Mīkhāʼīl Nuʻaymah

Mikhail Naimy, also known by the Arabic spelling Mikha'il Nu'ayma, was a Lebanese poet, novelist and philosopher who lived from 1889 to 1988. He wrote in Arabic, English and Russian. Known for his spiritual writing, especially The Book of Mirdad, he is regarded as one of the leading figures of modern Arabic literature and one of the significant spiritual writers of the twentieth century.

Born into a Greek Orthodox family, he received his early schooling in Baskinta. He went on to study at a Russian teachers' institute and a theological seminary in Poltava, in present-day Ukraine. In 1911 he emigrated to the United States to join two older brothers who ran a furniture shop in Walla Walla, Washington. He later studied at the University of Washington in Seattle, earning degrees in law and the liberal arts, and after the First World War he settled in New York and began publishing in earnest.

In New York he helped found the New York Pen League with Khalil Gibran and other writers, a circle of Arab émigré authors who hoped to revitalise Arabic literature from abroad. Naimy served as its secretary while Gibran was president. His output was substantial, with more than thirty works of poetry, fiction, drama, memoir, criticism and essays. He translated much of his English and Russian writing into Arabic himself. His work is largely philosophical and introspective, with a religious outlook that does not follow any single doctrine.

In 1932, after twenty-one years in the United States and shortly after Gibran's death, he returned to Baskinta, where he spent the rest of his life. In 1948 he published The Book of Mirdad, a mystical text about human existence and the bond between a person and an inner God, which is generally considered his best-known work. He also wrote a three-part autobiography, Sab'un, and a biography of Gibran. He died of pneumonia in Beirut in February 1988, at the age of 98. His legacy lives on chiefly in modern Arabic poetry and in the wider recognition of the Arab émigré literary movement.