Wajdi Mallat
Encyclopedia
Wajdi Mallat (November 22, 1919 - April 17, 2010) was a Lebanese
jurist, statesman and author. He was the first president of the Constitutional Council (Arabic المجلس الدستوري) of Lebanon, from 1994 to 1997. He resigned from the Council over the handling of the parliamentary elections of 1996.
, the capital of Ottoman Mount Lebanon. His uncle Tamer (1856–1914), a judge during the Ottoman era, was a well-known poet who stood publicly against the arbitrariness and corruption of Wasa Basha (Arabic واصا باشا), the plenipotentiary governor of Mount Lebanon. His mother, Marie Checrallah, hailed from a family of physicians educated in Constantinople. His father, Shibli (1875–1961), was celebrated as the "Poet of the Cedars" (Arabic شاعر الأرز) in Cairo and Alexandria, Baghdad, Damascus, Aleppo and Haifa, and entertained close friendships across the region, from then Emir Abdallah of Transjordan (later King Abdullah I of Jordan
) to the first president of independent Lebanon, Bechara El-Khoury.
on his trip to Paris in preparation of the meeting.
. In 1972, he was elected president of the Beirut bar, and founded the first Arab Organization for Human Rights in 1974, together with prominent Arab lawyers like Abderrahmane Youssoufi
(Arabic عبد الرحمن اليوسفي), a prisoner of conscience and later prime minister of Morocco.
In peacetime, he was an influential figure in Lebanon through the respect expressed to him by the leaders of various factions and his intimate knowledge of the Lebanese political scene. In 1964, he was appointed Minister of Social Affairs by Lebanese president Charles Helou
, but resigned a year later over the arbitrary dismissal of leading judges under the pretext of fighting corruption.
During the Lebanese civil war
(1975–90), he refused to take sides, repeating his distaste for violence, while denouncing the atrocities carried out by various Lebanese factions and the excesses of foreign intervention. His mantra was taken through the long war from a saying attributed to Renaissance humanist thinker Erasmus, "to be Guelfe amongst the Gibelins, and Gibelins amongst the Guelfes", entrenched factions in Italy's 13th century civil wars. Amongst the Lebanese leadership, he maintained a close friendship with Raymond Eddé
, Kamal Jumblatt
, Musa al-Sadr
and the successive heads of the Maronite Church.
The assassination of Kamal Jumblatt in 1977 came as a particular shock because of their literary and professional closeness and the particular affinity that had developed through a century and half of close family ties. In 2009, he published a diwan (poetry collection) of hitherto unknown poetry by his grand uncle Tamer, including poems to Nasib Jumblatt, a leader of the Lebanese Mountain in the second half of the 19th century.
He was also dismayed by the kidnapping in Libya soon afterwards of Imam Musa al-Sadr. He had achieved a historic compromise with Sadr, the head of the Lebanese Shi‘i community, over a land dispute in Beirut, where the Imam Sadr Center now stands. His office later brought the case against Mu‘ammar al-Qaddafi which led to an indictment and arrest warrant against the Libyan dictator and his aides.
He was a strong opponent of Israel's war on Lebanon in 1982 and provided the constitutional formula that put a definitive end to the attempted legitimization of the Israeli invasion known as "the May 17 Agreement
". He was attached to the coming together of the Arab world in what he coined as "white Arabism", which he consistently opposed to the dark military and dictatorial regimes across the Arab world.
He died in Beirut on 17 April 2010.
, Raya and Janane, and seven grandchildren.
Mawaqef-Positions, Dar al-Nahar, Beirut 2005, in Arabic and French
Edited, Tamer Mallat, Majmu‘at qasa’ed wa ash‘ar (Collection of lost poems), Beirut, private facsimile edition 2009, in Arabic.
Lebanese people
The Lebanese people are a nation and ethnic group of Levantine people originating in what is today the country of Lebanon, including those who had inhabited Mount Lebanon prior to the creation of the modern Lebanese state....
jurist, statesman and author. He was the first president of the Constitutional Council (Arabic المجلس الدستوري) of Lebanon, from 1994 to 1997. He resigned from the Council over the handling of the parliamentary elections of 1996.
Early years
Born on November 22, 1919, Wajdi Mallat was the scion of a family of poets from the city of BaabdaBaabda
Baabda is the capital city of Baabda District as well as the capital of Mount Lebanon Governorate, western Lebanon. Baabda was the capital city of the autonomous Ottoman Mount Lebanon....
, the capital of Ottoman Mount Lebanon. His uncle Tamer (1856–1914), a judge during the Ottoman era, was a well-known poet who stood publicly against the arbitrariness and corruption of Wasa Basha (Arabic واصا باشا), the plenipotentiary governor of Mount Lebanon. His mother, Marie Checrallah, hailed from a family of physicians educated in Constantinople. His father, Shibli (1875–1961), was celebrated as the "Poet of the Cedars" (Arabic شاعر الأرز) in Cairo and Alexandria, Baghdad, Damascus, Aleppo and Haifa, and entertained close friendships across the region, from then Emir Abdallah of Transjordan (later King Abdullah I of Jordan
Abdullah I of Jordan
Abdullah I bin al-Hussein, King of Jordan [‘Abd Allāh ibn al-Husayn] عبد الله الأول بن الحسين born in Mecca, Second Saudi State, was the second of three sons of Sherif Hussein bin Ali, Sharif and Emir of Mecca and his first wife Abdiyya bint Abdullah...
) to the first president of independent Lebanon, Bechara El-Khoury.
Education and early career
Wajdi Mallat was educated at the Jesuit college of Beirut, then studied for an advanced degree in Latin while earning a Masters in law from Saint Joseph University, where his classmates included many of the subsequent intellectual and political leaders of Lebanon. He was attached early on to the unique interwar experiment of liberalism in the Levant, especially Egypt, which he lived first hand from the close friendship between his father and the leader of the Egyptian national movement, Saad Zaghloul. As the young representative of the Lebanese delegation to UNESCO, which held an early Congress in Beirut in 1948, he made friends with such luminaries as Taha Hussein and Louis MassignonLouis Massignon
Louis Massignon was a French scholar of Islam and its history. Although a Catholic himself, he tried to understand Islam from within and thus had a great influence on the way Islam was seen in the West; among other things, he paved the way for a greater openness inside the Catholic Church towards...
on his trip to Paris in preparation of the meeting.
Lawyer and minister
Following a legal apprenticeship with prominent Lebanese lawyers Edmond Gaspard and Yusuf al-Sawda, he established Mallat law offices in 1949. As a lawyer, he defended celebrated cases in Lebanese modern advocacy, winning landmark judicial victories on behalf of the Vatican and the Beirut Maronite ChurchMaronite Church
The Syriac Maronite Church of Antioch is an Eastern Catholic Church in full communion with the Holy See of Rome . It traces its heritage back to the community founded by Maron, a 4th-century Syriac monk venerated as a saint. The first Maronite Patriarch, John Maron, was elected in the late 7th...
. In 1972, he was elected president of the Beirut bar, and founded the first Arab Organization for Human Rights in 1974, together with prominent Arab lawyers like Abderrahmane Youssoufi
Abderrahmane Youssoufi
Abderrahmane Youssoufi is a Moroccan politician who served as the Prime Minister of Morocco from 1998 to 2002.-Early life:...
(Arabic عبد الرحمن اليوسفي), a prisoner of conscience and later prime minister of Morocco.
In peacetime, he was an influential figure in Lebanon through the respect expressed to him by the leaders of various factions and his intimate knowledge of the Lebanese political scene. In 1964, he was appointed Minister of Social Affairs by Lebanese president Charles Helou
Charles Helou
Charles Helou was President of Lebanon from 1964 to 1970.Born in Beirut, Helou was the scion of a powerful Maronite family from Baabda. He graduated with honours from St. Joseph's University in Beirut in 1929, and went on to complete a Law degree in 1934...
, but resigned a year later over the arbitrary dismissal of leading judges under the pretext of fighting corruption.
During the Lebanese civil war
Lebanese Civil War
The Lebanese Civil War was a multifaceted civil war in Lebanon. The war lasted from 1975 to 1990 and resulted in an estimated 150,000 to 230,000 civilian fatalities. Another one million people were wounded, and today approximately 350,000 people remain displaced. There was also a mass exodus of...
(1975–90), he refused to take sides, repeating his distaste for violence, while denouncing the atrocities carried out by various Lebanese factions and the excesses of foreign intervention. His mantra was taken through the long war from a saying attributed to Renaissance humanist thinker Erasmus, "to be Guelfe amongst the Gibelins, and Gibelins amongst the Guelfes", entrenched factions in Italy's 13th century civil wars. Amongst the Lebanese leadership, he maintained a close friendship with Raymond Eddé
Raymond Edde
Raymond Eddé was a Lebanese statesman who served his country for many years as a legislator and cabinet minister. He led the Lebanese National Bloc, an influential political party. The son of former President Émile Eddé, Raymond Eddé was himself a candidate for the presidency in 1958, and was...
, Kamal Jumblatt
Kamal Jumblatt
Kamal Jumblatt ; was an important Lebanese politician. He was the main leader of the anti-government forces in the Lebanese Civil War until his assassination in 1977. He is the father of the present Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt.-Family background and education:Kamal Jumblatt was born in...
, Musa al-Sadr
Musa al-Sadr
For the Twelver Shī‘ah Imām, see Mūsá al-KāżimMūsá aṣ-Ṣadr , also Musā-ye Sader and Moussa Sadr), was an Iranian-Lebanese philosopher and Shī‘ah religious leader who disappeared in August 1978...
and the successive heads of the Maronite Church.
The assassination of Kamal Jumblatt in 1977 came as a particular shock because of their literary and professional closeness and the particular affinity that had developed through a century and half of close family ties. In 2009, he published a diwan (poetry collection) of hitherto unknown poetry by his grand uncle Tamer, including poems to Nasib Jumblatt, a leader of the Lebanese Mountain in the second half of the 19th century.
He was also dismayed by the kidnapping in Libya soon afterwards of Imam Musa al-Sadr. He had achieved a historic compromise with Sadr, the head of the Lebanese Shi‘i community, over a land dispute in Beirut, where the Imam Sadr Center now stands. His office later brought the case against Mu‘ammar al-Qaddafi which led to an indictment and arrest warrant against the Libyan dictator and his aides.
He was a strong opponent of Israel's war on Lebanon in 1982 and provided the constitutional formula that put a definitive end to the attempted legitimization of the Israeli invasion known as "the May 17 Agreement
May 17 Agreement
The May 17 Agreement of 1983 was a failed U.S.-backed attempt to create peace between Lebanon and Israel during the Lebanese Civil War, after Israel invaded Lebanon and besieged Beirut in 1982...
". He was attached to the coming together of the Arab world in what he coined as "white Arabism", which he consistently opposed to the dark military and dictatorial regimes across the Arab world.
President of the Constitutional Council
In 1994, he was elected by a large majority in the Lebanese Parliament to sit on the newly established Constitutional Council, then by his peers on the Council as its president. Within two years, the Constitutional Council had become the most respected institution in the country owing to its fiercely independent and principled decisions. He resigned from the Council over unfair tampering with parliamentary elections on April 3, 1997. While he never expressed the full reasons for his resignation to avoid further shocks to the country, he did say in a rare television interview that "the Constitutional Council came to Lebanon 25 years later before its time." His pattern of resigning high government positions earned him a reputation of a statesman who was keener to protect the public position's dignity over earning it in the first place.Retirement and legacy
He developed in his late years his rare literary talents into several books, including a best-selling book on his various political and professional positions entitled Mawaqef-Positions, in Arabic and French, and a reference compendium of some 700 pages on the mark of his father on contemporary Arab poetry, The Poet of the Cedars: a School for National Identity. He also left thousands of pages in legal studies and briefs, and a fully annotated manuscript of Tamer's recovered diwan.He died in Beirut on 17 April 2010.
Personal life
Dedicated to his family's education as his prime concern, he remained extremely private through his career as jurist, man of letters, and politician. During his tenure as the most powerful judge in the country, he refused all invitations to social functions. In 1956, he married Nouhad Diab. They had four children, Manal, ChibliChibli Mallat
Chibli Mallat is a human rights lawyer and a former candidate for presidency in Lebanon.-Career:In his law practice, he is best known for bringing the case of Victims of Sabra and Shatila v...
, Raya and Janane, and seven grandchildren.
Books
Shibli al-Mallat, Sha‘er al-arz, madrasat al-talaqi al-watani (The Poet of the Cedars: a School for National Identity), Joseph Raidi Press, Beirut 1999, in Arabic, with introductions in English and FrenchMawaqef-Positions, Dar al-Nahar, Beirut 2005, in Arabic and French
Edited, Tamer Mallat, Majmu‘at qasa’ed wa ash‘ar (Collection of lost poems), Beirut, private facsimile edition 2009, in Arabic.