This story was translated from the English by the woman of letters Mrs. Na'am Dawud, and published by the American Press, Beirut, in 196 small-format pages.
The reader will admire in this splendid, idealistic story many merits, chief among them the loftiness of its meaning and the grandeur of its moral. These two — the loftiness and the grandeur — may be summed up thus: that religion has its effect in the straightening of morals; that truth, and steadfastness in the truth however circumstances and conditions may turn, are among the greatest of virtues; and that the good example and the fine model are among the strongest forces that lead human society toward the good.
The reading of this story is almost a duty for every person who desires to spend his hours of leisure in what will profit him and yield him moral benefit.
This is a series for the teaching of history, of which its author, the accomplished man of letters Mr. Rashad al-Maghribi Darghouth, has presented us the four parts. There is no doubt that Mr. Darghouth's devotion to writing for the schools is a precious service to the school library, which lacks "a great many technical works." For he is the literary storyteller who has contributed, and still contributes, to the renaissance of the modern Arabic story.
Perhaps we can give no truer description of this series of books than the one its author himself intended and expressed in the introduction to the first part, namely: First — the simplification of facts after sifting them. Second — the omission of dates, except those that are decisive. Third — the cultivation of the patriotic and national spirit. Fourth — the cultivation of the love of independence, inquiry, and induction. Fifth — the study of contemporary history first, and then working backward.
May educators, then, take up this series, which has adopted a new method in the teaching of history, and give it its due of the attention it deserves.
Our need for a free platform from which Lebanese affairs might be treated was the most pressing of all our needs; and God provided us with Mr. Michel Asmar, who created this platform — indeed two platforms: one for lectures, which is the "Lebanese Nadwa," and another for publishing the lectures, which is the magazine
"Lectures of the Nadwa" — so that if some cannot manage to hear the lecturers themselves, they may turn instead to reading the lectures in the Nadwa's magazine. Thus he fulfilled a hope we had thought would remain forever orphaned.
Last year's lecture season was crowded with the men of Lebanon and with Lebanese subjects.
And the founder wished, this season, to go further and further in selecting the subjects that bear most firmly upon the Lebanese question, and in bringing to light its lines and the rules upon which it relies in order to pass through the storms and hurricanes safe and gaining.
He succeeded, in the end, in choosing two series of lectures. The first: "Building the Lebanese House," in which the lecturers, in succession, are Colonel Aziz Ghazi and Messrs. Habib Abu Shahla, Shafiq Hatem, Muhyi al-Din al-Nasuli, Musa Mubarak, Gabriel Menassa, Alfred Naccache, and Mrs. Wadad Cortas, and Messrs. Joseph Najjar, Farid Trad, Dr. Tawfiq Rizk, Fouad Pasha al-Khatib, Hamid Frangieh, Ibrahim Abd al-Al, Ni'meh Thabet, Henri Gemayel, Michel Chiha.
And the second: "Lebanese Faces," in which the lecturers, in succession, are: Messrs. Rushdi Ma'alouf, Fouad Haddad, Salah Labaki, Fouad al-Boustani, Colonel Ghazi, Mrs. Salma Sayegh, and Messrs. Salim Mubarak, Rushdi Ma'alouf, Edouard Honein.
The Lebanese Nadwa opened its season on December 1, 1947, and it will close on June 7, 1948.
Success, then, to all that the Lebanese Nadwa undertakes and to all that its founder Mr. Asmar undertakes — and to ever-growing success, God willing.
The absence of Al-Mashriq from the world of publishing is an absence felt most keenly by the distinguished Arab elite in this East generally, and in Lebanon particularly. And so it was, in fact, on the day Al-Mashriq disappeared at the outset of the last war.
The worthy Jesuit Fathers therefore decided to bring their Mashriq — the sheikh of Arabic magazines — back into print, and set over its affairs the learned Father Robert Chidiac and the great scholar Mr. Fouad Ephrem al-Boustani, to restore it to its first career in a dress in keeping with modern development.
We welcome the return of the venerable Al-Mashriq, bearing to us benefits which, did it not offer them to us under the direction of its two editors, it would at present be impossible for any other to be able to offer.
In the last three months there have appeared the first two parts of its forty-first year, carrying the choicest of articles and the deepest in study and research.
Mr. Mikhail Naimy sent his friend Mr. Albert Rihani the following letter on the occasion of the publication of "The Heart of Lebanon" by Ameen Rihani:
Dear Albert,
You were faithful to your brother, to Arabic literature, and to your homeland when you brought out "The Heart of Lebanon," and many readers of this precious tome will say to you what I say: "Well done, well done — bless your hands."
Hours of delight for soul and body were those I spent in the company of Ameen on his Lebanese journeys. In them he is the graceful talker, the inspired poet, the exacting historian, the sage who draws the lesson even from the most trivial matters and events, the wakeful traveler whom nothing escapes, going or coming, the witty narrator, the gentle critic, and the surgeon with the sharp scalpel and the shears, who does not chew things over and over nor wind about them.
And Lebanon — with its heights and its depths, its springs and its rivers, its boulders and its forests, with the dress of its inhabitants and their customs, their morals and their beliefs, and with its history from the dawn of history down to this our day — Lebanon, which Ameen loved with a love bordering on worship, unveils its true face in the pages of his book. There it is, in its fat and its flesh, its vital points and its workaday garb, its humanity and its divinity, its weakness and its might, its traditions and its superstitions.
I accompanied Ameen on his journeys, and I did not feel that I was in this world and he in the next, with a curtain between us that we call the curtain of death. Rather, his image was in my eye and his voice in my ear, as though he were present in every line of his book, in his flesh and blood. And that, upon my life, is the magic of the pen in which the blood of life runs, so that death cannot conquer it. Peace, then, be upon it and upon its master. And thanks to you, Albert.
Your friend,