Jurji Zaydan

Jurji Zaydan (14 December 1861 – 21 July 1914) was a prolific Lebanese novelist, journalist, editor and teacher, most noted for creating the magazine Al-Hilal, in which he serialised his twenty-three historical novels. His primary goal during the Nahda was to make the common Arabic population know their own history through the entertaining medium of the novel, and he was one of the first thinkers to help formulate the theory of Arab nationalism. ^{1 2}

He was born in Beirut to an Eastern Orthodox Christian family of limited means that had probably originated in the Hauran region; the Arabic article adds that the family came from the village of Ain Aanoub in Mount Lebanon, and that his father Habib owned a restaurant. ^{1 2} He left school early to help in the business, educated himself at night classes, and in 1881 was admitted to the Syrian Protestant College as a medical student. After the 1882 crisis at the college, when Professor Lewis was dismissed for praising Darwin, he was among the students who left Syria for Cairo. ¹

After a short stint assisting on al-Muqtataf, he produced scholarly works on history: Ta'rikh al-Masuniya al-'Amm (1889), on the Freemasons — of whose "Le Liban" lodge he was a member — and in 1890 al-Ta'rikh al-'Amm, among the first non-Islamic histories written in Arabic. He taught Arabic, opened the publishing house Dar al-Hilal, and in 1891 published his first historical novel, al-Mamluk al-Shariid (The Fleeing Mamluk). ^{1 2}

In 1892 he began publishing Al-Hilal (The Crescent), which combined history, his serialised novels, current events and criticism, with an encyclopaedic aim of informing the public about Islamic history and Western civilisation. ^{1 3}

Each novel rested on a skeleton outline built from the available sources on an event of Islamic history, with documented sources, footnotes and introductory chapters of historical and geographic context; the entertainment came from a love story and a mystery woven through it. His scholarly works include Tarikh al-Tamaddun al-Islami (History of Islamic Civilisation, 1901–1906, in five volumes) and Tarikh Adab al-Lugha al-'Arabiyya (History of Arabic Literature). ^{1 2}

In 1910 the newly opened Egyptian University offered him a professorship in Islamic history; he was dismissed before beginning, after an outcry from the Muslim public, who objected to his Christian origins and secular leanings. The experience embittered him until his unexpected death in Cairo on 21 July 1914. ^{1 2}

The sources describe his background rather than a personal profession: the English article says he was born to an Eastern Orthodox Christian family, the Arabic article says a poor Christian family, and Wikidata carries a single religion value of Eastern Orthodoxy. Family background on its own does not settle a personal affiliation, so this museum records his faith as unknown, with the evidence preserved in his data record. ^{1 2 4}