Biography of Kahlil Gibran

Khalil Gibran (born Gibran Khalil Gibran bin Mikhā'īl bin Sa'ad; January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931 also known as Kahlil Gibran, was a Lebanese American artist, poet, and writer. Born in the town of Bsharri in modern-day Lebanon (then part of Ottoman Syria), as a young man he emigrated with his family to the United States where he studied art and began his literary career. He is chiefly known for his 1923 book The Prophet, a series of philosophical essays written in English prose. An early example of Inspirational fiction, the book sold well despite a cool critical reception, and became extremely popular in the 1960s counterculture.


Gibran was born in the Christian Maronite town of Bsharri (in modern day northern Lebanon) to the daughter of a Maronite priest. His mother Kamila was thirty when he was born; his father, also named Khalil, was her third husband.As a result of his family's poverty, Gibran received no formal schooling during his youth. However, priests visited him regularly and taught him about the Bible, as well as the Arabic and Syriac languages.
Gibran's father initially worked in an apothecary but, with gambling debts he was unable to pay, he went to work for a local Ottoman-appointed administrator or local warlord.
Around 1891, extensive complaints by angry subjects led to the administrator being removed and his staff being investigated. Gibran's father was imprisoned for alleged embezzlement, and his family's property was confiscated by the authorities. With no home, Kamila Gibran decided to follow her brother to the United States. Although Gibran's father was released in 1894, Kamila remained resolved and left for New York on June 25, 1895, taking Khalil, his younger sisters Mariana and Sultana, and his elder half-brother Peter(/Bhutros/Butrus)

The Gibrans settled in Boston's South End, at the time the second largest Syrian/Lebanese-American community in the United States. Due to a mistake at school he was registered as Kahlil Gibran.
His mother began working as a seamstress peddler, selling lace and linens that she carried from door to door. Gibran started school on September 30, 1895. School officials placed him in a special class for immigrants to learn English. Gibran also enrolled in an art school at a nearby settlement house. Through his teachers there, he was introduced to the avant-garde Boston artist, photographer, and publisher Fred Holland Day, who encouraged and supported Gibran in his creative endeavors. A publisher used some of Gibran's drawings for book covers in 1898.
Gibran's mother, along with his elder brother Peter, wanted him to absorb more of his own heritage rather than just the Western aesthetic culture he was attracted to, so at the age of fifteen, Gibran returned to his homeland to study at a Maronite-run preparatory school and higher-education institute in Beirut. He started a student literary magazine with a classmate and was elected "college poet". He stayed there for several years before returning to Boston in 1902, coming through Ellis Island on May 10. Two weeks before he got back, his sister Sultana died of tuberculosis at the age of 14. The next year, Peter died of the same disease and his mother died of cancer. His sister Marianna supported Gibran and herself by working at a dressmaker’s shop. 

 Works
In Arabic:

• Nubthah fi Fan Al-Musiqa (1905)
• Ara'is al-Muruj (Nymphs of the Valley, also translated as Spirit Brides, 1906)
• al-Arwah al-Mutamarrida (Spirits Rebellious, 1908)
• al-Ajniha al-Mutakassira (Broken Wings, 1912)
• Dam'a wa Ibtisama (A Tear and A Smile, 1914)
• al-Mawakib (The Processions, 1919)
• al-‘Awāsif (The Tempests, 1920)
• al-Bada'i' waal-Tara'if (The New and the Marvellous,1923)

In English, prior to his death:

• The Madman (1918)
  
• Twenty Drawings (1919)
• The Forerunner (1920)
• The Prophet, (1923)
• Sand and Foam (1926)
• Kingdom Of The Imagination (1927)
• Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)
• The Earth Gods (1931)

Posthumous, in English:

• The Wanderer (1932)
• The Garden of the Prophet(1933)
• Lazarus and his Beloved (1933)
• Prose and Poems (1934)
• A Self-Portrait (1959)
• Thought and Meditations (1960)
• Spiritual sayings (1962)
• Voice of the master (1963)
• Mirrors of the Soul (1965)
• The Vision (1994)
• Eye of the Prophet (1995)

Other:

• Beloved Prophet, The love letters of Khalil Gibran and Mary Haskell, and her private journal (1972, edited by Virginia Hilu)

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