The Woman's Voice Asks Our Leaders of Thought: Dr. Philip Hitti

During Dr. Philip Hitti's passage through Lebanon, on his way back from a cultural journey through the countries of the Arab East, India, and Pakistan, the magazine The Woman's Voice put to him a number of questions, particular and general, and he was kind enough to answer them — despite the narrowness of the space — with the frankness of the thinker and the precision of the historian.

Here we publish these answers, with our sincerest thanks.

Q — How does Princeton University contribute to the projects the United States undertakes to achieve rapprochement and establish friendly relations between itself and the Arab countries?

A — If there is any contribution, it is of the unintended and indirect kind, for political contribution is not among the functions of a university, if it is a university in the true sense. The true university has one principal aim: the ascertaining of facts, scientific and literary, the discovery of what is still unknown of them, and then their publication and diffusion — and it makes no difference whether this accords with the policy of the country in which the university stands or does not accord with it. Many readers know that Princeton University houses the only American department fully equipped for Islamic studies, including Arabic, Turkish, and Persian. The bachelor's student with us may, if he wishes, specialize in these three languages, in their literatures, and in the history and culture of their peoples. Likewise the doctoral student may specialize in them — something not available to a student at any other American university. Beyond that, the department of Oriental studies at our university takes up and treats most of the ancient Oriental languages: Hebrew, Syriac, Aramaic, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Indian. In our university library is a collection of Arabic manuscripts numbering no fewer than ten thousand, unmatched at any other university, American or otherwise. And we have an Arabic press on the Linotype, on which we have so far published a number of volumes in a series, some of them in English; the latest volume in it is an atlas of Islamic history, the only one of its kind. It is clear that our publishing of the treasures of the Arabic language and of the history and culture of its people, and our teaching of this language, beget in the souls of the students and of the American people a certain regard for the sons of Arabic, and smooth the path of mutual understanding — and this is what I mean by the indirect and unintended contribution.

Q — Can the small states not take a neutral stand toward the disputes of the great powers while preserving the friendship of both? Is not the neutral position the better one?

A — Yes, they can — on condition that they remove to Mars or some other planet. But with our Arab states lying in an important strategic zone between East and West, containing as they do the world's highways, the sources of oil, and the keys to Asia and Africa, and with both camps, the democratic and the communist, beckoning to them from close at hand and courting their favor, their bearing proclaiming "whoever is not with us is against us" — the opportunity is at hand to study the situation in the light of their own interest and to take a clear and decisive stand. And we must not forget that if a world war were to break out, nothing would be easier than the violation of the small states' neutrality by both sides. There is no doubt that the possibility of a hot war grows more remote day by day, and the possibility of the cold war's ending draws nearer day by day. A time will come, then, and perhaps soon, when the two rival camps will say to our Arab states — all of them small — "goodbye." By then we shall have lost a precious opportunity

to turn the international situation to account, one that may never return in our future history.

Q — What was the mission for which you were delegated on your journey to Karachi? And what are your chief impressions of that country?

A — My mission was not confined to visiting Pakistan and its capital Karachi; it extended to the Arab countries in their entirety, and to India. It was confined to communicating with the Muslim scholars invited to a scholarly and literary colloquium, the first of its kind, to be held in the second week of September at Princeton University, for discussions of modern trends in literature, education, philosophy, religious law, science, and the writing of history, as a result of the political, economic, and social changes that have come over the countries of the Near East and as a result of Western influence in the contemporary age.

Foremost among my impressions is the great number of Muslims in Pakistan and India, amounting to some one hundred million — that is, more than double their number in the entire Arab world. In these two distant countries stand the greatest of mosques, a single one of which holds fifty to sixty thousand worshippers at once. And in India is the most beautiful mosque in the whole world, the Taj Mahal at Agra. The Muslim scholars there write their books in English; the professors among them lecture in it and scrutinize whatever is published in that language and in the other European languages concerning Islamic studies and researches. They grapple with problems touching Islamic culture, its development, and its adaptation to the demands of the new age, such as other scholars of Islam rarely take up. How great was my astonishment when I arrived in Karachi and found the booksellers' guild giving a luncheon for me upon my arrival, attended by some thirty persons, and the society of Pakistani historians holding an evening in the house of its president, a former minister. As for the questions that some of these men, and some of the professors in Lahore, put to me — I do not recall anyone putting their like to me in the Arab countries.

Q — What success has your book "A Short History of the Arabs" met with? And how do your other principal works stand?

A — It may perhaps be said that this work has met with a success unmatched by any other of its kind in this age. This summer we authorized a certain institution the right to translate it into Bengali, and we had earlier granted the right of translation into Urdu, the language of Pakistan, even though one man in Lahore and another in Delhi had already translated the book into that language. Last year we permitted its translation into Indonesian, and this summer the Macmillan Company in London asked me whether I had corrections or changes for a new English edition.

As for the longer History of the Arabs, its most recent translation was into Spanish, in Madrid. Its Arabic translation is now in its second printing. And the reports indicate that the "History of Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine" in English will enjoy the same currency as its predecessor, the longer History of the Arabs.

Q — We have heard that you are preparing a general history of Lebanon. On this occasion we ask you: do you believe that Lebanon — in its present condition — can continue to play the cultural role it played in the past? And how?

A — What you have heard is correct. We are now at work on a special volume devoted to Lebanon. The raw material is ready, but years must be spent in casting it into shape and preparing the maps and illustrations for it. The work is arduous, taking in not only the historical ages but the prehistoric, passing beyond them to the geological era, and treating the geographical formation. And we have no comprehensive history of Lebanon to guide us. This summer and the summer before, I visited some of its museums and libraries in the hope of examining new materials.

The sons of Lebanon were the first Eastern people to knit firm scholarly and literary relations with the sons of Europe, and that from the late sixteenth century and the early seventeenth, when Lebanese students began making their way to the schools of Rome and elsewhere. Among these were the Assemanis, al-Sahyuni, al-Haqilani, al-Duwayhi, and others; some returned to Lebanon to labor in the fields of religion and education, while others joined the universities of Rome, Naples, and Paris, teaching, publishing books, and acquainting the West with the treasures of Arabic and Syriac. Lebanon was likewise the oldest seat of permanent Western educational institutions, such as the American University and the Jesuit University in Beirut. But the two world wars, and the universal moral collapse that followed them, left the sons of Lebanon in a state of intellectual and spiritual dissolution such as they had perhaps never reached in any earlier age. And what made the affliction worse is that a large measure of the country's best blood has drained away to foreign lands. This moral and intellectual dissolution is reflected in the political countenance. When the nation's civic morals have crystallized, when the political situation has come to enjoy some measure of stability, and when intellectual life has been centered upon firm foundations — then the thinkers of Lebanon will be capable of creative, original production; they will carry out their country's historic mission and reflect in their thoughts and their expressions the clearness of its air, the breadth of its horizon, the beauty of its views, the majesty of its mountains, and the sweetness of its waters, drawing their inspiration from its traditions and its history and from all they contain of the incentives to virtue, truth, and beauty that bring man near to God and to human perfection. And blessed be God, who created Lebanon and wrought it marvelously.