Matar Nabil - The United States Through Arab Eyes: An Anthology of Writings (1876-1914)

The United States through Arab Eyes

An Anthology of Writings (18761914)

Introduced, selected, and translated by Nabil Matar

EDINBURGH

University Press

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editorial matter and organisation Nabil Matar, 2018

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ISBN 978 1 4744 3435 5 (hardback)

ISBN 978 1 4744 3436 2 (paperback)

ISBN 978 1 4744 3437 9 (webready PDF)

ISBN 978 1 4744 3438 6 (epub)

The right of Nabil Matar to be identified as Editor of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

The illustration on the front cover is from Mikhail Rustum, Diwan (1909), 183.

Contents

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank many colleagues and friends who helped me during the last three years while I worked on this text.

I start with Professor Hani Bawardi, University of Michigan, Dearborn, whose book on The Making of Arab Americans and his friendship first motivated me to this new area of research. I also wish to thank Professor Muhammad Shaheen of the University of Jordan for his suggestion of texts and for discussing with me his translation strategies. And of course, Professor Wadad Kadi, who has been my mentor since our AUB days: she was ever ready with her philological insights and assistance. I benefited from the various panels at MLA and MESA that dealt with Arabic literature and history in the United States, and from conversations with Professors Nouri Gana, Tahia Abdul Nasser, Wal Hassan, Suha Kudsieh, Nizar Hermes and others.

I am grateful to Ms Samira Kawar for introducing me to her ninety-two-year-old Jerusalemite mother and sending me the newspaper article and comments by Mr Hazem Nusseibeh (Lest we forget Christian Palestinians of Jerusalem, Jordan Times, 15 July 2017). I wish to thank Ms Nawal A. Kawar of the Library of Congress for her help in locating a lost document. I am very grateful to Ms Amy Frankfurt for her support and inspiration; Ms Meghan Philips for her research on Native Americans in early-twentieth-century newspapers; and Mr David Faust of the Wilson Library at the University of Minnesota who sent me links to digitized copies of early Arabic newspapers in the United States. Many students in my classes on Arabic Writings at the University of Minnesota read and commented, sometimes quite insightfully, on sections of the introduction. Thanks are also due Professor Katharine Gerbner who convened (and continues to convene) the Atlantic Workshop at the University of Minnesota, and to Professor Kirsten Fischer, who offered me insightful comments. I am grateful to the (then) Chair of the English Department, Professor Ellen Messer-Davidow, for extending to me funds which I used to conduct research at the NYPL in Spring 2016. I am also grateful to Professor Erika Lee for giving me the opportunity to share with her and her seminar an early version of my introduction, and for her inspiring role in the Immigration Center at the University of Minnesota where I spent many an hour going through the extensive collection of material on early Arab America. On 26 April 2018, I gave the Farhat J. Ziyadeh Distinguished Lecture in Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Washington, based on the research in this book. I am grateful to Professor Selim S. Kuru for the invitation and to the family of the late Professor Ziyadeh for sponsoring the lecture.

I wish to thank my former student Ian Larson, who has been my friend for years, and who is preparing to launch on a new phase in his life. His comments on the typescript of this book were invaluable. And last but not least, I wish to thank my life-long friend Professor Mohammad Asfour, winner of the State Award for Excellence in Translation (Cairo, 2017), for agreeing to go over the translation; I could not have hoped for sharper and more experienced eyes than his.

As always, I think of Abraham and Hady, in Atlanta and Ramallah respectively, forging ahead in life. Sons of immigrants, may they ever celebrate their multiple identities as Americans and Arabs, adopting the best from those tumultuous worlds.

I was awarded the Samuel Russell Chair for the Humanities during my work on this book which enabled me to complete my research in a timely manner. I am grateful to Dean John Coleman and to Associate Dean Ana Paula Ferreira for their support, and to Mr and Mrs Gesell of St Paul, Minnesota, who generously endowed the Chair.

This book is dedicated to G.H. for whom immigration to the United States offered the opportunity to realize dreams, to achieve goals, and to excel. Since we met four decades ago, she has been a friend and a confidante. But on that day in July 2006, she was pure heroism always, always to be remembered, cherished, and thanked.

Some Notes on the Translation

With the exception of Khalil al-Sakakinis letters, the texts below were written and published during the period commonly known as the Nahda the Renaissance of Arabic thought and literature which started in the second half of the nineteenth century. After centuries of decline under Ottoman rule, writers from Greater Syria and Egypt revived their mastery of classical Arabic at the same time that they started studying Western literature and publishing novels and articles to entertain and edify their compatriots from the Mediterranean to North America.

The authors below wrote in the same formal Arabic that is used in mass media today. It is simple, clear, and pragmatic, without the rhetorical flourish that had marked it during the previous centuries. In their writings about the United States, they aimed at a truly transnational readership, extending between New York and Beirut, Buenos Aires and Cairo, and so they used language and diction that were to be accessible and uncomplicated to the widely different reading communities. Only Mikhail Rustum and Prince Muhammad Ali aspired to some sophistication in style; The prince used an elegant and educated language, avoiding (as did others) the internal rhymes in prose, the cumbersome adjectives, and the long winding sentences of earlier centuries.

Excepting him, all the writers of the selections translated below were Christian, but all shared in promoting an inclusive perspective that would appeal to the intellectual circles in the home countries as well as to emigrants who were adjusting to their new American environment. Religion rarely intruded into their writings, and although the prince sometimes quoted Quranic verses, he expressed an exuberant tolerance and engagement with other religions (he had earlier traveled to and written about Japan).

In translating the texts, I have remained close to the original in both style and content. On some occasions, I omitted or added words because authors used turns of phrases which, literally translated into English, would make awkward sense. I have not had reason to interpret much as translation is always an act of interpretation. The authors were presenting arguments, descriptions, accounts, and polemics, and therefore, they avoided ambiguity and uncertainty. They were also eager to promote the Arabic language, and if there was a strong undercurrent to their writings, it was the narrative of Arabic as language and culture that defined them in the