The following letters, selected from the Philip Hitti Papers at the IHRC Archives, were received by Philip Hitti in the United States from his relatives in Lebanon between 1924 and 1977.

Philip Khuri Hitti (1886-1978) was born in Shimlan, Lebanon. He graduated from the American University of Beirut and taught there until he came to the United States in 1913. In 1915, he received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, where he lectured in the Department of Oriental Languages. In 1920, he returned to the American University of Beirut as a professor of history. From 1926 until his retirement in 1954, he taught at Princeton University in the Departments of Oriental Languages and Literatures and Near Eastern Studies. In the United States, he was an authority on the cultures, history, religions and languages of the Near East and did much to create among Americans an appreciation and understanding of Arabic and Islamic cultures. In 1945, he served as adviser to the Arab delegations to the United Nations organizational meeting in San Francisco. He also served as a consultant to American government agencies and corporations. Hitti was the author of numerous books and trained generations of scholars. His major work was the "History of the Arabs" (1937).