1. Salma Kalila, “al-Rajul wal-mara’,” Lubnan, 21 October 1895, 4.

2. Rashid Sa‘id Nakhleh, “Keeping the Woman within Her Limits,” Lubnan, 18 July 1895, 3.

3. For a study of the women's press in Egypt, see Baron, The Women's Awakening in Egypt, and Beth Baron, The Rise of a New Literary Culture: The Women's Press of Egypt, 1892–1919 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994). Also see Joseph Zeidan, Arab Women Novelists: The Formative Years and Beyond (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995).

4. In addition to a few instances where the photographs of women authors were presented to a public audience, we find that the pictorial representation of “woman” in these magazines defied the notion of “femininity” as imagined by more conservative writers.

5. Anisa wa-‘Afifa al-Shartouni, Nafahat al-wardatayn (Beirut: al-Matba‘ al-Lubnaniya, 1909), 28.

6. Ibid., 45.

7. Zaynab Fawaz, Rasa’il Zaynabiya (Cairo: n.p., 1906), 47.

8. Booth, “The Egyptian Lives of Jeanne d'Arc,” 175.

9. Rita Felski, The Gender of Modernity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 4. Felski notes that European women activists' appropriations of public space cannot be ignored in the construction of European modernities.

10. Booth, “The Egyptian Lives of Jeanne D'Arc,” 177.

11. “Madame de Stahl,” al-Hasna’, no. 1 (20 May 1909): 3.

12. Booth, “The Egyptian Lives of Jeanne D'Arc,” 191.

13. “Madame de Stahl,” 3–11.

14. “Mrs. Roosevelt,” al-Hasna’, no. 12 (20 April 1910): 377–381.

15. “The Ottoman Woman and the Constitution,” al-Hasna’ 1, no. 2 (20 June 1909): 56.

16. I am borrowing this distinction from Riley's excellent critique of the term women, which she argues keeps women as a category separate from the larger context of humanity. Denise Riley, “Does a Sex Have a History?” in Feminism and History, edited by Joan Wallach Scott (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 30.

17. Sarah Abi al-‘Ala’, “Hypocrisy of Men,” al-Sa’ih, 12 September 1912, 6.

18. al-Muhazab, 14 December 1907, 2.

19. Fatat Lubnan, no. 2 (February 1914): 26.

20. Salma Kalila, “The Man and the Woman,” Lubnan, no. 108 (2 October 1895): 4.

21. Quoted in Imili Faris Ibrahim, Adībāt Lubnaniyāt (Beirut: al-Rayhani, 1964), 34.

22. Quoted in ibid., 50.

23. Dawud Effendi Naqash, “Women and Idleness,” Lubnan, no. 90 (20 June 1895): 4.

24. Salima Abi Rashed, “Preface,” Fatat Lubnan 1 (January 1914): 5.

25. Julia Ta‘mi Dimashqiya, “Ibn Biladi,” New Woman 1 (1924): 146.

26. Abbas Mahmoud al-‘Aqqad, “Education of the Woman,” Minerva 2, no. 4 (1921): 149.

27. Mary, “Mrs. Huntington,” Minerva 2, no. 6 (1921): 7.

28. In this, middle-class feminists in Lebanon shared the same strategies as other feminists. For example, Egyptian feminists made similar arguments when demanding voting rights. See, for example, Margot Badran's edited auto-biography of Huda al-Sha‘arawi, Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist (1879–1924) (London: Virago, 1986); or Cynthia Nelson's Doria Shafik, Egyptian Feminist: A Woman Apart (Gainseville: University Press of Florida, 1996). Of course, this same strategy had also been used by U.S. and European feminists in their quest for the vote.

29. Riley, “Does a Sex Have a History?” 28.

30. Quoted in Ibrahim, Adībāt Lubnaniyāt, 51–52.

31. Published in Father Butrus Berto, Majmu‘at al-muntaqa (Beirut: Matba‘ Kathulikiyya, 1908).

32. Ibid., 13.

33. Quoted in Ibrahim, Adībāt Lubnaniyāt, 52.

34. Quoted in ibid., 99.

35. Quoted in ibid.

36. Quoted in ibid., 100.

37. Quoted in ibid.

38. Quoted in ibid., 101–102.

39. Among the news that was published about women in Europe and the United States, we find items like: “European women who demand equal political rights with man, convened a general conference in London that gathered about 300 ladies from 17 nations”; “the Italian Senate approved a Chamber of Commerce law that gives women the right to vote in elections of that chamber.” (Both items appeared in al-Hasna’).

40. Quoted in Ibrahim, Adībāt Lubnaniyāt, 51.

41. Locating the “simple and pure” in the countryside is not limited to Lebanon. Rather, as Booth notes, Jeanne d'Arc's peasant roots were celebrated in her biographies; “The Egyptian Lives of Jeanne D'Arc,” 187–190. Gibran imbued most of his writings with similarly pastoral images. In his story “Martha min Ban,” which appeared in his ‘ ‘Ara’is al-muruj, the contrast is drawn sharply between the evil city and the good countryside; Khalil Gibran, ‘ ‘Ara’is al-muruj (Cairo: Maktbat al-Hilāl, 1922). In Haykl's first novel—and arguably the first nonhistorical fiction in the Arab world—Zaynab speaks in equally romantic terms about the peasant woman “seduced” by Hamid, who is the son of the owner of fields where she works and a student in Cairo; Muhammad Husayn Haykl, Zaynab: Manāzir wa-akhlāq rīfiyah, 6th ed. (Cairo: Maktbat al-nahda, 1967). In German literature of the 1920s we encounter a similar theme set in different circumstances. In a story in Junge Kräft, a professional journal for sales and office employees in Germany, a young working woman is leaving the metropolis for the countryside. She notes, “This city most certainly does not harbor Germany's soul; . . . the soul of Germany resides in the countryside”; quoted in Katharina von Ankum, ed., Women in the Metropolis: Gender and Modernity in Weimar Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 1.

42. Ibrahim, Adībāt Lubnaniyāt, 105.

43. “Donations for the Orphanage,” al-Muhazab, 27 June 1907, 282.

44. Ibrahim, Adībāt Lubnaniyāt, 96.

45. Salma Sa’igh, “The Noble Work of Women's Associations,” Minerva 2 (1921): 150.

46. It is worth noting here that associations for men (like the Young Muslim Men's Association) were primarily political or “scientific” in orientation. Few were involved in welfare activities that were meant to ameliorate social problems.

47. Quoted in George Kallas, al-Haraka al-fikriya al-nasawiya fi ‘asr al-nahda, 1849–1929 (Beirut: al-Jil, 1996), 56.

48. “Women's Association in Hasroun,” Minerva 1 (1920): 45.

49. Proceedings of the Fourth Women's Conference (Beirut: al-Matba‘ Kathu-likiyya, 1923), 18.

50. Quoted in Kallas, al-Haraka al-fikriya al-nasawiya, 79.

51. Minutes of the Kusba Women's Benevolent Association, April 15, 1912. Quoted in Kallas, al-Haraka al-fikriya al-nasawiya fi ‘asr al-nahda, 63.

52. al-Bashir 38, no. 1817 (5 August 1908): 3.

53. National Archives, dispatches from the U.S. consuls in Beirut, U.S./208, Ravndal, “Report on Expansion of American Interests,” 31 July 1903.

54. Lubnan, no. 96 (1 August 1895): 2. The reference to notables in this newspaper indicates families with social prestige (the old elite) as well as new, bourgeois families.

55. Newsletter of Brummana High School, June 10, 1912, Archives of the Old Scholars Association, Brummana High School, Brummana.

56. al-Bashir 38, no. 1817 (5 August 1908): 3.

57. One of the earliest essays on the subject appeared in 1903, and the debate lasted through World War I. Writing in 1903, an author lamented that the “young Syrian woman” continued to refrain from appearance on the theater stage out of false modesty. He encouraged these “young women” to follow the suit of American women, “who are truly educated and modern enough” to act in literary productions. Elias Salim, “Our Ladies and Acting,” al-Huda, 10 March 1903, 2.

58. Dr. Haykal al-Khouri, “The Syrian Woman and Acting,” al-Huda, 16 January 1908, 5.

59. I am deeply indebted to Patricia Nabti—an anthropologist working on, and in, Lebanon—who generously provided me with copies of papers she has written on this subject in addition to her dissertation (in which the statistics below from the baptismal records are reported): “International Emigration from a Lebanese Village: Bishmizzinis on Six Continents” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1989).

60. Only 17 percent of the godmothers were identified by personal name in the previous period, while in this period the percentage had tripled to 51 percent.

61. Lahad Khatir, Habouba Khatir: 1853–1929 (Beirut: Catholic Press, 1930), 19.

62. Mar Elias Church, Hadeth al-Jobbé, Sijil 7, 1890–1923.

63. Smithsonian Museum of American History, Alexa Naff Arab American Collection, Series 4-c-5, interview with Mayme Faris, 1964.

64. Ibid., Series 4-c-c, interview with Elizabeth Beshara, Spring 1962.

65. Yusuf Jirjis Zakham, “Need to Place a Limit or Establish a Law to Prohibit the Emigration of the Syrian Woman to America,” al-Huda, 13 January 1908, 4; 9 July 1908, 4–5; 10 July 1908, 4; 17 July 1908, 4.

66. Ibid., 15 January 1908, 4; emphasis mine.

67. Tannous, “Trends of Social and Cultural Change,” 232.

68. The details of this story are based on oral interviews conducted with the living relatives of Saydeh and Assaf in the summer of 1997.

69. Elias Tweyni, “The Philosophy of Marriage,” Lubnan, 3 October 1895, 1.

70. Elias Tannous, “Marriage,” Lubnan, 12 September 1895, 4.

71. Zakham, “Need to Place a Limit or Establish a Law to Prohibit the Emigration of the Syrian Woman to America,” 13 January 1908, 4.

72. Tweyni, “The Philosophy of Marriage,” 1.

73. Ester Muyal, “The Woman's Kingdom: Discourse on Domestic Politics,” al-Hasna’ 1 (July 1909): 52–55.

74. As Riley argued, “'Women' [in Europe] became a modern social category when their place as newly re-mapped entities was distributed among the other collectivities established by these nineteenth-century sciences. 'Men' did not undergo any parallel re-alignments. But 'society' relied on 'man' too, but now as the opposite which secured its own balance. The couplet of man and society, and the ensuing riddle of their relationship, became the life-blood of anthropology, sociology, and social psychology—the endless problem of how the individual stood vis-à-vis the world . . . . [Women] were not the submerged opposite of man, and as such only in need of being fished up; they formed, rather, a kind of continuum of sociality against which the political was set. 'Man in society' did not undergo the same kind of immersion as did woman. He faced society, rather; a society already permeated by the feminine.” Riley, “Does a Sex Have a History?” 30.

75. Almost every literary writer in the mahjar or in Lebanon spoke, in a spiritual language, of love as a force that elevates lovers to the level of gods. See the short stories of Khalil Gibran and Mikhail Nu‘aymi and the journalistic essays of Elias Tweyni and ‘Afifa Karam among others.

76. Tannous, “Marriage,” 4.

77. Tammam Dawud, “Life of the Young Man and Woman and the Duties of the Mother,” in Proceedings of the Fourth Women's Conference, 19.

78. See Roger Allen, The Arabic Novel: An Historical and Critical Introduction (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1982); Roger Allen, Hilary Kilpatrick, and Ed de Moor, eds., Love and Sexuality in Modern Arabic Literature (London: Saqi Books, 1995).

79. Fatat Lubnan 1 (January 1914): 19, and 1 (March 1914): 26.

80. Richard T. Gray, Stations of the Divided Subject: Contestation and Ideological Legitimation in German Bourgeois Literature, 1770–1914 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995), 2.

81. Lubnan, 1 June 1907, 4.

82. Lubnan, 1 October 1895, 4.

83. Lubnan, 11 November 1895, 4.

84. Tannous, “Marriage,” 4.

85. des Villettes, La Vie des femmes dans un village Maronite libanais, 44.

86. Articles of this nature were published in Lubnan, al-Bashir, al-Hasna’, Fatat Lubnan, al-Muqtataf (an Egyptian magazine published by Lebanese immigrants), and al-Huda in New York.

87. Gibran, Spirits Rebellious, 53.

88. Gray, Stations of the Divided Subject, 5.

89. al-Muhazab, 14 December 1907, 1–2.