Founding of the Syrian Protestant College (SPC) later known as the American University of Beirut (AUB)

By 1860, the missionaries had founded around thirty-three schools, a press, and the Syrian Society for Arts and Sciences which encouraged cooperation and cultural activities among the people of Syria. After 1860 Mount Lebanon massacres, the missionaries sensed a new obligation to prepare leaders of this country. “That training must be such as to provide honest, intelligent, and courageous men, liberal in point of view, devoted to the true interest of the country[1].” As a result, the American missionaries decided to establish an institution of higher education and selected Dr. Daniel Bliss to assume this task. Bliss travelled to the United Kingdom and the United States to secure funds for this venture. In New York, he contacted William E. Dodge who assisted him in getting the approval of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) and a charter from New York State. A group of American philanthropists formed the Board of Trustees and a local Board of Managers (1866-1902), formed of international residents of Syria, helped the college to overcome the disadvantage of having the Board of Trustees thousand miles away.

Upon its founding, the mission of the Syrian Protestant College was to give a thorough literary, scientific, and medical education. As the students were not fluent in English and “realizing the untold wealth of the rapidly vanishing Arab culture, it seemed wiser to them to make use of it. The faculty themselves learned Arabic and taught, preached, wrote, or translated books to Arabic.”[2] The founding fathers designed an Arabic curriculum that fit the needs of these citizens and their country, but the original faculty faced a shortage of appropriate books to fill the escalating demand, and so they engaged in translating and authoring scientific books in Arabic and even used old manuscripts to fill the scarcity of books.

The original faculty constituted of a selection of American missionaries that held undergraduate academic degrees from their homeland and came to Syria pre-1866; these were counted as the founding fathers. The first two faculty members were David Stewart Dodge and Daniel Bliss, while the local instructors or residents that joined the college were mostly scholars or men of the pen that were employed to help the American and British faculty members but did not continue for lengthy periods of time for varied reasons.

The active work of instruction began with a preparatory class in 1865, and the College opened in the autumn of the following year, while medical class started in 1868. The first collegiate class graduated in 1870 and the first medical class in 1871. In the autumn of 1873, the permanent building at Ras Beirut was occupied. Since its inception, the object of the Syrian Protestant College was to give a thorough literary, scientific, and medical education in its three departments-Preparatory, Collegiate, and Medical (including Pharmaceutical) [3]

[1] Penrose, S. (1970). That they may have life; the story of the American University of Beirut, 1866-1941.

[2] Penrose, S. (1970). That they may have life; the story of the American University of Beirut, 1866-1941.

[3] Catalogue of the Syrian Protestant College, 1880-1881, General Statement, (24).