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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 October 2020
A Protestant missionary in the Ottoman Empire relayed in his field report dated February 1855 some unusually exciting news about his ‘discovery’ of an ‘obscure Muslim sect’ in eastern Anatolia:
There is a sect of nominal Moslems scattered through this region, of whom I think you have not heard. They bear the name Kuzulbash, which means, literally, ‘red head.’ But why this name has been given to them, I am not able as yet to determine … Though they are claimed by the Moslems, they are no followers of Mohammed. They believe in Christ, the Son of God, so far as they have a knowledge of him … They never, or almost never, go through the Moslem forms of prayer; nor do they keep their fast. They are a people by themselves, a peculiar people, and open to the gospel. Indeed they are very anxious to get it, and some have it already … The Turks seem to regard them very much as they do the Koords, as worthless heretics, and not worth caring for; and I think that no very serious trouble would come to them from that quarter, if they were all to embrace the truth openly.
This report, most probably the earliest written record of the Kizilbash communities in modern times, was authored by Mr Dunmore, a missionary associated with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and it appeared in the board's bulletin, The Missionary Herald. With this report, Mr Dunmore laid the foundations of a hopeful vision regarding a possible Kizilbash conversion that the Protestant missionaries would maintain for about a decade, only to give it up when recognising its unlikely prospects. Two things led to the missionaries’ disillusionment. First, the small group of Kizilbash whom Mr Dunmore believed were ready to embrace Protestantism were seeking from the missionaries a promise of formal protection similar to the one granted to the Protestant Armenians as a means of escaping the recently imposed requirement of military service, among other things.
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