The Beginning

The first Americans who came to Lebanon in 1820 were Presbyterians working under the auspices of the American Board of Control for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). Though their vocation was to proselytize they soon realized that what the country needed most was a system of education "consonant with its traditions... and that a nation's lost inheritance may not be recovered except through its literature," wrote George Antonius in The Arab Awakening.

The Arabic language had by that time degenerated under Turkish dominance and the Arabic press was non-existent. Before they could open schools to educate the populace, the missionaries had to provide textbooks and manuals. They, therefore, transferred their printing press from Malta to Beirut and proceeded to learn Arabic. "It is a terrible language," wrote Mrs. Daniel Bliss after trying to speak and to read it for nine months, "The difficulties it presents to a foreigner are certainly formidable; strange gutturals, a novel syntax and a bewildering distinction between the written language used also in formal discourse, and the speech of ordinary conversation."

Another project launched soon after the printing press came to Beirut was a new translation of the Bible by Dr. Van Dyck and Butrus Bustani both of the Abeih school staff, supervised by the Rev. Simon Calhoun who was known as the Saint of Mount Lebanon. Eli Smith, who came to Beirut from Malta in 1872, supervised the printing press for which he had a new type cast in Leipzig that became known as American-Arabic type. The missionaries then secured the services of two scholars, Nassif Yazegi and Butrus Bustani to compose manuals and books which were then printed in their own establishment.

The Americans mastered the Arabic language to an extent that in his Annual Report to the Board of Managers in 1877, President Bliss wrote: "We have now the President as before, Dr. Van Dyck M.D.,D.D. Prof. of Theology and Practice of Medicine and Astronomy. Rev. John Wortabet M.D. Prof. of Anatomy and Physiology.

Rev. Geo. E. Post M.D., D. D. S. Prof. of Surgery, and Materia Medica, Rev. Edwin R. Lewis M.D., Prof. of Chemistry, Physics and Geology, Isaac Hall B. L. L. Prof. of English Language, Joshua E. Crane A.B. Principal of the Preparatory Department, R.W. Bridgestocke M.D. Lecturer on Diseases of Women and Children, four native instructors and two tutors... Besides giving instruction and lectures customary in such institutions the Professors have prepared in the Arabic language, edited and published Philosophy, Pathology, Physical Diagnosis, Chemistry, Natural History, Physiology, Botany, Surgery, Materia Medica, Mental Philosophy, Astronomy, Higher Mathematics, Latin Grammar and Reader with Vocabulary, Meteorology and Arabic hymn and tune book and Arabic Concordance of the Bible similar to Crudins."

The Syria Mission, as it was known, also set up societies such as a literary society in 1847 which, according to George Antonius, started the Arab national movement. The Society's statutes include at the end by-laws for its library. The statutes were published in ZDMG, the German Orientalist magazine, and the librarians were named as Nassif Yazegi and Tannous al-Haddad.

The Mission also had a library of its own for in a letter from David Stuart Dodge to Dr. Daniel Bliss, dated November 1, 1864, Dr. Dodge advises that he had sent a set of the new Encyclopedia to the Library.

The role of the Mission and the Syrian Protestant College played in the revival of the Arabic language continued even after the College changed to English as the medium of instruction in the early eighteen eighties. In 1910 Dr. Henry H. Jessup wrote "...this adoption of English has not been at the expense of Arabic, for the Arabic instruction is so efficient that the graduates average higher ability to use the tongue acceptably than those of any other missionary institution in the Arabic-speaking world."