Arabic under Shidyaq in Malta 1833-1848

Abstract

Information regarding Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq in Malta is scanty, but the fragmented evidences that modern scholars have collected are sometimes not properly investigated leaving, as a result of this, discrepancies that obscure the life and history of this Lebanese writer in Malta. Shidyaq (1804-1887), a Maronite, born in Ashqut, was also a lexicographer, journalist and a poet. His appointment in Malta started around 1833, when he was invited by the American missionaries in Egypt to assist Reverend Christoph Friedrich Schlienz at the Arabic press. There is not much information about Schlienz except that he was an Arabist, a linguist and above all an active propagandist for the Church Missionary Society ( = CMS) on an important mission in the Maltese Islands. This paper attempts to reconstruct, from the available information, some important events of Shidyaq's contribution of Arabic to Malta.