Francis Marrash

Historian Matti Moosa considered Marrash to have been the first truly cosmopolitan Arab intellectual and writer of modern times. Marrash adhered to the principles of the French Revolution and defended them in his own works, implicitly criticizing Ottoman rule in West Asia and North Africa. He was also influential in introducing French romanticism in the Arab world, especially through his use of poetic prose and prose poetry, of which his writings were the first examples in modern Arabic literature, according to Salma Khadra Jayyusi and Shmuel Moreh. His modes of thinking and feeling, and ways of expressing them, have had a lasting influence on contemporary Arab thought and on the Mahjari poets.

Francis Marrash was born in Aleppo, a city of Ottoman Syria (present-day Syria), to an old Melkite family of merchants known for their literary interests. Having earned wealth and standing in the 18th century, the family was well established in Aleppo, although they had gone through troubles: a relative of Francis, Butrus Marrash, was killed by the wali's troops in the midst of a Catholic–Orthodox clash in April 1818. Other Melkite Catholics were exiled from Aleppo during the persecutions, among them the priest Jibrail Marrash. Francis' father, Fathallah, tried to defuse the sectarian conflict by writing a treatise in 1849, in which he rejected the Filioque. He had built up a large private library to give his three children Francis, Abdallah and Maryana a thorough education, particularly in the field of Arabic language and literature. Aleppo was then a major intellectual center of the Ottoman Empire, featuring many thinkers and writers concerned with the future of the Arabs. It was in the French missionary 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. At the age of four years, Marrash had contracted measles, and had ever since suffered from eye problems that had kept worsening over time. Hoping to find a treatment, his father had therefore taken him to Paris in 1850; Francis stayed there for about a year, after which he was sent back to Aleppo while his father remained in Paris. In 1853, Francis accompanied his father once again, on a business trip of several months to Beirut, where there was a noticeable presence and cultural influence of Europeans. Francis experienced similar cultural contact later on, when he received private tutoring in medicine for four years under a British physician, in Aleppo—he had by then developed a keen interest in science, and in medicine in particular. At the same time, he wrote and published several works. Marrash practiced medicine for about a year; however, deeming it safer for his trade to become a state-licensed physician, he went to Paris in 1866 so as to continue his medical education at a school. 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.

Around 1865, Marrash published Ghabat al-haqq ("The Forest of Truth" or "The Forest of Justice"), an allegory about the conditions required to establish and maintain civilization and freedom. This allegory relates the apocalyptic vision of a war between a Kingdom of Liberty and a Kingdom of Slavery, resolved by the capture of the latter's king and a subsequent trial before the King of Liberty, the Queen of Wisdom, the Vizier of Peace and Fraternal Love, the Commander of the Army of Civilization, with the Philosopher from the City of Light—who represents the author—as counsel. In this work, Marrash expressed ideas of political and social reforms, highlighting the need of the Arabs for two things above all: modern schools and patriotism "free from religious considerations". In 1870, when distinguishing the notion of fatherland from that of nation and applying the latter to the region of Syria, Marrash would point to the role played by language, among other factors, in counterbalancing religious and sectarian differences, and thus, in defining national identity. Although Marrash's poetical expression lacked the legal meticulousness found in works from Enlightened Europe, orientalist Shmuel Moreh has stated that Marrash became, with Ghabat al-haqq, "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." Yet, his views on freedom differed from those of the French revolutionists and of his Middle Eastern contemporaries; indeed, he considered pleading for freedom on the basis of natural analogy to be superficial, for even nature responds to its own set of rules, according to Marrash. As a consequence, nothing in the universe may yearn for liberty without satisfying essential rules and needs that guarantee its existence. Being one of these, the need for progress may therefore justify the abolition of any restriction that does not serve as a regulator for a good system. In light of this reasoning, and in reference to the ongoing American Civil War, he thus in Ghabat al-haqq supported the abolition of slavery. But the significance of this work also lay in Marrash's attempt to blend European thought with his own reading of the Christian belief in universal love. Indeed, he had tried to reconcile his philosophical understanding of the concept of liberty with his belief in the benevolence of the Catholic Church's authority. As stated by Nazik Saba Yared: He argued that only the spiritual kingdom [i.e. the kingdom centered on religion] could curb evil [...] and consequently guarantee the freedom of man. Love is one of the pillars of Christianity, and Marrash, like some Sufis and Romantics, considered it to be the basis of civilization, indeed of the entire universe [...]. Since love, for Marrash, was the general law, and freedom meant participation in that law, it followed that freedom would be inseparable from love and religion.

Dalīl al-ḥurrīyah al-insānīyah (Guide to Human Liberty), 1861. Al-Mirʼāh al-ṣafīyah fī al-mabādiʼ al-ṭabīʻīyah (The Clear Mirror of Natural Principles), 1861. Taʻzīyat al-makrūb wa-rāḥat al-matʻūb (Consolation of the Anxious and Repose of the Weary One), 1864—pessimistic discourse on nations of the past. Ghābat al-ḥaqq fī tafṣīl al-akhlāq al-fāḍilah (The Forest of Truth in Detailing Cultured Manners), c. 1865. Riḥlat Bārīs (Journey to Paris), 1867. Kitāb dalīl al-ṭabīʻah (Guide to Nature), c. 1867. Al-Kunūz al-fannīyah fī al-rumūz al-Maymūnīyah (Artistic Treasures Concerning the Symbolic Visions of Maymun), 1870—poem of almost 500 verses. Mashhad al-aḥwāl (The Witnessing of the Stages of Human Life), 1870—collection of poems and short works in rhymed prose. Durr al-ṣadaf fī gharāʼib al-ṣudaf (Pearl Shells in Relating Strange Coincidences), 1872—a romance with songs for which he supplied the tunes. Mirʼāt al-ḥasnāʼ (The Mirror of the Beautiful One), 1872. Shahādat al-ṭabīʻah fī wujūd Allāh wa-al-sharīʻah (Nature's Proofs for the Existence of God and the Divine Law), 1892 (posthumous). Writings published in periodicals:

Marrash often included poems in his works, written in muwashshah and zajal forms according to the occasion. Shmuel Moreh has stated that Marrash tried to introduce "a revolution in diction, themes, metaphor and imagery in modern Arabic poetry", sometimes even mocking conventional poetic themes. In the introduction to his poetry book Mir'at al-hasna' (The Mirror of the Beautiful One), which was first published in 1872, Marrash rejected even the traditional genres of Arabic poetry, particularly panegyrics and lampoons. His use of conventional diction for new ideas marked the rise of a new stage in Arabic poetry which was carried on by the Mahjaris. Shmuel Moreh has also considered some passages from Ghabat al-haqq and Rihlat Baris to be prose poetry, while Salma Khadra Jayyusi has described his prosaic writing as "often Romantic in tone, rising sometimes to poetic heights, declamatory, vivid, colourful and musical", calling it the first example of poetic prose in modern Arabic literature.