Abdul-Karim Rafeq

As a historian of Ottoman Syria, I owe everything to my mentor Dr. Abdul-Karim Rafeq. I attended his lectures at Damascus University in the mid-1980s. Once he relocated with his family to Williamsburg where taught at William and Mary, I visited him periodically during the torturous period of completing my dissertation. He was so generous with his time and expertise. I never knew how to properly thank him. His wife Therese and their children treated me like family. The civil war in Syria,...