Published in: Adel Beshara (ed.) Butrus al-Bustani - Spirit of the Age (Melbourne: Iphoenix

Publishing, 2014), pp. 113-130.

Feminism for Men: A note on Butrus al-Bustani's Lecture on

the Education of Women (1849)

Fruma Zachs

Haifa University

Introduction

Butrus al-Bustani (1819-1883) is considered one of the leading figures of the

nahda, the period of transformation to what the Arab intellectuals termed a

civilized/modern society (mutamaddin). He has been described as a brilliant scholar, a

leading educator and one of the first to broach the topic of Syrian and Arab patriotism.

This article presents another, less well researched facet of al-Bustani's many

contributions to the nahda in its initial phase, and examines his approach to education

for women and their role in society and family. Through an examination of al-

Bustani's famous lecture, A Lecture on the Education of Women which he delivered in

1849, it shows how as part of a small but gradually growing circle of “pro-feminist”

intellectuals, al-Bustani encouraged education for women as part of their role in

modern Arab society and the homeland (watan).1 However, I show that his aim was

not to promote individual feminism but rather as a way of complementing opposites.

I argue that al-Bustani may have been inspired by the American discourse on

republican motherhood and Protestant educational religious theories that American

missionaries brought with them to the region in the 1820's. These theories stressed the

missionary notion of the Christian home. Nevertheless, al-Bustani infused this

discourse with Arab notions, culture and patriotism and shaped his own vision to fit

the society of the time to formulate what he considered to be a crucial goal for his

sectarian/heterogenic society educating women as a means to pave the way for a

modern Syrian Arab society and homeland.2

al-Bustani's lecture should be seen as part of the gradual evolution of pro-

feminist Arab men's rhetorical strategies that Michael Kimmel, a leading scholar in

masculinity, termed "feminism for men", a process that roughly paralleled, as in the

case of Arab nahda, the history of feminism in the second half of the nineteenth

century both in Greater Syria and Egypt. I suggest that al-Bustani's lecture should be

read as an initial part of this gradual process which also arose in response to a crisis in

Arab masculinity.3 This crisis in masculinity

4 was the outcome of the encounter

between Arab and Western cultures that created the need to renegotiate gender

relationships but at the same time preserve and change women's traditional role, to

come closer to fulfilling the intellectual vision of a modern Arab society. Thus, al-

Bustani as well as other intellectuals who were active in supporting women's

education believed that women should play an important role in building the Arab

society “…not only because women had 'an equal right to virtue', but because they,

like men, would be transformed by women's equality.”5

Historicizing al-Bustani's Thought

Debates on education for women and girls which can be found in the Arab

press from the mid- to the late nineteenth century both in Greater Syria and Egypt

were manifestations of an increasingly modern attitude towards gender but also

reflected a specific Arab gender schema. As a result of the Arab-Western encounter,

this renegotiation of gender relations was set in motion by structural, social and

economic changes that prompted debate on issues such as modernization, patriotism

and the re-construction of local Arab society and the family in modern times.6 Male

intellectuals felt the need to find solutions to safeguard their traditional/patriarchal

status while still promoting societal progress adhering.

This lively public discourse on women's place in society was also the outcome

of an ongoing process that began in the roughly 1830's. Like Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq

(1801-1887) and the Egyptian Rifa‘a Rafi‘ Tahtawi (1801-1873), al-Bustani belonged

to the first generation of “pro-feminists” who tackled these questions in the

frameworks of cultural societies, lectures, books and newspapers. These intellectuals

were also deeply involved in the issue of tamaddun (civilization, being or becoming

civilized, becoming modernized). Tamaddun, in the eyes of these intellectuals,

embodied the concept of an urbane and civilized way of living and hence was the

opposite of tawahhush (barbarism). These intellectuals saw themselves as the

generation of light and knowledge and emphasized that the transformation of their

society was not to be a mere imitation of the West but one in which selected ideas and

institutions from the West would be used as tools to advance their own society.

Although class and gender divisions were maintained, this generation believed that for

Arabic society to change from a barbaric society to a civilized one, women should be

educated, since women’s inferior status was the prime cause of the backwardness of

Arab and Islamic societies. These male intellectuals also considered that women were

the key players in this process because they were entrusted with the education of the

next generation who would shape the future of their family, society and homeland.

Arab intellectuals thus believed that the success of their mission required

assistance from women. They called upon women to participate in social reforms and

praised women's impact as moralizing agents on the family and by extension on

society in general. They claimed that women's oppression impoverished men, and that

support for women's education would ultimately benefit them as men and Arab

society as a whole. Hence women's role as the guardians of the home was extended to

the homeland. The traditional qualities of manhood based on family fortune and name

would thus also derive from character and by championing merit for men and women.

In this way these intellectuals' modern masculine role was reworked to shape the

home and family as a private sphere shared by like-minded virtuous men and women.

To define their own masculinity, these intellectuals needed to re-define the femininity

of their womenfolk and became “pro-feminist” in their support for women's rights to

education.

From the outset these intellectuals and reformists associated their stance on

women with other issues that they considered crucial for political, social and cultural

reforms. Key issues in their writings were education, marriage, the nuclear family and

ideals of domesticity.7 Men of the nahda mostly envisaged an educated bourgeois

woman as confined to her home, whose education was mainly directed toward

inculcating her children to serve the future generation of the homeland. Nevertheless

some felt that it was neither possible nor desirable to educate women.

The development of a discourse on women which became to be known as the

Woman Question was also visible in the changing definition of the term jins which

originally denoted “kind” or “species”, but during the nineteenth century was used

increasingly to refer to “sex”, by both men and women writers. Starting primarily in

the 1860's terms such as al-jins al-miskin (the deprived sex), jins al-nisa‘ (the female

sex), al-jins al-karim (the reputable sex), al-jins al-latif (the fair sex), al-jins al-zarif

al-latif (the gentle and fair sex), al-jins al-nashit wal-latif (the fair and industrious

sex) for women abounded in nahda discourse as did the occasional pairing of al-jins

al-da‘if (the weak sex) with al-jins al-qawiyy (the strong sex) or al-jins al-nisai‘ with

jins al-rijal (the sex of men).

Al-Bustani himself was one of the first intellectuals to highlight the woman

question and its terminology in Arabic writing. In his Muhit al-Muhit (Ocean of

Oceans), which was published in 1870 and was the first Arabic dictionary, the word

jins does not appear as a separate entry. However, in the entry for janasat he

mentions various colloquial uses of jins and speculates that the word originated from

the Greek genos (γένος - kind, race, family, birth or origin) and was used to denote

species (of animals) and races (of humans). He also provided the following example:

“…as they say the man (rajul) is preferable (afdal) to the woman (mar’a), or this sex

(jins) is preferable to the other.”8 This terminology suggests that the view of gender

in which men and women were viewed as opposites was already percolating through

intellectual circles in Greater Syria and by the late 1850s, and had begun to appear in

the periodical press. This view of gender accompanied al-Bustani's thought

throughout his life.

Sources and Influences

Jurji Niqula Baz (1881-1959) who dedicated his life to advancing Arab

women's place in society and wrote extensively on “pro-feminist” male figures of the

nahda noted that “He [al-Bustani] was the first to support the woman in Syria and the

first messenger (rasul) of Syrian women who called to teach and educate her…”9 In

Baz's opinion, al-Bustani's mother, who raised him alone (and was her only son), from

the age of five after his father's death had an important influence on the way al-

Bustani viewed the role of women in society. His mother disregarded the advice of

the Maronaite Patriarch, who recommended al-Bustani be sent to study at the

Maronite Seminary at Rome, which al-Bustani saw as a lost opportunity. Baz

suggested that al-Bustani's experience prompted him to take an interest in educating

women, especially those who prevented their children from pursuing their education

to keep them close by, as al-Bustani's mother did. 10

He also indicated that this was

one of the motivations for al-Bustani's his famous lecture on women's education.

As a youth, al-Bustani studied in the Maronite Seminary at ‘Ayn Warqa

School on Mount Lebanon. In 1840 he left the Mountain and went to Beirut, where he

formed close relationships with American missionaries, and eventually converted to

Protestantism.11

Al-Bustani was later employed as dragoman at the American

consulate in Beirut and in 1846 he was hired by the missionary school in ‘Abeih to

teach Arabic. In 1848 he was appointed assistant to the American missionary Eli

Smith (1801-1857) to help him translate the Bible into Arabic. He became a close

friend, as did the American missionary Cornelius Van Dyke (1818-1895). During

these years and in addition to his other activities, he delivered lectures, published a

number of textbooks and articles.

Al-Bustani's connections with the American missionaries' work in the region

constituted another parameter that may have shaped his thoughts on the place of

women in society. He apparently absorbed and was inspired by the American national

and civic discourse on republican motherhood;12

namely, that patriots' daughters

should be raised to uphold the ideals of republicanism to pass on republican values to

the next generation. He may also have been exposed to the more religious and

educational theories of the American missionaries that emphasized the notion of the

Christian home or the domesticity discourse that viewed the role of women as the

complementing opposite and the centre of the home and family, which were values

the missionaries taught and encouraged in their schools in the Syrian region.

Nevertheless al-Bustani's domestic discourse was a hybrid, complex, and dynamic

cultural process in which power relations were negotiated and re-inscribed, and which

drew upon multiple sources (both Arab and Euro-American) to constitute a unique

discourse, albeit one which bore an outward resemblance to similar discourses

emerging worldwide at the time.

al-Bustani's own family and home can be seen as the outcome of the

combination of the above influences, along with al-Bustani's own Arab vision. On the

one hand, and as the American missionary Henry Harris Jessup (1832-1910) wrote, it

was a home full of affection, decorum, and Christian refinement13

while on the other

it was the new Arab home al-Bustani aspired to, in which the wife is responsible for

preserving the Arab language, morality and culture, and overseeing her children's

education for the sake of future Arab homeland.

Al-Bustani's wife Rahil ‘Ata (1823/6–1894) whom he married in the 1840's

was a perfect complementary opposite who helped al-Bustani concretize his vision of

the modern Arab home. She was one of the first girls to have been educated in the

American missionary girls' school,14

which was run by Eli Smith's wife Shara

Huntington (1802-1836) 15

who has frequently been given full credit as the initiator of

female education in the Near East.16

Later, Rahil, at the age of eight, was “adopted”

(as a protégé) by Sarah and her husband, Eli Smith. 17

The main aim of Shara's school, as was the case for other missionary schools,

was religious. Eli Smith stated that his wife would not have had any interest in

schools if there were no connection between them and the saving of girls' souls.18

However, when Shara adopted Rahil she made it clear that “… a fundamental

principle in her education, from the first, was not to Europeanize her [Rahil], and

thereby unfit her to live contently and usefully among her countrymen, where she was

to have her abode.” 19

Shara herself was a dedicated missionary who was praised for her perfect

housekeeping. Her attitude reflected that of Victorian-era Westerners living outside of

their own society. This was the atmosphere Rahil was most likely exposed to as a

young girl. Shara's memoirs imply that in Greater Syria, missionary women were

shocked by the condition and lack of education of women and children, undoubtedly

because they failed to perceive the power exerted behind the scenes by women of this

region. Shara's outlook and activities also shed additional light on some of Rahil's

thinking in later years in her own home with al-Bustani.20

In Shara's missionary school Rahil studied what was required of an educated

woman at the time, as al-Bustani emphasized later in his lecture in 1849. This

included reading, spelling, geography, simple arithmetic, scripture, English and sacred

music. At Smith's house she was taught daily by Shara and improved her domestic

skills. She acquired a high sense of morality and became fluent in English and Arabic

and well versed in their literatures.21

Rahil read philosophical works in Arabic and

English as well as literary and ethical books – a love of learning she would later pass

on to her children.

Later when Rahil married al-Bustani she apparently applied some of her

missionary education in her home and in raising her nine children to be educated and

successful.22

At the same time she was very active alongside her husband in his

patriotic project al-Madra al-Wataniyya (the Patriotic School). In the 1860s al-

Bustani planned to establish al-Madrasa al-Wataniyya for girls, a project that never

came to fruition.23

Nevertheless, in the coming years Rahil helped him to improve the condition

of boys and girls in the region. In fact, and as Makdisi writes: “Together the Bustanis

embodied an almost ideal 'native' couple: an educated, literate professing Protestant in

the service of the mission wedded to a pious literati woman for whom building an

evangelical home and raising her Christian family were her primary

responsibilities.”24

Booth emphasized that Rahil was “…depicted as a paragon of the

elite reformist image of national womanhood. The perfect companion and mother, she

extended her domestic work to include the school her husband has founded. ”25

Al-

Bustani's used his personal life as a model of his vision of the role of women in

society.

From Saving Women's Souls to Saving the Homeland's Soul

Though al-Bustani was exposed to the educational activities of the American

missionaries, he fused the meaning of female education to the needs of Syrian-Arab

society. He gradually detached himself 26

from the American missionary community,

and developed his own take on Arab women's need for education.27

He in fact

mediated and interpreted these ideas in the context of modern notions on the place of

women in Arab society.

Later, in 1850's al-Bustani became an enthusiastic supporter of the tanzimat

(1839-1876) reforms and a proponent of Syrian-Arab patriotism, in part in reaction to

growing inter- sectarian violence, especially after the civil war of 1860 which broke

out in Mount Lebanon and Damascus. He aspired to a vision of a Syrian Arab society

and saw "Syria," as Arab rather than Muslim or Christian, and thus perhaps

represented one of the earliest forms of secularism which was to play such a critical

role in the way Christian Arab nationalism was to develop. He believed that women

would play a significant part in building Syrian-Arab patriotism as a key counterpart

to their menfolk. In the 1870's and 1880's, al-Bustani and his son Salim supported

women's issues, especially that of the new woman (al-mar’a al-jadida) and her place

in a Syrian Arab society in his periodical al-Jinan. As Sheehi put it: “He was an

ideologue inasmuch as he actively argued for the restricting of Syrian Arab society

along the lines of secular epistemology of 'progress and civilization'."28

As early as the 1840's al-Bustani promoted women's education in the

framework of al-Jam‘iyya al-Suriyya liktisab al-‘Ulum wal-Funun (The Syrian

Society for the Acquisition of Sciences and Arts) a cultural society catering to Arab

intellectuals and American missionaries that was active from 1847 to1852. Some

lectures delivered in the framework of this society dealt with the need to educate

women and children. As in Victorian society and American nineteenth century

approaches he emphasized the importance of women's education to help their

husbands, children, home and society. For example, the American missionary

Cornelius Van Dyck who praised the virtues and benefits of knowledge (‘ilm) stressed

the importance of educating children by both parents and guiding them to spend their

free time improving their minds.29

The American missionary Henry de Forest, who

delivered a lecture on the education of children, emphasized the importance of home

education and the role of women as primary caregivers. De Forest criticized the rate

of female illiteracy in the Syrian region and called for women's education.30

However, al-Bustani's 1849 lecture to this society entitled A Lecture on the

Education of Women (Khitab fi Ta‘lim al-Nisa’) is considered to have had the most

impact.31

Not surprisingly the lecture echoed the vision of the American mission and

conformed to a gendered missionary view similar to the idealized Christian family.

Nevertheless it went far beyond notions of the evangelical activities or the challenge

of the American Missionaries to present a cultural solution for al-Bustani's homeland,

and its divided society and nation, which were his main concerns. His lecture on

women's education represented the start of his gradual transformation to a more

secular/cultural vision of a modern Syrian Arab society, which became his main goal

for the rest of his life. Women were important factor in this vision.

As he would do later in khutba fi Adab al-‘Arab (A Lecture on the Culture of

the Arabs, 1859) whose main purpose was to awaken (inhad) a sense of pride in the

Arab language and culture, this lecture on women was designed to raise

consciousness (again using the word inhad) of the condition of Arab women, whom

he termed al-jins al-miskin (the deprived sex), and their right to education. Strikingly,

his call to educate women was made ten years before his defence of the Arab culture

and language, since he saw women's education as a vital way for Syrian-Arab society

to keep pace with the progress of Western culture. Specifically, he wrote: “In the

reformation of a nation, then, the first rung in the ladder is the education of women

from childhood. And those who neglect women and girls, and expect people to

progress simply by educating men and boys, are like a person walking with one foot

on the earth, and the other in the clouds.” 32

Bustani reprimand his audience and strongly criticized it by raising rhetorical

questions about the woeful situation of women in the Syrian region:

How many women in this region (biladina) know how to read? And how many

schools in Barr al-Sham were founded to educate them? Is it not true that the denial of

their humiliation and their lack of religious and earthly knowledge is equivalent to

denying the sun's existence at midday? Don't men refuse to mention them, or if they

do, they add “you are most praised” or “may your mention never be coupled with

hers” or other sayings, as though they were talking about an animal or a dirty horrible

thing? Are they honored or respected? Are they not engaged in the same tasks as the

women of barbarian nations? What are these women most interested in? Is it not

cosmetics, clothes and tattoos? Do we not hear voices of rejection of such things from

all sides? What do they know about raising children, housecleaning (tartib al-buyut)

or caring for the sick? How many vast superstitions do they believe in, despite the fact

that they are prohibited in religious texts…?

...Haven't books, journals (kazatat) and letters from travellers been filled with

descriptions of their situation? Does anybody who has the slightest knowledge of the

situation of children and parents not know more than I do and often grumble about

this burden, calling for the situation to be remedied? These examples are probably

enough in this context and I will not delve into them any further to avoid boring you

and since what I would mention is common knowledge. It is the expert's duty to look

more deeply into what has not been mentioned. Even though I beg men to restore

women's situation and rescue them from the depths of degeneration, I intend, through

this lecture, to motivate (inhad) women themselves to learn so as to gain in dignity.33

When complaining about men's attitude he writes:

It is surprising to see that many members of this generation, even in civilized places,

have neglected this sex (jins), are unwilling to elevate it from its primitive/barbaric

(mutawahhisha) state to one appropriate to an individual who has the same mental

capacities and can help them remedy the conditions of the people (jumhur) and the

region (bilad).34

How can we convince him that teaching her is comparable to placing an antidote in

weakening patient's mouth or pouring oil and wine on a serious mortal wound?35

In his lecture, Al-Bustani portrayed women as building blocks in a civilizing

process, who should be educated to become full-fledged members of a civilized

society. In this way he empowered the role of women. He believed as did other

intellectuals of his generation that the transformation from a barbaric society to a

civilized (mutamaddin) one begins with the education of women. In his opinion, Arab

women in Greater Syria were at the half way point between the civilized women of

Europe and the “barbarians” of the world; namely the women of India, Africa and

native America.

For al-Bustani, education was also important because women rear the future

generation. Thus he presented women as educators, not only naturally through

motherhood but primarily through devotion to childrearing as a valuable field of

knowledge that women must acquire. Similar to the notion of republican motherhood,

he saw a direct connection between motherhood and the state of the homeland. He

wrote:

…children drink knowledge and morals with their milk and sip water good

qualities, sciences and upstanding morals from the pure springs of civilization which

spread to their organs and are imprinted on them permanently.36

In fact, Bustani's concept of female education was based on a maxim which

he uses in the end of his lecture: “She who rocks the cradle with her right hand moves

the world with her arm.” This maxim would become a kind of a mantra among Arab

intellectuals in later years. In the lecture al-Bustani also detailed what kind of

education a woman should have. He stressed that civilized women (al-Mar’a al-

Mutamaddina as opposed to al-mar’a al-ghayr mutamaddina or al-mar’a al-jahila)

should be taught religion because it was their right, privilege and duty; they should be

taught their native tongue so that they can express themselves correctly, to write so

that they can communicate their views and feelings to those their voices cannot reach,

and to read to remember their duties, both secular and religious, which they tended to

forget when told orally. Women should be instructed in childrearing, he maintained,

since bringing up children was not an instinct, but was learned from experience and

observation. They should also learn domestic economy, serving, cooking, and care of

the sick as well as geography, arithmetic, and history. In other words motherhood was

to be professionalized. Al-Bustani also believed that women's education should

develop those qualities which would ensure their happiness in marriage and that they

should be educated to use their rational powers in their role as wife and mother.

Thus, al-Bustani called for a restricted and constructed Arab education, in

which women learned selected topics that were similar to the missionary curriculum

and purpose in the 1850's. This attitude also served to keep women from explicitly

challenging men in the public realm or exposing them to Western culture as a whole.

As al-Bustani wrote:

It is impossible to determine how much knowledge a woman should receive in

the aforementioned fields nor do I mean to say that women should limit themselves to

these fields. One virtuous woman aptly pointed out in a few words that women ought

to learn what make them wise but not arrogant, fortunate without the need of proof

and useful without a reputation, encourages them to know what is right and love what

is true, rectifies their thoughts, disciplines their mind, teaches them to reason,

compare, analyse, compose and organize and incites them to prefer the real and the

truthful over the modern (al-haditha) and the festive and so forth.37

Elsewhere in the lecture he explains that an educated woman should know her

place in society. Hence, she should be educated and changed but not so much so that

she puts the traditional patriarchal gender relationship at risk. Al-Bustani wrote:

…I say to the civilized woman (al-mar’a al-mutamaddina) that being a very

useful and important member of the group should not lead her to narcissism and

arrogance or compel her to belittle to her husband even if she is more knowledgeable

because minor issues should not annul the essentials. A woman's place in comparison

to a man's is known and she should not cross the line under any circumstances.38

Al-Bustani makes it clear that an education alone will not change the state of

women and thus appealed to turn the relationship between the couple in marriage in

which the man (sultat al-jins al-qawiyy) ruled his wife (al-jins al-da‘if) and saw her

as his property (mulk) into a complementary relationship in which the two sexes are

complementary opposites, each with unique virtues that the other does not possess. In

fact woman is the other half of man. He stressed that “It is evident that women have

certain qualities that men cannot exercise and vice versa but both share equal rights...

”39

Thus he emphasized that men possess greatness and magnificence, strength/power,

courage, determination and perception while women possess refined taste, tenderness,

humility and patience.40

In this partnership of marriage women are social partners and

their husbands' social equals, as well as in the progress of humankind. Not only was

the place of women re-defined but their educational abilities were brought to the fore.

This meant that the family as a unit took on an unprecedented social significance

because it was the only social unit that could be relied on to provide both moral

training and discipline to the homeland's youth.

The lecture did not include any discussion of the concept of self-actualization

or individual feminism for women, and no mention of professional or career training,

no political rights, but only the positive/moral goal of training girls to become

mothers who could have an enlightening influence upon their children and be a

perfect friend and companion to their husbands. Hence they could enable their

menfolk, society and the homeland to progress.41

Thus Al-Bustani, like other intellectuals of his generation, imagined new

relationships between men and women but not at the expense of traditional gender

roles. They aspired to reform the family through a reform in women's education

which would impact the family, society but also men as well.

He wrote:

For it is undoubtedly known that no education could exist amongst men if it

did not exist amongst women just as no educated women could exist in a world of

ignorant men given the relation and the mutual effect between the two.42

In the pro-feminist rhetorical strategies described in Education of women?,

women's rights were interpreted as women's duties to men. For al-Bustani, education

for women was not problematic as long as certain roles remained all-male preserves.

If women could be changed for the sake of their men, the latter could reform society.

This was one of the ways that intellectuals like al-Bustani could recruit women to be

involved the process of changing their society.

Al-Bustani was committed to the idea of educating women most of his life.

Twenty years later in 1869 he reiterated his call in a lecture entitled Khitab fil-Hay’a

al-‘Ijtima‘iyya wal-Muqabala bayna al-‘Awa’id al-‘Arabiyya wal-Ifranjiyya (Lecture

on Human Society and a Comparison between Arab and European Customs). In it, he

repeats his depiction of the regrettable situation of local women but his relatively

conservative attitude toward women emerges once again, and in particular his belief

that women should be educated but by no means in liberal way Western women are

educated which conflicts with the traditional and moral codes of Arab culture. Again

he attempts to construct Arab womanhood differently from European womanhood. He

writes:

One Western custom when saying hello involves shaking the person's hand

and lifting your hat to acknowledge the man or woman [you meet]. Kissing is not

common, but exists between women and sometimes even between men and women. A

man kissing a woman is considered an obscenity and is seen primarily on dance

floors. The dancers' gestures and movements are enough to shock an Arab, even if he

is westernized.

We hope that the Arab culture does not fall into this state of degeneracy,

although the Arabs are extreme in this respect in the opposite direction. Arabs do not

look up to women and men are reluctant to give up or give women the natural rights

the Creator endowed upon them. [They do not allow] them to take part in [the

management] of daily life, which would benefit both parties (men and women).

This is why women are in this difficult position of ignorance and misery,

whereas the history of civilization in Europe suggests that progress began after

women were granted a better status and better education. What we see as an

exaggeration by foreigners with regard to respect for women and giving them

preference in some issues is only one way among many used to raise the status of this

sex and thereby reduce the risks for the public which arise when women are left in a

state of ignorance and depravity as I mentioned in my lecture "On The Education of

Women. 43

The second generation of women in al-Bustani family in fact extended his

vision. Three of his daughter became writers. Idlid (Adelaide) wrote a short novella44

for al-Bustani's first periodical al-Jinan in which she appealed directly to her female

readers at the end, explaining that if both men and women read al-Jinan, men should

also read texts written by women like herself.45

Sarah al-Bustani, who was named for

Sarah Smith and who died in a young age, served as a scribe for an elderly woman.46

Alice al-Bustani (1870-1926) wrote a novel in 1891, which she published as a book.47

Conclusion

A-Bustani's daring lecture reflects early discourse on the woman question in

the Syrian region, which was delivered well before the Egyptian Qasim Amin's more

famous book, Tahrir al-Mar’a (The Liberation of Women) was published in 1899. He

prompted a new conceptualization of the role of women that straddled the boundary

between tradition and innovation, religious and secular attitudes, Western and Arab

ideals, and femininity and masculinity.

Al-Bustani's thought was the outcome of multiple influences but at the same

time authentically encapsulated the way his generation constructed the role and place

of women in a changing Arab society. In this sense, when al-Bustani expanded on the

American missionaries' view of women's education; he made it the lynchpin for

constructing his own stance toward Arab women's education.

Al-Bustani did not ask for a basic change in the relations between the sexes.

He offered a kind of social equality to women, but at the same time justified the status

quo. Though al-Bustani's position did not reflect equality in the modern sense of the

word, it did raise the possibility of an equivalence between the sexes that was

unprecedented for the time. His reasoning would form the basis for later discourse on

women's roles and rights. In fact, the next generation of intellectuals including his

son, Salim al-Bustani contributed to this debate, but in a selective manner that

adhered to the needs of their Arab society and local culture. Al-Bustani's lecture also

set the stage for the lively debates on women's rights which took place in the Arab

press of Greater Syria and in Egypt in the 1880's and 1890's. It would take some time

for the question of women's rights and political equality to be viewed as crucial;

however the notions put forward by al-Bustani clearly fuelled the debate on what

became known as the 'woman question'.

1 Butrus' son, Salim al-Bustani, was associated with the 'woman question' through his

articles, novels and novellas.

2 Historians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Middle East have

focused mainly on the practices and discourse of domesticity in turn-of-the-century

Egypt. Lisa Pollard, Nurturing the Nation: The Family Politics of Modernizing,

Colonizing and Liberating Egypt (1805-1923), (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University

of California Press, 2005), pp. 6-8; see also Beth Baron, Egypt as a Woman:

Nationalism, Gender, and Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p.

33; Mona Russell, Creating the New Egyptian Woman: Consumerism Education and

National Identity, 1863-1922 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 80-81, 84-

87; Hanan Kholoussy, For Better, For Worse: The Marriage Crisis That Made

Modern Egypt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), pp. 59-65; Cathlyn

Mariscotti, Gender and Class in the Egyptian Women’s Movement, 1925-1939:

Changing Perspectives (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008), pp. 57-76; Hoda

Elsadda, “Gendered Citizenship: Discourses on Domesticity in the Second Half of the

Nineteenth Century,” Hawwa vol. 4 (2006), pp. 1-28; Omnia Shakry, “Schooled

Mothers and Structured Play: Child Rearing in Turn-of-the-Century Egypt,” in

Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East, ed. Lila Abu-Lughod

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 126-170.

3 Most studies on Arab masculinities in the modern period have examined them in

connection with early nationalist discourses (e.g. Egypt and Iran) in the first years of

the twentieth century. This article refers to an earlier phase in which men dealt with

their masculinity through their discussion of women's place in society. For studies

discussing Arab masculinities in these periods, see Keith David Watenpaugh, Being

Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab

Middle Class (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006), pp. 89-91;

Samira Aghacy, Masculinity Identity in the Fiction of the Arab East since 1967

(Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2009); Lisa Pollard, “From

Husbands and Housewives to Suckers and Whores: Marital-Political Anxieties in the

‘House of Egypt’, 1919-48,” Gender & History vol. 2/3 (2009), pp. 647-699, and

Wilson Chacko Jacob, Working Out Egypt: Effendi Masculinity and Subject

Formation in Colonial Modernity, 1870-1940 (Durham and London: Duke University

Press, 2011).

4 For more on masculinity crises in this period, see Fruma Zachs and Sharon Halevi,

Gendering Culture in Greater Syria: Intellectuals and Ideology in the Late Ottoman

Period, forthcoming in Tauris.

5 Michale S. Kimmel, “From Conscience and Common Sense to “Feminism for

Men”: Pro-Feminist Men's Rhetoric's of Support for Women's equality,” International

Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 17 (1997), p. 9; See also Kandiyoti's

explanation regarding the emergence of the novel which suggests that this pro-

feminist discourse was the product of “the emergence of a novel male agenda which

did not necessarily have as its main concern women’s liberation, but rather their

own.” See Deniz Kandiyoti, “The Paradoxes of Masculinity: Some Thoughts on

Segregated Societies,” in Andrea Cornwall and Nancy Lindisfarne (eds.), Dislocating

Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 197, 198;

Marilyn Booth, “Woman in Islam: Men and the ‘Women’s Press,’ in Turn- of-the-

20th-Century Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 33/2 (2001),

pp. 171-201.

6 On the impact of the world market and capitalist development on Middle Eastern

women, see Margaret L. Meriwether, “Women and Economic Change in Nineteenth-

Century Syria-The Case of Aleppo,” in Judith E. Tucker (ed.) Arab Women: Old

Boundaries New Boundaries, (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University

Press, 1993), pp. 65-83; Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights,

Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York: Columbia

University Press, 2000), pp. 34-36; Akram Fouad Khater,“ “House” to “Goddess of

the House”: Gender, Class, and Silk in 19th

century Mount Lebanon,” International

Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 28/ 3 (1996), pp. 325-348.

7 Fruma Zachs and Sharon Halevi, “From Difa‘ al-Nisa’ to Mas’alat al-Nisa’ in

Greater Syria: Readers and Writers Debate Women and their Rights, 1858-1900,”

International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 41/4 (2009), pp. 615-633; Juan

Ricardo Cole, “Feminism, Class, and Islam in Turn of the Century Egypt,”

International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 13/4 (1981), pp. 387-407.

8 Butrus al-Bustani, Muhit al-Muhit (Beirut, 1870), pp. 128-129; the quotation is

found on page 129.

9 Jurji Niqula Baz, al-Nisa’iyat: Kitab Adabi Akhlaqi Ijtima‘i (Beirut: al-Matba‘a al-

‘Abasiyya, 1919), p. 52.

10 Ibid.; Stephen Sheehi, “Butrus al-Bustani Syria's Ideologue of the Age” in Adel

Beshara (ed.), The Origins of Syrian Nationhood: Histories, Pioneers and Identity

(London and New-York: Routledge, 2011), p. 58.

11 For more information on the American Missionaries, see Ussama Makdisi,

“Reclaiming the Land of the Bible: Missionaries, Secularism, and Evangelical

Modernity,” The American Historical Review, vol. 102/3 (1997), pp. 680-713.

12 See for more details, Rosemarie Zagarri, “Morals, Manners, and the Republican

Mother,” American Quarterly, vol. 44/2 (1992), pp. 192-215; Linda Kerber, “The

Republican Mother: Women and the Enlightenment-An American Perspective,”

American Quartly, vol. 28/2 (1976) pp. 187-205.

13 Henry Harris Jessup, The Women of the Arabs (New-York: Dodd and Mead,

Publishers, 1873), p. 136.

13 Baz, al-Nisa’iyat: KitabA dabi Akhlaqi Ijtima‘i, p. 52.

14 As early as1835 the school was operated under her direction and was successful

even though some of the older male missionaries were skeptical about female

education. Dana Lee Robert, American Women in Mission: A Social History of their

Thought and Practice (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1998), pp. 78-80;

Edward W. Hooker, Memoir of Mrs. Sarah Lanman Smith (New-York: American

Tract Society, 1845).

15

For more details on her life, see Christine B. Lindner, “Long, Long Will She be

Affectionately Remembered”: Gender and the Memorialization of an American

Female Missionary,” Social Sciences and Missions, vol. 23 (2010), pp. 7-31.

16 Although Shara Smith did not found the first girl's school, her arrival in 1834 and

her subsequent work in the region was a strong impetus toward female education. Rao

H. Lindsay, Nineteenth Century American Schools in the Levant: A Study of Purposes

(Ann Arbor, Michigan: Malloy Lithoprinting, Inc., 1965), p. 119.

17 Rahil's position in the family was midway between a daughter and a servant.

Hooker, Memoir of Mrs. Sarah Lanman Smith, p. 371.

18 Lindsay, Nineteenth Century American Schools, p. 120; Hooker, Memoir of Mrs.

Sarah Lanman Smith, p. 371.

19 Ibid.

20 Lindner, “Long, Long Will She be Affectionately Remembered,” p. 22.

21 Ibid., 377; See also, Marilyn Booth, “'She herself was the Ultimate Rule': Arabic

Biographies of Missionary Teachers and their Pupils, ” Islam and Christians-Muslim

Relations, vol. 13/4 (2002), pp. 427-448.

22 Ellen Fleischmann, “The Impact of American Protestant Missions in Lebanon on

the Construction of Female Identity, 1860-1950,” Islam and Christian-Muslim

Relations, vol. 13/4 (2002), pp. 411-426.

23 Baz, al-Nisa’iyat: Kitab Adabi Akhlaqi Ijtima‘i, p. 52.

24 Ussama Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed

Conversion of the Middle East (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2008),

p. 196.

25 Ibid., 437.

26

As early as 1854 Smith explained to al-Bustani that he was not suited for the

ministry since he had developed a more secular personality and was not essentially a

man of religion. Smith described him as intelligent person, one astute in commerce,

and a diligent manager. See Fruma Zachs, “Toward a Proto-Nationalist Concept of

Syria? Revisiting the American Presbyterian Missionaries in the Nineteenth-Century

Levant,” Die Welt Des Islams, vol. 41/2 (2001), pp. 145-173.

27 Fruma Zachs, The Making of A Syrian Identity: Intellectuals and Merchants in

Nineteenth Century Beirut (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2005), p. 223.

28 Sheehi, “Butrus al-Bustani Syria's Ideologue of the Age,” p. 74.

29 Cornelius Van Dyck, “Fi Lidhat al-‘Ilm wa-Fawa’idihi, ” al-Jam‘iyya al-Suriyya

lil-‘Ulum wal-Funun 1847-1852, ed. Yusuf Qizma al-Khuri (Beirut, 1900), pp. 27, 31.

30 Henry de Forest, “Fi Tarbiyat al-Awlad, ” Al-Jam‘iyya al-Suriyya lil-‘Ulum wal-

Funun 1847-1852, ed. Yusuf Qizma al-Khuri (Beirut, 1900), pp. 69-70.

31 Butrus al-Bustani, “Khitab fi Ta‘lim al-Nisa,’” al-Jam‘iyya al-Suriyya lil-‘Ulum

wal-Funun 1847-1852, ed. Yusuf Qizma al-Khuri (Beirut, 1900), pp. 45-53.

This lecture was published in 1852 as part of series of lectures that were delivered at

the society, and again in 1882 in al-Bustani's periodical al-Jinan.

32 Henry Harris Jessup, The Women of the Arabs (New-York: Dodd and Mead,

Publishers, 1873), p. 160. In this section I quote from Jessup's translation.

33 Al-Bustani, “Khitab fi Ta‘lim al-Nisa’,” p. 47. I would like to thank Tarek Abboud

who translated al-Bustani's lecture and also Adel Beshara who drew my attention to

this translation. Most of the translated sections from al-Bustani's lecture in this article

are based on Abboud’s translation. See also, Jessup, The Women of the Arabs, p. 159.

34 Al-Bustani, “Khitab fi Ta‘lim al-Nisa’,” p. 45.

35 Ibid., pp. 45-46.

36

Ibid., p. 52.

37 Ibid., p. 50.

38 Ibid., p. 52.

39 Ibid., p. 47.

40 “Al-‘A’ila,” Da’irat al-Ma‘arif, vol. 11 (Beirut: Mu’asast Matbu‘at

al-Isma‘liyan, ? ), pp. 470-473.

41 Lindsay, Nineteenth Century American Schools, p. 126.

42 Al-Bustani, “Khitab fi Ta‘lim al-Nisa’,” pp. 48-49.

43 Butrus al-Bustani, “Khitab fil- Hay’a al-‘Ijtima‘iyya wal-Muqabala bayna al-

‘Awa’id al-‘Arabiyya wal-Ifranjiyya” in A‘mal al-Jam‘iyya al-‘lmiyya al-Suriyya

1868-1869 (Beirut: Dar al-Huda, 1990), p. 214.

44 Idlid al-Bustani, “Hinri wa-Imilya,” al-Jinan vol. 1, no. 12, 13 (1883–1884), pp.

266–7; 404–7.

45 Idlid al-Bustani, “Hinri wa-Imilya,” p. 407. No biographical details are available

about her.

46 Christine B. Lindner, ““Making the Way into the Heart of the People”: Woman of

the Early Protestant Church in Beirut,” Theological Review, vol. 32 (2011), p. 89.

47 Alice Butrus al-Bustani, Riwayat Sa’iba (Beirut: al-Matba‘a al-Adabiyya, 1891).