Carl Gottlieb Pfander or C.G. Pfander (1803–1865), spelt also as Karl Gottlieb Pfander, was a Basel Mission missionary in Central Asia and Trans-Caucasus, and the Church Missionary Society polemicist to North-Western Provinces—later became Agra Province – present Agra in Uttar Pradesh — North India. He was known for converting Muslims to Christianity.
He authored Mizan al-Haqq (The balance of truth), an apologetic, Remarks on the nature of Muhammedanism, and more.
Life:
One of nine children, the son of a village baker was born on 3 November 1803 at Württemberg, Germany—Württemberg, his birthplace was one of the few places notorious for Pietistic form of Evangelism, influenced by Pietists like J.A. Bengel and F.C. Oetinger. Pfander attended a local Latin school, and then grammar school in Stuttgart. At the age of sixteen, he had already decided to become a Protestant Christian missionary; accordingly, he got his missionary training in Germany between 1819 and 1821. In due course, he was accepted for training at the newly established Evangelical Institute at Basel in Switzerland between 1821 and 1825, and became fluent in Persian, Turkish, and Arabic languages. During his first appointment with the Basel Mission (BM) [German: Evangelische Missions Gasellschaft at Shusha in Karabakh Khanate, Azerbaijan, he quickly learned Armenian and Azerbaijani languages, and fine-tuned his Persian language skills; he served for twelve years at BM society between 1825 and 1837, studying the Arabic language and Quran. He married Sophia Reuss, first wife; a German, in Moscow on 11 July 1834; however, she died in childbed in Shusha on 12 May 12, 1835. In 1837, he joined the Church Missionary Society (CMS) when BM was closed by Russia in Central Asia; consequently, he was sent to India for sixteen years between 1837 and 1857. He married Emily Swinburne, second wife; an English woman, in Calcutta on 19 January 1841, who bore him three boys and three girls. In 1858, he was sent to Constantinople by CMS following an uprising against the British rule in India. Pfander returned to Britain when CMS activity in the city was suspended as Ottomon opposed his controversialist approach. He died on 1 December 1865 at Richmond, London.
He is buried in the cemetery of St Andrew’s Church, Ham, Germany
Pfander Vs Rahmatullah Debate
While in India, he engaged with Muslim religious leaders in a famous public debate at Agra on 10 and 11 April 1854 at the invitation of Islamic scholar Rahmatullah Kairanawi. Several hundred Muslims and Christians gathered in the school room of Agra’s Church Missionary Society to listen to a series of public debates between Pfander, a German CMS Protestant missionary, and Kairanawi, a Sunni theologian. Pfander supporters included British East Indian Company servants, who represented India’s colonial power and its protection of European missionaries; Pfander’s co-workers including Thomas Valpy French, who later became the first bishop of Lahore; local Christian converts from Islam, and representatives of the Anglican Church. Local Shi’ites and Sunni audiences; local Catholic missionaries, who disliked the work of Protestants, Muhammad Wazîr Khân, a physician in British-run medical hospital; and prolific Islamic writer and scholar Imad ud-din Lahiz were in the crowd on Kairanawi’s side.
Although the debate had been slated to address the topics of the Quran as the word of God, the Trinity and the sending of Muhammad, the debate centered around a single point, the authenticity of Christian scriptures. Pfander, well versed in the traditional argument, defended the integrity of the New Testament and Old Testament, while Kairanawi insisted that the Christian scriptures had been abrogated using the apocryphal 16th century Gospel of Barnabas as his main source, which he thought was the only authentic Gospel. After two days of debate, both claimed victory.
Pfander was not prepared against the arguments of Kairanwi and hence his position remained relatively weak. This emboldened the Muslim debaters to contest in their future polemics.
The interest the debate aroused led a number of Muslims to read Pfander’s literature and consider the questions that had been discussed. Some, such as the leading Sufi scholars and theologians Imad ud-din Lahiz and Safdar Ali, both of whom attended the debate, proclaimed their conversion to Christianity.
Imad ud-din Lahiz, for example, who assisted Kairanawi in representing the Islamic side in the debate, was so impressed with Pfander and his detailed arguments in his Magnum opus Mizan Al Haqq (The Balance of Truth) that he noted upon his conversion to Christianity:
“We can now, I think, say that the controversy has virtually been complete … [that] the Christians have obtained a complete victory, while our opponents have been signally defeated.”
William Muir, Secretary to the Government of the North West Provinces, described these debates between Pfander and Kairanawi in an article published by the “Calcutta Review,” along with recent history of Christian mission to Muslims. Having observed the debate by himself, he later labeled these articles as The Mohammedan Controversy in 1897.
Peshawar (1855-1857)
In 1837 the CMS relocated Pfander to strategic location Peshawar, doorway to Central Asia and South Asia, on the north-west frontier of India, where he continued his distribution of literature and his controversial discussions. At the outbreak of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, he “went on preaching in the streets right through the most anxious time, when plots to murder all the Europeans were revealed by intercepted letters.” That same year he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Cambridge University in recognition of his scholarship.
Constantinople (1858–1865)
He was sent as CMS missionary to Constantinople in 1859. When he arrived at Constantinople, many Turks showed interest in the doctrines of Christianity for the first few years. When in Constantinople, then-Ottoman capital, while he was on Middle Eastern mission, he commented:
If Constantinople were to be in the hands of a Christian government and a Christian people, it would with its unquestionably propitious surroundings be one of the most beautiful and fascinating places in the world.
However, with ill-advised comments and attacks against the Prophet Muhammad, the Turks soon retaliated violently against Christian missions, confiscating printing presses used by the missionaries, closed rooms and bookstores of the missionaries, including imprisonment of the missionaries, spurring the British government to interfere to free the missionaries. The mission never recovered from that blow, forcing them to forbid Istanbul for good.