Before the American University of Beirut rose on the hills of Ras Beirut, there was the Syrian Protestant College — founded in 1866 by American missionaries with a bold mission: teach science, medicine, and the English language in Arabic. But within a decade, a secret war erupted over Darwin's theory of evolution, pitting president Daniel Bliss against a charismatic Arab professor, Yaqub Sarruf. When Sarruf and his colleague Faris Nimr were fired for teaching natural selection, they didn't retreat — they launched a rival journal, al-Muqtataf, that became the most influential scientific magazine in the Arab world. This episode uncovers the 1882 Darwin controversy that split Beirut's intellectual elite, the secret society that tried to topple the college's leadership, and how a handful of exiled professors sparked the Arab scientific renaissance. We also explore the role of the college's first medical class in 1871 and its impact on public health in Mount Lebanon during the silk boom. It's a story of education, empire, and the fierce battle for ideas that shaped modern Lebanon.
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