In 1886, aged 20, he moved to Beirut to teach at the Kulliat Al-Aba' Alyasu'iyun (The college of Jesuit Fathers) and to continue his Arabic studies.

In 1887 he continued his studies at a monastery in Chèvremont, near Liège, Belgium, adopting celibacy and the name Anastas Mari Al-Karmali.

In 1889 he went to Montpellier, France, to study philosophy, theology, Biblical exegesis and the history of Christianity and was ordained a priest in 1894, taking the name Père Anastase-Marie de Saint-Elie.

[2][3] His published articles in the magazines of Egypt, Syria and Iraq, appeared under many pseudonyms: In addition to comparative studies of Latin and Greek in relationship to Arabic, he studied Aramaic (Syriac and Mandaic), Hebrew, Abyssinian (Habesha), Persian, Turkish, Sabthi (Sabian), English, Italian and Spanish.

During the war the Ottomans refused him leave and he remain in Kayseri in Central Anatoli for a year and ten months between 1914 and 1916, when he was returned to Baghdad.

[1] For decades, Anastas al-Karmali was a close friend of the Mandaeans of Iraq and studied their language and culture in detail.