Kamil Abdul Messiah

Kamil Abdul Messiah — published in 1898 as The Setting of the Crescent and the Rising of the Cross — tells the story of Kamil Aietany, a young Syrian from a prominent Beirut Muslim family. Sent to the Jesuit college to study Greek, he encountered the New Testament, and when his instructors advised him to deceive his father about his motives, his conscience revolted; he sought out the American missionary Henry H. Jessup instead, and read the scriptures for himself day after day in Jessup’s study.

He was baptized, taking the name Abdul Messiah — ‘servant of the Messiah’ — and gave himself to mission work: first among the Bedouin, then with Samuel Zwemer and James Cantine in the pioneering Arabia mission at Basrah. He died there suddenly and young, apparently poisoned, and was buried under Muslim rites before his friends could reach him.

The book is Jessup’s memoir of his convert, but it is built on Kamil’s own letters, quoted at length throughout — so that much of it is testimony in Kamil’s own voice: a partly first-person record, honestly framed, of one of the earliest Syrian converts from Islam of the missionary era.

Our clean edition presents the public-domain 1898 text in a readable modern format — Jessup’s narrative with Kamil’s letters — and we link the free source so you can read the original scan online as well.

This is a clean, modern reading edition of The Setting of the Crescent and the Rising of the Cross; or, Kamil Abdul Messiah, a Syrian Convert from Islam to Christianity, written by the Rev. Henry Harris Jessup, D.D., and published by The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, in 1898. The text is in the public domain.

A note on language. Jessup wrote in the English of an American missionary in 1898, and used the words standard then — "Mohammedan" and "Moslem" for a Muslim, "Mussulman" for the same, "Mohammedanism" for Islam. Those forms are dated now, and they are not the words Muslims use of themselves. In this edition we have updated them to "Muslim" and "Islam" throughout the body of the text, so that a modern reader meets the account in respectful, current language. The change runs to about a hundred and ten words and reaches inside quoted speech, including Kamil's own — he is reported saying "We Mohammedans think that the Christians worship three Gods," and here says "We Muslims think".

What we have not changed is as important as what we have. Jessup's argument, his judgements and his meaning are untouched, and so are Kamil's. We have kept every personal name exactly as written — including the name Mohammed, and figures such as Mohammed Ali, pasha of Egypt — and we have kept the historical title under which the book has been known since 1898.

A word about whose book this is. It is Jessup's memoir of his convert, not an autobiography. But it is built out of Kamil's own letters and reported words, quoted at length, so that much of the story is told in Kamil's voice. We present it honestly as a partly first-person testimony rather than as a work Kamil wrote.

The free source is linked from this book's page, so any reader can check our edition against the original scan.