Louis Sabunji

Sabunji was born in Diyarbakır in 1838.[1] His family were Syriac Catholic.[2] He had two brothers, Jurji and Daoud.[3]

Sabunji received education at the seminary in the Syriac Catholic Church in Mount Lebanon in 1850.[3] Then he attended the College of Pontifical Propaganda in Rome between 1853 and 1861 and received a PhD in theology.[1][3] There he also learned photography.[3]

Following his graduation Sabunji became an ordained priest and was among the first Turkish and Latin instructors of the newly established Syrian Protestant College.[3] He established and headed a school named Al Madrasa Al Siriyaniyya (Arabic: the Syriac School) in 1864.[3] Then he began to work as a priest in Beirut where he launched a weekly journal entitled Al Nahla in 1870.[1][2] In August 1871 Sabunji suspended his journalistic activity in Beirut due to his clash with Butrus Al Bustani, a Christian journalist, and traveled various countries until his return to Beirut in 1864.[1] Sabunji permanently left Beirut and settled in London in 1876 due to his anti-Ottoman political stance.[1]

In London Sabunji worked as the political editor of a publication entitled Mirat Al Ahwal which was launched by Rizk Allah Hassun on 19 October 1876.[1] Sabunji continued to publish Al Nahla in London from 1877.[2] He founded another weekly in London entitled Al Khalifa.[1] Sabunji became the professor of the Arabic language at the Imperial Institute in London in the late 1880s.[2]

Sabunji settled in Egypt during World War I and then went to the United States where he lived in poverty.[3] In 1931, he was murdered by burglars in Los Angeles at age 93.[3]