Iran: 'A Persian Merchant', sketch and watercolour by Justin Perkins, Urmia (1839)

Justin Perkins (1805-1869) was born on a farm in Massachusetts, and educated at Amherst and the Andover Theological Seminary. From 1833 until shortly before his death in 1869, he served as missionary to the Nestorian Christians of Qajar Iran (1794-1925) under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions. He was the first American missionary in Qajar Iran, as well as an eminent scholar of Syriac. He developed an alphabet for the writing of modern Syriac, which was the Nestorians' vernacular, and established a press at Urmia (spelled Oroomiah by Perkins) in western Azerbaijan to print his translations of the New Testament (1846) and the Old Testament (1852) in both liturgical and modern Syriac.

Urmia, sometimes spelled, Orumieh, during the majority of the Pahlavi Dynasty (1925–1979) called Rezaiyeh), is a city in Northwestern Iran and the capital of West Azerbaijan Province. The city lies on an altitude of 1,330 m above sea level on the Shahar Chay river (City River). Urmia is the 10th most populated city in Iran with a population of about 600,000. The population is predominantly Azerbaijani with significant Kurdish, Assyrian and Armenian minorities.

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Pictures From History