Gibran Kahlil Gibran was born on January 6 near the Holy Cedar Grove on the edge of Wadi Qadisha (The Holy Valley) in the town of Bisharri, Lebanon. His mother Kamileh, the daughter of a clergyman named Istiphan Rahmeh, was a widow when she married Kahlil Gibran, father of the poet. Kamileh’s first husband was Hanna ‛Abd-es-Salaam Rahmeh, by whom she had one son, Boutros, who was six years old when Gibran was born.

Mariana, Gibran’s first sister, was born.

Sultanah, Gibran’s second sister, was born.

Kahlil, his half-brother Boutros, his mother, and his two sisters emigrated to the United States, settling in Boston’s Chinatown, while his father remained in Lebanon.

Gibran returned to Lebanon, where he began a course of intensive study at al-Hikmah School. He studied a wide variety of subjects beyond those prescribed in the curriculum, and immersed himself in Arabic literature, ancient and modern. He also familiarized himself with contemporary literary movements in the Arab world.

During the summer vacation in Bisharri, Gibran fell desperately in love with a beautiful young woman. Although there is much conjecture as to the nature of this relationship and the identity of the young woman, it is certain that Gibran found his first love-affair both frustrating and disappointing. In the autumn he returned to Boston by way of Paris, and several years later described the unhappy affair in The Broken Wings.

Gibran returned to the Middle East once more, this time as a guide and interpreter to an American family. He reached Beirut but did not visit his hometown Bisharri. He was forced to hurry back to Boston on hearing of the death of his sister Sultanah, and of the serious illness of his mother.

In March his half-brother Boutros died, and his mother died in June, leaving Gibran and his sister Mariana in Boston. His half-brother and younger sister died of tuberculosis, while the mother passed away by cancer.

By now, Gibran was beginning to attract attention as an artist. Fred Holland Day, a well-known photographer, became Gibran’s first patron, holding at his studio in January an exhibition of the poet’s paintings and drawings.
In February, a second exhibition was held at the Cambridge school, a private educational institution owned and operated by Mary Haskell, who became Gibran’s close friend, patroness and benefactress.
At the Cambridge School he also met a beautiful and impulsive young woman of French origin, Emilie Michel, who was known to all her acquaintances as Micheline and with whom, it is said, Gibran fell in love.

Gibran published Al-Musiqah (The Music), his first book in Arabic.

Gibran published a savage attack against the Church and the State in ‛Ara’is Al-Muruj (Nymphs of the Valley), which earned him the reputation of being a rebel and a revolutionary, a reputation which the publication of his later mystical works only partially mitigated.

Besides arranging for the publication of Al-Arwah Al-Mutamarridah (Spirits Rebellious),

Gibran also worked on Falsafat Al-Din wa’l-Tadayyun (The Philosophy of Religion and Religiosity), which was never published.

Through the generosity of Mary Haskell, who was determined to help Gibran fulfill his ambition to become a great artist and thinker, he went to Paris, visiting London on the way, to study art at the Académie Julien and at the Écoles des Beaux-Arts. During his stay in Paris, he came into contact with European literature, and read the works of contemporary English and French writers. He also became especially interested in the work of William Blake, who greatly influenced his thought and art; and for a while fell under the spell of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra; but Nietzsche’s influence, unlike that of Blake, was short-lived.

Gibran continued his studies in Paris, where he met again an old classmate from Al-Hikmah, Yusuf Al-Huwayik, also an art student. The two men became close friends, and together tried to acquaint themselves with modern trends in painting. They found, however, that they had little sympathy with Cubism, which one of them described as a “lunatic revolution”, and instead reaffirmed their loyalty to the classical tradition. They also met the sculptor Auguste Rodin, and although this meeting lasted only for a few seconds, Rodin was to exert a powerful influence on Gibran’s art. His teacher in Paris was in fact Maître Lawrence, whose art Gibran so detested that eventually he left him and began to work on his own.

Gibran, Ameen Rihani, and Yusuf Al-Huwayik met in London and laid many plans for a cultural renaissance of the Arab world. Among these plans was one for the founding of an opera house in Beirut, the outstanding feature of which was to be two domes symbolizing the reconciliation between Christianity and Islam.

After his return to Boston in October, Gibran proposed marriage to Mary Haskell, who was ten years his senior, but he was not accepted.

At a time of intense political activity occasioned by the freeing of Arab territories from the Ottoman rule, Gibran founded ‘Al-Halqa’ l-Dhahabiyyah (The Golden Circle), one of many semi-political Arab societies which sprang up in Syria, Lebanon, Constantinople, Paris and New York. But the Golden Circle was not popular among Arab immigrants and was dissolved after the first meeting.

Gibran began to earn his living through portrait painting.

Gibran moved from Boston to New York, where he hired a studio at 51 West Tenth Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenue. “The Hermitage”, as Gibran called his studio, remained his home until his death. He published Al-Ajnihah ‘l-Mutakassirah (The Broken Wings), his autobiographical narrative, on which he had been working since 1903.
A literary and love relationship began between Gibran and May Ziadeh, a Lebanese writer living in Egypt. Although they knew each other only through their correspondence, which lasted for more than twenty years, they achieved a rare intimacy and harmony of understanding which was broken only by Gibran’s death.
Gibran’s father died in Lebanon.

Gibran collected a number of his prose poems which had appeared in different magazines since 1904 and published them under the titles Dam’ah wa ‘Ibtisamah (A Tear and a Smile).

In December an exhibition of his paintings and drawings was held at the Montross Galleries, New York.

Two other exhibitions of Gibran’s works were held: one at the Knoedler Galleries, New York; the other at the Doll and Richards Galleries, Boston.

Gibran published The Madman, his first book written in English.

Gibran published Twenty Drawings- a collection of his drawings with an introduction by Alice Raphael, and Al-Mawakib (The Procession) – a philosophical poem illustrated by Gibran himself and containing some of his best drawings.

In addition to publishing Al- ‘Awasif (The Tempests), a collection of short narratives and prose poems which had appeared in various journals between 1912 and 1918, and his second English book, The Forerunner, Gibran became founder-president of a literary society called ‘Al-Rabita ‘l-Qalamiyyan (Arrabitah). This society, which included among its members such distinguished Arab immigrants as ‘Abd-al-Masih Haddad, Nasib ‘Arida, Mikhail Naimy, Rashied Ayyub, Nadra Haddad, William Catzflis, Iliya Abu Madi and Wadi’ Bahut, exerted a powerful influence on the work of immigrant Arab poets (Shu’ara’ ‘l-Mahjar) and on successive generations of Arab writers.

Gibran published a thematic “play”, Irm Dhat Al-Imad (Iram, City of Lofty Pillars), written in Arabic and taking the form of a discourse on mysticism.

His health began to deteriorate.

In January another exhibition of his work was held in Boston, this time at the Women’s City Club.

Gibran published Al-Badayi’ wa’l-Tarayif (Beautiful and Rare Sayings), in which he included his own sketches (drawn from imagination when he was seventeen) of some of the greatest Arab philosophers and poets such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Al Ghazzali, Al-Khansa’, Ibn Al-Farid, Abu Nuwas, Ibn Al-Muqafa’, and others.

He published The Prophet, his most successful work.

Gibran published Sand and Foam, a book of aphorisms some of which were first written in Arabic and then translated into English.

Gibran published Jesus the Son of Man, his longest work.

Two weeks before his death he published The Earth Gods.

Gibran died on Friday, April 10, at St. Vincent’s Hospital, New York, after a long and painful illness, described in the autopsy as “cirrhosis of the liver with incipient tuberculosis in one of the lungs.” His body lay in a funeral parlor for two days and thousands of admirers came to pay their last respects. It was then taken to Boston, where a funeral service was conducted in the Church of our Lady of the Cedars. The body was then taken to a vault to await its return to Lebanon, where it arrived at the port of Beirut on August 21.
After a magnificent reception unique in the history of Lebanon, Gibran’s body was carried to Bisharri to its final resting place in the old chapel of the Monastery of Mar Sarkis. Not far from Mar Sarkis a permanent Gibran Museum has been established by the people of Bisharri with the sponsorship and encouragement of the Government of Lebanon.

At his death Gibran left two works which were published posthumously: the completed The Wanderer, which appeared in 1932; and the unfinished The Garden of the Prophet, which was completed and published in 1933 by Barbara Young, an American poetess who claimed to have been Gibran’s companion during the last seven years of his life.

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

National Sculpture Society

Massachusetts, Horticultural Society