Adib Ishaq

Adib Ishaq was an important Syrian literary figure of the nineteenth-century Arab Nahda. He was born in Damascus, where he studied Arabic and French at a Lazarists' school. He left school at the age of twelve to work at the customs house, where he learned Turkish. He moved to Beirut at the age of fifteen to work for the postal office, and later for the customs house. He developed a passion for writing, grammar and poetry, and contributed to the newspaper Al-Taqaddum (Progress). He moved to Egypt in 1876, where he met Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, a prominent Islamic reformer and thinker. He became his disciple and adopted his views on pan-Islamism, nationalism and modernization. He founded the Parisian journal Misr al-Qahira (Egypt the Victorious) in 1879, with the help of Abdallah Marrash, a Syrian poet and writer. He used the journal to advocate for political and social reforms in the Arab world, and to criticize the Ottoman rule and the European colonialism. He also translated many works from French and Turkish into Arabic, and wrote original articles, essays, poems and stories. He died at his summer estate in al-Hadath, in present-day Lebanon, from tuberculosis. He was only 29 years old. His brother Awni collected his works and published them under the title Al-Durar (The Pearls) in 1909. Adib Ishaq is considered one of the pioneers of modern Arabic journalism and literature, and a influential figure of the Arab cultural renaissance.