2 See Missionary Herald for 1827, pp. 68, 71-76, 97-101, 129-136, 169-177, 268-271, 369-372; for 1828, pp. 16-19, 115-119, 165, 373, 375; for 1829, pp. 15, 47, 111, 115; and The Martyr of Lebanon, by Rev. Isaac Bird, Boston, 1864, pp. 208.
Asaad Shidiak was the fourth son of a respectable Maronite, and was born about the year 1797, at Hadet, a small village a few miles from Beirût. His early training was among the Maronites. Such was his ability and fondness for learning, that his family aided him in preparing for the Maronite college at Ain Warka, the most noted seminary on the mountains. He entered the college at the age of sixteen, and remained nearly three years, applying himself diligently to rhetoric, and to natural and theological science, all of which were taught in the Arabic and Syriac languages.
Having completed his college course with the highest honor, he became a teacher, first of a common village school, and then of theology and general science in a convent. Occasionally he was permitted to deliver public lectures. His text-book in the instruction of the monks, was the theological treatise of St. Anthony of Padua, translated into Arabic; of which he made an abridgment, that is still used among the Maronites.
From about the year 1820 to 1824, Asaad was successively in the employ of the Maronite bishop of Beirût, and of several Arab chiefs. These frequent changes were apparently not for his advantage.
He next made application in person to his old college instructor, who had been elevated to the Patriarchal chair. His holiness gave him a cool reception, and reproached him for having preferred the service of sheikhs and princes to that of his bishop. Yet so valuable were his services, that he remained a while with the Patriarch, copying, illustrating, and arranging certain important documents of the Patriarchate, and making out from them a convenient code of church-laws for the Maronite nation, which has since been adopted for general use. But for some reason Asaad felt himself unwelcome, and returned home dissatisfied.
At this time the Maronite priesthood began to be alarmed by the distribution of the Scriptures, and the spread of Protestantism. The Patriarch issued a proclamation against the missionaries, and they replied. Asaad set himself to answer their reply. It was in this connection that his name first became known to the missionaries, to whom he was reported as a man of talent and high education. The dignitaries of the church did not see fit to allow his essay to be published.
In March, 1825, a well-dressed young man, of easy manners and sedate countenance, came to Beirût and asked to be employed by the mission as a teacher of Arabic. As soon as he gave his name, he was recognized as the man who was to have answered their reply to the Patriarch. He took no pains to conceal his agency in the matter, and even frankly begged the liberty of examining the original book, containing one of the most important quotations in the reply by the mission.
There was then no special need of another teacher; and though his very gentlemanly appearance and apparent frankness, and his good sense pleaded in his favor, it was thought prudent to decline his proposal. Little did those excellent brethren think, as this young man turned to go away, how soon they would welcome him to their hearts and homes, and how many thousands of Christian people, even across the ocean, would thrill in sympathy with his sufferings as a martyr for Christ.
Providence so ordered it, that Mr. King arrived from Jerusalem just in time to secure the services of Asaad before he went elsewhere. He was for several weeks Mr. King's instructor in Syriac. The two were well met, and in their frequent discussions, on the differences between the doctrines of the Gospel and those of the Papacy, Mr. King found him one of the most intelligent and skillful reasoners in all the mountains. He was shrewd, sensible, and inquisitive, candid and self-possessed, and was always as ready to hear as to speak. His age was then twenty-nine. There is no good reason to believe that Asaad was actuated, at this time, by higher than worldly motives.
At the close of his connection with Mr. King, he made another effort to secure employment from his Patriarch. Not succeeding, he became Arabic teacher to Mr. Fisk; at the same time assisting Mr. King, then about leaving the country, in preparing his celebrated "Farewell Letter" to his Arab friends. After having put this into neat Arabic style, he made a large number of copies, to be sent to different parts of the country.