Gibran’s knowledge of geography and history was not limited to his home town or the school route. His description of places, events, customs and history of the Middle East prove that he had visited those places. Gibran was twelve years of age when he came to the United States. After two years of schooling in Boston he was back in Lebanon finishing his education. During the summer his father took him all over Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. After four years of studying Arabic and French, he left for Greece, Rome, Spain and then Paris to do more studying. After two years of study in Paris, Gibran returned to Boston.
Among the places Gibran visited were Nazareth, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Tyre (Sidon), Tripoli, Baalbek, Damascus, Aleppo and Palmyra. These names are but small dots on the map of the world, but they must have had profound effect on the thinking, the writings and philosophy of Gibran. They are reflected in the mirrors of his soul and in every word he wrote. It is reasonable to assume that while Gibran’s feet were stumbling on the stones of Nazareth, he decided to write his book Jesus the Son of Man.
Baalbek is one of the wonders of the world; among its strewn stones and columns a man stands in humility, bowing his head to the skill, might and devotion of its builders to their gods. Baalbek was built east of one of the highest summits of the chain of mountains confining the Mediterranean; the cedar forest is on the west side of this summit, and Gibran’s humble home was a short distance from both of them.
Baalbek was the oldest and the greatest religious center of the white man; the Egyptian Pharaohs placed boats of cedar wood near their tombs to transport them, on the day of resurrection, across the Mediterranean into Baalbek. The god Baal was found in all of the holy places of the white man, from Babylonia to the Baltic Sea.2 The greatest competition to Jehovah came from Baal and his mother, Eshtar. Baal created the rain for everything living; but he was also temperamental and in his anger created storms, lightning and earthquakes. How could Gibran remove him from the mirrors of his soul when he gazed daily at Wadi Qadisha, created by the anger of this god? Who is to say that Gibran’s book The Earth’s Gods was not conceived on the cliffs of Bcherri, or amid the ruins of Baalbek? Within this book, Baalbek was the setting for many articles dealing with religion and mystic life.
Damascus, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, was the capital of the golden period of Islam. While Europe was in its dark ages, its rulers unable to sign their own names, and while numbers and science were considered the work of the devil, the Ommiad dynasty at Damascus was gathering learned men from the four corners of the empire, which stretched from Spain to India, an area greater than any empire preceding it. These men translated the works of the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans and added their own. The outcome of this labor was preserved and translated into the modern languages after the Crusades. In other words, the works of the Greeks were translated into Arabic and from Arabic into English.
Wandering in the streets and mosques of Damascus, Gibran realized the absence of pictures of the great Arab leaders. This was due to the fact that Islam prohibits the use of images. Before he reached the age of sixteen, Gibran studied the works of the Arab philosophers and poets, and to match the written characters, he etched a set of pictures depicting those men and women.
Among the cities near the birthplace of Gibran were Tyre and Sidon. They were the main Phoenician cities which Carried trade and civilization to the known world; they colonized and civilized Greece; they founded the city of Rome; they colonized North Africa and developed constitutional government in Carthage (this system originated in Tripoli, which is on the road between Bcherri and Beirut). It was carried thence into Carthage, and from that great Phoenician city was copied in America and became the great document known as the United States Constitution, under which Gibran lived to write in freedom for both Arabic and English readers. This small piece of land, the birthplace of Gibran, was the birthplace of Western Civilization and constitutional government, and Gibran was one of its blessed sons and the latest contribution to this great United States of America.
1. See the chapters on Gelgamish, Eshtar and Tamuz in the author’s book One White Race.
2. See chapter on Baal in the book, One White Race.
4. WORDS OF CAUTION
Lebanon or Syria?
Gibran is known as the man from Lebanon, but he wrote My Country Syria. This discrepancy creates a most vexing problem for anyone writing about the Middle East.
As guideposts we offer the following:
As rivers bring sediment into the sea, new areas of land are created and new cities follow the land; in that case one city is older than another. In the Middle East the bottom of the ocean rose, carrying its petrified fish to the summit of a mountain. All the land east of the Mediterranean was created at the same time; no one section of it is older than another.
Man roamed the land as a hunter in the Middle East and North Africa for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years. During this period of hunting there were no political subdivisions and man needed no passport to migrate.1 Europe was covered with snow until twenty-five thousand years ago. Hence it was not conducive to human habitation; a few handy savages lived in caves until the glacier receded. Then man changed his residence from a cave to a sur, or enclosure, and became a city dweller; this sur became the name of a city on the seashore known to the West as Tyre. This city, Sur (Tyre), and its goddess Suria, which is still worshiped in India, gave its name to the whole area east of the Mediterranean. As Sur was latinized into Tyre, Suria was latinized into Syria and included the mountains of Lebanon.
Those city dwellers developed a philosophy of the existence of the soul, its immortality and resurrection, along with the premise that the soul needed help or guidance in order that it might reach paradise (heaven). This idea was adopted by St. Augustine. Those city dwellers of Sur or Tyre, traveled with their philosophy to Egypt, Babylonia, North Africa and Europe; they conquered the seas, colonized and founded the great cities of Europe, including London. They were nicknamed the Phoenicians or “the believers in immortality.”
In the caves men developed the idea of fighting in groups to overcome the mighty animals; in the city they fought in groups to destroy each other.
The cave dwellers grouped together to protect a cave or a spring of water; the Suri or city dwellers built a sur to protect a city and an army to protect a country. Even now every country keeps an army.
What has all this to do with the nationality of Gibran?
It affects us in this respect: wars create new boundaries, new administrations and new philosophies of government. Hence the administrative divisions of Gibran’s country during the Roman period varied greatly at different times. The Roman Emperor, Hadrian, divided it into three provinces: Syria, Syria-Phoenicia and Syria-Palestine. Gibran was born in Syria-Phoenicia; Christ was born in Syria-Palestine.
One historian writing about the birth of Christ has said: “It did not appear that one born in the obscurity of a Syrian provincial village would be able to give a new date to history and change the religious belief of mankind.”
After the Romans came the Arabs, after the Arabs came the Turks, after the Turks came the French and the English. None of the armies of these invaders ever assaulted the mountains because they were treacherous, impregnable and not worth the cost. These mountains were like a besieged city; the armies would occupy the plains on the east and the cities along the seashore, and after a period of time the mountaineers would come down to join each new invader, bargaining but reserving for themselves certain rights and privileges.
When the Arabs conquered that part of the world from India to Spain and converted it to Islam, the mountaineers, Gibran’s ancestors, were able to preserve their Christian religion, a tiny island of Christians in an ocean of Islam.
When Turkey overran the country, it divided Syria into districts (Wilayah), naming for each one a governor with the title of Pasha. The people during the Turkish rule of four hundred years, refused to be assimilated by t
heir conquerors. Hence the country of Gibran remained its Achilles’ heel, and its numerous revolutions were supported by one European country or another until 1860, when a civil war broke out. England sent her fleet and France disembarked on Lebanese soil an army of six thousand men. After the landing of these armies, a special committee composed of diplomatic representatives of France, England, Russia and Austria convened in Beirut with the First Minister of Turkey. The outcome was the conferring upon Lebanon of an internal autonomy guaranteed by these European powers. The Sultan was to appoint a Christian governor for Lebanon and the European powers were to approve the appointment. This autonomous area included neither the plains of Bekaa on the east nor the cities along the seashores, nor even Beirut, which is now the capital of Lebanon.
Therefore, the people who came to America from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean were classified as Syrian nationals regardless of whether they came from Damascus or from the mountains by the cedars.
After the First World War Turkey was ousted and France received from the League of Nations a mandate over Syria and Lebanon, while England took over Palestine. Even then, people arriving in America were listed as Syrian nationals.
During the Second World War, Lebanon and Syria overthrew the French mandate and became separate, independent countries with full representation in the United Nations.
Therefore the words in Gibran’s book My Countrymen the Syrians include both the Syrians and the Lebanese.
Youth
“During the days of my youth I wrote enough prose and poetry to fill many volumes, but I did not, and shall not, commit the crime of having them published.”
Thus wrote Gibran to a friend. However, the admirers of Gibran are publishing anything and everything they can find. As a matter of fact, his best friend did the same thing while Gibran was still alive. Gibran protested, “Don’t mention to me my past deeds, for the remembrance of them makes my blood into a burning fire.”
This does not mean that all the early works of Gibran were trivial or unimportant, especially when we consider that Gibran died at the age of forty-eight (December 6, 1883 — April 10, 1931).
A word of caution: Keep in mind that many items now in book form were originally written in a letter to a friend or in an article to a newspaper.
Reprints
Most, if not all, of Gibran’s works have been through numerous reprints. Some of these reprints fail to carry the date of the original publication or the date and source of the material, particularly the Arabic editions, whose front page carries the year of reprint.
How can future biographers determine the time and circumstances under which a newspaper article was written?
For example, the Arabic edition reads: “Spirits Rebellious by Gibran, 1959.” The English edition, published by Heinemann, reads: “The Spirits Rebellious by Gibran, translated from Arabic; first published 1949.” But the introduction explains that the stories were completed in 1908.
Barbara Young wrote that the book was written and burned in the market place in Beirut between 1901 and 1903.
Quotation Marks
There are no quotation marks in Arabic writing. However, Arabic students of English or French do use quotation marks, often haphazardly.
One Lebanese biographer wrote some paragraphs in Arabic, using quotation marks, describing them as the work of Gibran. In reality, the quotation marks were meant to signify that they were figments of the biographer’s own imagination. In translation these marks were not removed. A biographer writing in English, especially one who is not familiar with the Arabic language, accepts the quotation marks as an indication that the statements are Gibran’s own saying and beliefs.
This confusion is unfair to Gibran, unfair to future writers and unfair to the reader. Therefore these words of caution become imperative.
1. See the book One White Race.
5. GIBRAN’S DUAL PERSONALITY
Man is the product of his environment. When Gibran was born, the economic conditions of the Middle East were bad and political conditions were even worse. For many years Turkey had been involved in wars, of which she was always the loser. Thus, the boundaries of the Empire were shrinking. Meanwhile, inside Turkey, the government grew more and more tyrannical. Minority groups in all parts of the Empire were abused and persecuted. It was true that the Lebanese were exempt from military service because of the local autonomy granted them in 1860 under pressure of the European nations, but it was also true that many families were moving from the cities into the mountains to avoid the dreaded military service. Many Moslem families changed to Christianity.
The whole Arab world became honeycombed with secret societies working to throw off the Turkish yoke. The Turkish government, trusting no one, systematically discharged non-Turks from government offices and replaced them with Turkish citizens; even judges were removed from their high offices. These secret societies even dared to send delegates to an Arab conference held in Paris. Many Syrian and Lebanese men from America attended the conference and made demands for reform. Many of the leaders paid with their lives. They were hanged in public squares for others to see and take heed.
Gibran, a young man in the United States and beyond the rope of the hangman, called his countrymen to revolt. He wrote articles for Arabic publication, using the words, “my countrymen.” These articles translated into English without benefit of explanations gave the impression that Gibran was calling the people of his adopted country of America to rebellion. Hence we find in Gibran a dual personality; he wrote in Arabic calling for arms, and in English calling for contentment and peace.
The following is an example of Gibran’s writing to his countrymen, published in translation without explanation:
My Countrymen
by Kahlil Gibran
What do you seek of me my countrymen?
Do you wish that I falsely promise to build
For you great palaces out of words, and temples roofed with dreams?
Or would you rather I destroy the work of liars and cowards and demolish the work of hypocrites and tyrants?
What would you have me do, My Countrymen?
Shall I coo like a pigeon to please you,
Or shall I roar like a lion to please myself?
I sang for you but you did not dance;
I lamented but you did not cry.
Do you wish that I sing and lament at the same time?
Your souls are hungry and the bread of knowledge is more plentiful than the stones of the valleys, but you do not eat.
Your hearts thirst, yet the springs of life pour around your homes like rivers, and you do not drink.
The sea has its ebb and tide, the moon its crescent and fullness, and the year has its seasons of summer and winter, but Justice never changes, never falters, never perishes.
Why, then, do you attempt to distort the truth?
I have called you in the quietness of the night to point out to you the beauty of the moon and the dignity of the stars. You arise, frightened, and unsheathing your swords, cry, “Where is the enemy — to be struck down?”
At dawn, when the horsemen of the enemy arrived, I called again, but you refused to rise. You remained asleep, at war with the enemy in your dreams.
I told you, “Let us climb to the summit of the mountain where I can show you the kingdoms of the world.” You answered saying, “In the bottom of the valley of this mountain our fathers and forefathers lived; and in its shadows they died; and in its caves were they buried. How shall we leave and go to places to which they did not go?” I told you, “Let us go to the plains and I will show you gold mines and treasures of the earth.”
You refused, saying, “In the plains lurk thieves and robbers.”
I told you, “Let us go to the seashore where the sea gives of its bounties.” You refused, saying, “The tumult of the abyss frightens us to death.”
I loved you, My Countrymen, yet my love for you distressed me and did not benefit you.
Today I hate
you, and hate is a flood that carries away the dead branches and washes away crumbling buildings.
I pitied your weakness, but my pity encouraged your sloth.…
What are your demands from me, My Countrymen?
Rather what are your demands from Life,
Although no longer do I consider you children of Life.
Your souls cringe in the palms of soothsayers and sorcerers, while your bodies tremble in the paws of the bloody tyrants, and your country lies prostrate under the heels of the conquerors: what do you expect as you stand before the face of the sun? Your swords are rusty; the points of your spears are broken; your shields are covered with mud. Why, then, do you stand upon the battlefield?
Hypocrisy is your religion; Pretension, your life; dust, your end.
Why do you live? Death is the only rest for the wretched.
Life is determination in youth, strife during manhood, and wisdom in maturity. But you, My Countrymen, were born old and feeble, your heads shrunk,
Your skin withered, and you became as children, playing in the mire, and throwing stones at one another.…
Humanity is a crystalline river, singing, in a rippling rush, and carrying the secrets of the mountains to the depths of the sea. But you are as a swamp with worms in its dregs and snakes on its banks.
The soul is a sacred, blue-burning flame, illuminating the faces of the gods. But your souls, My Countrymen, are ashes for the wind to scatter over the snows, and for the tempest to dispel into the deep abysses.
I hate you, My Countrymen, because you despise glory and greatness.
I vilify you because you vilify yourselves.
I am your enemy because you are enemies of the gods and you do not know it.
The day of reckoning came during the First World War. Turkey entered the war on the side of Germany and the troops of both countries occupied the shores east of the Mediterranean. This action was to prevent a landing by the Allies and, more important, it was to protect the railroad line that carried food to Turkey and Germany, preventing a complete blockade of Germany.