208.
Asaad Shidiak was the fourth son of a respectable Maronite, and was born about the year 1797, at Hadet, a small village a few miles from Beirut.

His early training was among the Maronites.

Such was his ability and fondness for learning, that his family aided him in preparing for the Maronite college at Ain Warka, the most noted seminary on the mountains.

He entered the college at the age of sixteen, and remained nearly three years, applying himself diligently to rhetoric, and to natural and theological science, all of which were taught in the Arabic and Syriac languages.
Having completed his college course with the highest honor, he became a teacher, first of a common village school, and then of theology and general science in a convent.

Occasionally he was permitted to deliver public lectures.