Mr. Michaiel Araman, for many years a teacher in the Abeih Seminary with Mr. Calhoun, and for some time a native preacher in Beirut, was appointed instructor in the Biblical History and the Higher Arabic branches; his wife Lulu, the Matron, and Miss Rufka Gregory, the Preceptress.  Rufka was an orphan, as already stated, and was trained with her sister Sada in the family of Mr. and Mrs. Whiting for many years.  As a teacher and a disciplinarian she had not an equal among the women of Syria, and under the joint management of this corps of teachers, aided by competent assistants in the various branches, the Seminary rose in public esteem, until it became one of the most attractive and prosperous institutions in Syria.

In March, 1862, Rufka’s day school of seventy girls held a public examination in the Chapel.  The girls were examined in Arabic reading, geography, grammar, catechism, arithmetic, Scripture lessons and English, with an exhibition of specimens of their needle work.  In the fall it was commenced as a Boarding School, with two paying pupils and four charity pupils.  The funds for commencing the boarding department were furnished by Mr. Alexander Van Rensselaer, Mrs. Henry Farnum, Col.  Frazer, H.B.M.  Commissioner to Syria, and others.  The Seminary not being under the direction of the Mission as such, nor in connection with the American Board, was placed under the care of a local Board of Managers, consisting of Dr. Thomson, Dr. Van Dyck, Consul J.A.  Johnson, and Rev. H.H.  Jessup.  Dr. Thomson was indefatigable in his efforts to place it on a firm and permanent foundation, as a purely Native Protestant institution, and the fact that such a school could be carried on for a year without a single foreign instructor, was one of the most encouraging features in the history of the Syria Mission.  It was the first purely native Female Seminary in Western Asia, and we hope it will not be the last.

It will continue to be the aim of the Mission, and of the present able faculty of the institution, to train up Native teachers qualified to carry on the work in the future.

At the same time in the fall of 1862, a school for Damascene girls was opened in an upper room of my house, under the care of one of Dr. De Forest’s pupils, Sada el Haleby, who carried it on successfully with seventy girls until August, 1864, when, on my departure for the U.S.A. the school was taken up by the late Mrs. Bowen Thompson, whose Society has maintained it until this day.

In 1863, the number of paying boarders in the Seminary had increased to twenty, and in 1866 the pupils numbered eighty, and the income from native paying pupils was about fifteen hundred dollars in gold!