Francis Marrash

Francis Marrash
Native name
فرنسيس بن فتح الله بن نصر الله مرّاش
Born1835, 1836 or 1837
Aleppo, Aleppo Eyalet, Ottoman Syria
Died1873 or 1874
Aleppo, Aleppo Vilayet, Ottoman Syria
Occupation
  • Scholar
  • publicist
  • writer
  • poet
  • physician
LanguageArabic
PeriodModern (19th century)
Genres
Literary movementNahda
Relatives

Francis bin Fathallah bin Nasrallah Marrash (Arabic: فرنسيس بن فتح الله بن نصر الله مرّاش, ALA-LC: Fransīs bin Fatḥ Allāh bin Naṣr Allāh Marrāsh; 1835,[1] 1836,[2][a] or 1837[3][b] – 1873[5] or 1874[1]), also known as Francis al-Marrash or Francis Marrash al-Halabi, was a Syrian scholar,[6] publicist,[6] writer and poet of the Nahda or the Arab Renaissance, and a physician. Most of his works revolve around science, history and religion, analysed under an epistemological light. He traveled throughout West Asia and France in his youth, and after some medical training and a year of practice in his native Aleppo, during which he wrote several works, he enrolled in a medical school in Paris; yet, declining health and growing blindness forced him to return to Aleppo, where he produced more literary works until his early death.

Historian Matti Moosa considered Marrash to be the first truly cosmopolitan Arab intellectual and writer of modern times. Marrash adhered to the principles of the French Revolution and defended them in his own works, implicitly criticizing Ottoman rule in West Asia and North Africa. He was also influential in introducing French romanticism in the Arab world, especially through his use of poetic prose and prose poetry, of which his writings were the first examples in modern Arabic literature, according to Salma Khadra Jayyusi and Shmuel Moreh. His modes of thinking and feeling, and ways of expressing them, have had a lasting influence on contemporary Arab thought and on the Mahjari poets.

  1. ^ a b Al-Ḥimṣī 1925, p. 20.
  2. ^ a b Zaydān 1922, p. 253.
  3. ^ Halevi & Zachs 2015, p. 24.
  4. ^ Halevi & Zachs 2015, p. 172.
  5. ^ Zaydān 1922, p. 253; Halevi & Zachs 2015, p. 24.
  6. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Tomiche, p. 598. was invoked but never defined (see the help page).


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