Ghabat al-haqq

Around 1865, Marrash published Ghabat al-haqq ("The Forest of Truth" or "The Forest of Justice"), an allegory about the conditions required to establish and maintain civilization and freedom.^{[22][lower-alpha 5]} This allegory relates the apocalyptic vision of a war between a Kingdom of Liberty and a Kingdom of Slavery, resolved by the capture of the latter's king and a subsequent trial before the King of Liberty, the Queen of Wisdom, the Vizier of Peace and Fraternal Love, the Commander of the Army of Civilization, with the Philosopher from the City of Light—who represents the author—as counsel.^[26] In this work, Marrash expressed ideas of political and social reforms,^{[lower-alpha 6]} highlighting the need of the Arabs for two things above all: modern schools and patriotism "free from religious considerations".^[28] In 1870, when distinguishing the notion of fatherland from that of nation and applying the latter to Greater Syria, Marrash would point to the role played by language, among other factors, in counterbalancing religious and sectarian differences, and thus, in defining national identity.^[29]

Although Marrash's poetical expression lacked the legal meticulousness found in works from Enlightened Europe,^[30] orientalist Shmuel Moreh has stated that Marrash became, with Ghabat al-haqq, "the first Arab writer to reflect the optimism and humanistic view of 18th-century Europe. This view stemmed from the hope that education, science and technology would resolve such problems of humanity as slavery, religious discrimination, illiteracy, disease, poverty, war, and other scourges of mankind, and it gave utterance to his hope for brotherhood and equality among peoples."^[31] Yet, his views on freedom differed from those of the French revolutionists and of his Middle Eastern contemporaries; indeed, he considered pleading for freedom on the basis of natural analogy to be superficial, for even nature responds to its own set of rules, according to Marrash.^[32] As a consequence, nothing in the universe may yearn for liberty without satisfying essential rules and needs that guarantee its existence.^[32] Being one of these, the need for progress may therefore justify the abolition of any restriction that does not serve as a regulator for a good system.^[32] In light of this reasoning, and in reference to the ongoing American Civil War, he thus in Ghabat al-haqq supported the abolition of slavery.^[33]

But the significance of this work also lay in Marrash's attempt to blend European thought with his own reading of the Christian belief in universal love.^[35] Indeed, he had tried to reconcile his philosophical understanding of the concept of liberty with his belief in the benevolence of the Catholic Church's authority.^[36] As stated by Nazik Saba Yared:

He argued that only the spiritual kingdom [i.e. the kingdom centered on religion] could curb evil [...] and consequently guarantee the freedom of man. Love is one of the pillars of Christianity, and Marrash, like some Sufis and Romantics, considered it to be the basis of civilization, indeed of the entire universe [...]. Since love, for Marrash, was the general law, and freedom meant participation in that law, it followed that freedom would be inseparable from love and religion.^[30]

Later writings

In 1867, Marrash published Rihlat Baris, an account of his second journey to Paris.^[21] The book begins with a description of his progress from Aleppo to İskenderun, Latakia, Tripoli, Beirut, Jaffa, Alexandria, Cairo, and then back to Alexandria from which he had boarded a ship to Marseille, where he arrived in October 1866.^[37] The Arab cities had inspired in him revulsion and indifference, except Alexandria and Cairo, where Ismail Pasha had already begun modernization projects.^[38] He had then travelled through France, with a stopover in Lyon before ending up in Paris.^[38] Marrash was fascinated by France, and by Paris the most; everything he described in his account, from the Paris Exhibition of 1867 to gas lighting in the streets, served to praise the accomplishments of Western civilization.^[39] In Mashhad al-ahwal ("The Witnessing of the Stages of Human Life"), published in 1870, Marrash would again compare the East and the West, writing that "while the East sank deeper into darkness, the West embraced light".^[40] The optimism he had formerly expressed about the first reform currents under the reign of Sultan Abdülaziz in the Ottoman Empire^{[lower-alpha 7]} gave way to pessimism in Mashhad al-ahwal, as he realized these reforms were superficial and that those he had hoped for would not soon come into being.^[42] Yet, in Durr al-sadaf fi ghara'ib al-sudaf (Pearl Shells in Relating Strange Coincidences), which he published two years later, he depicted the Lebanese social life of his day and criticised the blind imitation of Western customs and the use of the French language in everyday life.^[43]

Throughout his life, Marrash composed many essays about science (especially mathematics), and about education,^[44] a subject which mattered a lot to him; indeed, he wrote in Ghabat al-haqq that "without the education of the mind, man is a mindless beast".^[45] He also wrote many articles in the popular press;^[46] in those published in Butrus al-Bustani's journal Al-Jinan, he showed himself favourable to women's education, which he restricted however to reading, writing, and a little bit of arithmetic, geography and grammar.^[21] In an 1872 issue of Al-Jinan, he wrote that it is not necessary for a woman "to act like a man, neglect her domestic and family duties, or that she should consider herself superior to the man"; he nonetheless closely followed his sister's studies.^[6] Marrash also condemned Arab men's severe treatment of their wives and daughters.^[47] In his later works, he tried to demonstrate the existence of God and of the divine law; the Sharia, as he conceived it, was not restricted to the sphere of the Islamic law alone.^[6]