The story of the Arab national movement opens in Syria in 1847, with the foundation in Bairut [sic] of a modest literary society under American Patronage.
George Antonius, The Arab Awakening, Chapter One, The Background (1938)With these words, George Antonius began his account of Arab nationalism and established a genealogy for the learned societies of the Nahḍa (Renaissance).Footnote 2 The jamʿiyya (society) is a ubiquitous feature of the literary, social, and intellectual landscape of late Ottoman Beirut.Footnote 3 At this “new institutional phenomenon”,Footnote 4 an emerging urban middle class, composed of Christians and Muslims, congregated to discuss topics such as tradition and modernity, language and culture, and education and politics. The learned society was “the place to be” in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was the social and civic space where inhabitants of Beirut assembled to pursue humanist knowledge and liberal ideals associated with the arts and sciences.
The Nahḍa birthplace that Antonius praised (quoted in the epigraph), al-Jamʿiyya al-Sūriyya li-ʾktisāb al-ʿUlūm wal-Funūn (the Syrian Society of Arts and Sciences, est. 1847), however, is not without its critics. The historian A.L. Tibawi found Antonius “very muddled about the name, date, aims and membership of this [Syrian] society” and in its stead, proffered the hitherto unknown Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb (the Refinement Council, est. 1846).Footnote 5 With two possible options, scholars now defer to either AntoniusFootnote 6 or Tibawi,Footnote 7 or simply footnote their uncertainty.Footnote 8 To date there is not a single study that meticulously examines Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb for its own sake. Furthermore, it has not been considered independent from the recursive narrative of the Nahḍa learned societies.Footnote 9 In other words, the historiographical emergence and continued presence of this council in Nahḍa studies is the result of a circulating yet unexamined origin story.
As a designation, “the first” isolates a moment in time, identifies a subject as significant, and provides a beginning from which a story can proceed towards its already scripted end. Foucault cautions us that the foundational primacy of “the event”, its first-ness, emerges as a function of “a particular stage of forces” in which divergences are purposefully left undocumented, possibilities discounted, and discrepancies expunged.Footnote 10 In other words, beginnings that were but cheated of a raison d’être are unwritten, or un-happened, at the instance when “the first” is christened as such.
“The first” also matters because the individuals associated with it often emerge as leaders of a movement, progenitors of epistemologies, and icons of human progress whom history is hesitant to dislodge. Buṭrus al-Bustānī (1819–83) occupies a place of such prominence in Nahḍa studies given his active role in the social, literary, political, and educational discourses of the period.Footnote 11 “The Muʿallim (Master/Teacher)”, as he stylized himself and as he is remembered to this day, was “the first” to establish a secular, non-confessional school; to argue for female education; to author a modern Arabic encyclopaedia; to publish a patriotic newspaper; and to preach for Syrian and Arab patriotism.Footnote 12 He was also among the founders of the two aforementioned “first” learned societies in late Ottoman Beirut. Thus, al-Bustānī and his letter on the 1846 Refinement Council are the point of departure for this study.
This essay is a comprehensive examination of Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb and its role within the Protestant community in 1840s Beirut. I recollect this confraternity of 14 men from the social, religious, and economic linkages in which they lived and learned, worked and worshipped, and argue that it was not a learned society established for the acquisition of the arts and sciences but an ad hoc, short-lived seminary. The first section of this essay concentrates on the council as an institution, putting into relief its evangelical character, pedagogical function, and role in unifying the fledgling group of Protestants. The next section outlines the integrated nature of the members’ lives in the confessional community. It contextualizes their educational backgrounds, employment statuses, and religious views and deduces that these men were deeply plugged into the Protestant social, economic, and confessional sphere for both personal and professional reasons. The third section identifies the refinement trivium that formed the foundations of the seminary curriculum: advanced literacy, scriptural knowledge, and character training. The final section relates how council members applied their seminary training as travelling Protestant evangelists in the environs of Syria. I conclude that Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb was formed to strengthen group cohesion among the Syrian Protestants and to train prospective preachers from among the new body of converts for itinerant preaching. Its confessional character, evangelical resolution, and semblance of an educational institution distance this council from the genealogy of Nahḍa learned societies and situate it within the history of the Protestant community in Beirut.
The following pages disentangle an early Nahḍa encounter between a motley cast of SyriansFootnote 13 and Americans, among them the first Syrian appointed to the Medical School of the American University of Beirut, Yūḥannā Wurtabāt (1827–1908); the Greek Catholic philologist célèbre, Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī (1800–71); the long-term medical missionary and educationalist from Kinderhook, New York, Cornelius Van Dyck (1818–95); and the Maronite-turned-Protestant and social reformer, Buṭrus al-Bustānī. At this historical juncture, their lives were enmeshed within the Protestant Circle,Footnote 14 the newest confession to appear in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Refinement Council provides an example of orchestrated community building and the confluence of educational, financial, and religious trends in Beirut. This essay studies a community-of-practice composed of individuals who performed a collective belief in Protestantism, or at least saw the economic and social opportunities that this communal association might afford them. This lost history of Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb adds to the expanding body of literature on the entangled encounters of the American missionaries and the local population in late Ottoman Syria.Footnote 15 It also complicates the interstitial mappings of identity based on religion,Footnote 16 historical and cultural heritage,Footnote 17 and nationality.Footnote 18
Information on the council has been limited to a single letter penned by a Beiruti convert to an American missionary. On 10 January 1846, al-Bustānī informed Eli Smith (1801–57) that Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb had been established on 1 January. It was directed by a five-person executive committee composed of a president, secretary, and three deputy officers, and dedicated “to refine reason and to promote its benefits”.Footnote 19 By the tenth day, it had convened four times and boasted a membership of fourteen: twelve locals from the Levant and two missionary physicians.Footnote 20 The historian A.L. Tibawi discovered this letter among Eli Smith's personal papers which are preserved at Houghton Library, Harvard University.Footnote 21 To the present day, it remains the only document that scholars reference when discussing the Refinement Council.
I too relied on the written record left behind by missionaries, specifically the correspondence of Eli Smith with other missionaries and with several council members. I adopted a heuristic approach in an effort to reconstitute and contextualize Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb culturally, socially, and temporally. I weaved together the biographies of the members (culled from unpublished missionary minutes, school reports, personal letters, and employment records) with published annual summaries from the missionaries. At Houghton Library, Harvard University, I discovered a letter dated one month after al-Bustānī’s in which another council member expounded on the mission of Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb in a postscript.Footnote 22 Although my approach is not optimal, it uses the available archive to uncover the social tensions and economic opportunism of conversion, an educational space for theological inquiry, and the evangelical drive of many early Protestant converts in 1840s Beirut.
This essay is not retrospective. It does not hold the protagonists, i.e. the council members, to be heroes of a cultural revival or social movement because in 1846, the Arab Nahḍa – a signature event that scholars have considered a national awakening, an “archive for the ‘Arab nation’ (emphasis original)”, or a process of visceral engagements with modernity – had not yet been written as such.Footnote 23 In the following pages, al-Bustānī speaks from the missionary sources as the missionary-employed, impassioned Protestant convert that he was in 1846. In reconstructing the events and biographies in a detailed, chronological manner, the pulse of the Protestant community up through 1846, the year under consideration, can be measured. This investigative form of scholarship refrains from ahistorical readings and uses life stories to extrapolate the “diversity and eclecticism that were inherent” in the period.Footnote 24
I. Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb: a Protestant seminary
In terms of nomenclature, the Refinement Majmaʿ is distinct from its successors, the Syrian Jamʿiyya of Arts and Sciences (est. 1847), and the Syrian Learned Jamʿiyya (est. 1868). While both majmaʿ and jamʿiyya (society) derive from the tri-consonantal root (j-m-ʿ) and carry the primary meaning of gathering and assembly, the two are not entirely synonymous.Footnote 25
A majmaʿ is a noun of place, i.e. the place of j-m- ʿ (= gathering/assembly), “where people are assembled; it is also the noun for [a group of] people”.Footnote 26 The word also has religious and institutional connotations. The philologist and Archbishop of Aleppo, Jirmānūs Farḥāt (1670–1732), explained that “the holy councils (al-majāmiʿ al-muqaddasa) are where Christian leaders, from among the bishops and scholars, gather to elucidate the true faith and to refute the heretics (al-mubtadiʿūn)”.Footnote 27 The ecclesiastical overtones of the word continued into the nineteenth century. Refinement Council members used the word majmaʿ to refer to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) and its committees.Footnote 28 Another Christian association proselytizing in the region similarly harnessed the religious implications of the word.Footnote 29 In 1867, al-Bustānī distinguished majmaʿ from the recently introduced word jamʿiyya (society).Footnote 30 A majmaʿ is “a group of religious leaders who assemble for the sake of examining religious issues, e.g. the Christian majāmiʿ (councils) of provincial or ecumenical [types]”; whereas a jamʿiyya “according to the muwallidūn (post-classicalists), is an organized or unorganized group of people who assemble for the sake of a designated purpose”.Footnote 31 It appears that in the late Ottoman period, majmaʿ signified a type of formal body that derived some institutional authority from Christianity.
The council was intentionally titled a majmaʿ, conceivably in order to harness a degree of Christian institutionality. The regulations of the council unambiguously state, “the name of this majmaʿ is Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb”, which al-Bustānī reiterated in his letter: “We have set up a majmaʿ in Beirut and we named it Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb”.Footnote 32 To equate a majmaʿ (council) with a jamʿiyya (society) is semantically inaccurate and historically reductive because it diminishes the planned confessional character of the council. While the word majma ʿ points to human assembly in the broadest of terms, at this historical juncture it is characteristically a religious assembly of sorts.
Council regulations and individual statements from members also point to its evangelical aspirations. The final regulation states that Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb exists “for the sheer benefit that returns to God Almighty”.Footnote 33 In a postscript, al-Bustānī expressed his hope that the group “leads to the good of the Gospel and the benefit of one's neighbor”.Footnote 34 In a postscript to another letter, also to the missionary Eli Smith, council member Ilyās Fawwāz (d. 1878)Footnote 35 avowed the religious objectives of the council. “With God's blessings and Your prayers”, he wrote “hopefully, it brings a benefit to those assembling because most aims of this majmaʿ are spiritual (rūḥiyya)”.Footnote 36 These pronouncements strongly indicate an evangelical quality. Because neither the council regulations nor the two postscripts allude to cultural or literary pursuits, to consider the Refinement Council a learned society – an assembly in pursuit of humanist knowledge – misconstrues what appears to be a decidedly confessional project. Therefore, this council should not be considered a forerunner of Nahḍa learned societies but rather an enterprise of the emergent Protestant community in Beirut.
Al-Bustānī and Fawwāz were fully engaged in the mission of Protestant proselytization and it appears that Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb was a collaborative endeavour launched by the entire Protestant community. The letters of these two converts (discussed above) read like reports on the goings-on of the new confessional group in Syria. As part of his update, al-Bustānī communicated that “We have set up … and we named it… (emphasis added)”.Footnote 37 Al-Fawwāz also used the third-person plural in his postscript: “Perhaps Muʿallim, Brother Buṭrus al-Bustānī, informed You [i.e. Eli Smith] about the nature of the majmaʿ that is now running among us (emphasis added)”.Footnote 38
The council perhaps served to strengthen camaraderie and develop confessional solidarity among the Protestant community, which by 1846 had endured a number of turbulent years.Footnote 39 The early part of the 1840s was marked by deaths, closures, and major personnel changes. In 1841, the superintendent of the Boys’ School in Beirut died. Despite attempts to combat financial problems, staffing shortages, and reduced enrolment, the school closed in 1842. Two missionaries left the mission field that year, and another in 1843.Footnote 40 A new missionary station was opened at ʿAbeih in 1843 and chosen as the site for reviving the Boys’ School. In 1844, Nathaniel Abbott Keyes (1807–57), who managed the disbanded school in Beirut during its last year, resigned the ministry.
Replacements did arrive in the 1840s, but many were not trained ministers, e.g. the physicians Cornelius Van Dyck and Henry Alfred De Forest – the only non-Syrians in Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb. Stability was increasingly unattainable. In late April 1845, hostilities broke out on Mt. Lebanon, threatening the future of the recently opened mountain station of ʿAbeih. In September, the missionaries were ordered to leave. In December, their return was permitted. Instability of the site and the lack of a learning facility for the educational, spiritual, and moral edification of the former teachers and now older school pupils were of concern. In a letter dated 7 October 1845 to his friend and spiritual mentor, Eli Smith, al-Bustānī summarized the despondency of the Protestant community: “We are dispersed in your absence as if we were orphans”.Footnote 41 The establishment of the council on 1 January 1846 signals a moment of relief and optimism after the chaotic first half of the 1840s.
Chronologically, the council existed between two educational institutions managed by the American missionaries. The Boys’ School in Beirut (est. 1835) was designed “for the rearing up of native helpers in the missionary work”Footnote 42 and “instruction in the principles of Christianity” occupied a prominent place in the curriculum.Footnote 43 The school disbanded in August 1842 and its successor, the ʿAbeih Seminary, did not open until November 1846.Footnote 44 In this interlude, the Refinement Council existed, albeit ever-so briefly. It was a structured organization, a fact reflected by its written set of regulations, systematized proceedings (discussed in Section III), and closed membership. I suggest that the council constituted a semi-formal learning environment where unenrolled pupils and unemployed instructors could be inculcated with tahdhīb (refinement) and readied for evangelistic activities (discussed in Sections II and IV).
II. The seminary “students”
Many council members became central figures of the Nahḍa, recognized for their roles in the educational, social, literary, and political discourses that shaped late Ottoman Beirut. Oft forgotten, however, are their lives before they emerged as leaders, a time when many of them were late adolescents or young men seeking material sustenance, human relationships, and spiritual guidance. From the perspective of the missionaries, the twelve Syrian members were in 1846 a “more intelligent class of young men” in Beirut among whom “evangelical principles” seemed to be spreading.Footnote 45
The men fit roughly into two groups. First there were the former pupils of the Boys’ School in Beirut: Yūḥannā Wurtabāt (John Wortabet),Footnote 46 his brother Krikūr Wurtabāt (Gregory M. Wortabet), Mulḥim Shiblī and his brother (Amīn?), and Iskandar Abkāriyūs (Alexander Abcarius). The second group consisted of missionary employees. Many of them were private instructors and teachers at the defunct Boys’ School: Ilyās Fawwāz (Elias Fuaz), Ṭannūs al-Ḥaddād, Dīmitrī Fīlibsun (Demetrius Philipson), Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī, and Buṭrus al-Bustānī (Butrus Bistany). In this group, there were also two colporteurs: Ṭannūs Ṣābūnjī and Buṭrus Wurtabāt (Bedros Vartabed).Footnote 47
To varying degrees, these men had committed their personal, professional, and confessional futures to the missionary project. Their lives pivoted around the educational and employment opportunities provided by the Beirut missionary station. Against this backdrop, Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb emerges as a site where many men performed their Protestant identity and collectively prepared themselves to be purveyors of the Gospel. A careful review of the members illustrates how traditional forms of social connections and the building of a Protestant Arab identity were of seminal importance to men whom historians consider leading figures of the forthcoming Nahḍa.
Young, former pupils
Many members had been educated at the Boys’ School in Beirut. Yūḥannā Wurtabāt (1827–1908) was a man of the Nahḍa and as Tibawi surmised, “truly the child of the mission”.Footnote 48 The son of an Armenian clergyman, Wurtabāt was among the first six boys admitted in December 1835,Footnote 49 at the age of eight. After it closed, he received private tutoring in theology and medicine from the missionaries. In 1853, he earned a doctorate from Yale UniversityFootnote 50 and later on became the first ordained native Protestant pastor in Syria. In 1859, he left the pastorate to pursue additional medical training in Scotland. In 1867, he joined the faculty of medicine at the Syrian Protestant College (est. 1866; now the American University of Beirut (AUB)) where he taught physiology, anatomy, and philosophy.Footnote 51 He also authored medical textbooks and books on the religion and culture of the Arabs.Footnote 52
In 1846, Wurtabāt and his brother Krikūr Wurtabāt (1828–93)Footnote 53 were still teenagers who had abruptly ended their formal studies three-and-a-half years earlier.Footnote 54 Following the untimely death of their father in 1832,Footnote 55 they informally became wards of the missionaries, who managed a fund dedicated to their upbringing and education.Footnote 56 Their classmate Iskandar Abkāriyūs (1827–85) had a similar background. He studied at the school from 1836 to 1842,Footnote 57 and in October 1845, his father passed away. Other former students included Mulḥim and Amīn Shiblī.Footnote 58 In 1846, these five ex-pupils were in their final years of adolescence: Yūḥannā Wurtabāt (19), Iskandar Abkāriyūs (19), and Krikūr Wurtabāt (18). The Shiblī brothers were presumably younger, having joined the school in the final year of operations. The Refinement Council provided this troupe of impressionable youths with a type of higher education and conversely, enabled the missionaries to practise indirect methods of conversion on their former students.
Teachers, instructors, and colporteurs
Many members heavily relied on the Beirut Station for a livelihood. This is best exemplified by the curious membership of Nāṣīf b. ʿAbdullāh al-Yāzijī (1800–71), a life-long adherent of Greek Catholicism who maintained a lengthy association with the Protestants, possibly for financial and professional reasons. Renowned for his encyclopaedic knowledge of the Arabic language and praised for his published oeuvre of poetry collections, episodic narratives in rhymed-prose, and textbooks on grammar, rhetoric, and prosody, in 1846 these accomplishments were all forthcoming. When Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb formed that January, al-Yāzijī was, according to missionary sources, “the former corrector of the [American] Press”Footnote 59 with whom they had a drawn-out, troublesome history.
Al-Yāzijī began his association with the missionaries in 1830. He published a grammar titled Faṣl al-Khiṭāb fī Lughat al-Aʿrāb (The Final Conclusion on the Principles of Arabs’ Elocution) in 1836, while working as a corrector at the American Press.Footnote 60 For nearly a decade he refused to teach Arabic to either missionaries or their pupils,Footnote 61 even though he was “the best qualified to teach this science [of Arabic language] of any man in Syria or Palestine, but such is his servile fear of ‘the powers that be [i.e. of the Greek Catholic Church]’ that no money will tempt him”.Footnote 62 In 1839, al-Yāzijī “reluctantly consented” when press operations dwindled and threats were made “to discontinue his wages”.Footnote 63 Frequent suspensions, salary reductions, and sporadic work punctuated his tenure. In July 1845, the missionaries fired him because his services were “not deem[ed] indispensable”.Footnote 64 His termination was also predicated upon his religious affiliation and rejection of public fraternization with the Protestants. The missionaries judged his presence “exceedingly pernicious” to potential converts and noted that he “is not friendly to Evangelical Religion, has regularly absented himself from our Sabbath services and forbidden his son [Ḥabīb] to attend the Sabbath School”.Footnote 65
The elder al-Yāzijī’s participation in the council might have been a deliberate effort on his part to engineer favour so that the Americans would rehire him. From August 1845 to February 1846, he unsuccessfully solicited a contract from the managing editor of the Press.Footnote 66 Becoming an unavoidable nuisance, his efforts nonetheless paid off. In February 1847, he was rehired as a corrector.Footnote 67 I suspect that his strategy for the year 1846 was to appear congenial and tolerant of the missionary project, therefore making his membership in the council a well-calculated step.
Al-Yāzijī was not the only council member plugged into the economic opportunities made possible through association with the missionaries. At the Boys’ School in Beirut, a certain Dīmitrī Fīlibsun taught Arabic and Modern Greek, managed the Arabic department, and led Sunday School.Footnote 68 He also worked as a forwarding agent at the missionary book magazine.Footnote 69 An “excitedly pious” member of the Protestant community for over a decade,Footnote 70 Fīlibsun seems to have forsworn Protestantism soon after the council formed, described in a letter (dated one month and two days after al-Bustānī’s) as “again in the service of the synagogue of Satan called the Greek [Orthodox] Church”.Footnote 71
Many members worked for the missionaries. Al-Bustānī secured employment at the Boys’ School in Beirut in 1840 and became a translator at the American Press in 1841.Footnote 72 In 1846, his American employers relocated him to the ʿAbeih Seminary and then in 1848, transferred him back to Beirut so that he could work on the Protestant translation of the Bible.Footnote 73 Mulḥim Shiblī taught Arabic and Amīn Shiblī worked at the American Press.Footnote 74 Ilyās Fawwāz,Footnote 75 an early convert, was first an Arabic instructor and colporteur, and then became the superintendent of the American Press magazine in 1842.Footnote 76 Ṭannūs al-Ḥaddād (d. 1864)Footnote 77 taught at the first mission school in Beirut in 1824, and at the Boys’ School in Beirut (est. 1835) worked as a language teacher, school administrator, and Sunday school teacher.Footnote 78 Ṭannūs Ṣābūnjī was a tract and Bible distributor in summer 1838, a position he kept throughout the 1840s.Footnote 79 Lastly, Buṭrus Wurtabāt (d. 1848),Footnote 80 a former Armenian Orthodox clergyman, worked as a colporteur and preacher in Aleppo, Gaziantep, and Kilis.Footnote 81
These men were fully integrated into the Protestant religious and social circle and they depended on the missionaries for their livelihood. The Syrian Mission was the largest employer of its converts, hiring them at the American Press and the missionary schools. Although employing graduates of its educational facilities and converts developed as a way to retain numbers and enfranchise the nascent confessional community, the practice was critiqued because it created a dependency situation in which the men relied on (and possibly exploited) their association with the missionaries for purely economic opportunities,Footnote 82 the example of the literary legend Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī being most apropos.
And two missionary physicians
In addition to the twelve Syrians, there were two Americans at Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb. They were not ordained ministers but rather medical missionaries practising social evangelism in Syria. A graduate of Yale Medical School,Footnote 83 Henry Alfred De Forest (1814–58) came to Beirut in 1842, where he managed mission finances and the missionary system of common schools.Footnote 84 An advocate of female education, in 1847 he and his wife opened a boarding school for girls in their home.Footnote 85 Cornelius Van Alan Van Dyck (1818–95) completed his studies at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and at the age of 21, came to Beirut in April 1840. He learned Arabic from Ṭannūs al-Ḥaddād, Ilyās Fawwāz, Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī, and his roommate Buṭrus al-Bustānī.Footnote 86 In 1841, Van Dyck became the superintendent of the Beirut common schools and in the following year assumed the same position for the mountain schools.Footnote 87 In 1844, Van Dyck and De Forest began their formal studies to enter the ministry.Footnote 88 Van Dyck spent the year 1845 preparing for his ordination, which culminated with a public “Critical Exercise in Arabic, and a Sermon in English” on 10 January 1846,Footnote 89 curiously the same day on which al-Bustānī wrote his letter about the Refinement Council. That year, Van Dyck “entered with zeal upon his duties as a preacher”.Footnote 90
Prospective preachers
In 1846, five of the fourteen council members were part of a targeted programme to grow a native ministry and increase the number of travelling preachers in Syria. Among this cohort was Buṭrus al-Bustānī, whom Nahḍa studies remembers for his contributions to the cultural, literary, and intellectual landscape of late Ottoman Beirut. He argued for women's education, Arab nationalism, a sectarian society, and Syrian patriotism; established the non-confessional Waṭaniyya (National) School (1863); authored textbooks on an array of topics, two dictionaries, and an Arabic encyclopaedia; played an active role in learned societies and a publishing co-operative; was a translator of the Protestant Arabic Bible; and founded three periodicals: al-Jinān (“Gardens”, 1870), al-Janna (“Garden/Paradise”, 1870), and al-Junayna (“Little Garden”, 1871).
A number of scholars have examined the intricacies of al-Bustānī’s religious and intellectual life. Sheehi, joined by a recent collection of essays, argues against lionizing al-Bustānī, the man.Footnote 91 Tibawi and Auji concentrate on his affiliation with the missionaries and his personal literary agenda.Footnote 92 Hanssen and Makdisi critically, yet complementarily, recognize al-Bustānī as enduring “a test of conflicting loyalties” and a “privileged product of a transitional age”, respectively.Footnote 93 Hagiographic in tenor, Abu-Manneh and Zachs circumscribed his agency within a moment of possibilities for the realization of a secular Syria and an Arab waṭan (nation).Footnote 94 And mostly recently, Bou Ali, Sacks, and Issa adopt a philological lens and consider his usage of language and its implications at the personal, confessional, and societal levels.Footnote 95
The historian A.L. Tibawi highlighted the need for “an estimate of every literary production according to the standards of his [al-Bustānī’s] times and to the proper stage in his career”.Footnote 96 When Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb formed in January 1846, the commendations listed above were in the future. In 1846, Buṭrus al-Bustānī was a 27-year-old convert to Protestantism firmly ensconced in his new confession. Six years earlier, at the age of 21, he left his teaching position at the college of ʿAyn Waraqa and came to Beirut, presumably to seek better financial opportunities. Although the missionaries initially rejected his application, they hired him as an interim language instructor in autumn 1840.Footnote 97 He was regarded as “the most important acquisition with which the Lord has favored the mission” and “to be entirely evangelical in sentiment”.Footnote 98 In 1841, he became a translator and the following year, a communicant at the Mission Church, further installing himself deep within the community.Footnote 99 In 1844, he was suggested for the ministry and the following year, is noted for enthusiastically saying, “I am ready to set forth and preach to people”.Footnote 100
The pressure to raise native ministers from among “the already existing and increasing body of evangelical native Christians” dates back to 1839.Footnote 101 The matter became a priority in March 1844, when missionaries spent three sessions of their annual meeting discussing the need for native churches, a native ministry, and native agency.Footnote 102 That April, al-Bustānī, along with long-term Protestants al-Ḥaddād and Fawwāz were “at once [to] be put upon studies and exercises preparatory to their entering the Ministry of the word”, along with physicians Van Dyck and De Forest.Footnote 103 It cannot be a mere coincidence that these five men were members of Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb, or that the two Americans are the only non-Syrian members and the only two missionaries to be undergoing theological training. Between 1845 and 1846, the titling of “native helpers” changed to “native preachers”,Footnote 104 a public exhibition of the programmatic change. On 15 January 1846 (fifteen days after the council was established), the missionaries resolved that “our native assistants be employed the present year as vigorously & constantly as possible in preaching the Gospel from tour to tour”.Footnote 105
The lives of these men and youths were entwined into the religious, economic, and social fabric woven by the missionaries. Whether for spiritual reasons or personal gains, it appears that the local Syrians were active participants in the Protestant community. In 1846, Buṭrus al-Bustānī and his colleagues were adhering to traditional practices of social cohesion and seeking any available employment avenues. Their determination for financial opportunities and relationships within their new confessional group harmonized with the American mission to cultivate a Protestant constituency in Syria.
III. Curriculum of the seminary
The objectives of the Refinement Council were “to refine reason (tahdhīb al-ʿaql) and promote its benefits”.Footnote 106 But in pragmatic terms, what exactly was to be refined? And how was this refinement to occur? Before unpacking the practice of tahdhīb (refinement) among the 14 men, a cursory review of the word is essential to understand the pedagogical orientation of the group.
In modern parlance, tahdhīb conveys correcting, refining, educating, and good upbringing.Footnote 107 Central to these significations is the active aspect of the procedure. Something or someone experiencing tahdhīb is being fundamentally changed and presumably improved. Tahdhīb is never static, but dynamic. The original meaning of the word was applied to inanimate objects, such as the cleaning of a colocynth in preparation for consumption; the pruning of trees in order to facilitate growth; and the trimming and notching of an arrowhead.Footnote 108 An individual who undergoes the tahdhīb process becomes muhadhdhab (refined/purified): he is free and cleansed of imperfections, and morally pure.Footnote 109
The trope of refinement surfaces repeatedly in Nahḍa discourse, often masquerading under the collocations al-tarbiya wal-taʿlīm (education and edification) or al-taqaddum wal-tamaddun (progress and civilization). Imperative to the manifestation of a modern, civil society is the moral, social, and intellectual improvement of its members. The establishment of schools exemplifies the calculated move of governments and philanthropic societies, missionaries and reformers to inculcate the masses with civility, cultural sophistication, and knowledge in a systematic manner within a structured environment.Footnote 110Nahḍa learned societies held public lectures to promote the humanist virtues of knowledge and to cultivate refinement among the emerging middle class of Beirut in order to engineer a secular and well-informed civil society. Contrariwise, the refinement scope of Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb concentrated on a cohort of mostly Protestants in a post-secondary school environment who exclusively engaged with the Bible in closed-door meetings. In 1846, these tahdhīb practitioners assembled to develop advanced literacy skills, to become knowledgeable of Scripture, and to improve their moral characters.
Advanced literacy
A refined individual should possess advanced literacy skills, i.e. be able to read and write. Through reading, one can access information directly; and through writing, one can explore thoughts and communicate them to others. These practical skills for civil society had merit at the evangelical council. Advanced literacy is fundamental to spiritual formation and growth. A Protestant should be able to access the Scriptures by himself and for himself, without the potentially distortive aid of an intermediary. As preachers in-training, the ability to read and write was a stipulation of council membership. Furthermore, the lettered preacher needed to cultivate his oratory abilities in order to be persuasive and effective in the mission field.
Meetings of Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb were unlike those of the learned societies. At the latter, the general public could attend to hear orations and poetry readings delivered by society members; whereas at the former, members read speeches, defended some scriptural interpretations and challenged others, moralized, and sermonized.
A meticulous analysis of a typical meeting illustrates the centrality of advanced language skills at this seminary-like venue.
The committee president nominates a suitable topic and the secretary records it in the register. Then every one of the members writes something on the topic, and at the meeting, reads what he wrote. If someone finds an objection to what was said, he should respond. At the end of the readings, whomever the president had elected to give the sermon (al-khuṭba) then preaches (yakhṭub).Footnote 111
This meeting has all the features of a university seminar – complete with homework, group discussion and disputation, and a closing lecture. Presumably in Arabic,Footnote 112 members came to class ready to read aloud their talking points on a predetermined topic. Every person was required to contemplate the topic prior to the meeting, record his thoughts in writing, and then audibly voice them before the council. Next, members had the opportunity to refute or challenge the statements made by their colleagues. As a language training activity, the advancement of objections and rebuttals indicates the formation of persuasive language skills. Pontifications were inadmissible at the meetings; the council regulations specified that every member was “to strive to affirm truth and not his opinion”.Footnote 113 The president, a.k.a. the teacher, presided over refutations and evaluated the validity of the arguments, “giving weight to the views of the debate based on the strength of the evidence and not for his [desire of] approval”.Footnote 114 Lastly, an appointed member from among the cohort delivered a sermon before the meeting concluded.
The word khuṭba, which I translated as “sermon”, reveals the religious nature of the meeting. Al-Bustānī authored the synopsis above and, as a graduate of ʿAyn Waraqa and teacher of Arabic grammar, was certainly aware of the semantic weight associated with the word. Cognizant of the council's evangelical charge and its theological orientation, it is imaginable that he intentionally chose khuṭba in lieu of khiṭāb, a more neutral term akin to “address” or “lecture”. In his dictionary, he wrote that “from the pulpit”, an individual “reads the khuṭba to those in attendance, preaches theology (kalām Allāh) for the sake of piety, and exhorts”; whereas a khiṭāb is “the steering of speech (tawjīh al-kalām) toward others to make them understand (lil-ʾifhām)”.Footnote 115
Al-Bustānī differentiated between the two words in secular environments, reserving the word khuṭba for exceptional occasions. In 1849, he delivered a khiṭāb on “The Education of Women” and in 1869 another khitāb titled “Society: A Comparative Study between Arab and European Practices”.Footnote 116 Within the setting of learned societies however, he named the annual presidential address of al-Jamʿiyya al-Sūriyya li-ʾktisāb al-ʿUlūm wal-Funūn (the Syrian Society of Arts and Sciences) in 1852 as “the Annual Khuṭba of the President”, even though the president himself considered it a “formal khiṭāb”. In 1859, al-Bustānī marketed his famous lecture as “Khuṭba on the Culture of the Arabs”, even though the hosting ʿUmdat al-Khiṭābāt (Oration Committee, est. 1859) and Beirut's newspaper considered it a mere khiṭāb.Footnote 117 It appears that in profane contexts, al-Bustānī strategically exploited the religious authority and institutional connotation of the word khuṭba in order to lend credibility to the event and imbue the speaker – one time himself – with a heightened sense of authority.
Returning to Refinement Council proceedings, khuṭba glossed as “sermon” captures the moralizing, religious, and performative quality of the lesson. The scripted exposition at the end of the meeting signals the culmination of all speeches. In giving a mock exhortation to his Christian colleagues, the speaker utilized his lexical, syntactic, and stylistic abilities to exposit a passage of Scripture and persuade his audience – a practical and valuable skill for preaching aloud in the mission field.
Using the Bible as an instrument for enhancing literacy skills was not unprecedented. The Protestants in Beirut regularly met outside of Sunday services to explore religious topics. At these less formal gatherings, missionaries hoped to convert the local Christians to a more “correct” interpretation of Christianity that Protestantism believed an advanced knowledge of language could facilitate. In a letter dated 30 January 1834, we learn that:
… a few natives assembled at Mr. [William] Bird's for reading the Scriptures in Arabic. It is a continuation of a meeting, similarly conducted, from former times, and is equivalent to a Bible class. Each attendant reads in his turn, and whatever subjects the passage read may contain, or questions the reader may suggest, are explained and enforced; or if points of disputation come forward, they are sometimes discussed with great freedom and latitude. It is intended to be sufficiently informal to admit free mutual argumentation (emphasis added).Footnote 118
The proceedings of this Bible class in 1834 are strikingly similar to Refinement Council meetings in 1846. At both, attendees studied the Bible and read passages aloud. They jointly discussed, questioned, and interpreted the texts. If disparate views surfaced, an ethos of amicability was to monitor the discussion.
The verbal component of both meetings testifies to the continued importance of orality and aurality in Arabic-speaking society.Footnote 119 The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) charged its missionaries to harness this aspect of Arabic language culture. Preaching is “publishing the gospel with the living voice. … You perform this duty when you orally publish the gospel wherever you can properly ask and expect a hearing (emphasis added)”.Footnote 120 The act of printing God's Word is derivative to preaching it aloud. The message of Christianity must be disseminated orally and received audibly. Writing down the Gospel and printing it is an anathema to the verbal command of Jesus Christ: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature”.Footnote 121 Inscribing the Gospel in print form was akin to silencing the message; it was infanticide. “As a means of converting men”, declared the ABCFM Foreign Correspondence Secretary, “the written or printed word of God is an auxiliary to preaching. The command to go into all the world & preach to every creature had a primary & special reference to the oral publication of it”.Footnote 122
The nineteenth century is considered a dynamic period in which manuscript culture gradually recoiled in the face of print culture – a transition epitomized by the spread of newspapers, printed literatures, textbooks, and the printed Bible.Footnote 123 The primacy of orality, as a means of relating current information and creating a public discourse, is well known in the spread of newspapers.Footnote 124 Within Arab society where language performance was a centuries-old practice, printing was an ineffective and impotent method for evangelism. The mandate to preach, that is to speak the Word of God aloud throughout Syria and its adjacencies, could not have resonated more aptly among the Refinement Council cohort. In the years leading to the Nahḍa, it appears that social pedagogues practised their oratory skills and developed high levels of literacy at religious gatherings.
Scriptural knowledge
It seems that an intimate understanding of the Bible was a priority for council members. At meetings, they explicated Christian teachings and their applicability in society. The importance of personal study of the scriptures parallels the education policy of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). Officially an interdenominational missionary organization, it was rooted in Congregationalism and Presbyterianism which underscore the individual study of Scriptures and the necessity of a learned clergy.Footnote 125 While reading the Bible in the privacy of home was commended, without communal hermeneutics, it could result in erroneous suppositions and potentially unbiblical practices. According to the ABCFM, this was among the sins of the Eastern Churches, where liturgical exercises qualified as worship even though the ritual had separated mankind from the truth of the Gospels. In order to preserve the accuracy of Christian doctrine and to propagate Protestantism, a literate and learned ministry was vital.
The exposition of the Bible was central to council discussions. At one meeting, attendees considered the question “Is it permissible to acquire slaves?” Discussants reached a consensus based on “the Rule (al-qānūn), which is whatever you want people to do to you, etc.”Footnote 126 A principle codified in many religious traditions, the Golden Rule for this Christian confraternity echoes a commandment from Jesus Christ which the Gospels record twice.Footnote 127 At a future meeting, the group planned to discuss what “should be an answer when the ignoramus (al-jāhil) said in his heart ‘There is no God (laysa ilāh)’”,Footnote 128 – a prompt unquestionably extracted from the Old Testament: “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God”.Footnote 129 Any conjecture on discourses and disputations taken at council meetings must consider these prompts, and only these two, because no other documentation exists regarding the subjects that members deliberated. To claim a literary, scientific, or humanist pursuit at this council is fallacious given the clear concern with Christian teachings, its application to daily life, and its usability when preaching.
The council constituted an organized, intra-confessional entity that replicated the interdenominational character of the ABCFM. While most members openly expressed an acceptance of Protestantism (except for al-Yāzijī) and demonstrated degrees of piety in the eyes of the missionaries, their confessional heritages and the presuppositions that they might bring to meetings cannot be discounted.Footnote 130 Al-Yāzijī and Ṣābūnjī were Greek Catholic. Al-Ḥaddād and Fīlibsun were Greek Orthodox. The Wurtabāt brothers and Iskandar Abkāriyūs were of Armenian Orthodox ancestry, and Buṭrus Wurtabāt had been an Armenian Orthodox ecclesiastic. Al-Bustānī came from an established Maronite family. To thwart possible splintering within the nascent Protestant community, the council created a place in which communal solidarity, social unity, and religious concord could be forged. Additionally, meetings provided opportunities to rectify teachings of the ancestral churches, to dispel confessional assumptions, and to inculcate an ecumenical yet Protestant interpretation to familiar passages of Scripture. Perhaps, the council was a refinery for Protestant doctrine, where “nominal Christians”, as the missionaries termed congregants of the ancient Eastern Churches, could become “true” Christians.
Character training
The third type of refinement was the formation of the individual's inward and outward comportment. As representatives of God, members needed to manifest his nature and his message. It was imperative therefore that their visible actions reflect Christian virtues. Refinement required the cultivation of moral character, which itself was a prerequisite for membership: members must “not be quarrelsome and not known for malicious behavior”.Footnote 131 This condition seems to combat the behavioural issues that plagued the Boys’ School in Beirut years earlier. When a new student arrived, he was “generally quarrelsome and disobedient, and requires to be constantly checked for using abusive and obscene language”.Footnote 132 In prescribing proper actions and codifying them in its regulations, the council directly challenged its members to a standard of linguistic decency and civilized behaviour, while covertly reminding former pupils, i.e. the Wurtabāt brothers, the Shiblī brothers, and Iskandar Abkāriyūs, of their not-so-distant juvenile actions.
To understand further the importance of developing polished manners, it is instructive to review Article V in its entirety.
(5) Indeed, those attending this council enter with a spirit of peace and quiet. Among them there is not [any] clamor or disorderly speech. Every one of them humbles himself. He has attended in order to benefit himself (lil-ʾifāda); thus, he strives to affirm truth and not his [own] opinion and maintain decorum in everything concerning the council, internally and externally.Footnote 133
Argumentativeness contradicted the atmosphere that the council aspired to foster: an amicable, interactive space receptive to the open exploration of Scripture. A member filled with malice could disrupt the congenial setting and therein impede free conversation. An invective tongue could potentially stoke division among the members and fracture the community. Rash, unpolished speech is associated with intemperate and undisciplined character. It seems that linguistic civility and physical composure epitomized refinement. Cultivating the mind was concomitant with edifying the individual. Both “internally and externally”, members were to “maintain decorum”.Footnote 134 It is unknown whether this was a physical ordinance, meant to dictate conduct inside and outside of council meetings, as well as metaphorical, i.e. the visible and invisible exhibitions of individual character. Nonetheless, an improved behavioural posture was valued and reflected the affectively constituted religiosity of the council members. Displays of refined character were to be rewarded with appointments to the council executive committee. If members possessed a “warm, kindred spirit based on observing their propriety (liyāqat-hum)”,Footnote 135 they might become deputy officers for a three-year tenure.
IV. Seminary “students” in the mission field
Thanks to some training at Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb, a lay clergy composed of Syrian converts was equipped to peddle the Word of God door-to-door in 1846. When evangelizing alongside their American brethren (and employers) in Christ, these local preachers appear to have been convinced of the redeeming power of the Protestant message.
In 1846, “four native preachers connected with the mission ha[d] circuits assigned them”.Footnote 136 In February, Ṭannūs al-Ḥaddād and Simeon Calhoun travelled to Hasbeiya, a village located 100 kilometres from Beirut. In March, Buṭrus al-Bustānī accompanied Henry De Forest to Sidon. Ṭannūs Ṣābūnjī preached in Hasbeiya and neighbouring villages on Mt. Hermon.Footnote 137 In summer, al-Bustānī relocated to ʿAbeih to help Cornelius Van Dyck “preach in the villages” and make preparations for the new Boys’ Seminary.Footnote 138 In August, Buṭrus Wurtabāt arrived in Aleppo to distribute books and be a “missionary assistant”.Footnote 139 In late summer, al-Ḥaddād and the missionary William McClure Thomson (1806–94) joined Wurtabāt in Aleppo.Footnote 140 1846 was truly the year of itinerant preaching by local Protestant converts who were members of the Refinement Council.
A close analysis of preaching in the mission field illustrates how council members utilized their training to propagate Protestantism. In March 1846, al-Bustānī and De Forest stayed a week in Sidon and “had but few opportunities of serious conversations & no opportunity to preach to a congregation”.Footnote 141 On the return trip to Beirut, they stopped near the Damour River to convalesce because the missionary was “ill with ague” and vomiting violently.Footnote 142 A crowd quickly gathered around the two men. The much-needed respite became a public exhibition of the value of individual learning and the merits of Protestantism. Al-Bustānī stepped up as the defender of the region's new confession.
In a letter, De Forest recounted the event, imbuing it with the trappings of a courtroom drama in which al-Bustānī symbolizes enlightened, Protestant learning and a priest represents unenlightened, Maronite dogma.Footnote 143 We read that a crowd of “20 to 30 people assembled” and listened “with great interest & some cowering in an undertone, – approving or disapproving”. Al-Bustānī was “recognized” and a Maronite priest, ʿAbdullāh from Maalaqah, “soon began an attack on him”. The missionary characterized the priest “as being of yesterday” and acknowledges parenthetically his earthly dominion as the “Maronite Patriarch's wakel [agent]”. De Forest stylizes the priest as an uncouth man who hurled “reproaches & opprobrious epithets” at al-Bustānī. We learn that the priest called him “a ‘Judas on whom the bread of the [Maronite] school [of ʿAyn Waraqa] had been wasted’” and chastised him for associating with a “bible-man”, i.e. the missionary De Forest.
On the other hand, al-Bustānī, the advocate of Protestantism, appears rational and civil in De Forest's letter, at one point responding to the priest “in a conclusive manner”. Al-Bustānī staved off the viperous attacks using techniques he perfected at Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb. He weakened his assailant by first quoting Proverbs 26: 4: “answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him unto him – answer a fool according to his folly lest he be wise in his own conceit”. He then invoked the words of Jesus Christ, quoting Matthew 10: 25: “if they ‘called the master [of the house] Beelzebuub &c’”. These words were revolutionary, unsettling the hierarchical structure of power between teacher and student, clergy and congregant. For over an hour, the Maronite priest and Maronite-turned-Protestant sparred. The priest admonished al-Bustānī for “denying the power of the priesthood to bind & loose”. Al-Bustānī deployed “the interpretation of Chapters &c. on those passages” and underscored the centrality of individualism in Protestant thought, reminding his adversary and calling his audience to “all repent individually & believe individually & love individually?” Amid the clash of theological viewpoints, al-Bustānī suggested “let us leave this disputing about things we differ about & talk of what we all confess to be essential – repentance & faith & love to God & our neighbor”. An appropriate injunction to a verbal spar that echoes al-Bustānī’s own postscript-wish for Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb – that it “leads to the good of the Gospel and the benefit of one's neighbor”.Footnote 144
In this episode, the merits of Protestant learning, individual access to the Scriptures, and civility emerge victorious. At the Refinement Council, the native preacher received the training for public evangelism and the pre-field work opportunity to practise his craft. Al-Bustānī’s evangelical sideshow is by no means the only example of itinerant preaching by council members in 1846. One month earlier, council member Ṭannūs al-Ḥaddād and the missionary Simeon Calhoun were in Hasbeiya, a village semi-hostile to Protestantism after some congregants of the Greek Orthodox Church converted. According to the ABCFM, the preaching “devolved chiefly on the native brother” because “Mr. Calhoun's facility in the [Arabic] language was not yet such as to enable him to preach with ease”.Footnote 145 Like al-Bustānī, in that moment al-Ḥaddād mobilized his Protestant conviction and the practical training he received at the council, becoming a dynamic, vocal advocate for Protestantism. In the words of the missionaries, al-Ḥaddād “seemed to have uncommon aid in opening the Scriptures, and the little audience melted into tears, some of them sobbing aloud”.Footnote 146
Throughout his life, al-Bustānī was “a committed evangelical” and his encounter with the missionaries spurred him to negotiate his new religious outlook and social experiences with his ancestral loyalties.Footnote 147 By the Damour River in 1846, al-Bustānī exhorted from a roadside pulpit not for a secular society but for God's Protestant Kingdom. As a lay preacher, the training he received at Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb, fuelled by a personal conviction to spread Protestantism, enabled him eloquently, emotively, and effectively, to argue for faith over religion, and individualism over institutionalism.
Conclusion
This article uncovered a short-lived Protestant seminary that Nahḍa studies misidentified as a learned society. In examining the members’ lives in light of their personal relationships and professional needs and obligations, Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb emerged as a theological, educational committee formed to ready prospective itinerant preachers in the Scriptures and to equip them with persuasive language and social skills indispensable for evangelism. Divorced from the telos of the learned societies, its position amid an ethos of the emergent Protestant community surfaced.
Nahḍa learned societies receive praise as societal crucibles where the virtues and ideologies of a modern, secular civil society were forged; yet at the time under consideration, the imminent leaders of the Nahḍa were not giants of a grandiose cultural project that history had yet to write. They were humans in tune with their religious views, financial needs, and social connections. If the story of nineteenth-century learned societies in Beirut is to begin with Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb, its decidedly confessional orientation must be foregrounded. Its members came from a small contingency in the city: the social, economic, and religious circle coalescing around the Protestant missionaries. Furthermore, its evangelical purpose distinguished it from future social-cum-intellectual gatherings in late Ottoman Beirut that pursued the promises of intellectual liberalism embodied within the arts and sciences.
When historiography labelled Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb a learned society, it overlooked its role in the sociocultural, religious, and economic landscape of the early Nahḍa period. It ignored the quotidian dimensions of life, the profane aspects of survival, and the spirituality of man. In order to pinpoint an already written story, Nahḍa studies brought the youthful Yūḥannā Wurtabāt, the unemployed Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī, and the committed convert Buṭrus al-Bustānī to seemingly instant maturity. This essay tried to pause the clock in order to observe in real-time their lives imbricated within the Protestant community. While this glimpse into the early lives of future Nahḍa luminaries is apparently devoid of a secular cultural project, it remains a complex moment of entanglement that should not be forgotten.
Appendix: Members of the refinement council
1. Iskandar Abkāriyūs (Alexander Abcarius) b. 1827 – d. 1885
2. Buṭrus al-Bustānī (Butrus Bistany) b. 1819 – d. 1883
3. Ilyās Fawwāz (Elias Fuaz) b. – d. 1878
4. Henry Alfred De Forest b. 1814 – d. 1858
5. Ṭannūs al-Ḥaddād b. – d. 1864
6. Dīmitrī Fīlibsun (Demetrius Philipson)
7. Amīn Shiblī
8. Mulḥim Shiblī
9. Ṭannūs Ṣābūnjī
10. Cornelius Van Dyck b. 1818 – d. 1895
11. Buṭrus Wurtabāt (Bedros Vartabed) b. – d. 1848
12. Yūḥannā Wurtabāt (John Wortabet) b. 1827 – d. 1908
13. Krikūr Wurtabāt (Gregory M. Wortabet) b. 1828 – d. 1893
14. Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī b. 1800 – d. 1871
