Dillon: 535–537 Madison Street, Chicago. Circa 1894.
Collodion-print, 6.5” x 4.25”, plus mount. Photographer’s imprint at recto, blue inkstamp reading “Shumun K. Guergez, Oroomia, Persia” at verso. CONDITION: Very good, minor soiling at right margin of image, not affecting scene or subject
A remarkably well preserved image of an early Iranian medical student in late nineteenth century Chicago.
This photograph shows Shumun K. Guergez, a Persian lecturer, missionary, and medical student at Rush College, Chicago. The period press reports that he was the “son of the Archdeacon Guergez of Oroomia,” who was likely a deacon at the Assyrian Church of the East, in present-day Urmia. Guergez’s first appearance in the newspaper record indicates that, in late January of 1892, he was one of the six converted “representatives of various unchristianized nations of Asia, dressed in the characteristic costumes of their land,” who were present at the Grace Methodist Episcopal Church during the Semi-Annual Missionary Congress of Nations that year. By 1894, the press reports that Guergez had embarked on a career as an itinerant lecturer across midwestern America. Likely to supplement his tuition and capitalizing on the excitement following the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago in 1893, in the mid-1890s, Guergez regaled his audience on “life in Persia, the customs, languages, religion and history of its people and the missionary work that is being done among them.” He appeared regularly in “native costume,” often speaking, singing, and praying in “a number of different languages,” which were likely Persian and Arabic, among others.
Guergez’s career as a traveling Persian convert to Presbyterianism was uncommon in nineteenth century America, and he was quite possibly among the first students from Iran to be educated in the medical field of this country. We locate no institutional documentation of Guergez’s education or career in American repositories.
Sources Consulted: D. T. Potts, “The American Mission at Urmia (1833–1848),” in Agreeable News from Persia, 2022; “The Assyrian Church of the East in the US—1919-2019.”
Dillon: 535–537 Madison Street, Chicago. Circa 1894.
Collodion-print, 6.5” x 4.25”, plus mount. Photographer’s imprint at recto, blue inkstamp reading “Shumun K. Guergez, Oroomia, Persia” at verso. CONDITION: Very good, minor soiling at right margin of image, not affecting scene or subject
A remarkably well preserved image of an early Iranian medical student in late nineteenth century Chicago.
This photograph shows Shumun K. Guergez, a Persian lecturer, missionary, and medical student at Rush College, Chicago. The period press reports that he was the “son of the Archdeacon Guergez of Oroomia,” who was likely a deacon at the Assyrian Church of the East, in present-day Urmia. Guergez’s first appearance in the newspaper record indicates that, in late January of 1892, he was one of the six converted “representatives of various unchristianized nations of Asia, dressed in the characteristic costumes of their land,” who were present at the Grace Methodist Episcopal Church during the Semi-Annual Missionary Congress of Nations that year. By 1894, the press reports that Guergez had embarked on a career as an itinerant lecturer across midwestern America. Likely to supplement his tuition and capitalizing on the excitement following the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago in 1893, in the mid-1890s, Guergez regaled his audience on “life in Persia, the customs, languages, religion and history of its people and the missionary work that is being done among them.” He appeared regularly in “native costume,” often speaking, singing, and praying in “a number of different languages,” which were likely Persian and Arabic, among others.
Guergez’s career as a traveling Persian convert to Presbyterianism was uncommon in nineteenth century America, and he was quite possibly among the first students from Iran to be educated in the medical field of this country. We locate no institutional documentation of Guergez’s education or career in American repositories.
Sources Consulted: D. T. Potts, “The American Mission at Urmia (1833–1848),” in Agreeable News from Persia, 2022; “The Assyrian Church of the East in the US—1919-2019.”
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