In 1847 a group of SyriansFootnote 1 partnered with American Protestant missionaries to establish a jamʿiyya (learned society) in Beirut. Affluent CatholicFootnote 2 Syrians formed another jamʿiyya in 1849 with Jesuit missionaries. Not wanting to be left behind, influential Orthodox elites in town launched their own jamʿiyya around 1850. This article examines the religious and political power struggles that played out at these three institutions to show the politicization of confessional identities at the hands of Syrians and foreigners alike.
The jamʿiyyāt (pl. of jamʿiyya) were forums for intellectualism and sociability among the emerging middle class.Footnote 3 They were crucibles that contoured modern political and nationalist identities and served as nodes in a network of orientalist transcultural exchange.Footnote 4 The form of the jamʿiyya was innovative because it was designed to exist in perpetuity.Footnote 5 To survive leadership changes and membership turnover, a constitution outlined objectives, rules and regulations, and participant rights and responsibilities. This document formally endowed the institution with operational transparency, continuity, and, it was hoped, longevity. Akin to a corporate body, the jamʿiyya was not centred around a person, like traditional conversation circles or intellectual salons.Footnote 6 The archetypical jamʿiyya was a collaborative hub of knowledge and fraternity divorced from the supervision of a magnetic leader.
As the “new institutional phenomenon” of the age, the jamʿiyyāt are inseparable from the story of modernity in Beirut.Footnote 7 Social visionaries, cultural afficionados, and political thinkers gathered to study the arts and sciences; debate the past, present, and future of society; and practise the ongoing Nahḍa. Stretching the long nineteenth century, the Nahḍa designates a period marked by social and political reforms promulgated in a series of imperial edicts known as the Tanzimat (1839–76), booming cultural production epitomized by the establishment of schools, printing presses, and periodicals, inescapable European political and cultural interference in the Arab world and Ottoman realm, and global economic expansion through trade and commerce.Footnote 8 This article leaves the heuristic label Nahḍa untranslated, recognizing how it simultaneously refers to both “the project of Arab cultural and political modernity”, as described by El-Ariss, and “a loose construct with a range of meanings”, in the words of Ayalon.Footnote 9 Beirut is an undisputed site of these modulations. The port town of 1800 transformed into a locus of commerce, politics, and culture by 1900. Its population grew from roughly 5,000 to over 100,000, and in 1888 the city became the capital of an independent eponymously named Ottoman province.Footnote 10
Experimentations characterized the transformation and modernization of Beirut. The city was an avant-garde canvas on which Nahḍa movers and shakers tried out “a series of projects and practices that intersect[ed] and clash[ed]”.Footnote 11 Through writing and lived experiences, Syrians renegotiated, reimagined, and remade literary forms, religious identities, and political views.Footnote 12 Many enterprises that Syrians undertook for cultural advancement, religious promotion, and civic improvement depended on their personal and professional networks.Footnote 13 Scholars have deployed the Nahḍa as an analytical frame to explore the defining tension of modernity in the Middle East – the sectarian–secular divide.Footnote 14 The confessionalization of civil society and elevation of religion as the cornerstone of political identity have yielded fruitful explorations on the origins and culture of sectarianism,Footnote 15 while proponents of teamwork among Christian communions and between Christian and Muslim groups have come to exemplify a spirit of secularism.Footnote 16 The three religiously hued jamʿiyyāt invite us to learn how Syrians chose to traverse the sectarian–secular discursive landscape in the age of testing out new things.
Established in 1868, al-Jamʿiyya al-ʿIlmiyya al-Sūriyya (the Syrian Academy) in Beirut symbolizes the ecumenical spirit of the Nahḍa. Spearheaded entirely by Syrians, the project counted Muslims and Christians from various sects among its members and was free of foreign missionaries. As such, historians celebrate it as an intellectual and social space “liberated” from confessional politics and foreign religious manoeuvrings.Footnote 17 Although recent studies have highlighted the complex and overlapping nature of religious, cultural, and political life during the Nahḍa, the jamʿiyyāt narrative remains largely unquestioned ever since George Antonius codified it in 1938. The 1847 and 1849 institutions are reduced to “Protestant” and “Catholic” spaces dominated by American Protestant and French Jesuit missionaries, respectively, and both are depicted as unavoidable preludes to the Syrian Academy of 1868.Footnote 18 This teleology, from sectarian to secular, is troublesome. Written mostly from the Protestant lens, it takes the “Catholic” jamʿiyya as a mere counterweight – which is sometimes mentioned but never examined in depth on its own terms – to its “Protestant” predecessor.Footnote 19 Additionally, the jamʿiyyāt genealogy has completely forgotten the 1850 Orthodox jamʿiyya.Footnote 20 Lastly, charismatic leaders and iconic personalities, missionaries and locals alike, have received the bulk of scholarly attention, thereby silencing the multitude of freethinking Syrians who voluntarily participated in the projects.Footnote 21
This article shifts the jamʿiyyāt story away from the nationalist paradigm, that anxiously looks for Christian–Muslim co-operation and liberation from foreign missionaries, to explore the institutions in situ temporally. The actions, alliances, and affinities of 109 participants are read in the context of social dynamics, economic linkages, political aspirations, and religious contestations in mid-nineteenth-century Beirut. As Feldtkeller and Zeuge-Buberl have stated, both Syrians and foreigners “had the agency to define themselves, to develop ideas beyond their respective orders of knowledge, and to cooperate in the search for improvements to their everyday lives that they may well have called ‘modern’”.Footnote 22 In giving weight to the agency of the Syrian jamʿiyya members, this research situates the Protestant institution amid a cacophony of other confessional voices, expands on the hitherto sidelined Catholic project, and retrieves the local Orthodox struggle from historiographical amnesia.
Before diving into the lifeworld of members, a survey of foreign intrusion into Syria and its confessional landscape would be instructive. European military, political, and cultural interference in the Ottoman realm increased in the closing decades of the eighteenth century and redoubled in the nineteenth. European powers encroached on Ottoman territorial and governmental sovereignty during the Greek War for Independence (1821–29), militarily allied with Istanbul to end the Egyptian occupation of Syria (1831–40), and backed the dissolution of the Shihābī Principality (1842), that ruled Mt Lebanon and its environs, and the subsequent formation of a religiously apportioned special province: the Double Qaim-Maqamate (1843).Footnote 23 Missionary activity was the handmaiden of political interventionism. Three European nations considered themselves protectors of particular communions within the Ottoman Empire. France cared for the Catholics: the Maronites, Monophysite Christians who accepted the authority of Rome in the twelfth century; the Melkites, Greek Orthodox Christians who allied with Catholicism in the early eighteenth century; and naturally, Roman Catholics. As the major Orthodox authority in Europe, Russia looked after the four autocephalous Orthodox Patriarchates of Constantinople, Antioch (based in Damascus), Jerusalem, and Alexandria. Lastly, Britain defended the nascent Protestant community, initiated in the 1820s by missionaries, and was joined in 1830 by the United States, upon the formation of American–Ottoman relations.
This study on entanglements between the sectarianism and secularism in Beirut civil society first surveys the institutional similarities of the three jamʿiyyāt and the motivations behind each name. Next the political connections, economic interests, and religious leanings of members are examined, one jamʿiyya at a time, to understand the institutions on their own terms. Established in 1847, al-Jamʿiyya al-Sūriyya li-Ktisāb al-ʿUlūm wal-Funūn (the Syrian Society of Arts and Sciences; hereafter the SSAS) revolved mainly around the Protestant community, Syrians and missionaries alike. It exhibited the emergence of American religious and cultural soft power in Syria and disturbed the sociopolitical status quo held by local Uniate notables and the longstanding Orthodox community. The second institution, al-Jamʿiyya al-Sharqiyya (the Oriental Society; hereafter the OS), was established in 1849 by mostly Maronite and Melkite financial and political magnates. As partisans of the defunct Shihābī court, these Syrian Uniates allied with the French Jesuit missionaries to maintain their erstwhile social authority and channel European political and religious influence from France and the Catholic Church. The third jamʿiyya was al-Jamʿiyya al-Sūriyya al-Urthūdhuksiyya (the Orthodox Syrian Society; hereafter the OSS) of 1850. Here wealthy elites from the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch – aggravated by the Protestant newcomers and still reeling from the schism that spawned the Melkite congregation – attempted to numerically preserve their flock and display sociopolitical relevance. In the rapidly changing religious and political landscape of Beirut, these institutions competed for space and significance in a new uncharted reality.
A note on the limitations of this study, particularly the temporality of the jamʿiyya rosters, is required. Since annual registries are non-extant, it is impossible to know precisely when members joined and when, or if, they withdrew. My research is based on the published SSAS roster (1852), the OS letter to Paris (1849), the OS log of members (1852), and the “list” of renowned figures involved in the OSS, as recorded by a nameless chronicler in an undated manuscript. Because 109 individuals (92 Syrians and 17 Westerners) joined the three jamʿiyyāt, I chose representative members to illustrate the socioeconomic, political, and religious entanglements underpinning the projects. Many members Latinized their names – a reflection of their cosmopolitan perspectives, international business dealings, European affinities, and consular connections. I used these preferred spellings and, for scholarly reference, transliterated the names in the appendices.Footnote 24 I did not explore the Islamic social and intellectual scene because all documented members were Christians. Although SSAS and OS membership was ostensibly open to Muslims, Protestant and Jesuit missionary overtones and the Christian majority possibly deterred their participation. There is no record of female participation at these jamʿiyyāt. Thus, the female voice from the Nahḍa is regrettably not heard here.
I. Anatomy of the jam ʿiyy āt
The many shared institutional features among the SSAS, OS, and OSS demonstrate the rising popularity of the jamʿiyya, as a corporate body, in Beirut. Each institution named itself a jamʿiyya – an abstract noun that denotes “assembly” or “gathering”. Organizers favoured the word jamʿiyya over majmaʿ, a close synonym, which carried strong religious overtones. Arabic speakers from all communions understood that a majmaʿ traditionally described a provincial or ecumenical synod or council concerned with doctrinal or ecclesiastical issues.Footnote 25 As the first jamʿiyya of the age, the SSAS selected a term that was devoid of religious implications and distinct from its alleged predecessor, the 1846 Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb (the Refinement Majmaʿ), which prioritized theological education.Footnote 26 Seeking parity with the Protestant project, the OS and OSS adopted the word jamʿiyya too.
Other similarities existed. Pursuing the arts and sciences was the primary objective, which was stated explicitly by the SSAS and OSS.Footnote 27 A religious tinge can be detected at all three institutions, nonetheless, albeit to varying degrees. The production and acquisition of knowledge was achieved through the medium of sound. At meetings a speaker delivered an oration or exposited on a topic while attendees listened and learned. To enable each jamʿiyya to function indefinitely as a corporate body, a governing document was in effect. Whether codified as a dustūr (constitution) at the SSAS and OSS or a collection of bunūd (articles) at the OS, these rules and regulations recorded the principles of the group and membership duties and served to direct the institution and endow it with a long life.Footnote 28 A president oversaw each organization. Based on the available record, a clergyman always presided over the SSAS and OSS, and a layman the OS. The meeting place testifies to the indelible bond between religious establishments and their respective jamʿiyyāt. The OS congregated at the Jesuit Residence and the OSS at “the Church Residence (dār al-kanīsa)”.Footnote 29 The SSAS most probably convened at the American Chapel in town where public lectures, organized by ʿUmdat al-Khiṭābāt (the Oration Committee), were held in winter 1858–59.Footnote 30 Lastly, members bore a cost to participate in the process of collective learning. The SSAS and OSS required initial membership dues followed by annual renewal fees, whereas the OS imposed financial penalties for not upholding group objectives and missing meetings without just cause.Footnote 31 The ubiquity of the jamʿiyya, as a replicable organizational form, demonstrates not only its popularity but a desire for institutional commensurability among Beirut denizens.
Parity is strongest between the SSAS and OS, pointing to ideological motivations between the two groups to fashion peer institutions.Footnote 32 The administrative structure of the “Protestant” and “Catholic” jamʿiyyāt was highly formalized. In addition to the president, each had vice presidents, secretaries, a treasurer, a librarian, and administrators (mudabbirūn) at the SSAS, or assistants (muʿāwinūn) at the OS.Footnote 33 The election rather than appointment of officers indicates an egalitarian spirit regarding the governing hierarchy. At both institutions minutes were recorded and a membership roster kept. Lectures from peers were the preferred way to support learning; yet these two groups also encouraged private reading, establishing libraries to facilitate the circulation of written knowledge. In 1852 Antonius Ameuney (1821–81) managed the SSAS collection, and Darwīsh Tayyān cared for the OS holdings.Footnote 34 Given the synonymity in governing structures, the cataloguing of members, and importance of assembling a library, it seems that the 1849 “Catholic” jamʿiyya intentionally reflected the 1847 “Protestant” prototype.
The SSAS and OS desired institutional recognition and fellowship from learned societies in the West. The rhetorical value of the adjective “Syrian” in “the Syrian Society of Arts and Sciences” manifests both Syrian and American Protestant missionary aspirations for the project. As Zachs has pointed out, the endonym “Syrian” articulated the coalescing sentiments of a proto-Syrian nationalist identity championed by local intellectuals, scholars, and merchants.Footnote 35 Conversely, as an exonym, it reflected the missionary understanding of the region as the Homeland of the Bible and “‘concretise[d]’ their imagined ‘Syria’ and ‘Syrians,’ internally and externally”.Footnote 36 The SSAS was a public-facing institution which established transcultural exchanges with the West, specifically the United States and Germany.Footnote 37 As such the Beirut cohort needed a supra-municipal label worthy of recognition. National designations branded most orientalist societies to give prominence to the geopolitical entities where the institutions were headquartered: the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (German Oriental Society) and the American Oriental Society. The Syrian Society imitated counterparts even though the adjective lacked real-world political or national anchorage. The discursive authority of “Syrian” served local hopes and missionary imaginings and helped advance the SSAS as a qualified scholarly partner on the world stage.
The OS looked towards France. Writing in French, the founders in 1849 christened their jamʿiyya the Société Catholique, a name that articulated the faith of members and the hand of the Jesuit missionaries.Footnote 38 The qualifier “Catholic” is significant. It points to inclusivity among the Syrian members and their attempt to bring Melkites and Maronites, along with Roman Catholics, under one scholarly tent. Additionally, the adjective delicately positioned the Jesuits and their Order, which had been reinstated in 1814, in submission to Rome. The religious nomenclature, however, was quickly dropped. At the inaugural lecture on 1 February 1850, Niqūlā Manassā referred to the institution as al-Jamʿiyya al-Sharqiyya (the Oriental Society).Footnote 39 The adjective “Oriental” raises new questions. Was it an honourable endonym embraced by Syrians or an exonym imposed by the Jesuits? Perhaps “Oriental” was adopted to signal historical and economic linkages with Europe and to counter the proto-nationalist notion of “Syrian” cultivated at the SSAS. Were both “Oriental” at the OS and “Syrian” at the SSAS generic terms intentionally marshalled to denote a new type of a cultural capital free from religious overtones?Footnote 40 Placing conjecture aside, we can note that rebranding the Société Catholique as the Société Orientale established in name a measure of commensurability with the respected Société Asiatique in Paris, as well as with the Syrian Society in Beirut.Footnote 41
Intent on curbing Protestant penetration into Syria, the OSS looked inward and, as far as we know, did not contact any learned society abroad. This jamʿiyya was unquestionably religious and designed to repel the American missionaries “who refused to accept the legitimacy of traditional Christian practice” in Syria.Footnote 42 The OSS founders strategically duplicated the organizational and procedural features of their “Protestant” adversary to signal institutional equivalence, yet selected a sectarian name to affirm their national birthright as sons of Syria. The adjective “Orthodox” distinguishes this “Syrian Society” from the “Syrian Society” of the Protestants. In the age of the jamʿiyyāt, religion was becoming a salient marker of political belonging. As Makdisi has perceptively concluded, the colonial encounter – enacted through missionary entanglements and Western military, cultural, and political invasions into the Ottoman Empire – “emphasized sectarian identity as the only viable marker of political reform and the only authentic basis for political claims”.Footnote 43 The members intentionally labelled their counter jamʿiyya as “Orthodox” to assert their presence and relevance within their homeland.
II. The Syrian Society of Arts and Sciences
In 1847 Syrians and Protestant missionaries collaborated to form the SSAS. Together they staffed the executive committee that managed society business and organized 53 discussion sessions and approximately 20 public lectures by the close of 1851.Footnote 44 The membership grew from an initial 40 to 52, among them literary figures, schoolmasters, consular agents, merchants, and dragomans.Footnote 45 In 1852 the jamʿiyya published its proceedings and gifted copies to orientalist societies in Paris, Leipzig, and Boston, where it was ebulliently received.Footnote 46 Aʿmāl al-Jamʿiyya al-Sūriyya (Transactions of the Syrian Society) “enables us to confirm”, reported the American Oriental Society, “the existence and prosperity of this [Syrian] Society”.Footnote 47 As the only jamʿiyya to issue proceedings, the SSAS guaranteed itself a lasting presence in the Nahḍa archive.
In the late 1840s the United States and Protestantism were political and religious newcomers in Syria. Missions had preceded diplomacy in the region. Protestant missionaries, dispatched by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1819, settled in Beirut in 1823 and searched for converts among the resident Melkite, Maronite, and Orthodox congregations. In political and legal matters, Britain represented American nationals and their spiritual protégés until 1830 when commercial and diplomatic relations between Washington DC and Istanbul were established. The two nations then jointly spoke on behalf of the embryonic Protestant community before the High Porte. In 1850, three years after the SSAS formed, the Sultan recognized Ottoman Protestants in his realm as a millet (religious community), granting it the right “to administer its own affairs and to worship freely”.Footnote 48
Protestantism, as the dominant faith at the SSAS, remains the preferred variable to analyse this jamʿiyya, its members, and their connection to the American missionaries. The growth of global capitalism in Syria, however, should not be overlooked. A socioeconomic investigation shows how money and politics were factors in establishing and populating the institution. There were two constituencies at the SSAS: those who were financially independent and those who were financially dependent on the missionaries. According to the roster, which lists members “in order of admission”, the self-sufficient group joined first.Footnote 49 After the missionaries William Thomson (1) (1806–94) and Cornelius Van Dyck (2) (1818–95), the first president and one vice president (of two), the roster names Antonius Ameuney (3), a dragoman and secretary at the US Consulate and the financier of Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī’s first poetry publication in 1853.Footnote 50 Namé Tabet (4) (c. 1818–98) belonged to a wealthy Maronite family and, since the early 1840s, was a dragoman and secretary at the British Consulate.Footnote 51 Nofel Nofel (5) (1811–87) came from an affluent family in Tripoli and held government positions in Beirut, such as Secretary of the Sidon Provincial Administrative Council and Chief Scribe of Customs.Footnote 52 His cousin, Selim Nauphal (6) (1828–1902) was a merchant who settled in England in 1850 and became a naturalized British subject.Footnote 53 Lastly, Jirjis Jammāl (7) (b. c. 1817) was a wealthy merchant in Acre who in 1860 invested in a shareholding company to publish inexpensive editions of Arabic classics.Footnote 54 These were well-to-do men who voluntarily worked with the American missionaries to establish the SSAS. Most had embraced Protestantism or were publicly Protestant leaning, save for the Orthodox Selim Nauphal.Footnote 55 They were in “the Protestant Circle” yet also self-directed persons who “maintained strong cultural, social or political ties to those outside of the Circle”.Footnote 56
Syrian agents of the US Consulate were part of the financially independent bloc of jamʿiyya members. These men were wealthy Protestant converts who, through their commercial enterprises and socio-religious associations, secured appointments to represent Washington DC. Based in Haifa, the merchant Gabriel Nasralla (b. c. 1817) became the US Vice Consul at Haifa and Acre in 1831, just one year after American–Ottoman relations were established.Footnote 57 The banker and merchant Antonio Yanni (1823–82) became the US Vice Consul at Tripoli in 1833.Footnote 58 One Ibrāhīm Nakhla (d. 1854) represented the US at Sidon.Footnote 59 These agents were able to conduct their businesses under the protection of the American flag – a prized perk of the job. The Syrian mercantile class and American political order were enmeshed at the SSAS.
Returning to the roster, we see men dependent on the missionaries for their livelihood forming the second constituency of SSAS members. Ṭannūs al-Ḥaddād (8) and Elias Fuaz (9) had been missionary employees for two decades.Footnote 60 Abdallah Witwat (11) worked for the Americans as a teacher and a caster at the American Press in town.Footnote 61 The scholar-linguists Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī (12) (1800–71) and Butrus Bistany (14) (1819–83) had worked for the evangelists for nearly a decade and in 1847 were hired to work on the Protestant Bible translation project. In this cohort, al-Yāzijī was the sole non-Protestant person. A Melkite, he associated with the Americans because they needed an Arabic philologist, and he needed money.Footnote 62 Politically these men benefitted from their status as missionary employees. They were legally protégés of the United States and as such enjoyed American protection and were considered foreign nationals within the Ottoman Empire.Footnote 63 Several men capitalized on their relationship to the SSAS and the missionaries to gain entry to the exclusive consular club. In the early 1850s Butrus Bistany secured an appointment as the First Dragoman at the US Consulate in Beirut, and the merchant Jirjis Jammāl became the US Vice Consul at Acre, when it was separated from the Haifa office.Footnote 64 When the “Protestant” jamʿiyya formed, it was advantageous for these Syrian employees to stay in the good graces of the missionaries to continue to reap financial and political benefits.
The SSAS endeavoured “to publicly awaken a desire to learn the arts and sciences, irrespective of divisive issues related to religion and politics (al-adyān wal-aḥkām)”.Footnote 65 The hope to cultivate a religiously neutral atmosphere delicately points to generational bigotry among some Christians in Syria. Antonius Ameuney, the third SSAS member and first Syrian on the roster, addressed the quotidian challenges that afflicted the project in 1847, recalling that it was “a work of considerable difficulty, for before it could be accomplished, numerous prejudices had to be broken down”.Footnote 66 The Syrian Protestants who petitioned to form a “native” church that same year echoed his observation on the deleterious nature of confessional predispositions: “We were, indeed of different sects, [Orthodox] Greeks, [Melkite] Greek Catholics, [Roman Catholic] Latins, Maronites and Armenians; but we have abandoned all the animosities and jealousies existing between these sects”.Footnote 67 The SSAS constitution sought to proactively manage the residual influences of ancestral teachings and develop a judgement-free zone.
Several Melkites and Orthodox became SSAS members, even though Protestantism was the unofficial religion in the room. These men were mostly businessmen and bureaucrats. The merchant class included the Orthodox Selim Nauphal and the Melkite brothers Michel (1822–89) and Niqūlā Medawar and Ilyās and Khalīl al-Munayyir. The Orthodox participants were primarily public officials. Jibrāʾīl Yūḥannā al-Khūrī, the father of the printing pioneer Khalīl al-Khūrī (1836–1907), served on the Sidon Provincial Law Council, and ʿAbdallāh Jirjis Nawfal (1796–1869), Selim Nauphal’s father, was a career-service scribe in Tripoli and agent of the Orthodox community before the Maronite Abū l-Lamaʿ princes who ruled the northern district of the Double Qaim-Maqamate.Footnote 68 The presence of Melkites and Orthodox at the SSAS signals the interest and investment of some non-Protestants in the programmatic vision of the jamʿiyya to create a religiously neutral space for the sake of knowledge. Delivering lectures and literary readings before the assembly, Selim Nauphal, Michel Medawar, and the missionary-employed Melkite Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī were not benchwarmers but active participants.Footnote 69 These men and their co-religionists proved their commitment to the scholarly and social ideals of the institution and formed the diverse religious substrate of the largely “Protestant” jamʿiyya.
The international flavour of the confraternity may have likewise incentivized merchants and civil servants to associate formally with the Protestant missionaries and their Syrian spiritual protégés. The Melkite and Orthodox businessmen and bureaucrats had cultivated, in their personal and professional lives, cosmopolitan attitudes, developed commercial ventures, and forged political networks. In search of fraternity and fortune, they had the opportunity to mingle with Western operatives at the jamʿiyya, such as Ernst Gustav Schultz (1811–51), the German Vice Consul in Jerusalem; Charles Henry Churchill (1807–69), a retired British army officer and diplomat; Pascal-Vincent Carletti (1822–91), the French secretary-interpreter for the Russian Consulate General; and Charles-Isidore Blanche (1823–87), the soon-to-be French Vice Consul in Tripoli. In 1847 the SSAS opened a public space in Beirut for cultured men with worldly outlooks to mingle and be seen. It is unknown if these wealthy well-connected Melkites and Orthodox left the SSAS when the OS and OSS were formed in 1849 and 1850. Nonetheless, the “Protestant” jamʿiyya appears to have been, in its first few years, the popular spot in town to socialize with likeminded local and international peers.
Why Michel Medawar joined the SSAS and not the OS remains a puzzle. He was a staunch Melkite who served as a dragoman at the French Consulate in Beirut, enjoyed French political and legal protection, which extended to his business, and held membership at the Société Asiatique – the learned society in Paris which the OS sought as a sister jamʿiyya.Footnote 70 Even though he embraced France and Catholicism, Medawar was non-sectarian in his intellectual and social life. He engaged with Protestants, Melkites, and Orthodox at the SSAS and welcomed Melkites, Orthodox, and Muslims into his home to mingle and discuss literary and social matters. Medawar was also ecumenical with his purse. He bankrolled the establishment of al-Maṭbaʿa al-Sūriyya (the Syrian Press; 1857) and the first Arabic newspaper in town Ḥadīqat al-Akhbār (“News Garden”; 1858), which were spearheaded by Khalīl al-Khūrī, the son of his SSAS colleague, the Orthodox Jibrāʾīl al-Khūrī.Footnote 71 Medawar embraced every opportunity to work on projects that expanded access to knowledge and culture in Beirut, regardless of religious affiliations. In winter 1858–59 he teamed up with the younger al-Khūrī, the Maronite-turned-Protestant Butrus Bistany, and American Protestant missionaries to form the Oration Committee where he served on the executive committee.Footnote 72 Medawar’s many collaborations across the confessional aisle are noteworthy in the era of confessionally coloured jamʿiyyāt in the early days of the Nahḍa.
Ideally knowledge is free from religious and political ideology. However, through public lectures on literature, history, the physical world, and trade, the American Protestant missionaries, who guided the SSAS, sold what Elshakry termed “the Gospel of Science”, where “science was the solution to the problem of progress and a means to escape … a repressive [political] regime”.Footnote 73 Standing at the lectern, converts embodied the achievements possible with Protestantism and modern information. Examples include “The extent of the development of science among this generation and its causes” (John Wortabet (1827–1908)), “An address on the education of women” (Butrus Bistany), and “Cooper metallurgy” (Antonius Ameuney).Footnote 74 In 1852 Mīkhāʾīl ʿAramān (d. 1883) spoke on “The cultivation of the mechanic arts in Syria” and preached how “the introduction of schools, literary societies, religious teaching, and female education” were essential to “a higher development of social life”.Footnote 75 These orations bore public witness to the positive outcomes of American “missionary pedagogy and proselytization”.Footnote 76
Syrians wrestled with questions regarding civil society and human progress at discussion sessions. Under the watchful eye of the missionary managers, they explored in 1849 “Patriotism” and another time “the causes which led to the present superiority of the people of the West over those of the East”.Footnote 77 In 1852 they deliberated “Are all men capable of civilization?”Footnote 78 The framing of these questions points to Western exceptionalism and the merits of European modernity and indicates a delicate move to colonize the Syrian mind. While the Arabic language abilities of the missionaries varied, jamʿiyya leaders Eli Smith and Cornelius Van Dyck certainly possessed the linguistic competency required to push and probe conversations.
The SSAS was likewise a panopticon where international spectators could observe local intellectualism in real time. In 1849 a Malta Protestant College delegation visited and declared the jamʿiyya “a new and most interesting event in the modern history of these regions, as it may be considered the beginning of the revival of literature in the East”.Footnote 79 In 1852 the president of the American Oriental Society, Edward Robinson (1794–1863), happily conveyed “a salutation to this young [society] sister, the daughter of the east”.Footnote 80 These observers made the civilized status of Syrians contingent upon their ability to use Arabic eloquently and effectively. The delegation witnessed “an animated debate in Arabic, in which the speakers seemed to express themselves with great ease and fluency … [t]he whole of the proceedings would have done credit to any European Society”.Footnote 81 Robinson similarly underscored members’ elocution, weighing their abilities against orators in the West: “… as far as manner was concerned, [they] acquitted themselves well. I have heard much worse speaking before Literary Societies in London and New York”.Footnote 82 The Syrians’ practice of knowledge transmission was deemed commensurate with Western oratorical practices.
Despite buy-in from local Christians, the Protestant missionaries blamed religious enmity for the disintegration of the SSAS. Lectures in 1851–52 “attracted more listeners than ever before”.Footnote 83 That season, however, was the last. In summer 1852 President Eli Smith began repeatedly charging Catholics and Orthodox in town with “exciting a sectarian spirit against it [the SSAS]”, establishing rival jamʿiyyāt, and siphoning off members.Footnote 84 Did he wax mad because his adversaries stole not only bodies but also the jamʿiyya model? Perhaps he considered the jamʿiyya, as an intellectual corporation, to be the proprietary product of the American Protestant missionaries? Regardless of dwindling membership numbers, the institution appears to have lingered, in some form, for a few years. Prospective members expressed interest in 1852–53 and administrative committees functioned through summer 1854.Footnote 85 In 1856, however, Smith confirmed that the SSAS was dead and lamented how “there is no one who wants to advance the cause”.Footnote 86 Religious partisanship in civil society appears to have been the death knell for the SSAS.
III. The Oriental Society
In October 1849, 22 men established the OS, under the auspices of French Jesuit missionaries.Footnote 87 The majority of the founders were well-known affluent Syrians who derived social clout from generational ties to the defunct Shihābī Principality. Families such as the Dahdahs, Eddés, Misks, and Khadras had faithfully served the princes as tax collectors, administrators, advisers, and scribes, and in the process secured wealth and power. At this new jamʿiyya the traditional elites of the mountain had the opportunity to strengthen political connections, cultivate economic prospects, network with peers, and even symbolically recreate the scholarly hub that had flourished at the “literary circle” of Prince Bashīr II (1767–1850; r. 1789–1840).Footnote 88 Under the banner of “Catholic”, many Melkites and Maronites from the former Shihābī court came together and put forth a united religious front – an institutional riposte to the “Protestant” SSAS. Moreover, striving to ensure the lasting influence of their families, they cast their lots with the Jesuit Fathers from France, conceivably as a way to undercut alternative political and religious influences from taking hold among the Uniate communities in Syria.
Mt Lebanon and its adjacent valleys and plateaus had been managed by local princes and feudal lords who, as long as they dutifully sent taxes to Istanbul, were reappointed annually to rule. The House of Shihāb rose to power in 1697, upon the death of an heirless cousin of the Maʿns, whose origins trace to 1120.Footnote 89 Headquartered in Deir el-Qamar, the Shihābs were “effective delivers of tax” who steadily expanded their dominions and became managers of a “super tax farm”.Footnote 90 The reign of Bashīr II is notable for its length and his ascent from “a mere fiscal functionary of the Ottoman state” to the uncontested Prince of the Mountain.Footnote 91 After the joint European–Ottoman coalition expelled the Egyptians from Syria in 1840, the prince was ousted and, two years later, the principality dissolved. In 1843 the first sectarian government, with Maronite and Druze subdivisions, was created: the Double Qaim-Maqamate of Mt Lebanon. Beirut was not incorporated into this religiously partitioned territory. It remained part of the Sidon Province and in 1840 became the seat of government – a reflection of the city’s rising status as a commercial, political, and cultural centre.
Shihābī loyalists lived in a new sociopolitical reality. The “nonsectarian notable politics” of the past had been replaced by “restoration politics” which “singled out the religious identity of local inhabitants as the point of departure for a modern reformed and ambivalent Ottoman sovereignty in Mt. Lebanon” and its environs.Footnote 92 Many Maronites and Melkites navigated the increasing politicization of religious identity by embracing the unity that Catholicism espoused and recognizing that associating with France, the European advocate of the Uniates, conferred political, social, and economic advantages. Local Catholic communions warmly received the French Jesuit missionaries when they returned to Syria in 1831.Footnote 93 In 1849 several Melkites and Maronites, whose reputations and wealth stemmed from the bygone mountain regime, strategically chose to align with the French missionaries in a jamʿiyya to advance and reinforce their erstwhile stations in a post-Shihābī world.
Court partisans had amassed vast fortunes through trade and commerce with France. The Maronite Dahdah family were tax collectors and secretaries who, in return for loyal service, received the title of sheikh and numerous properties, which helped increase their footprint in sociopolitical and economic arenas.Footnote 94 The first OS president, Elias (b. 1817), was a prosperous merchant alongside his father, Marʿī Nādir (d. 1868), who had worked for the mountain princes before establishing a commercial house in Marseilles where he secured French nationality.Footnote 95 Elias’ second cousin and future brother-in-law, Rochaïd Ghaleb (1813–89) had been a secretary to Bashīr II who fled to France and joined the family business in the early 1840s after unsuccessfully attempting to restore the Shihābī order.Footnote 96 Supportive of French religious outreach in Syria, Elias used his trans-Mediterranean connections to transport mail and packages for the Jesuit missionaries and apparently welcomed their participation in his jamʿiyya.Footnote 97
Several landowners and Shihābī counsellors became consular dragomans. The Maronite Eddé family built its fortune through trade and tax-farming concessions. The Eddé brothers, Ibrāhīm Yūsuf (c. 1830–1910) and Rājī, were early OS members. Ibrāhīm managed an import–export company and served as a dragoman at the French Consulate in Damascus, where his son, Émile (1886–1949), the future president of Lebanon, was born.Footnote 98 The story of the Roman Catholic Misk family is similar. Coming from Italy in the sixteenth century, the Misks established trading emporiums in Syria and Egypt.Footnote 99 Three Misks joined the OS: Francis (d. 1878), his son Alexander, and a certain Ḥabīb.Footnote 100 Francis was a savvy political operator and longtime British protégé who became Bashīr II’s divan efendisi (private secretary and confidant), thanks to the manoeuvrings of the British Consul.Footnote 101 A strategically positioned informant, Francis was an influential adviser in the mountain government.Footnote 102 After the principality ended, Francis and Alexander worked as British dragomans for decades. A Catholic faith did not translate into an affiliation to France.Footnote 103 Father and son Misk were committed to their religious community, as evidenced by their OS membership; yet they were pragmatists in need of employment, which they found at the British Consulate. Although the Eddés and Misks repurposed their administrative expertise, linguistic skills, and sociocultural knowledge to serve different European powers, they came together at the one and universal “Catholic” jamʿiyya.
Many Maronites who worked for the mountain princes zealously supported France and the Uniate community. The Khadra family were landowning Maronites in the Kisrawan. Anṭūn was a lead architectural engineer of Bashīr II’s luxurious place of Beiteddine (3 km east of Deir el-Qamar).Footnote 104 His grandsons, Théodore and Dominique (c. 1833–96), were successful merchants and deeply involved in French and Syrian political and religious circles.Footnote 105 In the 1850s Dominique became a dragoman at the French Consulate, and in the 1860s the brothers participated in the royalist Catholic associations of France.Footnote 106 Théodore, a devout Maronite and the inaugural OS secretary, promoted and defended his Church. In April 1869 he partnered with the Maronite Patriarch, Yūsuf al-Dibs (1833–1907), to publish religious texts – a collaboration which led to the formation of al-Maṭbaʿa al-ʿUmūmiyya al-Kāthūlīkiyya (the Catholic General Press).Footnote 107 Théodore provided vital financial and moral support, as al-Dibs noted: “The works [were] not just useful but also indispensable for the Catholic clergy to fruitfully proselytize”.Footnote 108 Théodore Khadra used his wealth to empower his brothers and sisters in Christ.
Even though the OS successfully unified many Maronites and Melkites from the Shihābī sphere, the project was forced to contend with the loss of two prominent figures who chose to join the SSAS. Mīkhāʾīl Jirjis Mishāqa (1800–88) grew up at Deir el-Qamar where his father, Jirjis Ibrāhīm (1765–1832), worked as a secretary and treasurer and, at the age of 25, became a salaried administrator for the mountain government.Footnote 109 Born a Melkite, Mīkhāʾīl famously converted to Protestantism in 1848 and publicly denounced the teachings of his ancestral church the following year. His probable distaste for the “Catholic” jamʿiyiya and subsequent preference for the “Protestant” jamʿiyiya matched the disapprobation of the OS to welcome a polemic apostate into their midst. Decisions of faith led to family divisions within the Mishāqa family. Ibrāhīm (1794–1864), Mīkhāʾīl’s brother, joined the OS, but his son, Khalīl (1822/23–70), Mīkhāʾīl’s nephew, the SSAS. Did Khalīl Ibrāhīm affiliate with the “Protestant” jamʿiyya because he was receptive to the religion of the American evangelists, as his uncle and the SSAS president hoped? Or did his position as a dragoman at the British Consulate incline him to join the American-run institution?Footnote 110 The Melkite Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī was another core member of Bashīr II’s court who stayed at the SSAS. When the OS formed in 1849, al-Yāzijī simply could not afford to jeopardize his working relationship with the American Protestant missionaries on whom he depended for his livelihood. The al-Yāzijīs also illustrate a house split between two jamʿiyyāt. Ḥabīb al-Yāzijī (1833–70), Nāṣīf’s son, was an OS member who in later years contributed articles to the Société de Saint-Vincent-de-Paul journal launched in 1867, as did former OS colleagues Anṭūn Ṣabbāgh and Darwīsh Tayyān.Footnote 111 In all likelihood the elder al-Yāzijī wholeheartedly endorsed Ḥabīb’s decision to join the OS, given his refusal to permit his son to attend the Protestant Sunday School.Footnote 112 The OS, as well as families, were forced to deal with new religious and economic realities in mid-nineteenth-century Beirut.
Whereas Arabic was the sole language of discourse at the SSAS, both French and Arabic were used at OS proceedings. The language of France alongside the language of the Syrian majority at this jamʿiyya shows the guiding hand of the French Jesuit missionaries, who earnestly supported the project, and the impact of Catholic missionary education in the country. Many OS members had studied French at the Lazarist school at ʿAintoura (est. 1834), the first institution in Syria to teach the language.Footnote 113 Ibrāhīm Eddé, Théodore Khadra, Jacob Tabet, a merchant, and Mīkhāʾīl Kumayyid, a dragoman at the British and Greek consulates, were alumni.Footnote 114 An affinity for France was impressed upon Syrian youths at the school. Fondly recalling their days at ʿAintoura, OS members voiced their love of France “whose language we use at our meetings and in our studies”, in the 1849 letter to the Société Asiatique.Footnote 115
A Biblical episteme underwrote information produced at the OS. There were lectures on the history of Syria (presumably from a Scriptural perspective) and the Orontes Valley with evidence culled from Judges and Joshua, in addition to orations on the Judaic monarchs Saul, David, and Jehoshaphat.Footnote 116 Addresses that focused entirely on modern science were also delivered “to snatch [back] many young people from the Protestants who lured them [away] in via science”, according to one Jesuit missionary.Footnote 117 David Bertrand spoke on “Astronomy, the planets and meteors” and others discussed the force of gravity, the weight of air, and the mass of water.Footnote 118 The Jesuits weaponized science and the Scriptures in their fight against Protestant evangelization.
Despite optimistic beginnings, the OS struggled to galvanize and retain members. Of the 22 founders, just four remained in 1852: Théodore Khadra (Secretary, 1849), Ibrāhīm al-Najjār (President, 1852), Yūsuf Kumayyid (Secretary, 1852), and Darwīsh Tayyān (Librarian, 1852).Footnote 119 These leaders were invested stakeholders driving the project forward. To encourage participation the society frequently revisited its bylaws. On 10 March 1850 attendance rules and penalties were updated, barely two months after the first administrative meeting on 17 January 1850.Footnote 120 Audience turnout, nonetheless, remained abysmal. On 13 August 1850, after a two-and-a-half-month hiatus, Niʿmatallāh Qīqānū (1824–91) chastised colleagues for their indifference.Footnote 121 Infrequent meetings plagued the group, and torrential winter rain and excessive summer heat were pretexts to postpone assemblies.Footnote 122 To re-jumpstart the project and alleviate pressure on schedules, members resolved in January 1852 to hold private meetings occasionally and public lectures monthly.Footnote 123 This eleventh-hour measure was ineffective. The jamʿiyya ceased sometime that winter.
It seems that the French Jesuit missionaries and French Director of Quarantine in Beirut were the chief stakeholders in the OS, supporting the impression that the project was French-inspired and Jesuit-driven. Dr J.P. Sucquet (d. 1887) frequently orated in French on scientific matters, and Father Henri de Pruinères (1821–72) recorded the minutes.Footnote 124 While only Syrians were official members,Footnote 125 the dedication of the foreigners was widely recognized. According to Qīqānū, the tireless efforts of Dr Sucquet and the Jesuits kept the project going.Footnote 126 The French missionaries preferred to work in the shadows, unobtrusively handling the Syrians. One wrote that while locals maintained executive control, they have “more or less receive[d] special guidance from our Fathers”.Footnote 127 Being the most interested in the success of the OS, the Jesuits were likely the most disappointed in its collapse.
The conversion of the jamʿiyya president to Protestantism in 1852 might have brought down the enterprise. An early OS member, the Melkite Ibrāhīm al-Najjār (1822–64) was the Chief Physician of the Ottoman Military Hospital in Beirut. His grandfather, Yūsuf, was a najjār (carpenter) who helped construct the Shihābī palace at Beiteddine.Footnote 128 Bashīr II looked favourably upon the young Ibrāhīm, awarding him a scholarship to study medicine at the Qaṣr al-ʿAynī in Cairo from where he proceeded to earned his Doctor of Medicine from the Imperial School of Medicine in Istanbul in 1846.Footnote 129 Al-Najjār became society president in January 1852 yet inexplicably joined the local Protestant Church that May.Footnote 130 While the SSAS bemoaned the loss of members to rival jamʿiyyāt, the Protestants themselves were guilty of poaching the executive leader of the OS. The loss of the president was surely demoralizing and likely crippled the already fraught enterprise.
IV. The Orthodox Syrian Society
The Orthodox rich and powerful established the OSS around 1850. An anonymous chronicler named nine members in Beirut and mentioned that men “from other districts” also joined.Footnote 131 The surnames Ṭrād, Sursock, and Bustros stand out. These men belonged to the seven historic aristocratic families of town and held significant political, religious, financial, and literary sway. They were Syrians, born and bred, and their project – albeit exclusivist in terms of religion and national belonging – appears to have been the first truly native jamʿiyya of the Nahḍa.
The Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch was suffering an existential crisis in the 1850s. In 1724 the congregation split to form the autonomous Melkite Greek Catholic Church. The Melkites confiscated Orthodox properties in the name of the new confession, and the Patriarch in Damascus watched his prominence and wealth diminish to Rome.Footnote 132 In 1848 Melkite Patriarch Maximus III Mazloum (1779–1855; r. 1833–55) secured total civil and spiritual autonomy for his flock as a millet.Footnote 133 With newfound confidence, the small Melkite convent and chapel, built in 1767 in the heart of Beirut next to the Orthodox Cathedral of St. George, were demolished and replaced with the Cathedral of St Elias in 1849.Footnote 134 Melkite spiritual and material gains kept the trauma of the schism fresh.
The arrival of Protestant missionaries in the 1820s exacerbated the situation because the foreign religionists pulled converts from the remaining Orthodox congregation. In 1824 Orthodox Patriarch Methodius (d. 1850; r. 1823–50) forbade communicants from sending their children to missionary schools.Footnote 135 Opposition peaked a decade later when an encyclical signed by the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Antioch and 16 bishops condemned the American evangelists and ordered the withdrawal of children from schools, forbade congregants from working as missionary teachers, and commanded that evangelical materials be burned.Footnote 136 Protestant encroachments on Orthodox territory became political in 1844 when approximately 80 villagers from Hasbaya claimed to have converted – a move that excused them from back taxes and placed them under foreign protection. Ottoman and Western consuls entered the fray to resolve this shift in the religio-political map of Syria.Footnote 137 Protestantism disturbed the social order and, as Tibawi cogently observed, led to “the creation of a new sect in a sectarian society”.Footnote 138
The OSS was a decidedly religious enterprise. Although purportedly formed “for the sake of the arts and sciences”, this jamʿiyya was polemic in nature.Footnote 139 At meetings members digested Church teachings and discussed the errors of Protestantism. The president, Father Jirāsimūs al-Shāmī, would often explain a topic taken from “the Catechism published in Beirut” and then members would discuss and write on it.Footnote 140 Additionally, every Saturday some members deliberated “Meletius’ book against the Protestants (Kitāb Milātiyūs ḍidd al-Brūtistānṭ)”.Footnote 141 To stop haemorrhaging congregants, it seems that the OSS aimed to equip members to be well-informed defenders of the faith.
This jamiʿyya was not the first cultural initiative launched by the Orthodox Church to combat Protestantism and Catholicism. In 1833 Patriarch Methodius established a school at the Balamand Monastery with roughly 30 students.Footnote 142 In 1835, the year the Protestants opened their Boys’ School in Beirut, he founded the School of the Three Hierarchs (Madrasat al-Thalāthat al-Aqmār) in town which boasted nearly 200 students by 1843.Footnote 143 The dormant press at the Orthodox Cathedral of St George was another ecclesiastical venture undertaken to arrest the spread of spiritual and educational materials printed at the American Press (est. 1834). In the 1840s the Metropolitan of Beirut, Archbishop Benjamin (d. 1848), decided to reactivate the press which had fallen silent after printing some religious texts in the mid-eighteenth century.Footnote 144 In 1845 St George’s Press completed its inaugural publication: a 275-page catechism which was possibly the edition studied at the OSS.Footnote 145 Catholics entered the competition of the presses in 1848, when they founded the Imprimerie Catholique at the Jesuit Residence.Footnote 146
The Tzar, the unquestionable protector of the Orthodox, mightily supported cultural efforts in Syria to fend off Catholic propaganda for more than 40 years.Footnote 147 With funds from Moscow, Patriarch Methodius opened schools across his realm.Footnote 148 Constantin Basili (1809–84), the Russian Consul in Beirut, was a proponent of defensive cultural projects, intentionally reporting on the competitive atmosphere between local Orthodox and Catholic schools.Footnote 149 In 1842 he helped Archbishop Benjamin secure new fonts from France to reactivate St George’s Press.Footnote 150 In 1848 the Tzar gave the Patriarch in Damascus the Church of the Ascension and Saint Hypatius in Moscow to convert into a metochion (an embassy church) and unofficial school to educate the Orthodox clergy and laity of Syria.Footnote 151 Russia decisively sponsored the survival of its Orthodox comrades.
The OSS members represented the religious, financial, and political elite of Orthodox society in Beirut. The Ṭrād family held significant clout as businessmen, littérateurs, philanthropists, public servants, and unimpeachable servants of the Church. In the nineteenth century ʿAbdallāh Mīkhāʾīl Yūnis authored a history of the Beirut Orthodox Archbishops, and Niqūlā Jirjis Ilyās Yūnis (d. 1843) and his brother, Būlus, were agents of the Church.Footnote 152 The OSS member Niʿmatallāh (God’s Blessing) Jirjis Yūsuf Yūnis was born into this influential family. The theophoric names of his brothers bespeak the churchgoing home where he was raised: Farajallāh (God’s Rescue), Luṭfallāh (God’s Grace), Rizqallāh (God’s Gift), and Fatḥallāh (God’s Victory).Footnote 153 In adulthood Niʿmatallāh unquestionably backed the religious establishment. After the death of Archbishop Benjamin in 1848, Patriarch Methodius – supported by the Greek and Russian consuls – nominated a Greek national. Niʿmatallāh and some Orthodox elites sided with the Church, but most notables and congregants objected.Footnote 154 The indissoluble bond between the Ṭrāds and the Patriarchate is best expressed by the aphorism: You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.
Church loyalty was paramount, and conversion was “a rejection of heritage and history … [and] a theft that undermined the very basis of social order, which depended on a quiescent and theoretically unchanging religiosity”.Footnote 155 The Protestant missionaries attracted many disciples from the esteemed Orthodox Ṭrāds: the brothers Ibrāhīm and Mīkhāʾīl (the sons of Mitrī Ibrāhīm Yūnis) and their second cousin, Farajallāh Jirjis Yūsuf Yūnis (Niʿmatallāh’s brother).Footnote 156 Even though Ibrāhīm joined the SSAS, family wrath poured most harshly on Mīkhāʾīl. His father threatened to disinherit him, and Niqūlā, the agent of the Church, admonished him in church, denounced him at home, and convinced the governor to weigh taxes on him.Footnote 157 Niqūlā also persuaded the Ottoman authorities to put a lien on Farajallāh’s properties “until he should return to his good standing in the [Orthodox] church”, according to an American missionary.Footnote 158 Social ostracism, financial hardships, and family repudiation were factors to consider when joining a jamʿiyya.
The Orthodox jamʿiyya members exuded money. The Bustros family made its name through local and international commercial enterprises.Footnote 159 Faḍlallāh Bustros and his cousin Bustros both joined the OSS. Faḍlallāh managed affairs for the family business in Egypt and in 1850 built a stately residence in the Achrafieh quarter of town.Footnote 160 Like the Bustroses, the Sursock family derived its fortune from trade and commerce.Footnote 161 Raised in a privileged home, the OSS member Asʿad Sursock (d. 1891) chose to spend his life promoting education and culture.Footnote 162 He was a polyglot proficient in Arabic, Greek, Italian, French, and English and taught Italian at the Orthodox School of the Three Hierarchs.Footnote 163
While not officially among the seven aristocratic families, the Shaḥādas demonstrate the political connection between Orthodoxy in Syria and the Russian Empire. The brothers Mīkhāʾīl Ḥannā (1819–1900) and Jibrāʾīl (d. 1857) were OSS members and recognized agents of the Tzar in Beirut. Jibrāʾīl was the dragoman at the Russian Consulate and Mīkhāʾīl, upon his brother’s passing, assumed the post, where he stayed for 43 years.Footnote 164 Educated at the Orthodox School of the Three Hierarchs, Salīm (1848–1907), Mīkhāʾīl’s son, also worked for the Consulate. In 1902 Tzar Nicholas II awarded him the Badge of the Order of St John (Grade III) for decades of faithful service.Footnote 165 The Shāḥādas were influential figures in civil society. According to one historian, the Protestant missionaries eagerly tried to associate with the family and even successfully persuaded Mīkhāʾīl to join the SSAS where he served as treasurer.Footnote 166 Interestingly Mīkhāʾīl Shaḥāda is the only name to appear on two jamʿiyya rosters. The virulently anti-Protestant climate of the OSS makes it highly improbable that he held dual membership. Did his religious conscience and vocational affiliation with Moscow motivate him to leave the SSAS and realign with his Church and its jamʿiyya? What of other Orthodox members at the SSAS? Did Jibrāʾīl al-Khūrī and the father–son duo ʿAbdallāh Nawfal and Selim Nauphal likewise withdraw from the “Protestant” club and join the “Orthodox” league soon after the SSAS roster was published in 1852? One day untapped archives can hopefully shed more light on the connections of Orthodox Syrians to both institutions.
Conclusion
A jamʿiyya is not inherently political or religious. It is structurally and semantically neutral – an organizational blank slate. Its widespread popularity lies in its versatility. It can be adapted to become whatever organizers want and need. The numerous permutations of the jamʿiyya in the nineteenth century typify the Arab experience and experiment with modernity. As El-Ariss wittily wrote, the Nahḍa was “this potential, this vague thing that everyone [was] practicing without knowing what it looks like or whether it will be achieved or not or to what end”.Footnote 167 The jamʿiyya embodied these potentialities as project forerunners and members tweaked the institution to serve their confessional sentiments, political loyalties, social bonds, and cultural leanings.
It is valuable to recognize that Syrians alone decided where to hold jamʿiyya membership. While financial dependency and political protection motivated the decisions for some, ultimately members were not passive agents of foreign missionaries and nations. They were free-thinking self-determined men who spent their social and intellectual leisure time where and with whom they wished. Like all humans, they were part of religious cliques, social networks, economic circles, and political teams, which in the bustling cosmopolitan port town were populated by locals and foreigners alike. Syrians were not oblivious to missionary objectives at the SSAS and the OS. Intelligent and perceptive, these men could detect how the jamʿiyya was an extension of a mission field, a secondary opportunity for proselytization. To praise Nahḍa Syrians for their intellectual debates and affability at the jamʿiyyāt is to concurrently recognize their voluntary affiliation with foreigners at the SSAS and OS and their exclusive collaboration with co-religionists at the OS and OSS.
Numerically Syrians were the majority at the jamʿiyyāt. Through their membership, 92 men expressed their commitment to work alongside fellow nationals in a formal institution. While peer pressure undeniably played a role, individuals of the emerging Syrian middle class chose to invest in something collectively for the greater good. When institutional longevity is measured, however, their apathy is borne out. The jamʿiyyāt were not priorities but marginally sustained extracurricular activities. The five-plus-year existence of the SSAS overshadows the seventeen-month run of the celebrated ecumenical Syrian Academy (Jan. 1868–May 1869), thereby making the “Protestant” institution the most successful jamʿiyya of the era. In the story of collaboration among the middle class in the cultural sphere, it appears that religious identity politics were a strong motivator and possible indicator for success. In the 1860s Syrian co-religionists from the Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox congregations teamed up again and founded separate philanthropic jamʿiyyāt which, incidentally, also operated longer than the acclaimed Syrian Academy.Footnote 168 Sectarian projects were more popular and perhaps more sustainable than multiconfessional ones.
The religiously tinted jamʿiyyāt relate the story of competition among Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox in Beirut, as well as the confessionalization of civil society.Footnote 169 The institutions were not the only adversarial cultural projects undertaken in nineteenth-century Beirut. The American Protestant and French Jesuit missionary rivalry manifested clearly in the establishment of two universities: the Syrian Protestant College (est. 1866; now the American University of Beirut), and the Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth (est. 1875). Other enterprises by the three communions included the above-mentioned Syrian-driven philanthropic jamʿiyyāt; the printing presses of the Protestants (est. 1834), Orthodox (re-est. 1845), and Jesuits (est. 1848); and three serials: the Protestant Akhbār ʿan Intishār al-Injīl fī Amākin Mukhtalifa (Reports on Evangelization in Various Places; est. 1863), the Catholic al-Bashīr (The Herald; est. 1870), and the Orthodox al-Hadīya (The Offering; est. 1883).Footnote 170 As the Nahḍa unfolded, religious groups maintain several cultural battlegrounds for the soul of the city and its denizens.
The three jamʿiyyāt surreptitiously duplicated the confessional landscape of Beirut within ostensibly secular institutions. They created spaces, that were not the institution of the church, where men could practise their emerging middle-class positions in civil society and remain connected to the sociopolitical capital they acquired from their religious communities. Aside from the handful of Melkites and Orthodox at the “Protestant” SSAS, the spirit of ecumenicalism among Christians in mid-nineteenth-century Beirut is an illusion within the hallmark modern institutions of the era. The Syrian members operated in signature projects for their respective confessions, and in this siloed environment, intellectual sociability at the rival institutions helped reinforce existing sociopolitical, economic, and religious ties.
Acknowledgements
I thank Kristen Brustad, Cacee Mabis, and Anna Ziajka Stanton for their feedback on early iterations of this article. I am also grateful to the anonymous referees for their pointed suggestions.
Appendix A: Members of the Syrian Society of Arts and Sciences
Resident Members Listed in Order of AdmissionFootnote 171
1. William Thomson
2. Cornelius Van Dyck
3. Anṭūniyūs al-Amyūnī (Antonius Ameuney)
4. Niʿma Thābit (Namé Tabet)
5. Nawfal Niʿmatallāh Nawfal (Nofel Nofel)
6. Salīm Nawfal (Selim Nauphal)
7. Jirjis Jammāl
8. Tannūs al-Ḥaddād
9. Ilyās Fawwāz (Elias Fuaz)
10. Khalīl al-Munayyir
11. ʿAbdallāh al-Watwāt (Abdallah Witwat)
12. Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī
13. Eli Smith
14. Buṭrus al-Bustānī (Butrus Bistany)
15. Ilyās al-Munayyir
16. George Hurter
17. Yūḥannā Wurtabāt (John Wortabet)
18. Mīkhāʾīl al-Amyūnī
19. Gustav Ernst Schultz
20. Charles Henry Churchill
21. Krikūr Wurtabāt (Gregory M. Wortabet)
22. Ibrāhīm Ṭrād
23. Mīkhāʾīl Shaḥāda
24. George Whiting
25. Mīkhāʾīl ʿAramān
26. Niqūlā Mudawwar
27. Jibrāʾīl al-Khūrī
28. Smylie Robson
29. Joseph Catafago
30. Khalīl Mishāqa
31. Dīmitrī Fīlibs (Demetrius Philippides)
32. Nāṣīf al-Shudūdī (Nasseef Shedoody)
33. Yuwākīm al-Najjār
34. Mīkhāʾīl Mudawwar (Michel Medawar)
35. Mīkhāʾīl Farajallāh
36. Charles-Isidore Blanche
37. Shukrī Niʿmatallāh al-Khūrī
38. Simeon Howard Calhoun
39. ʿAbdallāh ʿAramān
40. Pascal-Vincent Carletti
41. Lionel Moore
42. Niqūlā al-Amyūnī
43. Henry De ForestFootnote 172
Corresponding Members
1. Mīkhāʾīl Mishāqa, Damascus
2. Yūsuf Dhiyāb, Tripoli
3. Anṭūniyūs Yannī (Antonio Yanni), Tripoli
4. Ṭannūs Ṣābūnjī, Beirut
5. Ṭannūs Karam, Safed
6. Petragie (Peter Zacharias), London
7. Ibrāhīm Nakhla, Sidon
8. Jibrāʾīl Naṣrallāh (Gabriel Nasralla), Haifa
9. ʿAbdallāh Nawfal, Tripoli
Appendix B: Members and Participants of the Oriental Society
MembersFootnote 173
1. Ayyūb Abīla (Abela)
2. Jibrāʾīl Abīla (Abela)
3. Ḥannā Abī Ṣaʿb
4. Ḥannā ʿAwra
5. Ibrāhīm Bākhūs
6. Alexandre Bertrand*
7. Ilyās al-Daḥdāḥ (Elias Dahdah)*
8. Ilyās Ghānim*
9. Ḥabīb Ghudrāsī*
10. Ibrāhīm Ghusṭīn*
11. Ibrāhīm Iddah (Eddé)*
12. Rājī Iddah (Eddé)*
13. Asʿad Jabbūr*
14. Antūn Jāhil
15. Ḥabīb Jāhil*
16. Asʿad al-Jumayyil
17. Dīb Khaddāj*
18. Rizqallāh Khaḍrā (Théodore Khadra)*†
19. Shukrallāh Khūrī*
20. Yūsuf Kumayyid*†
21. Mīkhāʾīl Kumayyid
22. Niqūlā Manassā
23. Fransīs Maṭar
24. Mīkhāʾīl Maṭar
25. Ibrāhīm Mishāqa
26. Fransīs Misk (Francis Misk)
27. Ḥabīb Misk*
28. Iskandar Misk (Alexander Misk)*
29. Ḥabīb Mūṣallī
30. Ibrāhīm al-Najjār*†
31. Yūsuf al-Najjār
32. Iskandar Nammūr*
33. Mārūn Naqqāsh
34. Niʿmatallāh Naṣrallāh
35. Anṭūn Ṣabbāgh*
36. Anṭūn Salāmūnī*
37. Jibrāʾīl Sharābātī*
38. Mīkhāʾīl Sharābātī*
39. Ṭannūs al-Shidyāq
40. Ẓāhir al-Shidyāq
41. Darwīsh Tayyān*†
42. Ayyūb Thābit (Ayoub Tabet)
43. Yaʿqūb Thābit
44. Anṭūn Wākīm
45. Ḥabīb al-Yāzijī
Participants
46. David Bertrand
47. Henry de Pruinères
48. Niʿmatallāh Qīqānū
49. J.P. Sucquet
* Founding Signatory
† Still a member in 1852
Appendix C: Members of the Orthodox Syrian Society
MembersFootnote 174
1. Faḍlallāh al-ʿĀzār
2. Bustrus Bustrus (Bustros Bustros)
3. Faḍlallāh Bustrus (Bustros)
4. Jibrāʾīl Shaḥāda
5. Mīkhāʾīl Shaḥāda
6. Father Jirāsimūs al-Shāmī
7. Jibrān Shaḥāda al-Shāmī
8. Asʿad Sursuq (Sursock)
9. Niʿmatallāh Jirjis Yūsuf Ṭrād
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