The aim of this workshop was to further research and production on the life and work of the Lebanese nahdah (19th Century Arab cultural renaissance) author, Ahmad Faris ash-Shidyaq (1805-1887). As can be seen from the short biographical notice, much is still to be researched and revealed on the life and work of this exceptional but censored and marginalized writer.
Born a Maronite Christian, in `Ashqut (Kisrawan, Lebanon) Faris Shidyaq (Later: Ahmad Faris) studied at the famous Maronite seminary of ‘Ayn Waraqah but upon the death of his father, had to leave school and worked as a copyist of manuscripts. His brother As‘ad’s internment by the Maronite church on charges of Protestant ‘heresy’ and his ultimate death in prison changed the course of his life. He broke with the Maronite church and left the country for an exile from which he was never to return.
In Europe, Shidyaq soon seceded from his Protestant patrons, denouncing fiercely both Catholics and Protestants, flirted with agnosticism and led a libertine life in Paris. His sudden conversion to Islam in 1860 shocked many of his co-religionists as Mount Lebanon was still in the throes of a bloody civil war between Muslim Druze and Christians.
In his hometown, Faris Shidyaq was firstly a rebel against the muqâta`jî order (the Ottoman system of tax-farming and land control), the dominion of the Church and the privileged class of the rich and mighty. During his sojourn in Europe, he discovered the poverty and social ills of industrialization, and he was attracted to socialism. But that was not all concerning his multiple ambiguities and paradoxes. He became a British citizen and married an English woman after the death of his first wife (a Lebanese from Egypt). Even though he spent the last years of his life as a functionary of the Ottoman sultan, his political affinities professed overt support to the Khedives of Egypt, which drove the Sublime Porte to suspend the publication of his newspaper, al-jawâ’ib. By the end of his life, Shidyaq had become a tenacious opponent of the Porte’s campaign of Turkification. His last writings contained a compelling act of faith in the Arab ethnicity, a community bound by a shared language and culture, in one of the earliest expressions of Arab nationalism.
Shidyaq was a belles-lettrist, poet, grammarian, lexicologist, philologist, translator, travel-chronicler, educator, journalist and editor of the first modern Arabic-language newspaper. He is known for a translation of the Bible into Arabic, considered the best until the present, and for his masterpiece, al-sâq `alâ-l-sâq fi ma huwa al-fariyaq ("The Life and Adventures of Faryaq") considered by many as the foundational text of modernity in Arabic literature. Written and published in Arabic in 1855, the book is subversive for its radical ideas and its biting satire against social hierarchy and conventions. Among the works of Shidyaq, many of which remain in manuscript form, or are simply missing, are two books relating his travels in Europe al-wâsita fi ma‘rifat ahwâl Mâlta and Kashf al-mukhabbâ ‘an funûn urubbâ ("An Introduction to the Currents in Malta" and "Uncovering the secrets of European Arts"; both published in 1863). His writings on philology. lexicology and grammar include a number of dictionaries from French and English into Arabic, and al-jâsûs ‘ala-l-qâmûs ("The Spy on the Dictionary"), a monumental critique of Fayrûzabâdi’s classic dictionary al-qâmûs al-muhît in addition to two books on grammar and rhetoric.
Al-Sâq `ala-l-Sâq , initially a hardly veiled auto-biography and a travel book, also recounts the initiative voyage by an Arab male in the world of women, whose purpose is “uncovering the marvels of the Arabic language and singing the praise of women”. And 'sung' women are, in multiple ways, not least in the author’s revival of the tradition of Arab erotic literature. Shidyaq’s strong identification with the ‘other sex’ is revealed by his avowal that “the author had himself been metamorphosed into a woman” while writing his book. But the author went much further than his feminist contemporaries of the Nahdah. He called for the complete equality between women and men, strongly opposed sexual segregation –that reduces woman to a mere sexual object– and defended women’s right to work, to choose their husbands and to equal right in questions of divorce. However, the Lebanese libertarian’s most original contribution to women’s liberation, in mid-nineteenth century, was his defense of women’s equal right to sexual pleasure and to be judged for extra-marital relations the same as her partner.
In Lebanon, where many have not forgiven his attack of sectarianism, his anti-clerical, secular positions and his conversion to Islam, censorship and marginalization have struck Shidyaq’a work. Even the French translation of Al-Sâq, published in Paris in 1991, was amputated of a small chapter in which Shidyaq denounced the Maronite patriarch whom he held accountable for the death of his brother As`ad and enumerated the “thousand outrages against religion committed by the same people who pretend to serve it”, the popes and high dignitaries of the Catholic church.
The Workshop
The seminar is intended to group two categories of scholars and researchers: i) scholars who have worked on specific aspects of Shidyaq’s work: his literary genre; linguistics; libertine writings; social criticism; political reforms; travel writings; the feminism; religion and secularity and ii) scholars and researchers contributing to the reconstruction of his biography in the major cities he visited or resided in: Cairo, Malta, London, Paris, Tunis, Istanbul. That second part of the program is also intended as an occasion to study the possibility of launching a sustained effort of research to reconstruct Shidyaq’s biography.
Schedule
Thursday, March 6
9.30 am — 12.30 pm
Session 1
Fawwaz Traboulsi (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin), Introduction / Shidyaq, social and political critic and reformer
Radwa Ashour (University Ain Shams, Cairo), Literary History and the Institution of Criticism: The Case of Shidyaq
Paul Starkey (Durham University), Shidyaq’s biography between fact and fiction
Chair: Aziz Al-Azmeh (Central European University, Budapest)
2 pm — 6 pm
Session 2
Christian Junge (Freie Universität Berlin), Shidayaq’s metafictional modernity.
Barbara Winckler (Freie Universität Berlin), Shidyaq’s Travels: Comparing Paris and London
Sherif Hassan (Ain Shams University, Cairo), The Life of al-Faryaq and Tristram Shandy: Towards a Comparative Reading
Chair: Angelika Neuwirth (Free University Berlin)
Friday, March 7
9.30 am — 12.30 pm
Session 3
Simon Mercieca (Director of Mediterranean Institute, Malta), Al-Shidyaq and Malta; a love hate relationship.
Kamran Rastegar (University of Edinburgh), Shidyaq and literary modernity
Geoffrey Roper (London), Faris Shidyaq as translator and editor
Nadia al-Baghdadi (Central European University, Budapest), Retracing al-Shidyaq between evidence and disguise
Chair: Samah Selim (Marseille; EUME)
2.30 pm — 6 pm
Session 4
Malek Sherif (AUB, Beirut), Shidyaq: Perceptions of Eastern and Western Cities
Eman Morsi (Cairo University), Faris Al Shidyaq in Egypt
Shirin Abu Shaqra (Beirut)
Chair: Georges Khalil (EUME)
Saturday, March 8
10 am — 1 pm
Session 5
Discussion of a follow-up project on the biography of Shidyaq
Chair: Fawwaz Traboulsi