Biography
Ion Grant Neville Keith-Falconer was born on July 5, 1856, in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of the Earl of Kintore. He grew up in a family of wealth and rank, and he was educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a brilliant student and a fine athlete. He became a champion cyclist and held a record for the one-mile bicycle race. He also had a gift for languages and studied Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Ethiopic and other Semitic tongues. He became a scholar of Arabic and was recognized as one of the leading orientalists of his day.
In his youth, he was a man of faith and of strong moral character. He was drawn to the work of D. L. Moody, whose meetings in Britain in the 1870s impressed him. He taught Sunday school and took an interest in the poor. He worked among the working people in the slums of London and organized a group of cyclists for a mission. He also gave generously to Christian causes. In 1884, he was appointed lecturer in Arabic at Cambridge University, where he taught and wrote. He was a rising star in the world of scholarship.
He felt a call to be a missionary to the Muslims of Arabia. He was struck by the fact that the land around Aden, at the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula, had no missionary work among the Arabs. He decided to go himself. He gave up his position at Cambridge and went to Aden with his wife, Gwendolen Bevan, in 1885. He took no salary from any mission and paid his own expenses. He moved into a house in Sheikh Othman, a village near Aden, and began to learn the language of the people. He opened a school and a dispensary.
He said that he believed that a man might do as much for the cause of Christ by his gift of money as by his own work. He gave large sums to the mission. He also stressed the need for medical work among the Arabs. He spent his time speaking with the people, visiting the villages and distributing Scriptures. He saw that the work would be slow and difficult, but he was filled with hope. He wrote letters to his friends in England appealing for more workers.
His time was short. In 1886 he returned to England for a short visit to raise support for the work. He went back to Aden in the autumn. He was well-suited to the work, but his health was affected by the climate. He caught malaria fever in the spring of 1887 and was soon very sick. He died on May 11, 1887, at Sheikh Othman. He was thirty years old. He had been in Arabia for less than two years.
His death caused a great stir in Britain. Many were moved by the sacrifice of a young aristocrat. The Free Church of Scotland took over the work he had begun and carried it on. A mission hospital was built at Sheikh Othman, and it became one of the main centers of medical work in the Arabian peninsula. The Keith-Falconer Mission served for many years and trained workers who went further into the region.
His life shows the cost of a call to the hardest places. A young man with every advantage gave it all up for a people who did not know Christ. His grave at Aden is a reminder of the first missionary steps in Arabia.