| Abdallah Marrash | |
| Native Name: | عبد الله بن فتح الله بن نصر الله مرّاش |
| Native Name Lang: | ar |
| Birth Date: | 14 May 1839 |
| Birth Place: | Aleppo, Ottoman Syria |
| Death Place: | Marseille, France |
| Nationality: | Ottoman, British |
Abdallah bin Fathallah bin Nasrallah Marrash (Arabic: Arabic: عبد الله بن فتح الله بن نصر الله مرّاش, ; 14 May 1839[1] 17 January 1900) was a Syrian writer involved in various Arabic-language newspaper ventures in London and Paris.
Abdallah Marrash was born in Aleppo, a city of Ottoman Syria, to an old Melkite family of merchants known for their literary interests.[2] Having earned wealth and standing in the 18th century, the family was well established in Aleppo,[3] although they had gone through troubles: a relative of Abdallah, Butrus Marrash, was killed by the walis troops in the midst of a Catholic–Orthodox clash in April 1818.[4] Other Melkite Catholics were exiled from Aleppo during the persecutions, among them the priest Jibrail Marrash.[5] Abdallah's father, Fathallah, tried to defuse the Sectarian conflict by writing a treatise in 1849, in which he rejected the Filioque.[6] He had built up a large private library[7] to give his three children Francis, Abdallah and Maryana a thorough education, particularly in the field of Arabic language and literature.[8]
Aleppo was then a major intellectual center of the Ottoman Empire, featuring many thinkers and writers concerned with the future of the Arabs.[9] It was in the French missionary schools that the Marrash family learnt Arabic with French, and other foreign languages (Italian and English).[9] After studying in Aleppo, Abdallah went to Europe to pursue his studies while devoting himself to trade.[10]
Having established himself in Manchester by 1863,[11] he became a naturalized British subject on 6 May 1868 under Aliens Act 1844,[12] and on 11 July 1872 under Naturalization Act 1870 (33 & 34 Vict. c. 14).[13] [14] He accessed the collections of Arabic manuscripts in London and Paris and copied what he thought was useful to his Middle Eastern compatriots.[10] In 1879, he helped Adib Ishaq found the Parisian journal Misr al-Qahira (Egypt the Victorious).[15] Marrash founded Kawkab al-Mashriq (The Star of the Orient), a monthly Parisian Arabic-French bilingual journal, the first issue of which was published on 23 June 1882; it was ephemeral.[16] In 1882, Marrash settled down in Marseille, where he died on 17 January 1900.[17] He had been a member of the Société Asiatique.[18]
fr:Génériques
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