Constantine Zureiq

Constantine Zureiq was a prominent and influential Syrian Arab intellectual who was one of the first to pioneer and express the importance of Arab nationalism. He stressed the urgent need to transform stagnant Arab society by means of rational thought and radical modification of the methods of thinking and acting. He developed some ideas, such as the "Arab mission" and "national philosophy", which were to become key concepts for Arab nationalist thinkers, and in more recent years was a strong proponent of an intellectual reformation of Arab society, emphasizing the need for rationalism and an ethical revolution. He is credited with coining the term Nakba to refer to the flight and expulsion of the Palestinians from their lands in 1948 and the Palestinian catastrophe in his 1948 book Maʿna an-Nakba. Zureiq was born in Damascus, Syria Vilayet on April 18, 1909, during the waning years of the ruling Ottoman Empire, to a Greek Orthodox Christian family. He received his primary and secondary education in the Orthodox school systems and had an obsession with acquiring knowledge. He continued his education at the American University of Beirut, and eventually received his PhD at Princeton University all by the age of twenty-one. He immediately turned to teaching and became a professor of history at the American University of Beirut. ¹ After receiving his PhD, Zureiq focused his aims in teaching and politics. Alongside his work as a tenured professor, Zureiq experimented as the 1st Counselor to the Syrian Legation of the United States in 1945, and acted as the delegate to the UN Security Council and to the UN General Assembly in 1946. ¹ Zureiq later took an offer to become the vice president of the American University of Beirut in 1952, and completed his education by receiving his doctorate in literature at the University of Michigan in 1967. He died on August 11, 2000 in Beirut. ¹ During the last fifty years of his life, Zureiq dedicated himself in attempting to solve the various issues revolving around Arab society. His goal was to discover a means of radically and expeditiously transforming Arab society into a practical, rational, and scientific society. Zureiq focused his attention on contemporary Arab society and the current crisis of Arab civilization. He wrote several books and articles on Arab history, culture, politics, and identity, such as The Meaning of the Disaster, Arab Nationalism and Islam, The Arab Mind, and The Arab Revolution. He also advocated for Arab unity, democracy, human rights, and social justice. He was a respected and influential figure in the Arab world, and received many honors and awards for his contributions. ¹