Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq

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Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq
أحمد فارس الشدياق
Istanbul Vilayet, Ottoman Empire
Occupation(s)Linguist, writer, journalist, translator
Spouses
  • Marie As-Souly
  • Safia Ahmed Faris
ChildrenSalim[clarification needed] (1836–1910), Fayiz (1828–1856),
Parent(s)Youssef Ash-Shidyaq, Marie Massaad

Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq

Maronite Christian by birth, he later lived in major cities of the Arabic-speaking world, where he had his career. He converted to Protestantism during the nearly two decades that he lived and worked in Cairo, present-day Egypt, from 1825 to 1848. He also spent time on the island of Malta. In 1857, with Evangelist American missionaries, he participated in the publishing of a novel Protestant Arabic translation of the Bible in Great Britain where Faris lived and worked for 7 years, becoming a British citizen. He next moved to Paris
, France, for two years in the early 1850s, where he wrote and published some of his most important work.

Later in the 1850s Faris moved to

Ottoman government
, Faris also founded an Arabic-language newspaper. It was supported by the Ottomans, Egypt and Tunisia, publishing until the late 1880s.

Faris continued to promote Arabic language and culture, resisting the 19th-century "Turkization" pushed by the Ottomans based in present-day Turkey. Shidyaq is considered to be one of the founding fathers of modern Arabic literature; he wrote most of his fiction in his younger years.

Biography

Mystery shrouds the life of Ahmad Faris Shidyaq. While he has numerous autobiographical references in his writings, scholars have found it difficult to distinguish between romanticizing and reality.

Early life

Ahmad Faris Shidyaq was born in 1804 in

Maronite muqaddam Ra'ad bin Khatir from Hasroun. His family was very well educated and its members worked as secretaries for the governors of Mount Lebanon
. In 1805, the family was forced to leave Ashqout following a conflict with a local governor; Butrus al-Shidyaq, the paternal grandfather of Faris, was killed because of the politics.

The family settled in Hadath, in the suburbs of

Maronite schools of the 19th century. Again, a family conflict, in which the Shidyaq were at odds with the Prince Bashir Shihab II, obliged their father Youssef Ash-Shidyaq to take refuge in Damascus
, where he died in 1820.

Faris left school and continued his studies under his older brothers Assaad and Tannous. He joined his brother Tannous as a copyist at the service of the Prince Haydar Shihab; their brother Assaad worked as the secretary of the Sheikh Ali Al-Emad in Kfarnabrakh, in the Chouf District. His brother Assaad's life had a major influence on the life and career of Faris.

Conversion

Around 1820, Assaad Shidyaq encountered

Qadisha valley, where he died in 1830.[2]

By 1825, Faris had left

Maronite Patriarch
(1854–1890)) for what he considered their role in the events that led to the death of Assaad.

In 1826, Faris married Marie As-Souly, daughter of a wealthy Christian family, who were originally from Syria. They had two sons: Faris (1826–1906) and Fayiz (1828–1856). From 1825 to 1848, Faris divided his time in living in Cairo and on the island of Malta. He was the editor-in-chief of an Egyptian newspaper, Al Waqa'eh Al Masriah. In Malta, he was the director of the printing press of American missionaries. He also studied Fiqh in Al-Azhar University in Cairo. Faris is believed to have converted to Protestantism during this period in Egypt, an extended time of relative solitude and study.

In 1848 he was invited to Cambridge, England, by the Orientalist Samuel Lee (1783–1852) to participate in the Arabic translation of the Bible. This translation of the Bible was published in 1857, after the death of Samuel Lee. This translation is still considered one of the best Arabic translations of the Bible.

Faris stayed in England with his family for almost 7 years. He settled first in

Paris, France
around 1855.

Faris stayed in Paris till 1857. It was one of his most prolific periods in thinking and writing, but also in having an intense social nightlife. In Paris he wrote and published his major works. It is also in Paris that he was introduced to Socialism and where he became a Socialist. A keen admirer of

Shakespeare, Faris argued that Othello suggests a detailed knowledge of Arabic culture. Faris suggested that Shakespeare may have had an Arabic background, his original name being "Shaykh Zubayr". This theory was later developed in all seriousness by Safa Khulusi.[3]

His wife died in 1857. He married an English woman, Safia, who had embraced Islam They had no children

Salim Faris, Ahmads son followed him to England and Paris and became the Consul of Turkey in Paris. Salim lived a period in London 1877 had one daughter 1878 : Rosalinde Faris.( Mother unknown ) [4]

Ahmad and Safia moved to

Abdel Majid I
.

Ahmad spent the last part of his life in Istanbul where, in addition to his position as an official translator, he founded in 1861 an Arabic newspaper Al Jawaib. It was supported financially by the Ottomans, as well as by the Egyptian and Tunisian rulers. It was modeled on the modern Western newspapers and continued publication until 1884.

Ahmad strongly defended use of the Arabic language and its heritage and Arabic culture against the Turkization attempts of the Turkish reformers of the 19th century. He is considered one of the founding fathers of modern Arabic literature and journalism.

Death and afterward

Ahmad Faris Shidyaq died on 20 September 1887 in

Kadikoy, Turkey. He was buried in Lebanon
on 5 October 1887. Many of his works remain unpublished and some manuscripts are lost.

Philosophical and/or political views

Since 2001, scholars have published about his life, thought and unpublished works. Shidyaq's major works were dedicated to the modernization of the Arabic language, the promotion of the Arab culture in opposition to the turkization movement of the 19th century Ottoman Empire, and the modernization of the Arab societies.

Among the publication of his fictional works, in 2014, New York University Press published

Humphrey Davies
's English translation of Saq 'ala al-saq as Leg over Leg. This lengthy, digressive novel can be seen as in the tradition of Sterne's Tristram Shandy.

Works

Since 1980, a number of books containing unpublished works of Shidyaq have been published. Selected works also on his life and thought include:

  • Abu-'Uksa, Wael (2016). Freedom in the Arab World: Concepts and Ideologies in Arabic Thought in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge University Press.
  • Jubrān, S., & A. F. Shidyāq(1991). Kitāb al-Fāriyāq: mabnāhu wa-uslūbuhu wa-sukhriyatuh. Dirāsāt wa-nuṣūṣ adabīyah, 6. Tel Aviv: Jāmiʻat Tall Abīb – University of Tel Aviv.
    OCLC 40126655
  • Shidyāq, A. F., Ṭarābulsī, F., & ʻAẓmah, ʻA. (1995). Aḥmad Fāris Shidyāq. Silsilat al-aʻmāl al-majhūlah. London: Riyad El-Rayyes.
    OCLC 34773377
  • Shidyāq, A. F., & Ṣulḥ, ʻI. (1982). Iʻtirāfāt al-Shidyāq fī kitāb al-Sāq ʻalá al-sāq. Bayrūt, Lubnān: Dār al-Rāʼid al-ʻArabī.
    OCLC 15721715

Published works

See also

  • Converts to Islam

Notes

  1. ^ Also known as Ahmad Farès al-Chidiac.

References

  1. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/60819. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  2. ^ For more information, see Shidyāq, A., & Bird, I. (1833). Brief Memoir of Asaad Esh Shidiak: An Arab Young Man, of the Maronite Roman Catholic Church. Boston: Crocker & Brewster, printers. and Bustānī, B. i. B., & Shidyāq, A. i. Y. (1992). Qiṣṣat Asʻad al-Shidyāq: munāẓarah wa-ḥawār multahab ḥawla ḥurrīyat al-ḍamīr. Rāʼs Bayrūt: Dār al-Ḥamrāʼ.
  3. Ferial J. Ghazoul
    , "The Arabization of Othello", Comparative Literature, Vol. 50, No. 1, Winter, 1998, p.9
  4. ^ Rosalinde married Brigadier General Reginald Francis Legge, and they had 4 children. They later divorced in London around 1921–1924. One of their children, a son, Rupert Maximilian Faris Legge (1912-1966), married Sheila Chetwynd Inglis( 1911 - 1949 ) and had one child Douglas Robin Legge. They divorced in the same year in 1934, Rupert Legge moved to South Africa. He died in Pretoria 1966. Rupert and Sheila Legges son Eric Douglas Legge ( 1934 -1969 ) Married and had a child, Eric Robin Chetwynd Legge ( 1966 - ) Nobody knows what happened to Rosalinde after the divorce. Her grandmother Safia Ahmed Faris died in 1915 at her home 5 Ashburn Place.
  5. ^ The Holy Cities, the Pilgrimage and the World of Islām: A History from the Earliest Traditions until 1925 (1344H), pg. 310, by Ghālib ibn ʻAwaḍ Quʻayṭī (al-Sulṭān.), Sultan Ghalib al-Qu'aiti
  • Sawaie, Mohammed (1990). "An Aspect of 19th Century Arabic Lexicography: The modernizing role and contribution of (Ahmad) Faris al-Shidyaq (1804?-1887)". In Niederehe, H-J; Koerner, Konrad (eds.). History and Historiography of Linguistics. International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences. Vol. 4. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins Publishers. pp. 157–171.
  • Sawaie, Mohammed (1998). "Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq wa al-Muṣṭalaḥ al-Lughawi" [Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq and the Coining of Arabic Terminology]. Majallat Majmac Al-Lugha Al-cArabiyya Bi Dimashq (in Arabic). 73 (1): 89–100.
  • Mohammed, Sawaie (2002). "Nazra fi mawqif Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq min Taṭwīr al-Macājim al-cArabiyya" [An Examination of Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq's Views on Arabic Dictionaries]. Bulletins des Études Orientales (in Arabic). 53–54: 515–538.
  • Mohammed, Sawaie (2003). "Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq wa 'Arā'uhu fī Bacḍ al-Mustashriqīn fi al-cArabiyya wa Mashākil al-Tarjama" [Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq and his Views in Some Orientalists and Problems of Translation]. Majallat Majmac Al-Lugha Al-cArabiyya Bi Dimashq. 78 (1).
  • Sawaie, Mohammed (2013). Al-Ḥadātha wa Muṣṭalḥāt al-Nahḍa al-cArabiyya fī al-Qarn al-Tāsic cAshar [Modernity and Nineteenth Century Arabic Lexicography: A Case Study of Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq] (in Arabic). Beirut: al-Mu’assassa al-Arabiyya li al-Dirasat wa al-Nashr.

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