Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq

Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq was an Ottoman scholar, writer and journalist from Mount Lebanon, considered one of the founding fathers of modern Arabic literature. Born a Maronite, he became a Protestant in Egypt, where he lived from 1825, and from 1848 worked in England on an Arabic translation of the Bible, published in 1857. In Paris in 1855 he published al-Saq 'ala al-saq, a long, digressive novel drawing on his own life. In 1860 he converted to Islam, taking the name Ahmad, and in 1861 he founded the Arabic newspaper al-Jawa'ib in Istanbul.