Marun al-Naqqash

Marun al-Naqqash — Marun ibn Ilyas ibn Mikhail al-Naqqash — (1817–1855) was a Lebanese merchant who became the pioneer of theatre in Arabic. He was born at Sidon on 9 February 1817; in 1825 his family moved to Beirut, where he studied Arabic language and literature, law and foreign languages, among them French, Italian and Turkish, and was trained as a bookkeeper. He worked as chief clerk of the Beirut customs department and became a member of the city's chamber of commerce. In 1846 he travelled to Italy, where he encountered Italian theatre and opera, and on his return he adapted Molière's Miser into Arabic verse as Al-bakhil — published in 1847 and staged in 1848, the first known theatre performance in the Arabic language. He died of fever at Tarsus on 1 June 1855, aged thirty-eight. No Urdu Wikipedia article on him exists; this page rests on the English and Arabic articles. ^{1 2}

With permission from the Ottoman authorities, al-Naqqash built a theatre beside his Beirut home. After Al-bakhil he wrote two original plays: Abu al-Hasan al-Mughaffal aw Harun al-Rashid, drawn from the Thousand and One Nights and performed in 1850, and Al Salit al-Hasud, staged in the early 1850s — the English article gives 1852, the Arabic 1853. The first performers were men of his own household; women did not act on the Arabic stage until later. His brother Nicolas and his nephew Salim al-Naqqash were also men of the theatre: they formed a troupe, drew on French plays for their Arabic works, and after moving to Egypt contributed to the early development of Arabic theatre there. The Arabic article records that al-Naqqash, faced with the objections of conservatives and men of religion, turned his theatre into a church shortly before his death. ^{1 2}

The two articles do not say the same thing. The English article's lead calls him personally a "Maronite merchant", and its account of his early life says he was born into a Maronite family, citing Matti Moosa's 1972 study of the rise of the native Arab theatre. The Arabic article names no religion for him at all; what it records is an act — the conversion of his theatre into a church under clerical and conservative pressure. His data record therefore gives his faith as unknown, with both readings preserved: one text naming his affiliation personally has not in this museum been treated as enough on its own, and the question is flagged there for the founder's ruling on this recurring configuration. ^{1 2}