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Revisiting a Nahḍa origin story: Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb and the Protestant community in 1840s Beirut

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 December 2019

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Anthony Edwards*
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Abstract

This article is a comprehensive evaluation of the first learned society of the Nahḍa (Renaissance) in Beirut. I argue that Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb (the Refinement Council, est. 1846) was not a learned society but an ad hoc seminary formed to train converts for itinerant preaching and to build camaraderie among the nascent Protestant confession. In order to unearth the mission of Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb and amplify the voices of its members – twelve Syrians and two Americans – this essay reconstructs their biographies and the condition of the Protestant community until 1846. This case study explicates the personal and professional entanglements of these fourteen men in terms of social connections, educational opportunities, economic needs, and religious convictions. It contextualizes the early years of several prominent Nahḍa figures by highlighting the material and spiritual aspects of their lives in 1840s Beirut.

Keywords

Learned societyBeirutNahḍaMajmaʿ al-TahdhībProtestant
Type
Article
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 82 , Issue 3 , October 2019 , pp. 427 - 451
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS University of London 2019

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Footnotes

1

I am grateful to Cacee Hoyer, Anna Ziajka Stanton, and the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and criticisms of this essay at various stages of completion. I am also indebted to Kristen Brustad who many years ago encouraged me to not abandon research on the purported first Nahḍa learned society in Beirut.

References

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12 Beshara (ed.), Butrus al-Bustani, 15–6.

13 Classifications pegged to religion, nationality, ethnicity, toponymy, etc., are problematic given the dynamic nature of these variables. Acknowledging the historical inaccuracy of the term “Syrian/s”, this essay nonetheless uses this exonym to refer to inhabitants of Greater Syria (bilād al-shām), a geographic expanse encompassing the twenty-first-centuy nation-states of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel/Palestine.

14 The “Protestant Circle” is an analytical label that outlines how “Protestantism in Syria was unified by a specific ideological ‘gravity’ and concentrated on a central, elite group [i.e. the male missionaries]” and illustrates the “intricate dispersal of power emanating from the centre”. Christine Beth Lindner, “Negotiating the field: American Protestant missionaries in Ottoman Syria, 1823 to 1860” (PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2009), 14–5. This essay uses “Protestant circle” and “Protestant community” interchangeably.

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19 Eli Smith Papers (Arabic), 1819–69 (ABC 50). Houghton Library, Harvard University [hereafter ABC 50], Buṭrus al-Bustānī to Eli Smith (10 Jan. 1846).

20 See the Appendix for a completed roster with birth and death dates when known.

21 Tibawi, “Some misconceptions about the Nahḍa”, 17.

22 ABC 50, Ilyās Fawwāz to Eli Smith (10 Feb. 1846).

23 Antonius, The Arab Awakening; Ali, Nadia Bou, “Collecting the nation: lexicography and the national pedagogy in al-nahda al-‘arabiyya” in  Mejcher-Atassi, Sonja and Schwartz, John Pedro (eds), Archives, Museums and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World (Surrey: Ashgate, 2012), 33–56Google Scholar (33); and El-Ariss, Tarek, Trials of Arab Modernity: Literary Affects and the New Political (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013)Google Scholar.

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25 See Anthony Edwards, “Fact or fiction? In search of the ‘Learned Council’ of Ǧirmānūs Farḥāt”, Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 18, 2018, 4–7.

26 Kitāb al-ʿAyn, s.v. “j-m-ʿ”. Arabic lexicons repeat this definition. Lisān al-ʿArab, s.v. “j-m-ʿ”; Al-Qāmūs al-Muḥīṭ, s.v. “j-m-ʿ”; and Tāj al-ʿArūs, s.v. “j-m-ʿ”.

27 Jirmānūs Farḥāt, Iḥkām Bāb al-Iʿrāb ʿan Lughat al-Aʿrāb (ed. Rushayd al-Daḥdāḥ) (Marseilles: Imprimerie Carnaud, digitized by Barras and Savournin, 1849), “j-m-ʿ”.

28 ABC 50, Ṭannūs al-Ḥaddād to Eli Smith (24 Apr. 1841); ABC 50, Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī to Eli Smith (16 Aug. 1845); and ABC 50, Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī to Eli Smith (3 Feb. 1846).

29 Kītāb Tawārīkh Mukhtaṣar (Malta: CMS, 1833); Portions of the Book of Common Prayers (from the Arabic Version Lately Printed at Malta, 1833) (London: William Watts; the Prayer Book and Homily Society, 1844).

30 The noun jamʿiyya was likely a nineteenth-century coinage given its absence in the Classical Arabic lexicons consulted.

31 Buṭrus al-Bustānī, Kitāb Muḥīṭ al-Muḥīṭ (Beirut: no publisher, 1867), 287.

32 ABC 50, Buṭrus al-Bustānī to Eli Smith (10 Jan. 1846).

33 ABC 50, Buṭrus al-Bustānī to Eli Smith (10 Jan. 1846).

34 ABC 50, Buṭrus al-Bustānī to Eli Smith (10 Jan. 1846).

35 N.E.S.T. Special Collections, Beirut, Lebanon, “al-Kanīsa al-Injīliyya al-Waṭaniyya fī Bayrūt”, Daftar al-Kanīsa al-Injīliyya 1, Sijall Raqm 9.

36 ABC 50, Ilyās Fawwāz to Eli Smith (10 Feb. 1846).

37 ABC 50, Buṭrus al-Bustānī to Eli Smith (10 Jan. 1846).

38 ABC 50, Ilyās Fawwāz to Eli Smith (10 Feb. 1846).

39 Laurie, Thomas, Historical Sketch of the Syria Mission (New York: ABCFM, 1862), 24–5Google Scholar.

40 These missionaries were Elias Root Beadle (1812–79), Charles S. Sherman (1810–99), and Leander Thompson (1812–96).

41 ABC 50, Buṭrus al-Bustānī to Eli Smith (7 Oct. 1845).

42 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions Archives, 1810–1961, Syrian Mission 1823–1871 (ABC 16.8.1). Houghton Library, Harvard University [hereafter ABC 16.8.1], v. 8, Rufus Anderson to the Syrian Mission (2 Dec. 1835).

43 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (4 Dec. 1835).

44 The Near East School of Theology (N.E.S.T.) in Beirut traces its origins to the Boys’ School in Beirut and the ʿAbeih Seminary. Sabra, George F., Truth and Service: A History of the Near East School of Theology (Beirut: Librairie Antoine, 2009) 13–21Google Scholar.

45 ABC 16.8.1, v. 4, “Annual Report of the Beirut Station for 1846”.

46 The individual's Latinized name is provided between parentheses.

47 The Wurtabāt brothers and Buṭrus Wurtabāt are not related. A wurtabāt is a clergyman in the Armenian Orthodox Church.

48 Tibawi, A.L., American Interests in Syria, 1800–1901: A Study of Educational, Literary and Religious Work (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 132Google Scholar.

49 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Station Records (8 Dec. 1835).

50 Directory of the Living Graduates of Yale University (New Haven, CT: The Tuttle, Morehouse and Taylor Company, 1904), 277.

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54 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Station Records (11 Aug. 1842).

55 In 1836, their mother married future council member Ilyās Fawwāz. ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Records of the Missionary Church at Beyroot (19 Jan. 1836).

56 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (20 Mar. 1842); ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (25 Mar. 1843); and ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (16 Jan. 1845).

57 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Records of the Mission Church in Beirut, 1823–1834, “Records of Baptisms in the American Mission Church in Beyroot (11 Feb. 1827)”; ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Station Records (10 Dec. 1836); and Family and Personal Papers (New England Historic Genealogical Society), Mss. A 1898, “Correspondence of Leander Thompson, 1840–1841”, Letter by Naseef Shedudy (Nāṣīf al-Shudūdī) (27 Aug. 1841).

58 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, “Quarterly Report of the Seminary (Mar. 1842)”.

59 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (30 July 1845).

60 Pizzo, Paola, “Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī, Syrian scholar and intellectual: his fortunes in the east and west at the beginning of the Nahdah”, ARAM 25/1–2, 2013, 290Google Scholar and 297; Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī, Faṣl al-Khiṭāb fī Lughat al-Aʿrāb (Beirut: no publisher, 1836); and ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, “Report of the Seminary for 1837”.

61 In 1828, al-Yāzijī “ignored a request by Smith to read this classic [Maqāmāt al-Ḥarīrī] with him”. Tibawi, American Interests in Syria, 53.

62 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, “Report of the Seminary for 1837”.

63 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, “Report of the Seminary for 1839”.

64 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (30 July 1845).

65 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (30 July 1845).

66 ABC 50, Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī to Eli Smith (16 Aug. 1845) and ABC 50, Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī to Eli Smith (3 Feb. 1846).

67 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Station Records (9 Feb. 1847).

68 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Station Records (5 Nov. 1838); ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Station Records (Aug. 1839); The Missionary Herald [hereafter MH] 37/1, 1841, 27; ABC 50, Ṭannūs al-Ḥaddād to Eli Smith (13 Apr. 1839); ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, “Report of the Seminary for 1838”; and ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, “Report of the Seminary for 1839”.

69 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Station Records (13 Oct. 1841).

70 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, “Report of the Seminary for 1838”.

71 Eli Smith Papers (English), 1819–1869 (ABC 60). Houghton Library, Harvard University [hereafter ABC 60], Henry De Forest to Eli Smith (12 Feb. 1846). Fīlibsun reconnected with the Protestants in the early 1850s. Buṭrus al-Bustānī (ed.), Aʿmāl al-Jamʿiyya al-Sūriyya (Beirut: no publisher, 1852), ii.

72 MH 37/7 (July 1841): 303 and ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Station Records (20 Nov. 1841).

73 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Station Records (14 July 1846) and ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Station Records (11 Feb. 1848).

74 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Station Records (18 Oct. 1843); ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Station Records (13 June 1844); and N.E.S.T. Special Collections, Beirut, Lebanon, “Quarterly Report of the American Press (Undated)”. The missionaries fired Mulḥim Shiblī in September 1847. ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (28 Sept. 1847).

75 His full name is Ilyās b. Najm Fawwāz. Canons of the Councils (1851), colophon.

76 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, “Quarterly Report of the Boarding School (30 Sept. 1836)”; ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Station Records (24 Mar. 1836); and ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Station Records (28 Dec. 1842).

77 His full name was Ṭannūs b. ʿĪd al-Ḥaddād. Canons of the Councils (1851), colophon.

78 Tibawi, American Interests in Syria, 33; ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Station Records (24 Oct. 1836); ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Station Records (Aug. 1839); MH 37/1, 1841, 27; MH 33/6, 1837, 257–8; and ABC 50, Ṭannūs al-Ḥaddād to Eli Smith (13 Apr. 1839).

79 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Station Records, (25 July 1838); ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (24 Mar. 1843); ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (28 Sept. 1847); and ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (13 Sept. 1849).

80 MH 45/6, 1849, 186.

81 MH 42/12, 1846, 415; ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (14 Sept. 1846); and ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (15 Sept. 1846).

82 Paul William Harris, Nothing but Christ: Rufus Anderson and the Ideology of the Protestant Foreign Missions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 74–5.

83 “Death of Dr. De Forest”, The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 59/20, 16 December 1859, 407.

84 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (12 Dec. 1842); ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (24 Mar. 1843); ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (14 Mar. 1844); ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Station Records (4 Apr. 1843); ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (21 Jan. 1845); ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Station Records (4 Feb. 1845); ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (6 Jan. 1846); and ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Station Records (27 Jan. 1846).

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87 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Mission Records (13 Oct. 1841) and ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Mission Records (29 Dec. 1841).

88 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Rufus Anderson to the Syrian Mission (23 Apr. 1844).

89 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (14 Jan. 1845); ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (26 Nov. 1845); ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (9 Jan. 1846); and ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (10 Jan. 1846).

90 Report of the ABCFM, Presented at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Meeting [hereafter Report of the ABCFM, 37th] (Boston: T.R. Marvin, 1846), 112.

91 Sheehi, Foundations of Modern Arab Identity, 15–75 and Beshara (ed.), Butrus al-Bustani.

92 Tibawi, “The American missionaries in Beirut and Buṭrus al-Bustānī” and Hala Auji, Printing Arab Modernity (Leiden: Brill, 2016).

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97 MH 37/1, 1841, 27 and MH 37/7, 1841, 303.

98 MH 37/7, 1841, 303.

99 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Beirut Station Records (20 Nov. 1841) and ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Records of the Missionary Church at Beyroot (29 Oct. 1842).

100 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Rufus Anderson to the Syrian Mission (23 Apr. 1844) and ABC 50, Buṭrus al-Bustānī to Eli Smith (9 July 1845).

101 MH 35/1, 1839, 41.

102 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (11 Mar. 1844) and ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (14 Mar. 1844).

103 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Rufus Anderson to the Syrian Mission (23 Apr. 1844).

104 MH 41/1, 1845, 5 and MH 42/1, 1846, 5.

105 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Syrian Mission Records (15 Jan. 1846).

106 ABC 50, Buṭrus al-Bustānī to Eli Smith (10 Jan. 1846).

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109 Lisān al-ʿArab, s.v. “h-dh-b”.

110 Mitchell, Timothy, Colonising Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988)Google Scholar and Sedra, Paul, From Mission to Modernity: Evangelicals, Reformers and Education in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2011)Google Scholar.

111 ABC 50, Buṭrus al-Bustānī to Eli Smith (10 Jan. 1846).

112 Since Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī never learned English or any European language, the language of discourse was probably Arabic.

113 ABC, Buṭrus al-Bustānī to Eli Smith (10 Jan. 1846).

114 ABC, Buṭrus al-Bustānī to Eli Smith (10 Jan. 1846).

115 Kitāb Muḥīṭ al-Muḥīṭ, 558–9. Al-Bustānī reminds us that the word khiṭāb is etymologically the verbal noun of khāṭaba (to lecture/address someone) and thus akin to unidirectional interlocution.

116 al-Bustānī (ed.), Aʿmāl al-Jamʿiyya al-Sūriyya, 27 and Buṭrus al-Bustānī, Khiṭāb fī l-Hayʾa al-Ijtimāʿiyya wal-Muqābala bayn al-ʿAwāʾid al-ʿArabiyya wal-Ifranjiyya (Beirut: Maṭbaʿat al-Maʿārif, 1869), cover.

117 Buṭrus al-Bustānī, Khuṭba fī Ādāb al-ʿArab (Beirut: no publisher, 1859), cover; United States National Archives T367, roll 3, RG 59, “Circular/ʾIʿlān (1859)”; and Ḥadīqat al-Akhbār 2/100 (1 Dec. 1859).

118 MH 32/2, 1836, 51.

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120 MH 35/1, 1839, 43.

121 Mark 16: 15 (KJV).

122 ABC 16.8.1, v. 8, Rufus Anderson to the Syrian Mission (29 Dec. 1842).

123 Ayalon, Ami, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ayalon, The Arabic Print Revolution; Rana Issa, “The Bible as commodity: modern patterns of Arabic language standardization and Bible commoditization in the Levant” (PhD thesis, University of Oslo, 2015); and Auji, Printing Arab Modernity.

124 Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East, 154–9 and Fahmy, Ziad, Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 32–6Google Scholar.

125 Harris, Nothing but Christ, 39.

126 ABC 50, Buṭrus al-Bustānī to Eli Smith (10 Jan. 1846).

127 Matthew 7: 12 and Luke 6: 31.

128 ABC 50, Buṭrus al-Bustānī to Eli Smith (10 Jan. 1846).

129 Psalms 14: 1 (KJV) and Psalms 53: 1 (KJV).

130 I have been unable to determine the religious backgrounds of Ilyās Fawwāz and the Shiblī brothers.

131 ABC 50, Buṭrus al-Bustānī to Eli Smith (10 Jan. 1846).

132 MH 38/12, 1842, 493.

133 ABC 50, Buṭrus al-Bustānī to Eli Smith (10 Jan. 1846).

134 ABC 50, Buṭrus al-Bustānī to Eli Smith (10 Jan. 1846).

135 ABC 50, Buṭrus al-Bustānī to Eli Smith (10 Jan. 1846).

136 Report of the ABCFM, 37th, 114.

137 ABC 60, Henry De Forest to Eli Smith (18 Apr. 1846).

138 ABC 60, Henry De Forest to Eli Smith (7 Aug. 1846).

139 ABC 16.8.1, v. 4, “Annual Report of the Beirut Station for 1846”.

140 ABC 60, Henry De Forest to Eli Smith (7 Aug. 1846).

141 ABC 16.8.1, v. 4, “Annual Report of the Beirut Station for 1846”.

142 ABC 60, Henry De Forest to Eli Smith (18 Apr. 1846).

143 Ibid. All quotes from the altercation between al-Bustānī and the Maronite priest are drawn from De Forest's letter.

144 ABC 50, Buṭrus al-Bustānī to Eli Smith (10 Jan. 1846).

145 Report of the ABCFM, 37th, 115.

146 Report of the ABCFM, 37th, 115.

147 Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, 187.