Butrus al-Bustani

Butrus al-Bustani (Arabic: بطرس البستاني‎‎ / ALA-LC: Buṭrus al-Bustānī; 1819–1883) was a writer and scholar from present day Lebanon. He was a major figure in the Arabic Renaissance, which began in Egypt in the late 19th century and spread to the Middle East.

He is considered to be the first Syrian nationalist, due to his publication of Nafir Suria which began following the 1860 Mount Lebanon civil war.

Al-Bustani was born to a Lebanese Maronite Christian family in the village of Dibbiye in the Chouf region, in January 1819. He received primary education in the village school, where he attracted the attention of his teacher, Father Mikhail al-Bustani, because of his keen intelligence that he showed brilliantly.

The latter recommended him to the Bishop of Sidon and Beiteddine, Abdullah al-Bustani, who sent him at the age of 11 to the school at ‘Ayn Warqa, the most famous school of that period, to continue his studies there. At ‘Ayn Waraqa he learned Syriac and Latin. He spent ten years there and learned several foreign languages including French, Italian and English.

In 1840, after completing his studies at ‘Ayn Warqa’, Al-Bustani moved to Beirut and obtained his first employment outside of academia as a dragoman for the British Armed Forces assisting them in their efforts in evicting Ibrahim Pasha from Syria in the interest of preserving the Ottoman Empire. Later that year al-Bustani was hired by American Protestant Missionaries as a teacher and from that point on he worked closely with the Protestant mission in Beirut.

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