In LebanonGibran was born in the Christian
Maronite town of
Bsharri in northern Lebanon. His maternal grandfather was a Maronite Catholic priest. His mother Kamila was thirty when Gibran was born; his father, also named Kahlil, was her third husband. As a result of his family's poverty, Gibran did not receive any formal schooling during his youth. However, priests visited him regularly and taught him about the
Bible, as well as the
Arabic and
Syriac languages.
After Gibran's father, a tax collector, went to prison for alleged embezzlement, Ottoman authorities confiscated his family's property. Authorities released Gibran's father in 1894, but the family had by then lost their home. Gibran's mother decided to follow her brother, Gibran's uncle, and emigrate to the United States.Gibran's mother, along with Kahlil, his younger sisters Mariana and Sultana, and his half-brother Peter left for
New York on
June 25, 1895.
In the United StatesKahlil Gibran, Photograph by
Fred Holland Day, c. 1898
The Gibrans settled in
Boston's
South End, at the time the second largest Lebanese-American community in the United States. His mother began working as a pack 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's English teacher suggested that he Anglicise the spelling of his name in order to make it more acceptable to American society. Kahlil Gibran was the result.
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,
[1] who encouraged and supported Gibran in his creative endeavors. A publisher used some of Gibran's drawings for book covers in 1898.
At 15, Gibran went back to
Lebanon 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. Two weeks before he got back, his sister, Sultana, age 14, died of
tuberculosis. The next year, his brother Bhutros died of the same disease, and his mother died of
cancer. His sister Marianna then supported Gibran and herself, working at a dressmaker's shop.
