INTELLECTUAL AND NATIONALIST
STIRRINGS
The dawn of the nineteenth century found Syria, like its
neighbours, deep in its dark ages. The black-out, though
interrupted by a decade of enlightened and tolerant Egyptian
occupation ending in 1841, was soon resumed. Egypt under
Muhammad Ali (1805-1848) was the first Arabic-speaking
land to establish vital cultural contact with western Europe.
Not only did the Ottoman Turks deliberately cut themselves
off from cultural intercourse with the West, but they denied
their subjects that opportunity at the crucial time when
Europe was passing through the eighteenth-century en-
lightenment and the industrial revolution. They neither
joined nor allowed others to join the caravan of progress
that Europe was heading. The only major technical element
permitted to pierce the Ottoman curtain was the military
one, which was of no avail to Syrians and other Arabs.
Down to the mid-nineteenth century Syria had, therefore, remained medieval in all the varied aspects of life. The family followed the old extended patriarchal type, dominated by the grandfather or the oldest male member, in contrast to the small biological type consisting of parents and un- married children. Learning, what there was of it, was almost the monopoly of theologians, mostly of the con- servative obscurantist variety. Industry operated on the low domestic level and was carried on with looms and simple hand tools. The economy was provincial and business partnership was largely confined to members of the same family. Science, in the modern sense, was non-existent. Quacks practised medicine, at best with the aid of yellow- leafed texts of Avicenna (ibn-Sina) and other Arab physicians of a thousand years' vintage. Barbers served as dentists and grocers as pharmacists. But by the early twentieth century the whole picture was on the way to a radical change.
The point of departure may be fixed in 1860 when, as a result of the communal wars in Lebanon, which had spread to Damascus, public-spirited Europeans hastened to the aid of the afflicted in the area. Some of the work was intended for immediate relief, some for enduring value. The French military intervention in Lebanon, resulting in the granting of autonomy to the mountain under a Christian governor- general and the aegis of the then six great European powers, made of that land a chief centre for receiving cultural influences and radiating them to the entire adjoining area. Another international development of an entirely different nature, the opening of the Suez Canal to world traffic in 1869, helped to end the physical and intellectual isolation — and with it the stagnation — of the entire region and to restore it to its traditional rôle as the link connecting the three historic continents.
In the newly constituted Lebanon philanthropic and educational agencies could operate in a more congenial atmosphere. They thrived. Catholic missionaries needed no introduction to the area, some of them having been in operation on a limited scale since the benevolent days of Fakhr-al-Din al-Mani. Before the end of the nineteenth century these Capuchins had founded parishes in Antioch and Beirut and maintained houses in Aleppo and three Lebanese villages. Another Catholic mission, the Lazarist, had started work in Damascus as early as 1755 and twenty years later had founded a school for boys that is still in operation. This was the oldest modern school in the city. In the early stages such institutions were, as one would expect, patronized by Christians only.
Protestant activity was not slow to vie with Catholic. Following the war of i860 the German Deaconesses of Kaiserswerth established a centre at Sidon, transferred later to Beirut, for orphan training, hospital nursing and higher education. The same year saw the British Syrian Mission enter the field with the establishment of schools for boys and girls in Damascus, Beirut, Baalbek and other towns. Their Training College for girls in the Lebanese capital is still a going concern.
Of far greater importance was the advent of American educators, teachers, preachers and physicians whose work culminated in the founding of the Syrian Protestant College (1866), now the American University of Beirut. The French were quick to follow with their Universite Saint-Joseph (1874), both still leading institutions in the Near East. Through these two institutions Syrian higher education entered upon a new era in its evolution. Through their schools of medicine the art of healing belatedly entered its scientific age. Graduates of these universities became leaders of thought, science and literature not only in Syria- Lebanon but throughout the eastern Arab world. They founded the earliest literary and scientific magazines, organized the first learned societies, established the most modern schools and produced the most up-to-date books* Their influence has not abated. To implement their educational work the Americans had, as early as 1834, established in Beirut a printing-press, one of the first adequately equipped to print in Arabic. Nineteen years later the French, more particularly the Jesuit order, fol- lowed with the Imprimerie Catholique connected with their Beirut university. Both presses are still in operation.
Soon native schools began to deviate from the traditional conventional methods of instruction and follow Western models. French and English were introduced into the cur- riculums. Textbooks, scientific treatises, plays, novels began to be translated first from French and then from English to satisfy the new needs of the knowledge-starved youth. By the early twentieth century a new crop of writers, authors, poets, littèrateurs and scientific workers had been raised and was beginning to inch its way slowly to the front, receiving its stimulation from the living present rather than the dead past. Through their pens the Arabic language, rusty with age and given to the expression of traditional unprogressive thought, received a fresh polish and an injection of new life which started it on its way to becoming a vehicle capable of expressing the finest shades of scientific thought and the most delicate sentiments of the human heart. In this it repeated its experience in Baghdad under Harun al-Rashid and al-Mamun, when it rose to meet the challenge of the new day with its translations from Syriac, Greek and Persian. In both instances it embarked upon a new career of adequate and effective expression for a newly enlightened generation.
The impact of modern ideas — secular, scientific, demo- cratic, naturalistic — played havoc with old traditions, cherished beliefs and venerated institutions. It caused tension and brought about conflicts in the social order. This was indeed a period of transition and, like all such periods, a time of stress and strain. Old ties were loosening ; con- ventional loyalties were changing ; and accepted scales of value were being rearranged. How to reconcile the old with the new became and remained the major problem. Hitherto society had consisted of but two classes: one of landowners, aristocrats, ecclesiastics and the well-to-do and another of farmers, peasants, manual workers and the poor. Any in between were of no consequence. But now a fresh middle class of physicians, teachers, lawyers, writers and other professionals, together with a new variety of business- men, emerged and began to exercise telling influence. With the disruption of the social order the family institution, with its time-honoured loyalties and virtues, began to show cracks in its structure. This was, however, true only in urban settlements. By the early twentieth century women were demanding and receiving a large measure of freedom. Sons were seeking wives of their own choice and when married were moving into domiciles of their own.
Meantime an economic transformation was going on, less violent but no less radical. In it no deeply rooted emotions were involved as in the case of the social and spiritual transformation. Hitherto agriculture had been largely of the subsistence, rather than the commercial, type. The average farmer concerned himself with the necessary produce for his family. The craftsman likewise operated on a narrow scale, his customers being his neighbours or fellow- townsmen. The typical city merchant was his own buyer, salesman and bookkeeper. Neighbourliness, personal rela- tionship, characterized most economic dealings as it did social ones. But with the improved methods of sea and land transportation and the intrusion of foreign merchants and goods, this pattern yielded to change. Factory-made textiles from Manchester, machine-made articles from Paris and, later, line-produced commodities from New York and Detroit invaded the market. Before such an onslaught the primitive local industry stood helpless. The public developed a new taste for fashionable clothes, alcoholic drinks, soft beverages, cigars and cigarettes, candies and bonbons which the native market was incapable of producing. Village and town handicraft, unable to adjust itself to the new situation, dwindled or vanished. Urban population increased. Beirut, which started the nineteenth century with about 5000 in- habitants, ended it with some 120,000; Damascus ended it with 170,000. He among the city merchants who had the foresight and intelligence to adopt new techniques in his business survived, thrived and achieved membership in the rising influential class. In the old society the discrepancy between the two existing classes, though genuine, was not so apparent as in the new society. Now the nouveaux riches could and did display their riches in the form of shining jewellery bedecking their wives and daughters, Paris-tailored clothes worn on festive occasions, exotic foods and drinks — none of which were available before. As the rich became richer, the poor felt poorer.
The improved economy called for quicker and better means of communication. In 1863 a highway connecting Beirut with Damascus was opened by a French company. It operated a diligence service. With this highway as the main artery a network of roads finally linked the principal towns of Syria-Lebanon. Horse-drawn carriages began to roll. In 1894 another French company inaugurated a Beirut-Damascus-Hawran railroad. This trunk was later extended into Turkey, Iraq and Hejaz. For the first time remote villagers and desert-dwellers were brought within the range of modern civilization. At the turn of the twentieth century Syria-Lebanon was acknowledged to be the most civilized province of the Ottoman empire. Autonomous Lebanon was admittedly the best governed sanjaq.
Increased knowledge, improved sanitation and the mounting rise in the standard of living resulted in an increased population. In 1840 the estimated population of Syria-Lebanon was a million and a quarter, a fraction of what it was in Roman days. In 1900 it reached four million. Pressure from the increase and the urge to escape from Ottoman oppression found a safety-valve in emigration into Egypt. The bulk of the emigrants were Christian Lebanese who sought a new home in British-occupied Egypt. Before 1890 this was the only land to which migration was officially allowed by the Ottomans, who still considered it a part of their empire. There educated Syrians and Lebanese found a wider and more rewarding field for their activity. The British governments of Egypt and the Sudan welcomed to their employment especially those educated in American and British schools. Other emigrants established them- selves as editors of magazines and newspapers, writers, interpreters and teachers and became known as the founders of the school of journalism and writing still dominant in the Arab East.
As the wave of migration swelled it splashed and reached the Americas, where at present there is hardly a good-sized town in the north or south which does not claim at least one Lebanese or Syrian family. In the New World, western Europe and Australia the immigrants engaged in business pursuits. All started from scratch. Many became leaders of trade and industry in their respective communities ; some amassed fortunes considered impressive by world standards. Few returned home for permanent residence. Thus did these descendants of Aramaeans and Phoenicians write a new chapter in the history of international trade worthy of their ancestors. Remittances to the folks back home bolstered the economy of the old homeland. Their Arabic newspapers in Cairo, New York, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires and other places, together with their private cor- respondence and return visits, reinforced the principles of secularism, self-determination and nationalism already in operation there.
From time immemorial the outlook on life throughout the Near East was religious and mystical. Everyday happen- ings were given a providential interpretation. An epidemic of smallpox, a plague of locusts, a crop failure was con- sidered literally an act of God. With the advance of science, however, a more critical, more rational view was introduced. Consequently religious sanctions began to lose their hold. Even the canon law of Islam, basically God-given, felt the impact of secularization. Attempts to modernize it began with the sultans before the mid-nineteenth century, but proved to be premature. Before the end of the century new commercial and maritime codes following French models were promulgated and adopted in all provinces.
Of all the secular ideas introduced from the West the most potent were political: self-determination, democracy and nationalism. The three marched side by side. Of the trio nationalism was undoubtedly the most dynamic. Political awakening, with its urge to throw off foreign domination and assert independence, was bound to follow the intellectual awakening. It was Revolutionary French thought that contributed the new concepts of liberty, equality and fraternity.
These and cognate ideas found their earliest expression — as was to be expected — in the writings of Syrian and Lebanese residents of Egypt, several of whom were con- demned in absentia to death by the oppressive regime of Abd-al-Hamid (i 876-1 909). One of the first Arabic writers to address himself to the subject of liberty and equality, defining and characterizing them, was a Christian Aleppine, Faransis al-Marrash (1 836-1 873). Another Aleppine, a turbaned Moslem, Abd-al-Rahman al-Kawakibi (1846- 1906), authored a most devastating treatise on the 'char- acteristics of dictatorship and the evils of oppression'. In 1870 a Christian Beiruti, Butrus al-Bustani, issued a literary magazine carrying for its motto: 'Love of country an article of faith' — a novel concept in a brand-new expression. Orthodox Islam considered the country of the believer not that delimited by geographical or political lines, but the entire area where Moslems lived. The Moslem's was a religious, not a territorial, homeland. Another writer, Adib Ishaq, a Damascene living in Egypt, was one of the first to use and give currency to a new term watan in the sense of fatherland. The term for nationalism (qawmiyah) did not acquire vogue until the second and third decades of the twentieth century.
Though basically the modern concept of nationalism, in the sense of loyalty to a political unit that transcends all other loyalties including the religious, is in conflict with the theory of Islam as a religious fraternity, the idea developed from faint beginnings to become an all-penetrating element in the life of Moslems from Morocco to Iraq. Its earliest expression took the form of an all - embracing Arab nationalism based on language and culture rather than on religion. Its earliest voice was that of a Christian Lebanese, Ibrahim al-Yaziji who, in a secret session of a Syrian learned society held in Beirut in 1868, recited a fiery original poem in which he exhorted: 'Arise, ye Arabs, and awake'. That verse was passed on from mouth to mouth to become the bugle-call for a Pan-Arab movement. The spark im- mediately touched off fire in Egypt. Starting from a wide base the new movement was soon to suffer fragmentation. As the political aspects developed they became diversified and localized. In Egypt, where opposition to British occupa- tion became the chief concern, a provincial — Egyptian — type gradually developed. In Syria, Arab nationalists had to concentrate their efforts first against Ottoman rule and then against the French mandate and to that extent part company with the general movement of Pan-Arabism. An anaemic Syrian nationalism developed. In Syria, as in Egypt, the young generation was thus torn between a grandiose Pan-Arab loyalty and a provincial one called forth by the realities of existing conditions. In all cases a powerful weapon adopted from the Western arsenal was therewith directed against the West. The experience of Egypt and Syria was repeated in Lebanon and Iraq as well.
With the firm establishment of nationalism and the urge for independence as a ruling passion in fife the first chapter in the history of modern Syria was concluded. The half- century beginning in i860 carried it from its medieval slumber to the dawn of an age of enlightenment and self- assertion. But a serious interruption was in store. A dark cloud was looming on the horizon — the cloud of world war.