an Ottoman author and father of Ibrahim al-Yaziji. He was one of the leading figures in the Nahda movement. When Yaziji moved to Beirut in 1840, he became an Arabic tutor and it was in this role that he came into contact with American and British Protestant missionaries. He would help fulfil one of the greatest ambitions of the missionaries – the translation of the Bible into Arabic – when he corrected a translation that Eli Smith, an American missionary, and Butrus al-Bustani started in 1847.
