ABSTRACT
The earliest mention of Darwin and evolution in Arabic print coincided with the publication of Abdallah Fikri Pasha's treatise defending Copernicus. In the minds of Roman Catholic authorities and American Protestant evangelicals, the very mention of Darwin's name was as if Satan had entered the room. In 1878 and for the next four years – until a crisis over Darwin temporarily closed the American College – Al-Muqtataf put out an article of varying length on evolution practically every other issue. Muqtataf's editors claimed to take no side, as they repeatedly said, but just asking the questions they did was provocative enough. The provocations kept coming, one following the next in small probing advances. Shibli Shumayyil had graduated from Syrian Protestant College a year behind Ya’qub Sarruf and Faris Nimr and was their close friend and Muqtataf's devil's advocate for pushing evolution theory.
