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The complex relationship between America and the Arab world goes back further than most people realize. In Artillery of Heaven, Ussama Makdisi presents a foundational American encounter with the Arab world that occurred in the nineteenth century, shortly after the arrival of the first American Protestant missionaries in the Middle East. He tells the dramatic tale of the conversion and death of As'ad Shidyaq, the earliest Arab convert to American Protestantism. The struggle over this man's body and soul-and over how his story might be told-changed the actors and cultures on both sides. In the unfamiliar, multireligious landscape of the Middle East, American missionaries at first conflated Arabs with Native Americans and American culture with an uncompromising evangelical Christianity. In turn, their Christian and Muslim opponents in the Ottoman Empire condemned the missionaries as malevolent intruders. Yet during the ensuing confrontation within and across cultures an unanticipated spirit of toleration was born that cannot be credited to either Americans or Arabs alone. Makdisi provides a genuinely transnational narrative for this new, liberal awakening in the Middle East, and the challenges that beset it.By exploring missed opportunities for cultural understanding, by retrieving unused historical evidence, and by juxtaposing for the first time Arab perspectives and archives with American ones, this book counters a notion of an inevitable clash of civilizations and thus reshapes our view of the history of America in the Arab world.

Sujets

Histoire

USA

United States of America

History of the Middle East

Middle East

History of the Americas

Christianity

États-Unis

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Publié par	Cornell University Press
Date de parution	15 octobre 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780801458989
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	18 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,7500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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ARTILLERY OF HEAVEN

Figure 1.Syria Mission Field in the mid-nineteenth century. Source: Isaac Bird,Bible Work in Bible Lands; or, Events in the History of the Syria Mission(Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1872), frontispiece.

ARTILLERY OF HEAVEN

American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East

USSAMA MAKDISI

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

A volume in the series

The United States in the World

Edited by Mark Philip Bradley and Paul A. Kramer

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2008 by Cornell University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2009

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Makdisi, Ussama Samir, 1968– Artillery of heaven : American missionaries and the failed conquest of the Middle East / Ussama Makdisi. p. cm. — (The United States in the world) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-4621-4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8014-7575-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Shidyaq, As’ad, 1798–1830. 2. American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. 3. Missions, American—Lebanon—History—19th century. 4. Missions, American—Middle East—History—19th century. 5. Religious pluralism—Middle East— History—19th century. 6. Maronites—Lebanon—History—19th century. 7. Christianity and other religions—Islam. 8. Islam—Relations—Christianity. I. Title. II. Series.

BV3210.L4M35 2008 266.0237305692—dc22

2007029232

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood ﬁbers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Clothprinting Paperbackprinting

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Elora

and in memory of Edward and Rosemarie

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction

Part I. Prelude 1. Mather’s America 2. “The Grammar of Heresy”: Coexistence in an Ottoman Arab World

Part II. Intersections 3. The Flying of Time 4. The Artillery of Heaven 5. An Arab Puritan

Part III. Reorientations 6. The Apotheosis of American Exceptionalism 7. The Vindication of Asgad Shidyaq

Epilogue Notes Index

ix 1

51 72 103

141 180

214 221 253

Acknowledgments

This is a book of many debts. Its inspiration came from a comment made by my late uncle Edward Said in one of his books several years ago, when he chided me, and my generation of scholars from the Middle East, for com-ing all the way to America to study the Arab world. I always thought that the criticism was not quite fair, although it was fairly meant, for Edward, more than anyone else I have known, wrote passionately and sincerely for the humanistic study of self and other. I truly regret that neither he, nor my aunt and fellow historian Rosemarie Said Zahlan, lived long enough to read these lines. There are other scholars who have followed this project from its incep-tion: Bernard Heyberger, Ray Mouawad, and George Sabra have all been extraordinarily generous with their time and criticism. I acknowledge the assistance of the staff of the following institutions: the Houghton Library at Harvard, Andover Theological Library, the Archives and Special Collec-tions of the Yale Divinity School Library (especially Joan Duffy) and Yale University Library, the Archives and Special Collections of Mount Holyoke College and Williams College (especially Sylvia Kennick Brown), the Spe-cial Collections of the Leyburn Library at Washington and Lee University,

Acknowledgments

the Rauner Special Collections Library at Dartmouth College, the Boston Athenaeum Library (especially Stephen Z. Nonack), the British Library, the CongregationalLibraryinBoston,theBas¸bakanlıkArchivesinIstanbul,the Historical Archives of the Propaganda Fide in Vatican City (and the assis-tance provided by Youssef Mouawad, Monsignor Nicolas Thevenin, and Father Camillus Johnpillai to facilitate my access there), the Near East School of Theology in Beirut, the Jafet Library of the American University of Beirut (especially Asma Fathallah), and the Archives of the Maronite Pa-triarchate at Bkirke, Lebanon (especially Sami Salameh). I have also been greatly aided by the staff in the Department of History and at Fondren Li-brary at Rice University, especially Anna Yousseﬁ and Anna Shparberg. I thank Père Nasser Gemayel for sharing with me some of his personal col-lection relating to the AsgHabib Badr of the Na-ad Shidyaq affair and Rev. tional Evangelical Church of Beirut for his encouragement. I acknowledge as well the support provided by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Center for Behavioral Research at the American University of Beirut and its director Samir Khalaf, Harvard University’s Center for Middle East-ern Studies, the Harvard Divinity School, the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies at Tufts University and its director Leila Fawaz, and the Ofﬁce of the Dean of Humanities at Rice University. My friends and colleagues at Rice and elsewhere have been helpful with their many criticisms and suggestions and their assistance. There are too many to thank, and so here I acknowledge only those who have read or helped with parts of this book, including Asli Gur, Evan Haefeli, Nadia Naz Janjua, Ilham Khuri Makdisi, Michael Maas, Scott McGill, Carl Pearson, Mark Pegg, Dana Robert, Paula Sanders, Heather Sharkey, Paul Silverstein, Himmet Ta¸skömür, Kerry Ward, and Lora Wildenthal, and those who read entire drafts, including Allison Sneider, Peter Sluglett, Alan Mikhail, Bruce Masters, Peter C. Caldwell, Niels Hooper, Jeremy Salt, Paul Kramer, Mark Bradley, the anonymous readers of both the University of California Press and Cornell University Press, and the graduate students in history at Rice, Laura Renee Chandler, Gale Kenny, and especially David Getman, who provided outstanding help as a research assistant. I am grateful to the bril-liant work of my editor at Cornell University Press, Alison Kalett, who has vigilantly seen this book into its ﬁnal form. I owe deep thanks to my mother, Jean Said Makdisi, who read multiple drafts; to my father, Samir Makdisi; and to my brothers Karim and Saree. I owe inﬁnite gratitude to my wife, Elora Shehabuddin, who has put up—

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