Antun Sa'ada

Antun Sa'ada

Antun Sa'ada ( Arabic أنطون سعادة Antūn Saʿāda , DMG Anṭūn Saʿāda , French Antoun Saadé , surname sometimes also Saadeh , Saada or Sa'adah ; * March 1, 1904 in Dhur al-Shuwair , Lebanon ; † July 8, 1949 in Beirut , Lebanon) was aLebanese journalist , writer , political activist and founder of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party from a Greek Orthodox family.

Life

In his early childhood he lived in Egypt , where he attended the "Frères" school in Cairo . After his mother's death, he returned to Lebanon and continued his studies at the Brummana School . In 1919 he emigrated with his siblings and his uncle to the USA and later to Brazil , where his father Chalil Sa'ada, who was also a journalist, found work.

He learned Portuguese , German and Russian in Brazil and deepened his knowledge of philosophy , history , sociology and politics . Then he and his father took part in the publication of the newspapers "Al-Djarida" and "Al-Madjalla".

His first article appeared when he was 18 years old. Between 1922 and 1923 he published several essays in which he called for the end of French colonization and the independence of Syria. He criticized the program of Zionism and its danger to the Syrian nation. He attacked the Balfour Declaration of November 1917, in which the then British Foreign Minister Balfour promised Great Britain's support for the establishment of a national home for Jews in Palestine , as well as the Sykes-Picot Agreement , which provided for the division of historical Syria between France and Great Britain .

In 1925 he tried a party called " Young Syrian Freedom Fighters " (الشبيبة الفدائية السورية) in Brazil, but was unsuccessful. In 1927 he then founded the " Party of the Free Syrians " (حزب السوريّين الأحرار), which only existed for three years.

From 1928 he taught at some Syrian institutes in São Paulo . During this time he wrote his novel "Fādschiʿat hubb" (فاجعة حب'Love Tragedy'), and in 1931 he published his second novel, “Sayyidat Saydnāyā” , named after the monastery of Our Lady of Saidnaya (سيّدة صيدنايا).

He returned to Lebanon in 1930 and began teaching German at the American University of Beirut (AUB) in 1931 . At the AUB he founded the " Syrian Social Nationalist Party " with five students in 1932 (الحزب السوريّ القوميّ الاجتماعيّ). The party worked and secretly spread among students and intellectuals. In 1936 the French mandate authority arrested Sa'ada. He was sentenced to six months in prison for his underground activities and plans to overthrow the government. In prison he wrote his book "Nushūʾ al-Umam" (نشوء الأمم 'The Origin of Nations'), the first edition of which appeared in 1938.

He left prison on May 12, 1936, but the Mandate Authority arrested him twice after that. He founded the newspaper "an-Nahda" (النهضة) in 1937 and used it as a forum to publicize his ideology. His criticisms of the Maronite Patriarch and the denominational parties in Lebanon and Damascus attracted a great deal of attention. In 1938, Sa'ada made a tour of Jordan, Palestine, Cyprus, Germany and Brazil to visit his party's offices abroad. He left Brazil for Argentina and stayed there until 1947. In 1947 he finally returned to Lebanon. After several arguments with the Lebanese government, he declared his revolution against the government on July 4, 1949 and went to Damascus to ask for support from Syrian President Husni az-Za'im . However, Az-Za'im extradited him to the Lebanese government on July 6, which sentenced him to death within 24 hours . He was born on July 8, 1949 executed . His widow Juliet al-Mir was arrested after an SSNP supporter murdered Adnan al-Malki , the Syrian Army's deputy chief of staff , in 1955, and was only released after the Ba'ath Party came to power in 1963.

The key points of his political program were the separation of state and religion and the reunification of a historical Syria, which after him consisted of Lebanon , Syria , Iraq , Kuwait , Jordan , Palestine and Cyprus . He was an opponent of Arab nationalism and Islamism. For him there were four Arab nations: Syria, Egypt (including Sudan ), Morocco (or Maghreb ) and Saudi Arabia (or Yemen, the Emirates and Oman). He also argued that Syria was historically, culturally and geographically different from the rest of the Arab world. He viewed the Syrian nation as a creative mix of cultural peoples from the time of the Sumerians , Canaanites , Phoenicians to the Arabs . His reasoning found fertile soil among intellectuals and encouraged Reformation, cultural and literary movements such as Phoenicianism .

Literary works

• Nushūʾ al-Umam (نشوء الأمم 'The Origin of Nations'), 1938
• Al-Islām fī risālataihi l-masīhiyya wa-l-muhammadiyya (الإسلام في رسالتيه المسيحية والمحمدية 'Islam in its two missions: Christianity and Mohammedan'), Beirut, 1958
• As-Sirāʿ al- fikrī fī l-adab as-sūrī (الصراع الفكري في الأدب السوري 'The Intellectual Conflict in Syrian Literature'), Beirut 1955.
• Fādschiʿat hubb (فاجعة حب 'Love Tragedy'), 1928
• Sayyidat Saydnāyā (سيّدة صيدنايا 'Our Lady Saydnaya'), novel, 1931

Primary sources

• Antun Sa'adah: Al-Muhādarat al-ʿaschr (المحاضرات العشر 'The ten lectures'), AUB, Beirut 1950
• Al-Islām fī risālataihi l-masīhiyya wa-l-muhammadiyya (الإسلام في رسالتيه المسيحية والمحمدية 'Islam in its two missions: Christianity and Islam'), Beirut 1958
• Separation of state and religion: a prerequisite for the unity of the nation. arab. Beirut 1972, German in Andreas Meier (Hrsg.): The political order of Islam. Programs and Criticism between Fundamentalism and Reforms. Original voices from the Islamic world. Peter Hammer Verlag , Wuppertal 1994 ISBN 3872946161 pp. 144–151 (with introduction to the publisher)

literature

• Adonis : Hâ anta ayyuha l-waqt (“There you are, time”). Damascus 1993.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Juliet al-Meer, the widow of Antune Saada, who was arrested in 1954 after the SSNP assassinated Adnan al-Malki, the deputy chief. ( Memento from November 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: The Online Museum of Syrian History.