Joseph Wolff

Joseph Wolff was a German-born Christian missionary and traveller whose journeys took him through Maharaja Ranjit Singh's Punjab in 1832. He is not a figure of the Panth. He appears in this record as a foreign witness to the Lahore court, and the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism warns that his account of the Punjab shows a strong sense of Western superiority and religious bias.

Wolff was born in 1795 at Weilersbach near Bamberg, the son of a rabbi. He was baptised a Roman Catholic near Prague in 1812 and took the name Joseph, then joined the Church of England and studied at Cambridge. From 1821 to 1826 he worked as a missionary in Egypt and the Sinai. From about 1827 he travelled through Anatolia, Armenia, Turkestan, Afghanistan, Kashmir and India, partly in a search for the Lost Tribes of Israel.

In the Punjab. When Wolff crossed the Indus into Sikh territory in 1832 he was welcomed with a 21-gun salute. According to the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism he stayed in the camp of the heir apparent, Kharak Singh, at Rawalpindi, with the American Josiah Harlan at Gujrat, with the Italian General Avitabile at Wazirabad and with the French General Allard at Lahore. Scroll adds that Harlan, whom Wolff met in June 1832, had been made governor of Gujrat in May 1831, and that foreign visitors were expected to report to the provincial governor.

At Lahore Wolff had proclamations posted in the streets calling people to Christ. Ranjit Singh sent him a polite letter of disapproval, saying that such words must not be said or heard. He then received Wolff in audience at Amritsar and teased him, asking why he was not preaching to the English in Hindustan, who in the Maharaja's words had no religion. The Encyclopaedia adds that Ranjit Singh ironically suggested an alliance with the British was one way to draw near to God, pointing to his meeting with the Governor-General, Lord William Bentinck, at Ropar.

Key moments

• 1812: baptised near Prague and takes the name Joseph.
• 1821 to 1826: missionary in Egypt and the Sinai.
• 1832: crosses the Indus into Ranjit Singh's territory, is rebuked in writing over his Lahore proclamations and is received at Amritsar.
• 1843 to 1845: travels to Bukhara to learn the fate of the British officers Charles Stoddart and Arthur Conolly, who had already been executed. He wrote that he was spared because the Emir laughed at his clerical dress.
• 2 May 1862: dies at Isle Brewers, Somerset, where he had been vicar since 1845.

What he is remembered for. Wolff is remembered for the Bukhara mission and for his travel books, among them the Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara (1845) and the Travels and Adventures of the Rev. Joseph Wolff (1860 or 1861). For the Panth's record he is one of the visitors whose memoirs, read critically, show how Ranjit Singh and his court looked to outsiders in the Maharaja's last years.