Ameen Rihani
This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (May 2014) |
Ameen Rihani أمين الريحاني | |
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New York Pen League | |
Notable works | 29 works in English and 26 works in Arabic |
Spouse | Bertha Case |
Relatives | Ameen A. Rihani, May Rihani, Ramzi Rihani, Sarmad Rihani |
Website | |
www |
Ameen Rihani (Amīn Fāris Anṭūn ar-Rīḥānī) (
Early days
Ameen Rihani was born on November 24, 1876, in Freike, in the
During this time, Ameen made the acquaintance of American and European writers. He eventually became familiar with the writings of
Once back in his homeland, he began teaching English in a clerical school in return for being taught formal
In 1905 he returned to his native mountains. During an ensuing six-year period of solitude, he published, in Arabic, two volumes of essays, a book of allegories and a few short stories and plays. Rihani, who was influenced by the American poet Walt Whitman, introduced
Established writer in Arabic and English
During the period between 1910 and 1922 Rihani became remarkably involved in the literary life while continuing to pursue productive political engagements. On the literary level, he continued writing and publishing in English and Arabic. Among the books that he published during that period were: The Lily of A-Ghor, a novel in English, and (rewritten) in Arabic, describing the oppression of the woman (represented by Mariam) during the Ottoman Empire, Jihan, a novel in English about the role of Levantine women during World War I, The Luzumiyat, translation of the Arabic poetry of Al-Ma’arri into English with Rihani's introduction highlighting the significance of this poet to the Western mind, The Path of Vision, essays in English on East and West, A Chant of Mystics, poetry in English, The Descent of Bolchevism, political analysis in English on the Arab origins of the socialist movements, New Volumes of Ar-Rihaniyyaat, philosophic and social essays in Arabic.
In 1916 Ameen married Bertha Case, an American artist, who was part of the
Ameen and his wife Bertha visited
On the political front, he advocated several causes and worked tirelessly towards these goals: the rapprochement between East and West as a major step towards global cultural dialogue, the liberation of Lebanon from the rule of the Ottoman Empire, and the advocating for Arab nationalism and promoting what he called “The United States of Arabia”.
Political and intellectual activist
In 1922 Rihani traveled throughout Arabia, meeting and getting better acquainted with its rulers. He was the only traveler at that time, European or Arab, to have covered that whole territory in one trip. He acquired an invaluable and first-hand account of the character, vision and belief of each of these rulers. He developed a friendship with
Ameen Rihani died at age 64 on September 13, 1940, at 1:00 pm, in his hometown of Freike, Lebanon. The cause of his death was a bicycle accident which resulted in infectious injuries from multiple fractures of the skull. The news of his death was broadcast to many parts of the world. It caused great emotion not only in Lebanon but throughout the Arab world. Representatives of Arab kings and rulers and of foreign diplomatic missions, together with leading poets, writers, and other intellectuals from Lebanon and the Arab World, attended the funeral ceremony. He was laid to rest in the Rihani Family Mausoleum in Freike. Thirteen years after his death, in 1953, his brother Albert established the Ameen Rihani Museum in Freike to honor his legacy.
Overview
Rihani is the founding father of Arab American literature. His early English writings mark the beginning of a school of literature that is Arab in its concern, culture and characteristic, English in language, and American in spirit and platform. He is the first Arab to write English essays, poetry, novels, short stories, art critiques, and travel chronicles. He published his works in the U. S. during the first four decades of the twentieth century. In this sense, he is the forerunner of American literature written by well known Middle Eastern writers.[8]
Rihani is also considered to be the founder of "Adab Al-Mahjar" (Immigrant Literature). He is the first Arab who wrote complete literary works, either in Arabic or in English, and published in the U. S. (New York). His writings pioneered the movement of modern Arabic literature that played a leading role in the Arab Renaissance and contemporary Arab thought.
Rihani's Arabic book of essays entitled Ar-Rihaniyyaat (1910), endorsed his major philosophic and social beliefs and values that were reflected in his future works. These beliefs were addressed in the essays of this work such as: Who Am I, Religious Tolerance, From Brooklyn Bridge, The Great City, The Spirit of Our Time, The Spirit of Language, In the Spring of Despair, The Valley of Freike, On Solitude, Ethics, The Value of Life, Conducts of Life, Optimism, The Scattered Truth, Trilateral Wisdom, The Most Exalted Prophet, The State of the Future ... This book consecrate Rihani as a controversial writer paving the way for modernity in Arabic literature and contemporary Arab thought.
Rihani's first major novel (in English), The Book of Khalid (1911), was considered a pioneering literary work that paved the way for Arab-American literature. It combined reality and fiction, East and West, spiritualism and materialism, the Arabs and the Americans, philosophy and literature, in a style of language where Arabic metaphors and English language structures go together in an attempt to create an abstract line where both languages can almost touch. Khalid, the hero of the novel, descends from Baalbek, from the roots of the Cedars in Lebanon and immigrates all the way to New York where he faces all the contradictions of his Oriental soft background and the harshness of the Occidental severe reality. He dreams of the virtual Great City, thinks of the ideal Empire, and looks for the Superman who combines within himself the spirituality of the East, the art of Europe, and the Science of America.
According to several scholars, The Book of Khalid is the foundation of a new literary trend towards wisdom and prophecy that seeks to reconcile matter and soul, reason and faith, together with the Orient and the Occident in an attempt to explicate the unity of religions and represent the unity of the universe.
His books on Arabia, written originally in Arabic and in English, represent an alternative perspective to the Orientalist movement by giving the world, for the first time, an objective and analytical description of Arabia from an Arab point of view. These are Maker of Modern Arabia (1928), Around the Coasts of Arabia (1930), and Arabian Peak and Desert (1931). This Arab Trilogy was considered by the publishers in the United States and Europe as best sellers at the time. The author wrote accounts of his travels to Arabia, in Arabic first, and were published under the titles of Muluk-ul Arab (Kings of the Arabs), Tareekh Najd Al-Hadeeth (History of Modern Najd), Qalb-ul Iraq (The Heart of Iraq) and other works on Arabia that were considered to be a remarkably critical and public success.
Scholars, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, recognize the role of Rihani in the discourse of civilizations: Nathan C. Funk argues that “Rihani’s approach to intercultural reconciliation emerged gradually, reflecting the maturation of his personal identity. Though he was quick to develop an intellectually critical attitude toward all forms of intolerance rooted in traditional cultures, Rihani did not stop with the celebration of free thinking and the espousal of forms of national unity that renounce religious confessionalism”.[9] Terri DeYoung compares Rihani with Walt Whitman and highlights the fact that: “Walt Whitman attempted to expose the contradictions within a philosophy ... that called for individual liberty and freedom while at the same time permitting slavery ... So too do Rihani’s writings on the questions of whether democratic principles are evenly projected onto both societies – American and Middle Eastern – where he lived and worked, continue to challenge our most cherished assumptions about ourselves”.[9] Geoffrey P. Nash, on the other hand, emphasizes the spirit of modernity in the works of Rihani where his writings: “prompt a diachronic shift to the early twentieth century, the epoch in which Rihani, who has also been designated a prophet, was composing his first essays on cross-cultural literary and political subjects".[10]
Works
References
Citations
- ^ Rihani, Albert, Where to Find Ameen Rihani, Beirut, The Arab Institute for Research and Publication, 1979
- ^ Kassir, Samir, Histoire de Beyrouth, Paris, Fayard, p.394
- ^ a b Where to Find Ameen Rihani
- ^ "Sally Storch Biography". www.kennebeck.com. Retrieved 2017-05-29.
- ^ Charif, Maher. Rihanat al-Nahda fi'l-fikr al-`arabi, Damascus, Dar al-Mada, 2000
- ^ Lawrence Davidson, "Debating Palestine: Arab American Challenges to Zionism, 1917–1932" in Michael Suleiman ed. Arabs in America: Buildind a New Future (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999), p. 227-240
- ^ See for example, Ameen Rihani, "The Holy Land: Whose to Have and to Hold?" The Bookman, XLVI (September 1917), 8–14; Ameen Rihani, "Palestine Arabs Claim To Be Fighting For National Existence," Current History, XXXI (November 1919), 269–279; Ameen Rihani, "Zionism and the Peace of the World," The Nation CXXIX (October 2, 1929);Ameen Rihani, "Is Palestine Safe for Zionism," Palestine and Transjordan, I (November 21, 1936); and Ameen Rihani, "Palestine and the Proposed Arab Federation," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, (November 1932)
- .
- ^ a b DeYoung, Terri, “The Search for Peace and East-West Reconciliation in Rihani’s Prose Poetry” in Nathan C. Funk and Betty J. Sitka ed. Ameen Rihani: Bridging East and West, New York: University Press of America, 2004, p. 33
- ^ Nash, Geoffrey P., “Rihani and Carlyle on Revolution and Modernity”, in Nathan C. Funk and Betty J. Sitka ed. Ameen Rihani: Bridging East and West, New York: University Press of America, 2004, p. 47
Sources
- The Ameen Rihani Organization and website.
- Bravo-Villasante, Carmen Ruiz (1993). Un Testigo Árabe Del Siglo XX: Amin Al-Rihani en Marruecos y en España (1939), Madrid: Editorial Cantarabia, Universidad Autónoma De Madrid.
- Dunnavent, Walter Edward, III (1991). Ameen Rihani In America: Transcendentalism in an Arab-American Writer. Indiana: Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University.
- Funk, C. Nathan and Betty J. Sitka, eds. (2004). Ameen Rihani: Bridging East and West – A Pioneering Call for Arab-American Understanding. New York, Toronto, Oxford: University Press of America. ISBN 978-0-7618-2860-0.
- Hajjar, Nijmeh (2010). The Politics and Poetics of Ameen Rihani: The Humanist Ideology of an Arab-American Intellectual and Activist. London: Tauris Academic Studies. ISBN 978-1-84885-266-2.
- Hassan, Wail S. (2011) Immigrant Narratives: Orientalism and Cultural Translation in Arab American and Arab British Literature. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Karam Haydar, Savo (2008). Ameen Rihani the Multifold Critic. Beirut: Ph.D. dissertation, The Lebanese University.
- Mhiri, Mootacem Bellah (2005). The Transcultural and Transnational Poetics of Ameen Rihani and Paul Smail. Pennsylvania: Ph.D. dissertation in Comparative Literature, Pennsylvania State University.
- Oueijan, Naji, Assaad Eid, Carol Kfoury, Doumit Salameh (1999).Kahlil Gibran & Ameen Rihani, Prophets of Lebanese-American literature. Beirut: Notre Dame University Press. ISBN 978-0-9634349-4-4.
- Oueijan, Naji. (2012). Ameen Rihani's Arab-American Legacy: From Romanticism to Postmodernism. Louaize: Notre Dame University Press.ISBN 978-9953-558-15-8.
- Poeti arabi a New York. Il circolo di Gibran, introduzione e traduzione di F. Medici, prefazione di A. Salem, Palomar, Bari 2009. ISBN 978-88-7600-340-0.
- Rihani, Albert (1979). Where to Find Ameen Rihani. Beirut: The Arab Institute for Research and Publications. ASIN: B000Q9MCWE.
- Tkhinvaleli, Maria (1991). Travel in Modern Arabic literature, The Example of Ameen Rihani. Tbilisi: Ph.D. dissertation, Tbilisi University, The Republic of Georgia.
- Zeitouni, Latif (1980). Simiologie du Recit de Voyage: Etude de Qalb Lubnan, Aix-en-Provence: Ph.D. dissertation, Université Aix-en-Provence. Beirut: (1997). The Lebanese University Press.
External links
- Works by Ameen Rihani in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
- Works by Ameen Rihani at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Ameen Rihani at Internet Archive
- Works by Ameen Rihani at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)