AL-MAŠRIQ («L'ORIENTE»)

AL-MAŠRIQ («The East»). - A Catholic journal of popular scientific dissemination in the Arabic language, founded in Beirut in 1898 by the Jesuits of the Université Saint-Joseph to complement the work of their newspaper al-Bašir («The Messenger», since 1871), now defunct. Al-M. set itself the goals of education and religious propaganda, but at the same time, especially under the direction of its founder and principal editor, the eminent Arabist Fr. Luciano Cheikh (d. 1927), it published excellent studies and unpublished texts of ancient Arabic literature, which earned the periodical the esteem of Orientalists.