Francis Marrash

Francis Marrash
Born	Francis bin Fathallah bin Nasrallah Marrash 1836 Aleppo, Ottoman Syria
Died	1873 (aged 36–37) Aleppo, Ottoman Syria
Occupation	Writer, poet, physician
Nationality	Syrian
Literary movement	Al-Nahda
Notable work(s)	Ghabat al-haq Durr al-sadaf Mir'at al-hasna
Relative(s)	Abdallah Marrash (brother) Maryana Marrash (sister)
Influences Rousseau
Influenced Khalil Gibran

Francis bin Fathallah bin Nasrallah Marrash (Arabic: فرنسيس بن فتح الله بن نصرالله مرّاش / ALA-LC: Fransīs bin Fatḥallāh bin Naṣrallāh Marrāsh; 1836–1873), also known as Francis al-Marrash or Francis Marrash al-Halabi, was a Syrian writer and poet of the Nahda movement (the Arabic renaissance). In 1865, he published his novel Ghabat al-haq, considered to be the first modern novel of Arabic literature.

Life

Francis Marrash was born in Aleppo, a city of Ottoman Syria (present-day Syria), to an old and respected Melkite family known for its literary interests. The family was well established in Aleppo, although they had gone through troubles: Francis' uncle, Butrus Marrash, was martyred by Greek Orthodox fundamentalists on April 16, 1818. Other Melkite Catholics were exiled from Aleppo during the persecutions, and among them the priest Jibrail Marrash. Fathallah, Francis' father, wrote a blasphemous book and created another scandal. He was a man of letters, and had built up a huge private library to give his three children Francis, Abdallah and Maryana a thorough education, particularly in the field of Arabic language and literature. His mother was from the famous al-Antaki family. Aleppo was then a major literary and philosophical center of the Ottoman Empire, featuring many thinkers and writers concerned with the future of the Arabs. It was in the French religious schools that the Marrash family learnt Arabic with French, and other foreign languages (Italian and English). But Francis at first studied the Arabic language and its literature privately. He then received private tutoring in medicine for four years under an English physician and practiced medicine for a year. Eventually, his father Fathallah and brother Abdallah achieved a certain literary fame, while Maryana brought the tradition of literary salons back into the Arab world, and was the first woman to write in the Arab press.

At four, Marrash contracted measles, and suffered from eye problems that kept worsening ever since. In 1850, his father took him to Paris to find a treatment. In 1866, Marrash decided to continue his medical education in Paris. But his fragile health and his growing blindness forced him to interrupt his studies within a year after his arrival. He returned to Aleppo completely blind, but still managed to dictate his works. In 1867, he published an account of his journey to Paris: Rihlat Baris. The book begins with a description of his progress from Aleppo to Iskenderun, Latakia, Tripoli, Jaffa, Alexandria, Cairo, and then back to Alexandria from which he boarded a ship to Marseille. The Arab cities inspired him revulsion and indifference, except Alexandria and Cairo, where Ismail Pasha had already begun modernization projects. He then travelled through France, with a stopover in Lyon before ending up in Paris. He was fascinated by France, and Paris the most. He continued to travel between Aleppo, Beirut and France throughout his life.

In 1862, he began writing Ghabat al-haq (The Forest of Justice), which he published three years later. It is an allegorical novel written as a dialogue, which deals with ideas of peace, freedom and equality. Through this work, Marrash becomes the first Arab writer to reflect the optimism and humanistic view of 18th century Europe. This view stemmed from the hope that education, science and technology would resolve such problems of humanity as slavery, religious discrimination, illiteracy, disease, poverty, war, and other scourges of mankind, and it gave utterance to his hope for brotherhood and equality among peoples. He also advocates the modernization of Arab schools and the separation of state and religion. In 1872, he publishes Durr al-sadaf, a novel in which he describes the Lebanese society of the era and its customs. The contrast between natural and social laws, inspired by the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is a recurring theme in many fiction works of Marrash.

During his lifetime he wrote many essays about literature and science (especially mathematics), and about education, a subject which mattered a lot to him; he wrote in Ghabat al-haq that "without the education of the mind, man is a mindless beast". He included poems in all his works, written in muwashshah and zajal forms according to the occasion. In 1861, he published a poetic eulogy of Mehmed Fuad Pasha in the February 7 issue of Hadiqat al-Akhbar, the first bi-weekly newspaper in Beirut. He wrote many articles in the popular press. In those published in Butrus al-Bustani's journal al-Jinan, he reveals himself favourable to women's education, which he limited however to reading, writing, and a little bit of arithmetic, geography and grammar. In an 1882 issue of al-Jinan, he wrote that it is not necessary for a woman "to act like a man, neglect her domestic and family duties, or that she should consider herself superior to the man". He nevertheless closely followed his sister Maryana's studies not suspecting that the first poem which she would publish in the public press—actually in al-Jinan—would be her elegy on him. Marrash also attacked Arab men's oppressive treatment of their wives and daughters, and rebelled against the custom that allowed parents to marry their daughter off to an old man. In his later works, he tried to demonstrate the existence of God and the divine law; the Sharia, as he conceives it, goes beyond the sphere of the Islamic law alone.

Marrash died in 1873 in Aleppo.

Khalil Gibran was a great admirer of Marrash. His own works echoe Marrash's style and ideas about enslavement, education, women's liberation, truth, the natural goodness of man, and the corrupted morals of society.

Works

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• Dalīl al-ḥuriyah al-insāniyah (Guide to Human Liberty), Aleppo, 1861, 24 pp.
• Al-mir’āt al-ṣafiyah fī al-mābādi’ al-ṭabi‘iyah (The Clear Mirror of Natural Principles), Aleppo, 1861, 60 pp.
• Ta‘ziyat al-makrūb wa-rāḥat al-mat‘ūb ("Consolation of the Anxious and Respose of the Weary One", philosophical and pessimistic discourse on nations of the past), Aleppo, 1864
• Ghābat al-ḥaq fī tafṣīl al-lākhlāq al-fāḍilah wa-āḍdādihā wa-yalīhā kitāb mashhad al-’āḥwāl, Aleppo, 1865; Cairo, 1881; Beirut, 1881
• Riḥlat Bārīs (Journey to Paris), Beirut, 1867
• Al-kunūz al-faniyah fī al-rumūz al-Maymūniyah ("Artistic Treasures Concerning the Symbolic Visions of Maymun", poem of almost 500 verses), Aleppo, 1870
• Mashhad al-’āḥwāl (The Witnessing of the Stages of Human Life), Beirut, 1870, 1883
• Durr al-ṣadaf fī gharā’ib al-ṣudaf ("Pearl Shells in Relating Strange Coincidences", social romance), Beirut, 1872
• Mir’āt al-ḥasnā’ ("The Mirror of the Beautiful One", collection of poems), Beirut, 1872, 1883
• Shahādat al-ṭabi‘ah fī wujūd Allāh wa-al-sharī‘ah (The Proofs of Nature for the Existence of God and the Divine Law), Beirut, 1892 (posthumous)

External links

• Ghabat al-haq (1881 reprint) in the Open Library