ʿAbdallah Witwat: An Ordinary Protestant of the Arab Nahḍa

Abstract The intellectual elite in Beirut dominate the historiography of the Arab Nahḍa (“Renaissance”). Hence, this paper offers a microhistory of a relative nobody to shed light on how the ordinary man lived, worked, learned, and worshiped. The oldest son of the first Druze convert to Protestantism, ʿAbdallah Witwat received an American missionary education, worked as a teacher and type caster, expanded his intellectual horizons at learned societies, and practiced his enduring Protestant faith. His life echoes the lived experience of countless men and women who navigated the rapid social, political, religious, and cultural changes unfolding in Beirut in the long nineteenth century. As a member of the American missionary circle and longtime congregant of the Syrian Ottoman Protestant community, Witwat was both a beneficiary of and contributor to the Arab Nahḍa .