Abstract
The migration of Syrians to America in the 19th and 20th centuries is a major issue which has been widely covered in both fictional and non-fictional literature. Over the same period, many Arab magazines were founded both in North and South America, or “migrated” to those countries. An example is al-Jāmiʿa, which was relocated from Alexandria, Egypt, to New York in 1906, where its founder, the renowned intellectual Faraḥ Anṭūn, was able to undertake a profound study of Western society. Not only did this give him a better insight into that society, but also helped him to better understand the critical issues in his native milieu and the tensions between Turks and Arabs, which often came to the fore, especially when the latter expected the former to help them through important phases of their social, civil, and economic life even in the land they migrated to.
 This paper analyses an article in al-Jāmiʿa by Nāṣīf Shiblī Damūs, previously published in the epony-mous newspaper, in which Syrian migrants in the United States, with Anṭūn supporting them, lament the indifference of the Ottoman authorities toward them and put forward a number of specific requests, using the magazine as a means of making themselves heard by the entire Arab and Ottoman community throughout the world.
Highlights
In our present world which is characterized by a mutual sense of mistrust and an overwhelming lack of self-confidence at every level, it is certainly of great use to look back to history and study the experience of our ancestors, who freely believed, or who were inspired by circumstances to believe, in the possibility of physical, mental and culturalJournal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 19 (2019): 113-128 © Paola Viviani, Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche “Jean Monnet”, Università degli Studi della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, ItalyPaola Viviani integration with the “Other”
This makes us ponder on the kind of links that existed between Syrian migrants and the population of Greater Syria on the one hand, and the non-Arab Ottoman world, its central institutions, the land of adoption, its people and institutions, on the other
All this is of paramount importance if we consider what the United States meant to so many of the people who left their homeland in search of a decent standard of life, virtually impossible to achieve in the Ottoman Empire
Summary
In our present world which is characterized by a mutual sense of mistrust and an overwhelming lack of self-confidence at every level, it is certainly of great use to look back to history and study the experience of our ancestors, who freely believed, or who were inspired by circumstances to believe, in the possibility of physical, mental and culturalJournal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 19 (2019): 113-128 © Paola Viviani, Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche “Jean Monnet”, Università degli Studi della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, ItalyPaola Viviani integration with the “Other”.
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