Page 19 - New English Book L

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Brief Biography of Prof. Abdulahad Dawud

Prof. Abdulahad Dawud is the former Rev David
Benjamin Keldani, B.D., a Roman Catholic priest of the
Uniate-Chaldean sect. He was born in 1867 at Urmia in
Persia, and was educated from his early years in the same
town. From 1886 to 1889, 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
tablet on “Assyria, Rome and Canterbury”; and to the
Irish Record on the “Authenticity of the Pentateuch.”
He has several translations of the Ave Maria in 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 QalaLa Shárá, i.e. “The
Voice of Truth.”

In 1897, he was delegated by two Uniate-Chaldean
Archbishops of Urmia and of Salmas 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
Annals of the Eucharistic Congress, called “Le Pellerin”
of that year. In this paper, the Chaldean Archpriest (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.