Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate
Gibran was born January 6, 1883, in the village of Bsharri in the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, Ottoman Empire (modern-day Lebanon). His parents, Khalil Sa'ad Gibran and Kamila Rahmeh, the daughter of a priest, were Maronite Christians, although, as written by Bushrui and Jenkins, they would set for Gibran an example of tolerance by "refusing to perpetuate religious prejudice and bigotry in their daily lives." Kamila's paternal grandfather had converted from Islam to Christianity. She was thirty when Gibran was born, and Gibran's father, Khalil, was her third husband. Gibran had two younger sisters, Marianna and Sultana, and an older half-brother, Boutros, from one of Kamila's previous marriages. Gibran's family lived in poverty. In 1888, Gibran entered Bsharri's one-class school, which was run by a priest, and there he learnt the rudiments of Arabic, Syriac, and arithmetic.