Monday, August 26, 2024
Office of Advancement, advancement@aub.edu.lb
Philip K. Hitti (1886-1978) was a towering figure in Arab and Middle Eastern studies, AUB’s first Lebanese professor, the founder of Middle East studies in the US, and the author of History of the Arabs, now in its 10th edition, widely considered one of the most influential books ever written on the history of the region. Published in 1937, it has been translated into over 25 languages and was lauded in The New York Times when it was published: “The outstanding quality and merit of Professor Hitti’s book is the abundance and facility of its references to original and primary sources, and the richness of atmosphere in which every page is steeped.” Hitti earned many accolades during his long and distinguished career, including an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from his alma mater in 1969 and an honorary degree from Princeton in 1966 where he spent much of his career. “He was also,” remembers AUB Trustee B. Philip Winder, “a wonderful grandfather.” Anonymous donors have recently made a gift to AUB to establish the Philip K. Hitti Endowed Chair in Middle Eastern Studies.
After graduating from the Syrian Protestant College in 1908, which was renamed the American University of Beirut in 1920, Hitti joined the AUB faculty for five years. In 1913, Howard Bliss, who was then president of the university, asked Hitti to attend an international student conference in Lake Mohonk, New York. Hitti was stunned when he received the invitation, as he recalled in an interview that was published in Aramco magazine in July/August 1972. “America? I had never even dreamed of that kind of thing,” he said. Bliss told Hitti that the university would continue to pay his salary while he was in the US and urged him to go not just to attend the conference, but to do a year of graduate study. Hitti ended up selecting Columbia University for graduate study and earned his PhD in 1915, becoming the first Lebanese, and the first native-born Arab speaker, to receive a doctorate from a US university.
Hitti returned to AUB in 1920 as a professor of Oriental history. In 1926, he accepted an offer from Princeton University to teach Semitic literature. It was at Princeton that Hitti established the first program of Middle Eastern studies in the US. He chaired the program until his retirement in 1954. “Under his leadership Princeton became the greatest center of Islamic Studies in the West.” In addition to the many students who graduated from the program, leaders from all over the Middle East flocked to Princeton, including the Emir of Kuwait, the Shah of Iran, and two future Kings of Saudi Arabia. In 1966, when Princeton awarded Hitti an honorary degree, the citation read, “…long before President [Lyndon B.] Johnson called public attention to the duty of universities to promote regional studies, he [Hitti] built such a ‘center of excellence’ on this campus for the emulation of the academic world.”
Hitti was a prolific and highly acclaimed author who is best known for History of the Arabs, which was published in 1937. It has been translated into more than 25 languages, including Urdu, Serbio-Croatian, Africaans, Persian, and Bangali, and is still in print. Other major works by Hitti include An Arab-Syrian Gentleman and Warrior in the Period of the Crusades: Memoirs of Usamah ibn-Munqidh; Capital Cities of Arab Islam; History of Syria: Including Lebanon and Palestine; and Makers of Arab History. When he retired from Princeton his bibliography ran to 28 pages.
Although Hitti spent most of his career in the US, he returned regularly to Lebanon and to Shemlan, where he was born. He also maintained strong ties to AUB throughout his life and was a member of its Board of Trustees from 1945 to 1978.
Hitti had a global reputation and was feted around the world. He traveled, for example, to Brazil in 1925 and 1951; was featured on the cover of the Mexican Emir magazine in 1941; and served as an adviser to the Iraqi delegation at the San Francisco Conference for the creation of the United Nations in 1945. He spoke passionately and articulately on behalf of Arabs and Arab Americans. He was invited in 1944 to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the Wright-Compton resolutions that called on the US to “use its good offices to the end that the doors of Palestine shall be opened for free entry of Jews into that country and that there shall be full opportunity for colonizations so that the Jewish people may ultimately reconstitute Palestine as a free and democratic commonwealth.” Hitti opposed the resolutions noting the importance of Jerusalem to the Arabs.
In addition to receiving many public accolades, Hitti was also celebrated by generations of students, including Trustee Winder’s father, R. Bayly Winder, who was the founder and director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and former dean of the faculty of Arts and Science at New York University. Many students from the Arab world, including those who did not study with him, looked to Hitti for advice, support, and mentorship. “No one is more respected or beloved by those who call themselves Syrians or Lebanese than he,” noted Dr. Charles Malik, AUB alumnus (BA Mathematics and Physics ’27), Lebanon’s ambassador to the United States and representative to the United Nations. Malik, who was also Lebanon’s Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1956 and 1958, said, “No man has been more active in or more understanding of the affairs of [native Arabic-speakers] than Professor Hitti.”
Dr. Constantine Zurayk, AUB alumnus (BA History ’28), who was Hitti’s first PhD student, wrote to him in 1973: “You have been and continue to be an inspiration on your students and friends. Your energy is inexhaustible, and your reason as alive as ever. Each one of your new publications – and they have been many since your retirement – is a challenge to your students who admire you, but cannot emulate you.”
“This gift will further solidify the fact that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences has historically served as a hub for Arab and Middle Eastern studies, which has always underscored the university’s cosmopolitan identity, global outreach, and international visibility,” said Farès El-Dahdah, the Mamdouha El-Sayed Bobst Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “A holder of such an important chair will in addition have the opportunity to partner with other departments and programs throughout the university, especially those that specialize in areas of modern Middle Eastern history, such as the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies (CAMES), the Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR), the Departments of Political Studies and Public Administration (PSPA) and Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies ( SOAM), the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and Internatioal Affairs, etc.”