Gibran Khalil Gibran

Gibran Khalil Gibran (1883–1931), born in the shadow of the ancient Cedars of God in Bsharri, Mount Lebanon, emigrated with his mother to Boston's South End in 1895. Studying painting in Paris alongside Auguste Rodin, Gibran settled in Greenwich Village, New York, where in 1920 he co-founded *Al-Rabitah al-Qalamiyyah* (The Pen League), revolutionizing modern Arabic literature with free-verse mysticism and emotional directness.

In 1923, Gibran published The Prophet in English. Comprising twenty-six poetic sermons delivered by the sage Almustafa before sailing home from the city of Orphalese—meditating on love, marriage, children, work, sorrow, and death—the book became a global spiritual phenomenon, never once going out of print. At his death in New York at forty-eight, his body was transported across the Mediterranean back to Lebanon, laid to rest in the 7th-century monastery of Mar Sarkis in Bsharri.