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Pfander, Karl Gottlieb
PFANDER, pfān´der, KARL GOTTLIEB: Missionary to the Mohammedans; b. at Waiblingen (7 m. n.e. of Stuttgart), Germany, Nov. 3, 1803; d. at Richmond (8 m. w.s.w. of London) Dec. 1, 1865. His father was a baker, who, perceiving his aptitude for study and sharing his ambitions, sent him first to the Latin school in the town, then to Kornthal (q.v.), and finally to the missionary institute at Basel, where he studied from 1820 to 1825. He was a remarkable linguist and of indefatigable energy, and spent his life in the effort to convert Mohammedans. From 1825 to 1829 he labored in Shusha, in Transcaucasia, and neighboring lands; from 1829 to 1831 he was with Anthony Norris Groves (q.v.) in Bagdad; from Mar. to Sept., 1831, in Persia, but then returned to Shusha. In 1835 the Russian government forbade all missionary operations except those of the Greek Church; consequently he had to leave Shusha. He went first to Constantinople, in 1836 was back in Shusha, but in 1837 started for India by way of Persia, and arrived in Calcutta Oct. 1, 1838. As it seemed most promising to work henceforth under English auspices he, with the full consent of the Basel Society, became a missionary of the Church Missionary Society, Feb. 12, 1840. He was in Agra from 1841 to 1855, in Peshawar from 1855 to 1857, and in Constantinople from 1858 to 1865. His death occurred while on his furlough.
He married first Sophia Reuss, a German, in Moscow, July 11, 1834, who died in childbed in Shusha, May 12, 1835; second, Emily Swinburne, an Englishwoman, in Calcutta, Jan. 19, 1841, who bore him three boys and three girls, and survived him fifteen years. He wrote few books, and most of them in oriental languages. One that is in English was his Remarks on the Nature of Muhammedanism, Calcutta, 1840. But one of his books is a missionary classic. He drafted it in German in May, 1829, while in Shusha, then he expanded and perfected it. It bears in German the title Mizan ul Hakk oder die Wage der Wahrheit, translations have been made of it into Armenian, Turkish, Persian, and Ordu, and it has been widely circulated among 6Mohammedans of many lands. There is an English translation of it under the title, The Mizan ul Haqq; or Balance [should be Balances] of Truth (London, 1867, new ed., 1910). It is a cogent and incisive attack on Mohammedanism and an explanation and application of Christianity, written in simple language but with deep conviction and ample knowledge. In recognition of the service he had thus rendered, the archbishop of Canterbury (John Bird Sumner) made him a doctor of divinity in 1857.
Bibliography: C. F. Eppler, D. Karl Gottlieb Pfander, Basel, 1888; Emily Headland, Sketches of Church Missionary Society Workers, London, 1897.
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