Farah Antun

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Farah Antun ( Arabic فرح انطون Farah Antūn , DMG Faraḥ Anṭūn , French Farah Antoun ; * 1874 ; † 1922 ) was one of the first Christian Syrians to openly advocate secularization and equality regardless of religious affiliation. He became known through his magazine al-Jamia and his public debate with Muhammad Abduh regarding different worldviews.

biography

Farah Antun was born in 1874 to a Syrian Orthodox family. He had three sisters and a brother. His father, Ilias Anṭūn, was a timber merchant in Tripoli , where only a quarter of the population was Christian. The family lived in a Christian area called al-Mina near Tripoli. From the age of 13 to 16, Farah Antun attended a boys' school in Tripoli , which was attached to an Orthodox monastery. The school taught Arabic , Turkish , French and English, as well as history , geography , mathematics and Muslim law.

After the school closed in 1890, his father took him on as an apprentice in his wood shop. For the next two years, Farah Antun traveled through Syria as a timber merchant , but quickly realized that this was no job for him. He then took a job as a teacher at the orthodox al-Madrasah al-Ahliyah in Tripoli . At the same time he published his first articles and began to translate French texts. In 1897 Farah Antun left Syria with Raschid Rida and moved to Egypt . Once there, he studied journalism in Alexandria while Rida, a Muslim, became a follower of Muhammad Abduh . Since both his father and brother died shortly after his emigration, Anṭūn's mother and sisters moved to live with him in Alexandria and from then on it was his responsibility to look after the family.

Farah Antun began to write articles for the newspaper al-Ahram under different names and to do French translations for his friend Raschid Rida. When the newspaper moved to Cairo in 1899, Antun got a job as editor of the branch in Alexandria, which was closed a few months later. He then published a magazine called al-Jamia , which was first published in Alexandria, then in New York and finally in Cairo.

Farah Antun died in 1922 at the age of 48.

Publications

  • al-Jamia : a magazine published twice a month in Alexandria, New York and Cairo from 1899 to 1909
  • al-Sayyidat wa al-Banat : a women's magazine that Faraḥ Anṭūn and his sister Rose published in Alexandria from 1903 to 1906

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Donald M. Reid: The Odyssey of Farah Antun, Minneapolis & Chicago 1975, p. Xi.
  2. ^ Reid: Odyssey, pp. 3-6.
  3. ^ Reid: Odyssey, p. 11.
  4. ^ Reid: Odyssey, pp. 3-9.
  5. ^ Reid: Odyssey, p. 11.
  6. ^ Reid: Odyssey, p. 13.
  7. ^ Reid: Odyssey, pp. 16-17.
  8. ^ Reid: Odyssey, p. 18.
  9. ^ Reid: Odyssey, p. 18.
  10. ^ Reid: Odyssey, p. 23.
  11. ^ Reid: Odyssey, p. 11.
  12. ^ Reid: Odyssey, p. 33.
  13. ^ Reid: Odyssey, p. 39.
  14. ^ Reid: Odyssey, p. 42.
  15. ^ Reid: Odyssey, pp. 122-128.
  16. ^ Reid: Odyssey, pp. 42-59.
  17. ^ Reid: Odyssey, p. 42.