Philip Khuri Hitti

Philip Khuri Hitti (born June 24, 1886 in Shemlan , today's Lebanon , † December 24, 1978 in Princeton ) was an American scholar of Islam of Lebanese origin.

Hitti, a Maronite Christian , trained at the American Presbyterian School of Mission in Suq al-Gharb and at the American University of Beirut . After graduating in 1908, he taught at the American University of Beirut before going to Columbia University , where he taught Semitic languages and received his PhD in 1915 . After the First World War he returned to the American University of Beirut and taught there until 1926. In February 1926 he was given a chair at Princeton Universitywhich he occupied until his retirement in 1954. He was both professor of Semitic literature and chairman of the Department of Oriental Languages. After he officially retired, he accepted a position at Harvard . He also taught at the summer schools of the University of Utah and George Washington University in Washington, DC He then held a research position at the University of Minnesota . Philip Hitti created the discipline of Arabic studies in the United States almost single-handedly. His best-known work is his History of the Arabs , which had ten editions with many editions.

In 1945 he served as an advisor to the Arab delegation at the San Francisco Peace Conference , which founded the United Nations .

Hitti said in 1946 in the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry about the Palestinian question: "There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not".

The astronaut and teacher Christa McAuliffe , who died in the explosion of the space shuttle " Challenger " in 1986 , was a great niece of Philip Hitti.

Publications (selection)

• The Syrians in America . George H. Doran, New York 1924 ( at Internet Archive )
• The origins of the Druze people and religion: with extracts from their sacred writings . 1928
• An Arab-Syrian Gentlemen in the Period of the Crusades. Memoirs of Usamah ibn-Munqidh . 1929; Reissued by Columbia University Press, New York 2000, ISBN 0-231-12124-5
• History of the Arabs . Macmillan, London 1937; 10. Revised edition with a new foreword by Walid Khalidi in Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2002, ISBN 0-333-63141-2
• History of Syria: including Lebanon and Palestine . Macmillan, New York 1951
• Syria. A short history. The Macmillan Company, New York 1959 ( at Wikisource )
• The Arabs . 1960
• The Near East in History. A 5000 year story . van Nostrand, Princeton 1961
• Islam and the West . 1962
• Lebanon in History . Macmillan, London 1967
• Makers of Arab History . Macmillan, London 1968
• Islam. A way of life . 1970
• Capital cities of Arab Islam . 1973

See also

• List of well-known Arabists

literature

• Robert S. Lopez, Kenneth M. Setton, SD Goitein : Memoirs of Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the Mediaeval Academy of America. Philip K. Hitti , in: Speculum 54 (1979) 655-656 jstor .
• Bayly Winder: Philipp Khuri Hitti (1886-1978): A Homage. In: Eric James Hooglund (Ed.): Crossing the waters. Arabic-speaking immigrants to the United States before 1940. Washington, Smithsonian Institution Press 1987, pp. 147-160

Web links

• Literature by and about Philip Khuri Hitti in the catalog of the German National Library
• Immigration History Research Center
• A Talk With Philip Hitti conversation about his work history of the Arabs (Engl.)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hearing before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Washington DC, State Department, January 11, 1946