Jurji zaydan autobiography featuring

Lebanese novelist, journalist, editor and teacher

Jurji Zaydan^[a] (Arabic: جرجي زيدان, ALA-LC:Jurjī Zaydān; December 14, 1861 – July 21, 1914) was a prolific Lebanese novelist, journalist, editor and teacher, most noted for his creation of the magazine Al-Hilal, which he used to serialize his twenty three historical novels.

His primary goal, as a writer and intellectual during the Nahda, was to make the common Arabic population know their own history through the entertaining medium of the novel. He has enjoyed a widespread popularity. He is also considered to have been one of the first thinkers to help formulate the theory of Arab nationalism.^[1]

Early life

Jurji Zaydan was born on December 14, 1861, in Beirut to an Eastern Orthodox Christian family of limited means that had probably originated in the Hauran region.^[2][3] His father owned a restaurant and, being illiterate and uneducated himself, placed little im