Correspondence with Syrian friends and colleagues

Smith exchanged letters not only with the ABCFM and prominent scholars in Eu-rope and the United States. Numerous Arabic letters in the ABCFM archive attest to the missionary’s lively correspondence within Syria, including with the mission’s native helpers.²³⁷ The loose and unsorted collection, which thus far has attracted little notice, contains drafts of letters from Smith himself, providing a glimpse into his thoughts as well as his knowledge of Arabic. A comparable collection of letters does not exist for any other ABCFM missionary in Syria. This does not mean, how-ever, that Smith was an anomaly. In addition to the personal and professional letters that the missionaries regularly sent home, there was also a lively correspondence within the Protestant community in Syria, as C^hriStine l^indner describes:

The exchange of letters was an important medium through which members of the Protestant Circle constructed and strengthened their community. The use of letters to convey information was not a new concept introduced by the ABCFM missionaries to Ottoman Syria. Rather the novelty of the Protestants’ letter writing resided in their wide-spread use of letters, for written correspondences were exchanged by most members of the Circle, not just its elite members.²³⁸

It is well known that Van Dyck corresponded with the Damascus historian Mikhaʾil Mishaqa.²³⁹ Henry Harris Jessup reported that he exchanged letters in Arabic with

235 Prof. Dr. R. Anger, authorized representative of the DMG library (Leipzig, April 15, 1853):

ABC 60, Box 1 (20), (HHL).

236 Rödiger to Smith (Halle, October 12, 1848): ABC 60 (65), (HHL). The letter shows that Smith helped Rödiger gather materials on modern Syriac, which Rödiger wanted to use for the publi-cation of a “grammatical-lexical portrait of the language.”

237 An additional archival collection, including family letters and private photographs, was assem-bled by Eli Smith’s great-granddaughter Margaret Russell Leavy. It is located at the Yale Divin-ity School in New Haven, Connecticut. See Guide to the Eli Smith Family Papers, accessed July 2016, http://drs.library.yale.edu/HLTransformer/HLTransServlet?stylename=yul.ead2002.

xhtml.xsl&pid=divinity:124&clear-stylesheet-cache=yes.

In 1845, Smith wrote to Anderson that he needed a break and wanted to travel to the United States, since he had composed around one hundred letters and documents since the past Octo-ber. See ABC 16.8.1., Vol. 3 (102).

238 Lindner, “Negotiating the Field,” 127. Some letters from Syrian Protestants were translated for the Missionary Herald: for example, MH 25 (1829), in: ROS 2, 170–74; MH 27 (1831), in:

ROS 2, 272–73. Smith’s papers in the Harvard Houghton Library include a handwritten, Ara-bic-language text, in which Elyas Fawaz and Jacob Gregory Wortabet describe their work as Protestant preachers in Sidon in 1828. See ABC 50, Box 1 (HHL).

239 Smith to Mishaqa (April 16, 1849): ABC 50, Box 1 (HHL); Van Dyck to Anderson (ʿAbeih, July 28, 1851): ABC 16.8.1., Vol. 5 (323).

“Abu Selim” – that is, with Butrus al-Bustani, the father of Selim: “A missionary who cannot himself write a letter in the vernacular is greatly crippled and embar-rassed in his work.”²⁴⁰

Eli Smith stayed in touch with the native Protestants Antonius Yanni,²⁴¹ Shahin Barakat,²⁴² Muhammad Qasim,²⁴³ Suleiman al-Salibi,²⁴⁴ as well as his colleagues Elyas Fawaz,²⁴⁵ Tannus al-Haddad,²⁴⁶ Nasif al-Yaziji, Butrus al-Bustani. Mikhaʾil Mishaqa, and John Wortabet. Only in a few cases, as with Wortabet or Bustani, were English letters exchanged.²⁴⁷ Such letters generally discussed the well-being of family members, the progress of missionary work, the exchange of books and other materials, or negative experiences with the mission’s opponents. Correspond-ence with Bustani often discussed next steps in the Bible translation and included translation drafts. A letter written by Bustani on July 18, 1855 explains his plans to create a new lexicon that would be easier to use than Arabic reference works, mod-eled after the format of Western lexicons.²⁴⁸ Smith and Bustani probably exchanged ideas about this project more than once, since there was a great need for such a reference work.²⁴⁹ It can hardly be a coincidence that fourteen years later, in 1869, the first volume of Bustani’s dictionary Muhit al-Muhit (The Breadth of the Ocean) appeared in the American Mission Press. The second volume followed in 1870.²⁵⁰

Smith maintained a particularly lively correspondence with the Damascus his-torian Mikhaʾil Mishaqa, a Greek Catholic scholar who converted to Protestantism in 1848.²⁵¹ The two men exchanged books and writings, and they discussed the difficulties that Mishaqa encountered because of his conversion, including his writ-ten dispute with the Greek Catholic patriarch Maximus.²⁵² Smith not only acted as

240 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years in Syria, vol. 1, 115.

241 See appendix II, no. 73.

242 Ibid., no. 16.

243 Ibid., no. 49.

244 See chapter I, section 2.3, and appendix II, no. 52.

245 Ibid., no. 22.

246 Ibid., no. 31.

247 See ABC 60 (12) and (98), (HHL). There are no Arabic-language letter drafts from Smith to Wortabet. Smith’s responses to him were presumably in English.

248 Bustani to Smith (Souq al-Gharb, July 18, 1855): ABC 50, Box 3 (HHL).

249 However, there are no examples of this in Smith’s collected letters.

250 More on this in chapter III, section 1.4.

251 See appendix II, no. 46; more on Mishaqa in Zachs, “Mīkhāʾīl Mishāqa.”

252 Smith to Mishaqa (June 8, 1849 and July 14, 1849): ABC 50, Box 1 (HHL). The letters indicate that Mishaqa corresponded actively with numerous individuals. On the dispute with Patriarch Maximus, see Wortabet, Researches into the Religions of Syria, 88, 366. In 1849, Smith wrote in the Missionary Herald: “Mr. Meshakah favors me with a copy of all the correspondence between him and his antagonist, and also of his journal. The whole is deeply interesting, both from the ability he displays, and the deep Christian sincerity that moves him. The Protestant spirit, in the best sense, has got a firm hold of him. Every word of the documents in my hands deserves to be translated and printed at home.” See MH 45 (1849), in: ROS 4, 83.

Smith also forwarded other Syrians’ comments on Mishaqa’s writings to the author. See Smith to Mishaqa (June 4, 1849): ABC 50, Box 1 (HHL).

Mishaqa’s spiritual advisor,²⁵³ but also encouraged his work as an author and histo-rian.²⁵⁴ Some of his works were then published in the American Mission Press.²⁵⁵ Smith wrote in April 1849:

Highly esteemed, dear brother, sir Mikhaʾil, … I was very pleased to receive your letter. … I read the enclosed sheets with great joy. … You also mention some mistakes that occurred with the printing of your text. … You can be sure that we will make every effort to ensure that no further mistakes occur. …²⁵⁶

In addition, Smith distributed printed copies of a book by Mishaqa on a trip to Je-rusalem, in order to spark discussion. “On my trip, I distributed copies of the first part of your book in Jerusalem and Jaffa. I found that those who were enlightened (al-mutanawwirīn min al-nās) were very pleased by it, and I hope that they will find it useful.”²⁵⁷

For John Wortabet, Smith was at once a teacher, mentor, and friend. Between 1848 and 1856, they corresponded regularly. Besides the usual reports on work, Wortabet’s letters also contained personal notes about the families of both men.

Wortabet, who always signed his letters “your obedient Servant,” was grateful for the productive exchange with the experienced missionary: “I beg to express my sincere thanks for all your kind wishes and interest in me. It is a great consolation, as it is a blessing for me to think that I enjoy an interest in the prayers of such men as yourself; and I hope that I may still continue to enjoy the same.”²⁵⁸

According to Henry Harris Jessup, a classic Arabic letter consisted of three parts:

[A] long, flowery, poetical introduction covering one-third of the page, a similar conclusion covering the last third, and a brief letter in the middle. Important business, however, was writ-ten in a postscript diagonally across the right hand bottom of the page, and this was the part generally read by the receiver.²⁵⁹

Long letters with little content, as well as diagonally written notes, can be found in Smith’s collected letters. Smith, too, occasionally adopted a flowery, somewhat

253 Smith to Mishaqa (April 16, 1849): ABC, Box 1 (HHL): “You will be guided by your wisdom and your sense of justice, which you defend without fear. With the help of God’s spirit, you will triumph over everything that stands in your way.”

254 Smith wrote to an unknown addressee in Beirut: “I particularly urged him to the use of his pen in the production of writing that would enlighten the people. This suggestion he felt the impor-tance of, & I think he will attend to it.” See Smith (Damascus, December 6, 1848): ABC 16.8.1., Vol. 1. Mishaqa became an important historian in the second half of the nineteenth century.

255 For example: al-Dalil ila Taʿat al-Injil (Guide for Obedience to the Gospel), Beirut, 1849;

Tabriʾat al-Mathum mimma Qadafahu bihi al-Batriyark Maximus Mazlum (Absolution of the Accused from the Charges of Patriarch Maximus Mazlum), Beirut; 1854; Kashf ʿan Niqab ʿan Wajh al-Masih al-Kadhab (Unmasking the Face of the Anti-Christ), Beirut, 1860. See also Graf, Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, vol. 4, 299.

256 Smith to Mishaqa (April 16, 1849): ABC, Box 1 (HHL).

257 Smith to Mishaqa (May 14, 1849): ABC 50, Box 1 (HHL). This was probably the text al-Dalil ila Taʿat al-Injil (see note 255 in this chapter), which was in printed in Beirut in 1849.

258 Wortabet to Smith (Hasbeiya, January 13, 1852): ABC 60 (98), (HHL). More on the corre-spondence between Smith and Wortabet in chapter III, section 2.2.

259 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years in Syria, vol. 1, 115.

circuitous means of expression, similar to letters written by Mishaqa, Bustani, or Yanni. There were many similarities in the salutations and closings used by Smith and his correspondents. Smith usually began a letter with “Janāb akh ajl al-muḥtaram” (Very esteemed, dear brother) or “Janāb al-muḥib al-āʿz al-al-muḥtaram”

(Very esteemed, dear friend). Mishaqa likewise began with “Janāb sayyidī al-muḥtaram (Very honored sir). Then Smith continued with further words of greet-ing: “Nuḥib taqdīm kathrat al-ashwāq al-qalbīyya aʿruḍ innahu …” (We would like to send many warm greetings [and] I inform [you] that …). Mishaqa, in turn, wrote: “Nuḥib hadā wājibāt al-ikrām wa jazīl al-shauq al-wāfir … aʿruḍ annī …”

(We would like to convey [our] respect and many warm greetings … I inform [you]

that …). The words that Smith and Mishaqa used to close their letters were similar as well: While Smith wrote “Wa aṭāl Allah baqākum” (May God grant you a long life), Mishaqa wrote “Wa dāma baqākum” (May [HE] allow your life to be long).²⁶⁰ Although Smith’s Arabic – at least in his letter drafts – was not error-free, he made an effort to adopt typical phrasings and to show that he was an engaged and in-terested correspondent. Without question, his collected letters are an exceptional testament of transcultural understanding.