Abdul Masih (1765 - 1827)
An infleuntial indigenous Indian missionary
Abdul Masih, Salih (1765-1827), early Indian Muslim convert to Christianity. Abdul Masih was the most influential indigenous Christian to shape Christian mission to Islam in early nineteenth-century India. Born to a socially respected and devout Muslim family in Delhi, he spent his early life as a scholar and teacher in Lucknow, where he earned recognition as a religious Shaykh. In this capacity he befriended Henry Martyn, one of the first chaplains of the British East India Company to direct his energies almost wholly to the evangelisation of Muslims. Attracted by Martyn’s faith and preaching, he studied Martyn’s Urdu translation of the New Testament and took catechetical instruction from two other company Chaplains, David Brown and Daniel Corrie. His conversion and baptism in 1811 caused social unrest in Lucknow, so moved to Agra, where he worked as an itinerant preacher and healer, assisting the early development of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in the city. His success in winning both Muslim and Hindu converts led the CMS to hope that he would be the vanguard of indigenous evangelists. Although Abdul Masih became A Lutheran, in 1825 he re-entered the Anglican Church as the first Indian-ordained minister under Bishop Heber of Calcutta. As a consequence, he was able to exercise considerable influence over both Anglican and Lutheran approaches to mission among Muslims in the first half of the nineteenth century. His work prepared the way for the German CMS evangelist Karl Gottlieb, who followed Abdul Masih in Agra and dominated later nineteenth-century methods of Muslim evangelism.