Kahlil Gibran

Jubran Khalil Jubran, usually known in English as Kahlil Gibran, was a Lebanese American writer, poet and visual artist who lived from 1883 to 1931, born in Bsharri in the Ottoman-ruled Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate to a Maronite Christian family before immigrating with his mother and siblings to the United States in 1895. He is best known as the author of The Prophet, first published in the United States in 1923, which has since become one of the best selling books of all time and has been translated into more than one hundred languages. Discovered as a young artist in Boston and later supported in Paris by the benefactress Mary Haskell, Gibran also engaged with Syrian political thought opposing Ottoman rule, and some of his writing was banned by Ottoman authorities for its anti-clerical and rebellious themes.