Butrus Al-Bustani - Role in Al-Nahda

Role in Al-Nahda

In the late 1840s al-Boustani obtained the position of the official dragoman for the America Consulate in Beirut which he held until he passed it on to his son Salim in 1862. Through the 1850s Boustani continued to work closely with the Protestant Missionaries in their attempt of proselytizing and educating Arab Christians in the Levant. However, at this time al-Boustani began to diverge from the Missionaries method of education and began to express publicly the need for an Arabic identity that would be reflected in all spheres of society. In a lecture, “on the literature of the Arabs”, given in February 1859. al-Boustani publicly called for a revival of literature and scholarly works in the Arabic language. It was also in 1859 that al-Boustani disengaged from his work with the mission and devoted his time to this cause. Shortly after his lecture in Beirut in 1859, al-Boustani became the secretary of a cultural association for the publication of Arabic books, al-Umda’ al-Arrabyya l-Ishar al-Kutub al-Arrabyya. It was al-Boustani’s exodus from religious education and move towards secular, national education at this time that revolutionized Arab culture and set the stage for the Nahda.

Following the Maronite/Druze civil war of Mount Lebanon in 1860, al-Boustani, having witnessed these political/religious tensions, published an irregular newspaper which he called Nafir al-Surriya (a Clarion of Syria), wherein he voiced his ideal of a Syrian fatherland. Along with instilling Syrian Patriotism and “proto-nationalism”, Al-Boustani sought to reform education and so founded the madrasah al-Wataniyya in Beirut in 1863, his own National School in Lebanon where he applied his theories on education, namely his educational agenda. The National School educated its students in Arabic, French, English, Turkish, Latin and Greek and modern sciences without the pretense of religion but with an obvious nationalistic aim. Al-Boustani welcomed students from all religions and races and qualified staff not based on their religious standing but their competence and professional qualities. The school was successful because it was unique in Syria at the time as being an educational institution based on secular ideals of equality and non-discrimination and thus stood against the religious schools that were closed off to the modern world. However, the rising religious solidarity in Syria eventually led to it being closed in 1878.

It was during the proceeding years throughout the 1860s that his major contributions to the Nahda emerged. These included a daily newspaper and the first Arabic encyclopedia Al-Muhit al Muhit (The ocean of oceans) and an Arabic dictionary dairat al-ma’arif (dictionary of knowledge). Al-Boustani’s intention in these works was to form a common body of knowledge which, though was very French, was considered universal. It was at this time that he came to be known famously as the Master and Father of the Arabic Renaissance. The greater part of his life’s work was reviving and creating a love for the Arabic language, bringing Arabic into a place of affluence and utility as a tool for Arabs to express their thoughts and ideas in the modernising world of the 19th century. In 1868, al-Boustani helped found the Syrian Scientific Society al-Ja’miyya al-Ilmiyya al-Suriyya, a group of intellectuals who would be a part of promoting the study of science in educational institutions in Syria.

Al-Boustani made large strides in forging a nationalism for Arabs by adopting and contextualizing European political and social values and education while maintaining a distinct nationalism, patriotism and Arab identity. All of this was to the advancement and continuation of the Arab cultural and literary renaissance at large that moved from Egypt to Syria/Lebanon. The reforms in the Ottoman Empire (see Tanzimat) from 1839–1876 and the work of the Young Ottomans strongly influenced al-Boustani to see that “Ottomanism” was the best means of achieving nationalism politically being that it was the closest model available for him in Syria and in particular it was a Romantic nationalism, whereby one must recreate or recover a culture by looking into the past. In Boustani’s case he looked to the scientific revolution in the Golden Age of Islam under the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad (8th to 13th century A.D.) He argued that at that time, Europe was in the decline of the Dark Ages and that Arabs must once again reclaim that heritage. However it wasn’t an Islamic heritage Boustani was after for he was a secularist. Though a Protestant Christian, he did not seek religious reform but rather a reform similar to what the French had with the separation of the Church institutions from the State institutions. It was this very separation that was key for the European Renaissance and al-Boustani saw the same need for the Nahda. Al-Boustani viewed the edicts of the Young Ottomans as freedom for non-Muslims and an opportunity for Arabs in Syria to gain sovereignty. Thus politically, he helped Syria towards Ottomanism in the sense that the edicts allowed participation of citizens of the state regardless of religious affiliation.

Education, for Boustani, was the main vehicle to achieve an Arab identity and nationalism and it was only by the mass production of literature and its speedy circuit throughout the Middle East, afforded by the Nahda, that such an identity could be formed. Al-Boustani’s years in the Protestant Mission led him to be at odds with educating a people about remote places and histories clearly seen in a quote from a lecture of his on education, “there should be one educational system for (all) the children of the nation(‘Umma), to safeguard it’s (cultural) identity. Thus in the realm of education, Boustani helped pave the way for a distinctly Arab education. His national/secular educational agenda in the midst of religious education was paramount to Syria’s development. Al-Boustani’s contributions to Arab language and literature and his creating a medium and structure to spread his ideas and the ideas of other intellectuals in Syria led to great reforms of literature and moreover created a common body of knowledge for the Arab, a body that was a pre-requisite to modernity and Arab, but explicitly, Syrian nationalism. Butrus al-Boustani stands among the reformers that helped push the Middle East into modernity without seeing the reform as primarily Islamic. For he took a non-sectarian approach and worked to bring together both Christians and Muslims into the greater agenda of the revolution of Arab identity and culture.