Asaad was treated harshly by his older brothers, and had reason to regard his life as imperiled: "I am in a sort of imprisonment," he said, "enemies within, and enemies without," Towards the last of March, twenty or more of his relations assembled, to take him to the Patriarch by force. He expostulated with Tannûs, the eldest of the family except one, as the chief manager in the affair, and besought him to desist from a step so inconsistent with their fraternal relations. The unnatural brother turned from him in cold indifference, which so affected Asaad that he went aside, and prayed and wept.
In the evening, he at one time addressed the whole assembled company in this manner: "If I had not read the Gospel, I should have been astonished at this movement of yours; but now I see through it all. It is just what the Gospel has told me to expect; 'The brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and a man's foes shall be they of his own household.' Here you see it is just so. You have assembled together here to fulfill this prophecy of the Gospel. What have I done against you? What is my crime, that it should have called together such an assemblage? Be it that I take the blessed Bible as my only guide to heaven, does that injure you? Is it a crime that renders me worthy of being taken as a malefactor, and sent into confinement?"
Surrounded, as he was, by men insensible to pity, the mother's heart was deeply moved seeing him arrested and borne away as if he had been a murderer. She wept, and Asaad sympathized with her, and turned his back on the home of his childhood, weeping and praying aloud.
He was first taken to the convent of Alma, and then to Canobeen. That convent, where he was destined to wear out the miserable remainder of his life, was in one of the wildest and least accessible recesses of Lebanon.
More than a mouth passed without intelligence, when the Mission received reliable information, that Asaad was in prison, and in chains, and that he was beaten a certain number of stripes daily. A cousin was afterwards permitted to visit him, and reported that he found him sitting on the bare floor, his bed having been taken from him, with a heavy chain around his neck, the other end of which was fastened to the wall. He had also been deprived of all his books and writing utensils. Fruitless efforts were made to effect his deliverance, and his family at last relented, and joined in the efforts. The mother accompanied one of the older sons to Canobeen, and found him in chains, which she had not been willing to believe till she saw it for herself. So decided were the two younger brothers in their movements on his behalf, that they had to consult their own safety in flight. Once they almost succeeded. Asaad himself, under the pressure of his sufferings, made several attempts to flee, but not knowing the way, he was easily apprehended, and the only effect was an aggravation of his misery. A priest gives the following account of his treatment, after one of these failures. "On his arrival at the convent, the Patriarch gave immediate orders for his punishment; and they fell upon him with reproaches, caning him, and smiting him with their hands; yet as often as they struck him on one cheek, he turned to them the other. 'This,' said he, 'is a joyful day to me. My blessed Lord and Master has said, Bless them that curse you; and if they strike you on the right cheek, turn to them the other also. This I have been enabled to do; and I am ready to suffer even more than this for Him who was beaten, and spit upon, and led as a sheep to the slaughter on our account.' When they heard this, they fell to beating him anew, saying, 'Have we need of your preaching, you deceiver? Of what avail are such pretensions as yours, who are in the broad road to perdition?' He replied, 'He that believeth that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, hath eternal life.' 'Ah,' said they, 'this is the way you are blinded. Your salvation is by faith alone in Christ; thus you cast contempt on his mother, and on his saints. You believe not in the presence of his holy body on the earth.' And they threw him on the ground, and overwhelmed him with the multitude of their blows."
For three successive days he was subjected to the bastinado, by order of the Patriarch. Remaining firm to his belief, he was again put in chains, the door barred upon him, and his food given him in short allowance. Compassionate persons interceded, and his condition was alleviated for a time, but no one was allowed to converse with him. After some days, aided, it is supposed, by relatives, he again fled from the convent, but was arrested by soldiers sent out in search of him by the Emeer Abdallah, and delivered to the Patriarch. "On his arrival," says a priest who was with him at Canobeen, "he was loaded with chains, cast into a dark, filthy room, and bastinadoed every day for eight days, sometimes fainting under the operation, until he was near death. He was then left in his misery, his bed a thin flag mat, his covering his common clothes. The door of his prison was filled up with stones and mortar, and his food was six thin cakes of bread a day, and a cup of water."
To this dungeon there was no access or outlet whatever except a small loop-hole, through which they passed him his food. Here he lay several days, and its ever-increasing loathsomeness need not be described. No wonder he cried: "Love ye the Lord Jesus Christ according as He hath loved us, and given himself to die for us. Think of me, O ye that pass by; have pity upon me, and deliver me from these sufferings."
A certain priest, who had been a former friend of Asaad, was touched with compassion, and by perseverance succeeded in once more opening his prison doors, and taking off his chains. But he also became suspected in consequence of his kindness to Asaad, and it is not known how long the sufferer was allowed this partial freedom. One of his brothers visited him in 1828, and found him inclosed within four solid stone walls, as in a sepulchre "full of all uncleanness." In 1829, there appears not to have been any mitigation of his sufferings. For three years or more, the priestly despot had him under his heel, and inflicted upon him the greatest amount of suffering compatible with the continuance of life.
His death is supposed to have occurred in October, 1830. Public opinion was divided as to the cause and manner of it. The Patriarch said it was by fever. There is the same uncertainty as to the manner of his burial. But though thrown down into the ravine and covered with stones, as was alleged, his dust will ever be precious in the eyes of the Lord.
Asaad maintained his Christian profession to the last, and he must ever have an honorable place among the Christian martyrs of modern times.