The Kurdish Digital Library (BNK)
Retour au resultats
Imprimer cette page

Fever and Thirst


Author : Gordon Taylor
Editor : Academy Chicago Date & Place : 2005, Chicago
Preface : Pages : 354
Traduction : ISBN : 0-89733-537-6
Language : EnglishFormat : 140x225 mm
FIKP's Code : Liv. Ang. Tay. Fev. 1260Theme : General

Presentation Table of Contents Introduction Identity PDF
Fever and Thirst


Fever and Thirst, A Missionary Doctor Amid the Christian Tribes of Kurdistan

Gordon Taylor

Academy Chicago


The first Americans to work with the people of the Middle East were neither spies nor soldiers. They were, in fact, teachers, printers, and missionaries, of whom one was a country doctor from Utica, New York. In June of 1835 Asahel Grant, M.D., and his bride Judith sailed from Boston to heal the sick and save the world. Their destination was the town of Urmia, in northwest Iran, and their intended flock the Nestorian Christians who lived there and in the mountains of Hakkari, across the border in Ottoman Kurdistan.

Into the next eight years Grant packed ten lifetimes worth of danger, heartbreak, and exertion. He traversed deserts and glaciers, forded rivers, learned fluent Turkish and Syriac, opened schools, tended the sick and dying, confronted bandits, broke bread with thieves and murderers, and narrowly escaped death from drowning, malaria, cholera, influenza, mercury poisoning, dysentery, hypothermia, and assassination. In one year alone, he lost three-fifths of his family (including Judith) to disease.

Yet by the time his shattered body gave out, there was no one in the mountains who did not know his name and his legend, and thirty years later Kurds, Nestorians, Jews and Yedzis still spoke of "Hakim Grant” with reverence.

Gordon Taylor’s fascination with the Middle East began in the mid-1960s, when he worked as a Peace Corps teacher in Ankara, Turkey. He has spent over a decade collecting material on Asahel Grant and his work. Taylor, a waiter and avid traveler, has spent time in Turkey, Siena Leone, Greece and Israel, and now' lives with his wife in Seattle, Washington.



Foundation-Kurdish Institute of Paris © 2024
LIBRARY
Practical Information
Legal Informations
PROJECT
History & notes
Partenaires
LIST
Themas
Authors
Editors
Languages
Journals