Phillip Hitti

Philip Khuri Hitti (Arabic: فيليب خوري حتي), (Shimlan 1886 - Princeton 1978) was a Lebanese American scholar, and authority on Arab and Middle Eastern history, Islam, and Semitic languages. He almost single-handedly created the discipline of Arabic Studies in the United States.

Hitti was born in Ottoman Lebanon into a Maronite Christian family, in the village of Shemlan some 25 km southeast from Beirut, up in the Christian-majority Mount Lebanon.

He was educated at an American Presbyterian mission school at Suq al-Gharb and then at the American University of Beirut (AUB). After graduating in 1908 he taught at the American University of Beirut before moving to Columbia University where he earned his PhD in 1915 and taught Semitic languages. After World War I he returned to AUB and taught there until 1926. In February 1926 he was offered a Chair at Princeton University, which he held until he retired in 1954. During World War II, he taught Arabic to serviceman at Princeton through the Army Specialized Training Program (including future Ambassador Rodger Paul Davies). Hitti was both Professor of Semitic Literature and Chairman of the Department of Oriental Languages. After formal retirement he accepted a position at Harvard University. He also taught in the summer schools at the University of Utah and George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He subsequently held a research position at the University of Minnesota.

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