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 Ameen
Rihani
I-Biography:
Born in Freike, Lebanon, on November 24,
1876, Ameen Rihani was one of six children and the oldest son of a raw
silk manufacturer, then a flourishing local industry. In the summer of
1888, Ferris Rihani, the father, sent his brother and eldest son, Ameen,
to the United States and followed a year later. The young immigrant,
then twelve years old,
was placed in a school outside the city of New York. His father and
uncle, having established themselves as merchants in a small cellar in
Manhattan, soon felt the need for an assistant who would read and write
English. Therefore, Ameen, was taken out of school
to become the chief clerk, interpreter, and bookkeeper of the business.
During that phase of his life,
Ameen developed a genuine love for reading and became familiar with
the writings of Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Darwin, Huxley, Spencer,
Whitman, Tolstoy, Voltaire, Thoreau, and Emerson, to name a few.
Ameen had a natural talent in eloquent speaking, and in 1895, the
teenager joined a theatrical company. Two years later he entered
the New York Law School. A lung infection interrupted his studies,
and at the end of his first year, his father had to send him back
to Lebanon to recover. In Lebanon, Ameen Rihani taught English in
return for being taught his native Arabic language. During this
period he discovered Arab and other Eastern poets, among them Abul-Ala.
In 1899 he returned
to New York having decided to translate some of the quatrains of
Abul-Ala into English. He managed to do this while he was still
giving much of his time to the family business. The first version
of the translation was published in 1903. During this
phase he became a regular contributor to an Arabic weekly, "Al-Huda",
published in New York. He wrote about social traditions, national
politics, and philosophy. Thus, he began his extensive literary career,
bridging two worlds. He published his first two books in Arabic in 1902
and in 1903.
In 1905, he returned
to Freike. During an ensuing six-year period of solitude, he published,
in Arabic, two volumes of essays, a book of allegoriesand a few
short stories and plays. Additionally, he lectured at the American
University of Beirut, and in other institutions in Lebanon, as well
as in the cities of Homs and Damascus. He also worked, along with
other national leaders, for the liberation of his country from Turkish
rule. In 1910, he published Al-Rihaniyyat, the book that established
him as a forward thinker and visionary. As a result of Al-Rihaniyyat,
the Egyptian media hailed him as "The Philosopher of Freike".
The Book of Khalid was written during this same period of mountain
solitude and was later published in 1911 after he returned to New
York. The illustrations for this book, which was the first English
novel ever written by a Lebanese-Arab, were provided by Khalil Gibran.
In 1916, Ameen Rihani
married Bertha Case, an American artist who was part of the Matisse,
Picasso, Cézanne, and Derain group who frequently worked together
in Paris and in the Midi and exhibited their works at the Salon
de Mai. In 1917, Rihani met with Theodore Roosevelt, former president
of the United states concerning the Palestinian case.
In 1921, he served
as the only Near Eastern member of the Reduction of Armaments
Conference in Washington D.C.
During the period between 1910
and 1922, Rihani became remarkably involved politically
while continuing to pursue a productive literary life. Among the
books that he published during that period were Zanbakat-ul-Ghawr
- a novel in Arabic, The Luzumiyyat - a translation of Arabic poetry
into English, The Path of Vision - essays in English, A Chant of
Mystics - poetry in English. In 1922, Rihani traveled throughout
Arabia, meeting and getting better acquainted with its rulers. He
was the only traveler at that time, European or Arab, to have covered
that whole territory in one trip. Between 1924 and 1932, he wrote
and published six books in English and Arabic related to the trips
he made to Arabia. During that same time, he also published another
four books in Arabic, and delivered numerous
speeches in Lebanon, in the Arab World, and in the United States.
During the last eight years
of his life, Ameen Rihani wrote the remainder of his books,
continued to be active in his political, literary, and philosophical
endeavors, and maintained close contact with several political leaders,
poets, writers, scholars, and artists. Ameen Rihani passed away
at the age of 64 in 1940 in Freike, Lebanon. The news of his death
was broadcast to many parts of the world. Representatives of Arab
kings and rulers and of foreign diplomatic missions attended the
funeral. He was laid to rest in the Rihani Family
Mausoleum in Freike.
II- Some extracts of Rihani's work:
From The Book of Khalid (1911):
>Book
Khaled or Khalid Arabic Article (extracts)<
Why this inflated conception of thy Me, when an infusion of poppy
seeds might lull it to sleep, even to stupefaction? What avails
thy logic when a little of the Mandragora can melt the material
universe into golden, unfolding infinities of dreams? Why take thyself
so seriously when a leaf of henbane, taken by mistake in thy salad,
can destroy thee? But the soul is the source of both health and
disease. And life, therefore, is either a healthy or a diseased
state
of the soul
... To graft the strenuosity of Europe
and America upon the ease of the Orient, the materialism of the West
upon the spirituality of the East, -- this to us seems to be the
principal aim of Khalid.
... The spiritual and natural are so
united, so inextricably entwined around each other,
that I can not conceive of them separately, independently. And both in
the abstract
sense are meaningless and ineffectual without Consciousness. They are
blind, dumb forces, beautiful, barbaric pageants, careering without aim
or design through the immensities of No-where and No-time, if they are
not impregnated and nourished with Thought, that is to say, with
Consciousness, vitalized and purified. You may impregnate them with
philosophy, nourish them with art; they both arise from them, and remain
as skidding clouds, as shining mirages, as wandering dust, until they
find their exponent in Man.
From A Chant of Mystics (1921):
We are filled with the water that heals, and though sealed, we are
free;
We are not from the East or the West, no boundaries exist in our
breast, we are free;
We are not made of dust or of dew, we are not of the earth or the
blue, we are free.
Whirl, whirl, whirl, till the world is
the size of a pearl
Dance, dance, dance, till the world's like the point of a lance
Soar, soar, soar, till the world is no more.
From The Path of Vision (1921):
This is the highest, noblest form of spirituality -- the divine
essence, which can be attained only by those who follow devotedly
the path of vision, those who seek the light that bridges between
eye and soul, and without which there can be no vision.
....And then it will dawn upon him that
to give without expecting a return of any kind, immediate or distant, is
as natural as to accept the gifts of the sun and the air and the
mountain streams.
Indeed, we can be religious without being
conscious of it; we can be religious without religiosity. To invest our
heart-capital in the inherent goodness of humanity, to save a drowning
swimmer, as Thoreau says, and go our way; this is the practical workaday
spirituality which either points to us the path of vision or unfolds
before us, according to our degree of enlightenment, one or more of its
hidden secrets, which is a reward greater and more enduring than
anything the world can give.
It is the harmony we achieve within us;
the satisfaction we feel in a healthy, strength-giving reaction; the
knowledge and power that every noble, unselfish deed affords; the only
reward after all, in our triumphs and our consolation in defeat. Nay,
there is no such thing as defeat for those who achieve harmony within.
There is no such thing as disappointment for those who continue to
cherish the selflessness of which is born the noblest inner self. There
is no such thing as failure for those who invest in the potentialities
of the Ideal of the Soul.
And no matter how humble and obscure, how poor or how rich in the
material things of
the earth, the spiritually-bound and spiritually-directed of men, though
they may not
be counted among the great of history, are the only true heroes of the
race, the agents
of World-Spirit.
>Order the Book Heart of Lebanon by Ameen Rihani
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