Ameen Rihani

Ameen Faris Rihani was born in Freike in Mount Lebanon and immigrated to New York at twelve, working in his family's basement wholesale shop in Manhattan. Studying law and English literature, he returned repeatedly to Lebanon and the Arab world, devoting his life to creating intellectual and spiritual bridges between East and West.

In 1911, Rihani published The Book of Khalid in New York, the first novel in English written by an Arab, illustrated by Kahlil Gibran. He was a pioneer of Arabic free verse, an unbending champion of secular democracy, and the first Westernized writer to travel across the Arabian Peninsula to interview King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, publishing The Kings of Arabia in 1924.