Discovering the History of Arabic-Language Press: An Exhibition at Nabu Museum

Newspapers and periodicals, published in Arabic in various countries of the world and collected by Jawad Adra and Badri el-Hage, offer a vision of the history of the Arabic-language press in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as in the diaspora countries. Through this exhibition – listed on the Nabu museum calendar until September 16 –,

we discover that the Aleppo poet and journalist Rizkallah Hassoun el-Halabi (1825-1880) was the first Arab to publish a political daily, Mir’ate al-Ahwal (The Mirror of Conditions). That was in 1855. Three years later, the Lebanese Khalil el-Khoury, one of the central figures of the Nahda, would publish Hadiqat al-Akhbar (The Garden of News). He “was the first to popularize a sense of Syrian identity,” according to historians Jens Hanssen and Hicham Safieddine, professor of modern Middle Eastern history at the University of British Columbia. Among the pioneers also, the Alepin Abderrahman el-Kawakibi (1855-1902), co-founder with Hicham el-Attar of the newspaper ash-Shahba’, as well as Daoud Bacha (1816-1873), first governor of the moutassarrifiya of Mount Lebanon and creator of Lubnan, official journal of the moutassarrifiya. The catalog published by the Nabu Museum also highlights “a distinguished group of visionary founders of the press who were originally the Arab Renaissance”, such as Boutros el-Boustani and Nassif el-Yaziji, as well as Khalil Saade who lived in Argentina where he published a periodical called al-Majalla, before moving to Brazil in 1919. He had a connection between his homeland and the Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian diasporas through a weekly periodical, al-Jarida.

The Lebanese Khalil el-Khoury, one of the central figures of the Nahda, published in 1858 “Hadiqat al-Akhbar” (“The Garden of News”).

Hundreds of titles

Several attempts were made in the 19th century to inventory the number of Arabic newspapers and magazines published in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and America. Badr el-Hage, writer, collector and curator of the exhibition, reports that Gergi Zeidan listed 147 of them, annotated in his newsletter al-Hilal (The Crescent) in 1892. In 1893, Mohammad Kamel el-Bouhaïri revealed another quarantine in the first edition of Tarablos (Tripoli). In 1913, the statistics published by Count Philippe de Tarrazi in his encyclopedia Tarikh as-Sahafa al-Arabiyya (History of the Arab press), give the following results: in the second half of the 19th century, 394 periodicals and newspapers were created in Egypt; about 55 in Lebanon and many others dispatched between Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Hejaz, such as al-Quds founded by Girgi Hananiya in 1909; Kawkab Afriqia (Algeria) launched by Mahmoud Kahul in May 1907; an-Nasr (Tunisia), a political, socialist and cultural weekly, founded by Muhsin Zakaria in 1910; or ash-Sharq al-Arabi, the official newspaper of Transjordan, published in 1923.

Among the publications, magazines which are interested in art and literary life, satirical magazines as well as newspapers of political information. In this collection, enriched over the years, we discover with curiosity the Arabic-language press published in countries where this language is not dominant, such as in Constantinople where one of the first titles was the literary daily al-Jawa’eb du famous Farès el-Chidiac (1804 – 1887). Financially supported by the Ottoman, Egyptian and Tunisian authorities, the newspaper was read in Beirut as well as in Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo or the Maghreb. It ceased to appear in 1884. His son Salim Farès (1826-1906) opted for London to found the Hurriyet newspaper there in 1894.

Indeed, because of their asserted anti-Ottoman positioning, some publishers left to escape repression. This was not the case of the Lebanese Abdel Ghani el-Arissi, owner of the newspaper al-Moufid, executed by Jamal Pasha on May 6, 1916.

An issue of the newspaper “al-Ahram” published on August 5, 1876. Photo DR

The “mahjar” press, vector of nationalism

Historically, France and the United Kingdom have offered a space of free expression to journalists and other intellectuals who have found refuge there. From the second half of the 19th century, several titles hostile to the Ottoman Empire appeared in Europe, such as Mira’t ad-Dunia, published in Hamburg, Germany, or even an-Nahla (The Bee). Initially published in Beirut, the newspaper began to be published from London, from 1876, after the exile of its founder Louis Sabounji.

On the other side of the Channel, the migratory currents from the countries of the Levant to the New World have given rise to the creation of numerous newspapers in Arabic. In the United States, from the middle of the 19th century, there were 52 newspapers and 27 magazines, including the literary supplement as-Sa’ih, founded by Abdel Massih Haddad, which moved to New York in April 1912. To this magazine , collaborated with a host of emigrant writers, notably Gebran Khalil Gebran, Éliya Abou Madi, Nassib Arida, Mikhaël Neaïmé and Filib Hitti (Philippe Hitti). Previously, Kawkab Amrika (Planet America) had appeared in 1888.

It is however Brazil which will surpass all the countries of the Americas in number of titles: 82 newspapers and 13 magazines, if one refers to the census of De Tarrazi in 1929, and this is how was created in this country, in 1894, the first Arabic newspaper in Latin America. Brazil is followed by Argentina (41 newspapers and 17 reviews, including the one published by Salim Abou Ismaïl from 1915). In Mexico, there are 15 newspapers and 2 magazines. In all the countries of the continent, the Arab press has played an educational and learning role with immigrant communities, integration and good manners, but it has been particularly a vector of nationalist ideas, such as the Syrian nationalism and Lebanese nationalism, and played an important role in “transnational political mobilizations”. Through this exhibition, we identify a wealth of discoveries, such as the presence of an Arabic-speaking press in Malaysia and Indonesia, where the daily al-Wifaq, edited by Mohammad Saïd el-Fattat, relates in its numbers the scientific Nahda and Islamic thought. In 1908, al-Marounia al-Fatate (Early Maronitism) by Youssef Khattar Hatem appeared in China. Nabu published a detailed catalog of the exhibition.

Nabu Museum, al-Heri, Batroun,

North Lebanon, until September 16, 2023.

Open from Wednesday to Sunday inclusive. Free admission.