Two typescript letters and seven gelatine silver photographs. These seven photos, varying sizes ranging from 15,5x10 cm (three), 11x8 cm (one), 10,5x7,5 cm (one), 11x7 cm one), and 9x7 cm (one). Letters sent by "American Export Lines" are folded, one is signed in blue ink. A cut envelope is censored (stamped "passed by censor"). Letters include approx. 1300 words total. The sending address is "Utraula, Gonda Dist[rict], U[ttar] P[radesh], India". All very good condition. Both are addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Rogers of Pennsylvania by Jones, Ruth Helen van Heer, and Jones, Rev. Everard Keith. Ruth (1916-2006) and Keith Jones (1911-2006) were Canadian missionaries in India, Pakistan, and Iran between 1936-1979, in Ceylon and India with the Ceylan and India General Mission (later the Sudan Interior Mission) and Iran with the Anglican Church. Rev. Jones also served with the Fellowship of Faith for Muslims. They had a son named Rodney. Historically interesting small but content-rich archive includes seven photographs and two interesting typescript letters. Both letters from the missionaries' time in India, likely during their service with the Fellowship of Faith for Muslims in Northern India, in Uttar Pradesh Province, one dated 1942 and one 1944. The first letter is a personal hand-signed by Ruth discussing the difficulties of living in India, mentioning the lack of much success in their work and fears that cost and the war would disrupt plans for a homestay in 1945. Also, she writes about their son Rodney, how surprised when they arrived in India first by indicating "So far as the Gospel goes, this is one of the most illiterate provinces, and therefore one of the most difficult to work in". She goes on with their camera and photograph shoots, supplying the material of such things is very difficult in the region, etc. The second letter is a long one that describes a visit to a large home for five wealthy Shiite Bhatti Khanzada (Khanzada Muslim Rajputs) families on the Ashura, the tenth of Muharram, the Islamic New Year, a day of mourning for Shia Muslims, who annually commemorate the death of Husayn ibn Ali who was killed, alongside most of his relatives and his small retinue in the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE against the army of the Umayyad caliph Yazid b. Mu'awiya, grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and the third Shia imam. This is one of the most sacred holidays for Muslims in the Uttar Pradesh region and is marked by fasting, prayer, chest-beating, and (according to the letter) scary enactments that involve roping a boy and a baby by the foot and neck as a sort of homage to Imam Husayn. The letter also describes the set-up of the house that allows women to pass from one area to another without breaking "purdah" [i.e., the practice in certain Muslim and Hindu societies of screening women from men or strangers, especially by means of a curtain]. This long, content-rich, and historically informative typescript letter includes an invaluable account of the Shiite Muslim communities in India in the modern mid-20th century: "Ceylon & India General Mission. Utraula, Gonda Dist., U.P., North India, January 1942. Dear friends in Christ; As we neared the Muharram celebration this year, about which I wrote you a year ago, we had an invitation from a wealthy Mohammedan's house to come and see what goes on at that time in the purdah quarters. You'll remember that this is in commemoration of the martyrdom of Husayn, and how the people put on their mourning colours of green, white and black, take off all jewellery, eat simple food, and some fast and sleep on the floor on straw for ten days. You will also perhaps remember that on the seventh night they take their banners, the blood-stained, garbed horse and the funeral bed, around to each Shia house, going from house to house all night, and the women weep for hours. The house to which we were invited I really made up of five complete houses, and more than fiv
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