“Publishing” the Gospel, Reading the Nahda: Protestant Print Culture in Late Ottoman Syria

Chapter 2 turns to the American Mission Press in Beirut, which was a site of American-Syrian collaboration and a resource for Syrian Protestants to participate in the Arab cultural and literary renaissance. Locating the Nahda in Beirut within the context of broader nineteenth-century Ottoman reform movements, the chapter explores the socio-cultural contributions of Protestant men who wrote for the American Mission Press beginning in the 1870s. It demonstrates that these authors - including the nahdawi scholar Ibrahim al-Hurani - engaged in Nahda production not only through Arabic poetry, scientific studies, and other “secular” publications, but also in their writings on Islam and through press debates with Jesuit missionaries, Syrian Catholics, and Greek Orthodox leaders.