خلاصة تاريخ اليونان والرومان

Georgy Zeidan was born in Beirut on December 14, 1861 to a poor Christian family from the village of Ain Enab in Mount Lebanon. His father, Habib Zeidan, was an illiterate man who owned a restaurant in the Burj Square in Beirut, which was frequented by men of literature, language, and students of the American College. His father sent him to a modest school to learn reading, writing and arithmetic so that he could help him in managing the restaurant and controlling accounts. Then he joined Al-Shawam School and learned the French language. Then he joined an evening school to learn English after which he worked in his father’s restaurant, but his mother, Maryam Matar, was not satisfied with that and asked his father to He is learning another craft, so he went to learn to make shoes at the age of twelve for two years, but he left it because he did not want to do that work. He began to tend to knowledge, knowledge and a passion for literature, and he came into contact with graduates from the American College, men of the press and people of thought and literature, such as Yaqoub Sarouf, Faris Nimr, Ibrahim Al-Yazji, Salim Al-Bustani and others, and they were inviting him to attend the college celebrations. He joined the Syrian Protestant College (American University), where he passed the entrance exam to learn medicine, but he studied for a year, where he left studying medicine and went to study pharmacy, but he decided to go to Egypt to study medicine, so he borrowed six pounds from a neighbor in Beirut. He immigrated to Egypt and joined the Faculty of Medicine, but his financial conditions and the length of his studies made him look for work. He worked in editing Al-Zaman newspaper, which was owned by a man of Armenian origin, and this newspaper was the only one in Cairo after English colonialism stopped the press of that era. Then he worked as a translator in the British intelligence office in Cairo and accompanied the English campaign that went to Sudan to save the English commander "Gordon" from the siege of the Mahdi Army. This enabled him to write the first book on the philosophy of the Arabic language in 1886, and then issued a new revised edition of it in 1904 entitled The History of the Arabic Language. Then he visited England and returned to Egypt, breaking away from writing and journalism. He settled in Cairo and worked in writing and translation. He ran Al-Muqtaf magazine and resigned from it after working in it for 18 months. He taught Arabic at the Al-Ubaidiya Al-Kubra School for two years, then left it and participated with Naguib Mitri in establishing a printing press. Al-Hilal, while Najib Mitri established an independent printing press called Al-Maaref Press. Georgy Zidan issued Al-Hilal magazine in 1892, and he was editing it himself, then his son Emile helped him. And writers such as Ahmed Zaki, Hussein Munis, Ali Al-Ra’i, the poet Saleh Jawdat and others. Georgy Zaidan died suddenly while he was among his books and papers on 27 Sha’ban 1332 AH / 21 July 1914. He was lamented by great poets such as Ahmed Shawqi, Hafez Ibrahim and Khalil Mutran. His novels have been translated into Persian, Turkish and Azerbaijani, however, these novels have not been without criticism in form and content. It is also that Jurji Zaidan did not resort to the bright periods of Islamic history and highlight its glories, but turned to the periods that represent a struggle for power and influence. He was influenced by the Western view of the Islamic world.