George Percy Badger was an Anglican missionary appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury as delegate to the Nestorians, i.e. the Church of the East, in 1842. He worked on this mission in the Ottoman Empire until 1845, and returned to the Middle East in other capacities on subsequent occasions. The Nestorians and their Rituals, published in 1852, summarises Badger's findings on the Church of the East. It serves as one of the first—and still among the most—detailed treatments of the Church in English.
The first volume is written primarily in the form of a travel journal detailing the author's voyages through modern Turkey, Iraq, and Syria, and contains a wide range of observations on the practices and political situation of the Christians and Yazidis in the eastern Ottoman Empire, along with the wider politics of the empire, as well as notes on the remains of ancient sites visited by the author. These accounts are supplemented by numerous illustrations.
The second volume contains a detailed analysis of the liturgy and doctrine of the Assyrian Church of the East, supported by extensive quotations from original Syriac sources, and complete translations of two works by Abdisho bar Berika in the appendices.
Both volumes contain editorial annotations by John Mason Neale expanding on Badger's observations and correcting mistakes. These notes are designated by superscript numbers without square brackets (1), and link to each volume's respective "Notes by the Editor" chapter.
Volumes:
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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