Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East
Author: Ussama Makdisi
Publisher/Publication: Cornell University Press
DOI/ISBN: ISBN 978-0801475757
The book delves into 19th century American missions in the Ottoman Empire, telling the story of an early convert to Protestantism in what is today Lebanon. Using the tragic experiences of As'ad Shidyaq (1798-1830), the first person to convert from Maronite Catholicism to Evangelical Protestantism and, less centrally, the figure of Butrus al-Bustani, an evangelical Protestant who founded a famous school in Beirut and established an educational pattern, the writer compiles a unique approach of the region’s transnational history and adds another perspective to the examination of the region's history.
