The Early Work of the Arab Academy of Science in Damascus, 1919-1930
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Instituting Renaissance: The Early Work of the Arab Academy of Science in Damascus, 1919-1930 by Shaadi Khoury B.A. in English and Comparative Literature, May 2002, Columbia University M.A. in Near and Middle Eastern Studies, September 2005, SOAS, University of London A Dissertation submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 15, 2016 Dina Rizk Khoury Professor of History and International Affairs The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that Shaadi Khoury has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of December 11, 2015. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation. Instituting Renaissance: The Early Work of the Arab Academy of Science in Damascus, 1919-1930 Shaadi Khoury Dissertation Research Committee: Dina Rizk Khoury, Professor of History and International Affairs, Dissertation Director Shira Robinson, Associate Professor of History and International Affairs, Committee Member Andrew Zimmerman, Professor of History and International Affairs, Committee Member ii © Copyright 2016 by Shaadi Khoury All rights reserved iii I dedicate this work with love to my grandfather, Chehadé al-Khoury, fierce patriot of the Arabic language. iv Acknowledgments Every dissertation or research project is an undertaking, and writers are often sensitive to the solitary dimensions of their work and convinced of its weightiness. Crucially, though, the collaborative or social aspects of the burden make it bearable. I am indebted to many individuals and parties for their critical support in assisting me to complete this dissertation. Their efforts only improved this project; any mistakes or shortcomings are my own. First, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Dina Rizk Khoury, for serving as a model of integrity, dignity, and care as a scholar, teacher, and mentor. I am grateful for the explorations of ideas over years of afternoon conversations in her office. I have had the privilege and pleasure to work closely with Dr. Shira Robinson, and to learn from her passion for historical questions and her commitment to students. I have also gained from the scholarship and encouragement of Dr. Dane Kennedy and Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, and from their fruitful classes, comments, conversations, and comprehensive exams. Dr. Elliott Colla of Georgetown University came into my project at an advanced stage and with provocative insights to advance it further. I have benefitted too from years of correspondence with the great scholar Dr. Abdul-Karim Rafeq, and I thank him for his guidance and engagement with my project. Many thanks are due The George Washington University History Department and Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, for the tuition support and graduate teaching assistantships that served as the foundation for my doctoral studies. I was supported in part by GWU’s University Writing Program, which granted me the valuable opportunity to teach a freshman writing course of my design early in my graduate career. I was v fortunate to travel to and conduct research in Syria through the Fulbright Program administered by the US State Department during the academic year 2009-2010. I thank the fellowship program staff and personnel who facilitated that opportunity. I warmly thank the members and employees of the Academy of the Arabic Language in Damascus for their interest in my project and for availing me of their resources. I thank the Academy’s president, Dr. Marwan Mahasni, who welcomed me graciously. I thank also my excellent Arabic teachers during that memorable year in Damascus, Dr. Issam Eido and Mr. Ahmad Karout. My curiosity about language issues was ignited and sustained by them and numerous other educators over my career as a student. I am thankful for the help and professionalism of librarians at Gelman Library at GWU, the Library of Congress in Washington, DC and archivists at the Foreign Ministry Archives in Nantes, France, for enabling my research. I thank friends and faculty of The Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, for affording me a year of professional and personal development as a teacher at their fabulous school, from 2011-2012. Many family members and friends have endured this process with me, and have extended support I could not have reasonably demanded. My parents, Sawssan and Wael Khoury, always demonstrated real commitment to my project, as well as offered their generous practical assistance. Without the nourishment of their pride in Syrian and Arab culture, I would not have taken up this task as I did. I have learned much from the fortitude and talents of my three beloved sisters, Hala Haddad, Rana B. Khoury, and Leila Khoury. My close friends Dr. Christopher Hickman and Mr. Israel Meth know what their companionship, insight, and humor have meant to me over my years of study, and I thank them with great affection. vi Abstract of Dissertation Instituting Renaissance: The Early Work of the Arab Academy of Science in Damascus, 1919-1930 This dissertation examines the career of the Arab Academy of Science in Damascus roughly over its first formative decade, from 1919 to 1930. It situates the Academy’s work in relation to concerns about language modernization characteristic of the Nahda, or Modern Arab Renaissance, and in the context of great changes in the regional political and social order of the Middle East. It highlights the ways the pioneering Levantine man of letters Jurji Zaydan sought to reconcile indigenous traditions of linguistic thought with modern concepts of evolutionary change and historicism in the development of a new science of language and the cultivation of a new kind of scholarly elite, from the late nineteenth century to the eve of the First World War. This dissertation also analyzes Arab Academy founding member ‘Abd al-Qadir al- Maghribi’s wide-ranging writings in matters of religion, politics, ethics, and language. Al-Maghribi wrote on behalf of the Islamic and Arab umam or communities, as well as for a constitutional Ottoman caliphate around the time of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. The educability of the public was central to his vision as ordinary believers and Arabic-speakers became the population of the new national state of Syria following the Ottomans’ defeat in 1918. This project demonstrates how the three succeeding political orders over the territory that would become modern Syria influenced the thought of the founding members of the Academy in Damascus and contributed to the life of their institution: the late Ottoman state, the Amir Faysal’s short-lived Arabist kingdom in the aftermath of the First World War, and the imposition of the French Mandate for Syria from 1920. It argues that the late Ottoman Empire and its revolutionary and constitutional vii moment imparted qualities of ecumenicalism and worldliness, and that the Faysali and Mandatory regimes endowed a spirit of experimentation and standardization. Finally, this project turns to the relations of Arab Academy founding members, notably of their president Muhammad Kurd ‘Ali, with the Western orientalist scholars elected as corresponding members of their company. It chronicles how Arab and European scholars of Islam and Arabic collaborated in producing a body of knowledge and discourse of friendship in their shared area of study, characterized by both sympathetic and objective norms. It argues that the Arab Academicians and their Western colleagues collectively sketched the contours of a globalized discussion of Nahda, history, and modernity in the quasi-colonial context of French Mandate Syria. viii Table of Contents Dedication .................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................... v Abstract of Dissertation ................................................................................................ vii Note on Transliteration .................................................................................................. x Chapter 1: Introduction and Literature Review ............................................................. 1 Chapter 2: Intellectual Antecedents and Context: Jurji Zaydan and Two Surveys on the Future of Arabic ................................................................................................ 41 Chapter 3: Portrait of an Academician: ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Maghribi ........................... 109 Chapter 4: Productive Imprints: Ecumenicalism and Experimentation in Academy Thought and Practice ................................................................................................. 160 Chapter 5: In the Shadow of the Mandate and by the Light of Western Learning: Canon Formation in a Quasi-Colonial Context.......................................................... 223 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 256 Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 266 ix Note on Transliteration I have generally followed a simplified version of the transliteration guidelines of the International Journal of Middle East Studies, shorn of diacritical marks and superscript lines for long vowels. Vowels are represented with