28 Facts About Chekri Ganem

Chekri Ganem was a Lebanese intellectual, writer, playwright, poet, and journalist.

Chekri Ganem traveled extensively, and finally settled in France in 1895.

Chekri Ganem founded the Societe des Amis de l'Orient in 1908 and the Lebanese Committee of Paris in 1912.

Chekri Ganem played a significant role in the Arab Congress of 1913, where he was elected vice president.

Chekri Ganem is considered the founding father of Francophone Lebanese literature, and his literary work was overtly political, becoming most manifest in his poetry collection Ronces et Fleurs.

Chekri Ganem's masterpiece, Antar, was a widely-acclaimed theatrical fantasy, and an open manifesto of Arab nationalism.

Chekri Ganem was named Commander of the Legion of Honor shortly before his death in 1929.

Chekri Ganem was born on 14 September 1861 in Beirut, then part of the Ottoman Empire, to a well-to-do Maronite family from Lehfed.

Chekri Ganem grew up in the midst of rising sectarianism and mass emigration, following the 1860 civil conflict in Mount Lebanon.

Chekri Ganem received a French education at the Lazarist College of Antoura where he was exposed to European culture and ideals.

Chekri Ganem started dabbling with poetry at an early age,.

From Lebanon, Chekri Ganem traveled to Egypt, then to the French Protectorate of Tunisia, Florence, and Austria where he served as a translator and bureaucrat.

Chekri Ganem welcomed the Young Turk Revolution of July 1908, wrongly assuming that it would relieve the Arab provinces suffering under Sultan Abdul Hamid II rule.

Chekri Ganem's goals matched those of the committees established by Lebanese diaspora press figures, such as Naoum Mokarzel and Asad Bishara in New York and Sao Paulo respectively.

Chekri Ganem assiduously lobbied with the French foreign affairs authorities at the Quai d'Orsay so that Paris would host the Arab Congress of 1913.

Chekri Ganem was elected vice president of the Congress, which was organized by 25 official Arab Nationalist delegates.

Chekri Ganem did not abide and refused to report to Beirut, where some former delegates of the Congress were executed by hanging.

Chekri Ganem is considered the founding father of Lebanese literature of French expression.

Chekri Ganem was among the group of authors in the Syro-Lebanese diaspora who sought to promote a Catholic Francophile future for Syria.

Chekri Ganem demanded self-rule and increased representation in the Ottoman administration, and ultimately the independence of Lebanon.

Chekri Ganem's ideology imbued his political publications and literary works, drawing upon his missionary education in the Lazarists school in Antoura.

Chekri Ganem idolized the French culture as the pinnacle of civilization, and drew Orientalist images of the Levant in his writings and poetry.

Chekri Ganem composed the collection during his stay in Cairo and Tunisia, and did not publish it until 1896, after his arrival in France.

Chekri Ganem published his first novel, Daad in 1909, and wrote Antar his theatrical fantasy masterpiece, named after Antarah ibn Shaddad, a pre-Islamic Arab knight and poet, famous for both his poetry and his adventurous life.

Chekri Ganem married Anais-Marie Couturier; they lived in an apartment decorated in the Oriental style in Passy, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.

Chekri Ganem built La Libanaise, a villa in Antibes in the Lebanese and Moorish Revival Style.

Chekri Ganem died in his Antibes home on 3 May 1929.

Chekri Ganem was naturalized as a French citizen on 22 August 1913, and named Commander of the Legion of Honor on 1 March 1928 for his "services to the French cause in the Levant".