Draft:Jurji Zaydan
| Name | Jurji Zaydan |
|---|---|
| Father's Name | Habib |
| Born | 11 Jumada al-Thani 1278 |
| Place of Birth | Beirut/ Lebanon |
| Some Works | History of Greece and Rome 1899
History of Islamic Civilization 1902–1906 History of the Arabs Before Islam 1908 Daughters of Ghassan 1897/98 Virgin of Quraysh: The Story of the Killing of Uthman and the Battles of Jamal and Siffin 1899 17 Ramadan: The Story of the Killing of Ali ibn Abi Talib 1900 Leader of Karbala: The Story of the Killing of Husayn ibn Ali 1901 Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf: On the Politics of the Umayyad Era 1902 |
Jurji Zaydan is an intellectual and Lebanese writer known for his style and writings in the Arab world.
Biography
He was born on 11 Jumada al-Thani 1278 in a poor Christian family in Beirut. His father, Habib, was from the village of Ain Annub who had migrated to Beirut with his family and worked there in a grocery store[1].
His father, who was illiterate himself and deemed only basic reading, writing, and arithmetic necessary, sent Zaydan to school at the age of five so that he could help him in the grocery store in the future. After two years, Zaydan went to school and there learned arithmetic, morphology, syntax, calligraphy, and some French. At the age of eleven, he quit studies due to his father's insistence[2]. Zaydan worked for a year and some in the grocery store with his father and then for two years in a cobbler's workshop, but returned to his father again. At the age of fifteen, he attended a night school and learned English with great effort in four months. At the same time, he began compiling an English-Arabic dictionary which remained unfinished[3].
In the grocery store, he became acquainted with elders such as Ibrahim al-Yaziji (critic, poet, journalist, and researcher) and Abdullah al-Bustani (poet, journalist, and playwright), and became a member of the "Ma'iyat Shams al-Birr" group, a branch of the Christian Youth Society in England, and in this group, he became acquainted with Yaqub Sarruf (journalist, translator, and novelist), Salim al-Bustani (journalist and novelist), and Iskandar al-Barudi. With Barudi's encouragement and guidance, he decided to go to medical school. He studied preliminary courses with Barudi for two months and in 1298 was admitted to the Syrian Protestant College in the field of medicine[4] and in the first year, became an excellent student.
In the early second year, Zaydan and other students, in protest of the college's deficiencies and to assert their rights and support a professor who had been fired for lecturing on Darwinism, refused to attend classes. After many conflicts, the college decided to expel the protesting students[5]. Then he took the pharmacy exam and studied in this field for a while, but left it unfinished and went to Egypt for further studies [6]. Before traveling to Egypt, he had joined Freemasonry.
Initially, he intended to continue studying medicine in Egypt; however, at the suggestion of the owner of Al-Zaman newspaper, he worked there for a year. In the same year, during the British attack on Sudan, to crush the revolt of Muhammad Ahmad bin Abdullah known as Mahdi Sudani, he joined the British army as a security translator[7].
In 1302, he returned to Beirut and began learning Hebrew and Syriac languages and became a member of Al-Majma' al-Ilmi al-Sharqi[8]. In 1303, his first book, titled Al-Alfaz al-Arabiya wa al-Falsafa al-Lughawiya, was published in Beirut and due to its publication, he became a member of the Royal Asiatic Society[9]. In the same year, he traveled to London and became familiar with the works of Orientalists. After returning to Cairo, in the winter of the same year, at the suggestion of Yaqub Sarruf and Faris Nimr, he was employed by Al-Muqtataf magazine. He mostly dealt with administrative work, such that during one and a half years of cooperation, he published only one article there. In 1306, he resigned from his position and for two years taught Arabic as a senior teacher at Al-Abidiya Al-Kubra school[10].
In 1308, he married and established a small printing press with the participation of one of his friends, which the next year, with his partner's withdrawal, he undertook to manage alone. In late 1309, he founded Al-Hilal magazine[11]. Since 1298, a deep and firm relationship was established between Zaydan and Orientalists such as Noldeke, Goldziher, Krachkovsky, Margoliouth, and Van Dyck, and the Al-Hilal magazine office was a meeting place for Orientalists who came to Egypt[12]. Zaydan traveled to Istanbul in 1908, to European countries in 1912, and to Palestine in 1913[13].
In 1910, Cairo University invited him to teach Islamic History. The appointment of a Christian to teach Islamic History sparked strong protest from Muslims, and Zaydan was forced to resign from this position. He died suddenly at his home in Cairo in July 1914[14]. Poets such as Ahmed Shawqi, Muhammad Hafiz Ibrahim, Wali al-Din Yakan, Khalil Mutran, and Ilya Abu Madi wrote elegies upon his death[15].
Works
Historical studies
History of Egypt 1889.
History of Freemasonry 1889.
History of Nations 1890.
History of Greece and Rome 1899.
History of Islamic Civilization 1902–1906.
History of the Arabs Before Islam 1908.
Literature
Arabic Language and Linguistic Philosophy 1889.
History of Arabic Literature 1911[16].
Historical novels
The Fugitive Mamluk 1891. The Prisoner of Al-Muhtadi 1892 The Tyranny of the Mamluks 1893 The Jihad of the Lovers 1893 Armanus the Egyptian: The Story of the Conquest of Egypt by Amr ibn al-As 1896 The Daughters of Ghassan 1897/98 The Virgin of Quraysh: The Story of the Killing of Uthman and the Battles of Jamal and Siffin 1899 17 Ramadan: The Story of the Killing of Ali ibn Abi Talib 1900 The Leader of Karbala: The Story of the Killing of Hussein ibn Ali 1901 Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf: On the Politics of the Umayyad Era 1902 The Conquest of Andalusia 1903 Charles and Abd al-Rahman: The Story of Islamic Victories in Europe 1904 Abu Muslim al-Khorasani 1905 Abbasah, Daughter of Harun al-Rashid 1906 Al-Amin and Al-Ma'mun 1907 The Bride of Fergana: A Story About the Time of Al-Mu'tasim and the Becoming of Samarra as Capital 1908 Ahmad ibn Tulun: A Story About Egypt in the Third Century Hijri 1909 Abd al-Rahman al-Nasir: On the Golden Age of Andalusia 1910 The Ottoman Uprising: On the Political Conditions of the Era of Abdulhamid II 1911 The Daughter of Kairouan 1912 Saladin al-Ayyubi 1913 Shajar al-Durr 1914.
Magazines
Al-Hilal Magazine 1892–1914
Biography
Biography of Jurji Zaydan 1916
Footnotes
- ↑ See Zaydan, Works, vol. 20, pp. 528–529; Hasan, pp. 7–8; Philip, pp. 11, 131–133
- ↑ See Zaydan, Works, vol. 20, pp. 536–541; Hasan, p. 8, 22; Philip, pp. 135–139
- ↑ See Zaydan, Works, vol. 20, pp. 541–555; Aboud, p. 19; Philip, pp. 139–141, 151–152
- ↑ See Zaydan, Works, vol. 20, pp. 563–577; Hasan, pp. 8–9; Philip, pp. 161–169
- ↑ Philip, pp. 180–206; Brugman, p. 219
- ↑ Hasan, p. 10; Abu Khalil, p. 16
- ↑ Hasan, pp. 10–11; Philip, p. 24
- ↑ Fakhouri, vol. 4, p. 227
- ↑ Philip, pp. 25–26; Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. "Zaydan, Jurji"
- ↑ Hasan, pp. 11–12; Philip, p. 26
- ↑ Hasan, p. 13; Philip, p. 27
- ↑ Abu Khalil, p. 17
- ↑ Hasan, pp. 39–40; Abu Khalil, ibid.
- ↑ Hasan, pp. 205–208; Philip, p. 32
- ↑ See Aboud, pp. 389–440; Hasan, pp. 209–210
- ↑ Maqdisi, pp. 625–626