Rida Said by Sabah Kabbani Peter Clark

Author:Sabah Kabbani, Peter Clark [Sabah Kabbani, Peter Clark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Middle East, Biography & Memoir
ISBN: 9781912208289
Publisher: Haus Publishing
Published: 2021-06-05T04:00:00+00:00

Saturday, 1 May 1926

Dr Rida Saïd’s office manager informed him that the French High Commission had been in touch to say that the High Commissioner, Count Henri de Jouvenel,23 was coming the following day, Sunday, to visit the Syrian University and that Colonel Georges Catroux would accompany him.

Heavens above! What a gulf there was between this day and that day in November 1920 when he met Catroux for the first time, and had thought that he had been summoned to be told that the Arab Medical School was to be closed.

Who would have imagined that the day would come when this French Colonel, who had extended a helping hand six years earlier ensuring the survival of the college, was now calling on him, now that the Medical School and the School of Law had become cornerstones of the Syrian University? And that he would be accompanied on this visit by the first High Commissioner who had the idea of coming to the university?

There had been so many glorious stages that had passed in his life since that time! Activity among all attached to the school, staff and students, had expanded. There had been a huge influx of new enrolments, taking Arabic as the language of medical instruction. This gave the Medical School a distinct personality. It attracted students from all over the Arab world, east and west, confirming in a practical way that Damascus was its celebrated meeting-place. In one class you would see a Syrian student, alongside an Egyptian, an Iraqi, a Lebanese, a Palestinian and a Tunisian. It changed Damascus from being a capital for science into being a capital for Arabism.

Dr Rida Saïd believed there was no future for the Arab nation unless its sons studied all the sciences through the medium of Arabic. The experience of the Medical School in the previous six years had proved that Arabic was a language capable of absorbing all the new scientific vocabulary as well as adapting foreign terminology. This was just as the ancient Arab scientists had done, adapting words to fit in with the basics of the Arabic language. The school’s professors devoted themselves to translating the most important foreign medical textbooks into a fine and elegant Arabic and putting them into the hands of students. These professors demonstrated that the language was quite capable of absorbing modern scientific terminology. Their work was rich and flexible in their use of Arabic roots, and arabising words.

With this enthusiasm for the modern medical Arabic language, he saw that the work on it should not be limited to the Medical School. So he decided to found a monthly journal that would establish this language firmly and publicise as widely in the Arab world as possible the terminology created by the professors. He gave Dr Murshid Khatir,24 Professor at the school, the role of Editor-in-Chief. It had the title Journal of the Arab Medical School.25 Publication and distribution started in January 1924. In his role as Dean of the school he wrote

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