[3] According to a custom, he was entrusted to a priest named Ibrāhīm ibn Dray to learn from him the Syriac and the reading of the liturgical books.
Ibn al-Qilai was particularly devoted to the fight against the Jacobite influences (who won, apparently, his native village of Lehfed and of his relatives) to secure the Maronites to the Catholic Church.
On November 23, 1494, the Franciscan friar Francesco Suriano, then custos of the Holy Land, sent an unfriendly letter to Maronite Patriarch Simeon Hadath: he marveled that he was elected in 1492 but has not yet sent anyone to Rome to request the pallium (the confirmation of his election); "enemies" of the new primate, grouped in Cyprus where the Maronite Church was well established, accused him of breaking the union with the papacy; Suriano asked the Patriarch to justify and renew in writing, with the bishops, priests and lay leaders of the Maronite nation, their membership of the Catholic Church.
Then Gabriel ibn al-Qilai was sent by Suriano to investigate charges and collect the new act of faith of the patriarch and his people.
[5] The pope replied in 1515, confirming the rights of the Maronites and sent two other letters on this subject, to the Latin archbishop and the Venetian governor of the island.
Gabriel ibn al-Qilai authored many literary works, mixing prose and poetry, making him the first modern Maronite writer.
The Maronite historians of the 17th and 18th centuries (Antoine Faustus Nairon,[6] Estephan El Douaihy and Giuseppe Simone Assemani) were largely inspired by him.