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:

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.