The Amin Ghorayeb Collection is one of the largest and richest donations ever made to the Khayrallah Center. Spanning almost a century of history, the collection preserves the writings, photographs, letters, and personal papers of Amin Mansur Shahin Ghorayeb (1881–1971) — a Lebanese journalist, poet, and editor whose life and work connected Lebanon, Egypt, New York, and Brazil.

The collection includes bound volumes of Ghorayeb’s newspaper Al-Haress, rare books he authored, early-20th-century manuscripts, and hundreds of postcards, glass negatives, and stereoscopic photographs documenting global travel between 1900 and 1960. It also contains correspondence between the Ghorayeb family and intellectuals across the Arab world and the diaspora, as well as rare political pamphlets, literary works, and audio recordings.

Materials from the Amin Ghorayeb Collection, including Arabic newspapers, a historical memoir booklet, reel-to-reel audio recordings, and an album page of early 20th-century color postcards, and some photos and negatives from Amin Ghorayeb’s travels including photos taken in Ecuador, Brazil, and Cairo.

First published in Beirut in the 1920s and revived in São Paulo in the 1950s, Al-Haress became a leading cultural and literary newspaper. Ghorayeb used it to advance Arabic literature, language scholarship, and reflections on Arab and diaspora life, cementing his role in early mahjar [Arabic for: lands of immigration] journalism.

Collectively, these materials offer a vivid portrait of the early Arab mahjar, Arabic print culture, and the life of a family whose history spans continents. The Khayrallah Center is honored to preserve the Amin Ghorayeb Collection and make it available to the public and researchers worldwide.

The Center has finished cataloging the collection, and we are currently processing some of the materials starting with letters to and from Amin Ghorayeb. Once we complete this phase, we will start digitizing both the letters and Al-Haress. We hope to provide public access to some of this material by Spring/Summer 2026.