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Rev. David Benjamin Keldani, B.D.
Before he became a Muslim and changed his name to Abdul-Ahad Dawud, Rev. David Benjamin Keldani, B.D. was a Roman Catholic priest of the Uniate-Chaldean sect. He was born in 1867 at Urmia in Persia; educated from his early infancy in that town. From 1886-89 (three years) he was on the teaching staff of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Mission to the Assyrian (Nestorian) Christians at Urmia. In 1892 he was sent by Cardinal Vaughan to Rome, where he underwent a course of philosophical and theological studies at the Propaganda Fide College, and in 1895 was ordained Priest. In 1892 Professor Dawud contributed a series of articles to The Tableton "Assyria, Rome and Canterbury"; and also to the Irish Recordon the "Authenticity of the Pentateuch." He has several translations of the Ave Mariain different languages, published in the Illustrated Catholic Missions. While in Constantinople on his way to Persia in 1895, he contributed a long series of articles in English and French to the daily paper, published there under the name of The Levant Herald, on "Eastern Churches." In 1895 he joined the French Lazarist Mission at Urmia, and published for the first time in the history of that Mission a periodical in the vernacular Syriac called Qala-La-Shara, i.e. "The Voice of Truth." In 1897 he was delegated by two Uniate-Chaldean Archbishops of Urmia and of Salinas to represent the Eastern Catholics at the Eucharistic Congress held at Paray-le-Monial in France under the presidency of Cardinal Perraud. This was, of course, an official invitation. The paper read at the Congress by "Father Benjamin" was published in the Annalsof the Eucharistic Congress, called "Le Pellerin" of that year. In this paper, the Chaldean Arch-Priest (that being his official title) deplored the Catholic system of education among the Nestorians, and foretold the imminent appearance of the Russian priests in Urmia. |