Henry Harris Jessup

Henry Harris Jessup served as an American Presbyterian missionary, educator, and author, spending more than five decades in Syria and becoming closely involved with Arabic-language publishing. The Women of the Arabs reached readers through Dodd and Mead in 1873, with editorial assistance from Charles S. Robinson and Isaac Riley. Its chapters combine historical discussion with accounts of education and missionary activity concerning women in Syria and neighboring communities. Jessup wrote from long residence and language study, but his judgments also reflect the Protestant missionary assumptions of his period. That historical position should remain visible when the book is read today. Jessup's bibliography also contains Syrian Home Life, The Mohammedan Missionary Problem, and the two-volume memoir Fifty-Three Years in Syria. He was associated with the Syrian Protestant College, later the American University of Beirut. The Women of the Arabs belongs to that larger career, joining observation, religious advocacy, and institutional history in a source whose detail and perspective both require careful contextual reading.