, 1867. It represents the leading views of a large
class of the more enlightened Syrians with regard to education, and by
way of preface to the Effendi's remarks, I will make a brief historical
statement.

The Arab race were in ancient times celebrated for their schools of
learning, and although the arts and sciences taught in the great
University under the Khalifs of Baghdad, were chiefly drawn from Greece,
yet in poetry, logic and law the old Arab writers long held a proud
preeminence. But since the foundation of the present Ottoman Empire, the
Arabs have been under a foreign yoke, subject to every form of
oppression and wrong, and for generations hardly a poet worth the name
has appeared excepting Sheikh Nasif el Yazijy. Schools have been
discouraged, and learning, which migrated with the Arabs into Spain, has
never returned to its Eastern home. There are in every Moslem town and
city common schools, for every Moslem boy must be taught to read the
Koran; but with the exception of the Egyptian school of the Jamea el
Azhar in Cairo, there had not been up to 1867 for years even a high
school under native auspices, in the Arabic-speaking world. But what the
Turks have discouraged and the Arab Moslems have failed to do, is now
being done among the nominal Christian sects, and chiefly by foreign
educators. During the past thirty years a great work in educating the
Arab race in Syria has been done by the American Missionaries. Their
Seminary in Abeih, on Mount Lebanon, has trained multitudes of young
men, who are now scattered all over Syria and the East, and are making
their influence felt. Other schools have sprung up, and the result is,
that the young men and women of Syria are now talking about the "Asur el
Jedid," or "New Age of Syria," by which they mean an age of education
and light and advancement. The Arabic journal, above referred to, is
owned by the Turkish government, or rather subsidized by it, and its
editor is a talented young Greek of considerable poetic ability. It is
not often that he ventures to speak out boldly on such a theme as
education, but the pressure from the people upon the Governor-General
was so great at the time, that he gave permission to the editor to utter
his mind. I translate what he wrote, quite literally.

"There can be no doubt that the strength of every people and the source
of their happiness, rest upon the diffusion of knowledge among them.
Science has been in every age the foundat