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Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq أحمد فارس الشدياق | |
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| Born | Faris ibn Yusuf al-Shidyaq 1805 or 1806 |
| Died | 20 September 1887 |
| Occupation(s) | Linguist, writer, journalist, translator |
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| Children | Salim[clarification needed] (1836–1910), Fayiz (1828–1856), |
| Parent(s) | Youssef Ash-Shidyaq, Marie Massaad |
Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq[a] (Arabic: أحمد فارس الشدياق, ALA-LC: Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq; born Faris ibn Yusuf al-Shidyaq;[1] born 1805 or 1806;[1] died 20 September 1887) was an Ottoman scholar, writer and journalist who grew up in what is now present-day Lebanon. A Maronite Christian by birth, he later lived in major cities of the Arabic-speaking world, where he had his career. He converted to Protestantism during the nearly two decades that he lived and worked in Cairo, present-day Egypt, from 1825 to 1848. He also spent time on the island of Malta. In 1857, with Evangelist American missionaries, he participated in the publishing of a novel Protestant Arabic translation of the Bible in Great Britain where Faris lived and worked for 7 years, becoming a British citizen. He next moved to Paris, France, for two years in the early 1850s, where he wrote and published some of his most important work.
Later in the 1850s Faris moved to Tunisia, where in 1860 he converted to Islam, taking the first name Ahmad. Moving to Istanbul later that year to work as a translator at the request of the Ottoman government, Faris also founded an Arabic-language newspaper. It was supported by the Ottomans, Egypt and Tunisia, publishing until the late 1880s.
Faris continued to promote Arabic language and culture, resisting the 19th-century "Turkization" pushed by the Ottomans based in present-day Turkey. Shidyaq is considered to be one of the founding fathers of modern Arabic literature; he wrote most of his fiction in his younger years.
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- ^ a b Roper, G. J. (2004). "Faris, Ahmad [Aḣmad Fāris; formerly Faris ibn Yusuf al-Shidyaq] (1805/6–1887), author and translator | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/60819. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)