The civilizational message of American missionary work in Greater Syria evolved to accommodate the potential, in the words of Edward Salisbury, of “the naturally fine intellect of the Arab race.” Noted early on by Salisbury in the mid-nineteenth century, this realization helped set a new tone for subsequent American intellectual and institutional pursuits in the region. This notion is a departure from the prevailing presumption that the Americans’ mastery of the Arabic language relegated local talents to a secondary status, or that they provided the bulk of education to mostly uneducated Syrians among them future seminal authors. This paper make the case for emergent appreciation of Arab cultural and political awakening by the American missionaries, such as Salisbury, in Greater Syria as one of the reasons behind a fundamental shift in American intellectual interests in parts of the Levant. This research relies on translations of writings by seminal Syrian intellectual from the Beirut area and beyond, including Butros Al-Bustani, Nasif Yazeji, Jurji Zaidan, Muhammad Kurd Ali, and others, in addition to references to Syria and Syrians in the Journal of the American Oriental Society to explain, for example, how American missionaries and intellectuals acknowledged a disposition by their Syrian “students” of acquiring knowledge as means for attaining economic and political autonomy. Additionally, this paper discusses how, by the last decades of the nineteenth century, many Americans were seduced by the classical writings they helped reproduce in the printing presses brought to the area by their predecessors. Many Americans acted on their growing grasp of the region based on thorough understanding of the history and literary heritage of their hosts, by expressing their preference for Syrian reforms on the Syrian’s terms, and considered such reforms to be advantageous for advancing America’s interests in the region. Lacking in the discourse, this paper argues, is an explication of how and when did the American intellectuals become students of ancient and early-modern Arabic text themselves, and also an assessment of the quality of collaborative work on common philosophical grounds, even parity, between Syrians and Americans beyond translating the bible, and before the onslaught of European domination following the First World War.

In 1841, Yale College appointed Edward Elbridge Salisbury (1814-1901) as “Professor of Arabic & Sanscrit.” This was, at the time, the only position of its kind in North America, although Arabic had previously been taught at Yale and elsewhere. Salisbury’s appointment had much to do with American missionary and mercantile interest in the region now called the Middle East. This paper will argue that his appointment was critical to the rise of American Orientalism and the further development of U.S. interest in the academic study of the region—indeed, in the formation of the very basis of academic study upon which the Middle East Studies Association itself is founded. This paper proposes to shine a light on Salisbury’s legacy as it relates to the study of Arabic and Persian in the United States in the nineteenth century and beyond. The paper will examine the North American & European context for the appointment and its origins in American missionary aspirations (contemporary with the appearance of the first Arabic translation of the Bible, which was also highly influential in the nahdah, or renaissance, of Arabic literature). It will also examine Salisbury's contributions to the opening up of the study of Oriental languages & civilizations in the United States, how U.S. and European scholars contributed to the emerging discourse on the discipline of the study of Oriental languages, the rise of American Orientalism (in Salisbury’s well-documented support of the American Oriental Society), and the development of U.S. library collections in support of this study. Feedback from many mid-century Yale students indicates that this legacy is unknown to them—so finally, this paper proposes to highlight a legacy that is not well known even amongst its current beneficiaries!

Arabic instruction at Hartford has evolved from an academic subject focusing on classical Arabic texts to now include speaking and listening competencies related to Islamic Chaplaincy as well as computer-related pursuits. Arabic was introduced at Hartford by the new Instructor of Semitic Languages, Duncan Black Macdonald, in 1892. A review of primary sources shows that Macdonald, an ordained minister of the Church of Scotland, saw value in Arabic as (1) a component of his new program of comparative Semitic linguistics, (2) an aid to Old Testament exegesis, and (3) part of a missionary effort to the Muslim Lands. It was the third with which Macdonald clearly had misgivings. An analysis of the theses and dissertations produced by Macdonald’s students show an orientation, over his career of over 40 years at Hartford, of Arabic (and Islamic Studies) away from a missionary-guided program of instruction. Hartford Seminary had been founded in 1834 as a conservative Congregational antidote to Yale, but within 50 years came to dub itself a University of Religion. While the school remained traditionally conservative for more than a century, its Congregational ethos allowed it a theological and academic openness. Knowledge of Arabic allowed the students of the Seminary, many of whom obtained Ph.D.’s in Islamic Studies during the 20th century, to “ask questions” of Islam without going through the lens of Christian missionary efforts. Dozens of dissertations by Seminary students consist, at their base, of translations into English of classical Arabic works, both philosophical and mystical. Only one thesis has an obvious missionary orientation. The creation of the Macdonald Center in the 1970s after the demise of the Kennedy School of Missions and the end of the Ph.D. shifted Arabic instruction from a classical, text-driven curriculum. The institution of Chaplaincy programs for Imams since the 1990s has further changed Arabic instruction to include both oral and aural Arabic learning. With the re-institution of the Ph.D. in Islamic Studies in this year, it is anticipated that Arabic instruction at Hartford will once again include something of a classical focus, while a new course in Information Literacy for Islamic Studies incorporates instruction in Arabic keyboard use as well as web-searching in Arabic.

In 1782 the University of Pennsylvania appointed John Christopher Kunze, a Lutheran clergyman who had studied Hebrew, Arabic, and other languages in Halle and Leipzig, as a professor of “Oriental and Germanic languages”. On this basis, some scholars have boasted, Penn can claim the oldest Arabic professorship in the United States. However, drawing upon University of Pennsylvania archives and museum collections, as well as on the writings of generations of Penn scholars, this study will argue that the university’s development of “Semitics” and as it was later known “Oriental Studies”, only took off in the late nineteenth century and reflected the convergence of three trends. The first was a strong interest in Christian and Judaic studies – and this, despite the university’s foundation as a self-consciously non-sectarian institution with cultural debts to Quaker tolerance and the “secular” thought of its founder, Benjamin Franklin. These interests in Judeo-Christian studies fostered the study of Hebrew, which led, somewhat circuitously, to research on Judeo-Arabic among Jewish scholars, and from there to the study of Arabic and Islamic studies more broadly. The second was the university’s commitment after 1887 to building its Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. This was a period when museum makers in major American cities believed that objects could not only “speak” to visitors but could also civilize them – especially if they were immigrants. Materials that Penn archaeologists collected in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Palestine became chief exhibits in the Penn Museum’s civilizing mission within Philadelphia. The third trend was a close relationship between Penn archaeologists and U.S. diplomats in the Ottoman Empire, its post-World War I successor states, and Iran. The U.S. government not only advocated for Penn researchers abroad, but also used their presence to cultivate cordial diplomatic relations with Sultan Abdulhamid II of the Ottoman Empire and later the two Pahlavi shahs in Iran. In short, the U.S.-government’s support for American academics abroad, which began in the late nineteenth century, provided antecedents and foundations for its Cold-War-era sponsorship of professors and students specializing in “strategic” Middle Eastern languages and cultures.