of each religious community the peculiar laws of that community….So we had here a Church Court….” The basis for law in the legal board was the Canon Law of the Old Nestorian Church…a code of rules about marriage and divorce was based on the Nestorian Sunhadis or book of Church government; this was adopted by the Evangelical church…

There were a number of points that had to be modified. For many centuries the Nestorians had lived under Mohammedan rule in Turkey and Persia. Even in the midst of a polygamous people they adhered to the marriages laws of their own faith and divorce was very infrequent until emigration began. Mr. Shedd wrote, “The legal board of our native church had during the spring and winter an unusually large number of cases and we had some success in collecting fees for our work. The most serious cases were the divorce suits. Long suffering wives , so many of whose husbands had been unfaithful to them during their long absences in Russia, seldom asked for a divorce. But the husbands had gotten divorces from the Orthodox bishops. If these cases went into a Moslem court it was very hard to get a Moslem court to do justice to the wronged wife. Raising the issue may be worthwhile even if justice cannot be secured.”

There was one particular class of cases called “Jadad ul Islam”…according to traditional Persian law, a Christian who converted to Islam may claim the inheritance of all relatives within 7 degrees of kinship…i.e. the convert has the right to inherit the property of his Christian relatives superseding parents, children, brothers and sisters, cousins and other relatives to the 7th generation. This law furnished the basis of lawsuits often resulting in injustice and loss to Christians.

In 1905 Dr. Cochran died and Dr. Shedd took over his legal and political activities on the Legal Board. He felt that his theology training did not prepare him for this work and he wished he had taken law courses in addition.  During Dr. Shedd’s time in office the legal and political work greatly increased due to the “disturbed political conditions.”

In 1904 the Station experienced a terrible tragedy in the murder of Rev. Ben. W. Labaree while on a journey to days from Urumia. Mr Labaree was the victim of a plot to kill Dr. Cochran because he had pressed the matter of a punishment of a sayid for the unprovoked murder of a Syrian. [A sayid is a lineal descendant of Mohammed and is considered holy.] The attempt to bring him to justice aroused strong resentment. As there was no American consul in Persia a British consul was kept in Urumia for many months for the management of the case. In the following December Dr. Thomas Norton, the American consul from Turkey arrived in Urumia as special commissioner for the American government. He was compelled to leave  before the settlement of the case and the responsibility fell to Dr. Cochran and Dr. Shedd, as station representatives. For a long time there was much uncertainty in the political situation and anxiety for the safety of the missionaries and the Christian community.

The Persian Revolution which had begun in Teheran soon reached Urumia. What was at first a general unrest became an active protest against the prevailing order of political corruption, feudal oppression and despotic injustice. The people following the lead of Teheran and Tabriz demanded a representative government. A council of the people was formed in which were represented the various classes of society. The book says, “It was inevitable that such a revolution among a people to whom the idea of representative government was so foreign and for which they were wholly unprepared should lead to anarchy and chaos to collapse.” The granting of the Constitution by the Shah was celebrated in Urumia by the illumination of the bazaars where large groups of people collected to see the new day that had dawned fro Iran. The book says, “Mullahs and sayids were enthusiastically talking of liberty and equality with little conception of their meaning but the road between Oriental despotism and democracy is not traveled in a day or in a generation. When the question of Christian rights came up it was openly claimed by the anjuman in which mullahs were prominent that the religious law of Islam should be strictly enforced.

An interesting episode in the progress of the revolution in Urumia in the spring of 1909 was the arrest of the Governor by a nationalist leader who entered the city by night sent the Governor away as a prisoner, established himself as the power and reigned for a brief time extracting money from the rich Persians. After a short time he left and the exiled Governor returned.

To make things worse the Turks appeared on the border pressing their claims to that region. The Kurds made the situation worse by attacking scores of Persian villages and killing and plundering.  The Turks advanced until most of the country to the east of Urumia was in their hands. A Persian army was sent against the Kurds but was attacked by the Turks and put to flight without resistance.

Large numbers of refugees from the Christian villages along the border fled to Urumia. Then as the Kurds attacked the Urumia villages the helpless Persian Government gave rifles to the Christians to defend themselves from the attacking Kurds. The people turned to the Missions for help and protection and Mr. Shedd representing the American Mission found it necessary to give much of his time to the saving of life and property and securing justice for the suffering people. These were times of peril to the Mission although there was no anti-foreign or anti-Christian feeling in particular. A boundary commission was appointed by Turkey and Persia but nothing was accomplished.

Chapter 4 to be continued.

Updated 3/10/06