A History of Protestant missions in the near East

Syria and Palestine 273
the interior, Muhammad Ibn el Wahhab (died 178Y) and
Prince Saud established the Wahhab Empire in the eighteenth
century. In the southeast the imams have founded the Kingdom
of Oman, with Maskat as its capital. On the southern
coast of Hadramaut there are several little sultanates. The
Beduins are still as impatient as ever of any strict political
government, and many are said to be heathens, or at least
only nominal Muhammadans.
() Aden, the southwestern gate of Arabia. When the call
came to Protestants to take the Gospel to Muhammadans,
Arabia first attracted attention. General Haig of the
Church Missionary Society strongly advocated the beginning
of work in Aden. He wrote in 1882 in the Intelligencer, the
organ of the society, a significant article on Aden as the Gate
of Arabia, laying extensive plans before the society for a mission
in Southern Arabia and Somaliland. He himself went
to make enquiries in those lands (1886). The Church Missionary
Society adopted his plans, stationing the medical missionary,
Dr. Harpur, who had been in Egypt, temporarily in
Aden and Hodaida. But, in the meantime, at the request of
Haig, a talented Scotsman, the Hon. Dr. Ion Keith Falconer,
a son of the Earl of Kin tore, and professor of Arabic
in Cambridge, had settled in Aden, and had begun mission
work in the desert village of Sheikh Othman, in a grove of
date-palms, the only one in the neighbourhood. Unfortunately
he soon fell a victim to malaria, dying on the llth of
May, 1887. At once his mother and his widow each offered
300 a year for the continuance of the work, and the Free
Church of Scotland, to which he had belonged, adopted Aden
as a main station, while the Church Missionary Society very
tactfully retired from the neighbourhood. The work in
Sheikh Othman proved to be very arduous. The missionaries
were, to be sure, protected, since the district belonged to England,
and the place lay on the great caravan route between
Aden and Yemen, one of the most important and frequented
roads in the peninsula ;
on some days more than a thousand
camels would pass the mission station, affording a splendid