Sulaiman al-Boustani

Sulaiman al-Boustani — Suleyman in the English article's spelling — (22 May 1856 – 1 June 1925) was a Lebanese writer, poet and statesman, a nephew of Butrus al-Bustani, the encyclopaedist of the Nahda. He taught, contributed to the journals and the encyclopaedia of the Bustani family enterprises, mastered more than ten languages, and became famous across the Arab world for his verse translation of Homer's Iliad into Arabic, published in Cairo in 1904. He ended his career as finance minister in the last Ottoman government. ^{1 2}

He was born Sulayman Khattar al-Bustani at Bkheshtin, a village of Iqlim al-Kharroub in the Chouf, and was taught the elements of Arabic and Syriac by his father's uncle, Bishop Abdullah. At seven he entered the National School in Beirut, founded by his uncle Butrus, and spent eight years there, completing his studies in 1871. He taught, and at the same time wrote for the journals al-Jinan, al-Janna and al-Junayna and contributed to the Dairat al-Ma'arif encyclopaedia begun by Butrus al-Bustani. Appointed translator at the United States consulate in Beirut, he preferred study, and came to master more than ten living languages besides grounding himself in mathematics, chemistry, law, agriculture, commerce, mineralogy, sociology and history; visiting Istanbul in 1908, he is said to have spoken in public in Arabic, Turkish, English and French. ²

It was Yaqub Sarruf who, during a visit to the offices of al-Muqtataf in Cairo in 1887, encouraged him to translate the Iliad. He read the translations in English, French and Italian and then rendered the epic into Arabic verse; Dar al-Hilal published it in Cairo in 1904, in more than a thousand pages, with a glossary, appendices and a long introduction that amounts to a book in itself. The men of letters of Egypt held a celebration in his honour at Shepheard's Hotel on 14 June 1904. He stayed in Egypt until 1908, dealing in shares and land while pursuing letters; there he wrote Ibra wa-dhikra on the Ottoman constitutional revolution, presided over the Society of the Book, and was elected to the council of the Egyptian University. ^{2 1}

His health failed in his last years and he travelled to America for treatment, dying in New York on 1 June 1925; his body was carried back to be buried in his birthplace, Bkheshtin. The museum notes a correction here: the queue from which this record was commissioned carried his death year as 1913, but the English article, the Arabic article and Wikidata all give 1925, and 1925 is what is recorded. ^{2 1 3}

The English article states of him personally: "He was a Maronite Catholic." The Arabic article's text names no religion for him: it records that he learned Arabic and Syriac from his father's uncle, a bishop — family background and schooling — and its categories file him among the Lebanese Maronites, which is a filing, not an attestation; Wikidata carries the single structured value "Christianity". That makes one personal text attestation supported only by filings, the same configuration as May Ziade's, which under the museum's rule — a faith is recorded only when two independent sources name it for the person — stands as unknown. His faith is therefore recorded as unknown in his data record, with both readings preserved and the question flagged for a founder ruling. ^{1 2 3}