Birth

On October 28, 1860, there was born to Shadid Ni’mah Yafith and ‘Atrash Farah Yafith, in Shuwayr, Lebanon, their first-born, a son. The child was named after his paternal grandfather Ni’mah (Nami).

Childhood

Nami grew up in his birthplace, Shuwayr, with four younger brothers and a sister. The father, a teacher by calling and profession, was then the leading instructor at the convent school of Mar Elias in Shuwayr itself. There he instilled in his son, the love of learning and imparted to him the same love for teaching.

When, in 1874, the Suk-al-Gharb English Missionary School was moved to Shuwayr, Nami enlisted among its students, spending in it four years. Among his teachers there were William Carslaw, Jirjis Hammam, and Murad al-Baroodi. At the same time the fifteen-year old Nami was helping his own father in teaching at the Mar Elias.

College

After completing his studies at Shuwayr, Nami moved on to the Syrian Protestant College (now the American University of Beirut), where he entered the Freshman class of 1878. His class numbered only eleven. He was known to his fellow students as Nami Shadid as the College records also show. Among his classmates were Jibrail Haddad, later General Haddad Pasha and Daud Kurban, later a professor in this University.

On July 19, 1882, Nami graduated, receiving his B.A. degree with distinction. Three others of his class received their degrees on that day: Daud Kurban, Antoun Haddad, and Yousuf Haik. For the first time the College records show that our young graduate had added Yafith (Jafet) to his name. Henceforth he was always known by that name.

Among his teachers at the College were Daniel Bliss, George Post, John Wortabet, Yakoub Sarrouf, and Faris Nimr. He excelled especially in the natural sciences and mathematics. Consequently, the Administration requested him, during his senior year, to help in the teaching of the Freshman class. Once again he was studying and teaching at the same time.

But neither of these activities exhausted his talents and energies. He therefore took to reading, especially such books as Darwin’s Origin of Species and the essays of Spencer and Huxley, and writing learned contributions to al-Muktataf, crossing swords with the most eminent savants of his day. While still a student, too, he was elected a member in the Majma’ al-Sharki, a learned academy founded in 1880. Among his colleagues in that academy were Ibrahim al-Yaziji, Ibrahim al-Hourani, Butrus al-Bustani, Salim al-Bustani, Iskandar Baroodi, Isbir Shukayr, Jurji Zaydan, Jirjis Hammam, Faris Nimr, Cornelius Van Dyck, and others. He himself acted as secretary to the academy.

Throughout his college days he was the embodiment of energy, diligence, and courtesy. He imbibed the true scientific spirit, and became known for his love of accuracy, discipline, thoroughness, and punctuality in all his undertakings. These years proved very formative and and left a deep impression upon him which was constantly reflected in his later career. He himself always recalled those days and never forgot either the College or his teachers and their influence upon him.

At the Thalathat Akmar School

His father had already made for himself a name as a teacher and educator. Consequently he was called to the Thalathat Akmar School in Beirut, to which he moved with the family. In the winter of 1882, just a few months before the twenty-two year old Nami graduated, his father suddenly died in the forty-sixth year of his life. This threw upon the young man new and grave responsibilities, especially that the youngest of his brothers was not yet eight years old. At graduation he was invited to teach at the College, at the same time the Thalathat Akmar School offered him the position made vacant by his father’s death. Out of loyalty to his father’s memory, he chose the latter. He held that position for eleven years, during which he introduced into the school many reforms both in its administration and its curriculum. He also wrote several text books for the teaching of mathematics, and contributed many articles to the literary and scientific journals of his day. Among his students were As’ad Ufaysh, Jubran Futiyah, Jubran Makkari, Nicola Fayyad, and others. During this period he became known as Mu’allim Nami Jafet.

Wife and children

In 1891, he married Afife Nassif al-Tabsharani, a graduate of Shuwayr High School for Girls. She became his best and most loyal companion and help, and the mother of his seven sons and six daughters. They are Chedid, Nagib, Ricardo, Frederico, Carlos, Gladston, and Roberto; and Emma, Nabihah, Wadiah, Malakah, Matilda, and Hortensia.

Emigration to Brazil

With the hardships of the Ottoman period increasing, he made up his mind to follow his three brothers, Benjamin, Basilios, and John to Brazil. He arrived there in 1893. Once in the New World vast opportunities opened before the ambitious and hardworking teacher.

Life in the New World

In those days the life of the immigrants in the New World was not an easy one. T o make their way honorably to free enterprise and to make good there in called for ambition, faith, cooperation, and sacrifice. Nami Jafet was the first to become aware of this, and to that end he turned his talents and labor. To begin with he gathered his own brothers into a commercial company which he founded in their name in 1897, making honesty and orderly and truthful dealing with the customers his rule. It was not long before he and his compatriots gained both the confidence of the native population and that of the foreign commercial companies. To further still the reputation and the prestige of the Arab immigrants there, he set out organizing the Arab communities, there by gaining for them respect among their Brazilian neighbors, at the same time guiding them to paths of service both to their adopted homeland and to their people back home.

His commercial enterprise

Nami Jafet and his brothers’ business grew rapidly, their old business house becoming too small to hold the goods they were handling and distributing. They therefore purchased a new site and built upon it their new center to which they moved in 1903.

The Weaving industry

With the rapid expansion of his commercial enterprise and looking ahead for the future, he decided, after thorough study, to embark upon a new venture: the weaving and processing of cotton goods. He therefore purchased a vast piece of land in the region of Ypiranga, five kilo- meters from Sao Paulo, and there, in 1907, built his factory for the weaving and processing of all cotton fabrics. The new factory continued to grow until it became one of the biggest of its kind in the world.

No sooner had he started this gigantic undertaking when others followed his example and the number of native and foreign cotton factories multiplied. Rather than fall back before this keen competition, the Jafets expanded their activities and the value of their capital investment rocketed to nine times its original value. The factory grounds were also enlarged sevenfold, and around them rose the homes of the Jafets' and their aids.

They had forty-five thousand individual spindles and one thousand four hundred looms, all of the most modern type. In fact the establishment became a huge plant for spinning, weaving, dying, processing, and finishing all types of cotton fabrics. Raw cotton entered the Jafets’ factories, as it were, at one end and emerged a finished fabric at the other. The establishment is now know as the Fiaçao Tecelagem e Estamparia Ypiranga Jafet. It is considered one of the richest companies of its kind in the world.

His public services and contributions

With the rapid development of the commercial activities of the Lebanese communities in Brazil, Nami Jafet organized, in 1913, a special chamber of commerce to serve the interests of the immigrants and their new country. The newly organized Syro-Lebanese National Society invited him to become its first president. He accepted the invitation and set himself to the task of freeing his homeland from Ottoman domination. Likewise he was elected, during the First World War, head of the Brazilian Red Cross Society in Sao Paulo. His services in this and other philanthropies were recognized by both the immigrants and the Brazilians alike, and the Sao Paulo Republican Party, named him, in recognition of those services, head of its Ypiranga branch. The State government also bestowed upon him the rank of honorary colonel for his many services to the country, and the French government recognized his services to the Allied cause by decorating him with the Legion of Honor.

Literary activity

In spite of all business demands upon his time, Nami Jafet, the teacher at heart, never allowed anything to come between him and literary pursuits and activities. He always remained a patron of learned societies, and continued to deliver public lectures and to contribute to magazines and journals on social, literary, and political subjects. He engaged in an intellectual debate with the well-known Shaykh Mohammed Abdu. Though known primarily as a business man, he himself often said, “Commerce has indeed a special fascination, but the fascination of learning is still greater”.

Return to the Lebanon

Accompanied by his wife and son, Nagib, he embarked, immediately after the First World War, upon a visit to his native land, Lebanon. After touring Europe, he arrived in the Lebanon in the fall of 1921, and visited his birthplace, Shuwayr, and his Alma Mater, where he addressed a special convocation gathered to do him honor. Of the University he said, “It is the school where he himself drank of the fountain of learning and was nourished by the moral principles of life -- the only basis of progress in human society”. After spending the greater part of the year in his native land, he returned to the land of his adoption.

Return to Brazil and the presidency of the Alumni Association

On his return to Brazil he turned over the Administration of his business empire to his sons: the technical side to Chedid and the financial to Nagib. He himself devoted his time to the newly organized Alumni Association to which he was elected President. He went about promoting the cause of the University and considered that any aid so extended to his Alma Mater would serve as a token of gratitude for the great service the institution had rendered to his native land and its people. He launched a campaign to raise a special endowment for the education of promising Lebanese at the University, and another and still larger endowment to be raised solely from native contributions to the end that the University would eventually be supported and directed by native gifts and talents. He declared in his appeal for that endowment that “that day would be one of the most glorious of all days, the day of intellectual independence which is the foundation of every independence”.