Ottoman History Podcast - Ottoman Boston: Discovering Little Syria

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

with Chloe Bordewich and Lydia Harrington hosted by Meryum Kazmi and Harry Bastermajian | a collaboration with Harvard Islamica --- In this episode, we leave Harvard and Cambridge to explore the little-known history of immigration from the former Ottoman Empire to Boston in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While completing their PhDs at Boston University and Harvard, Dr. Lydia Harrington and Dr. Chloe Bordewich began to research the history of the neighborhood in today's Chinatown and South End once known as Little Syria. Through the study of property maps, newspapers, oral history interviews, and immigration records, Chloe and Lydia have uncovered the story of this diasporic community from today’s Syria and Lebanon and added both to our understanding of Ottoman immigration to the United States and the history of Boston. The resulting public history project now includes walking tours of Little Syria, an article in both English and Arabic, an exhibit, and a digital humanities project. « Click for More »

Welcome to the Harvard Islamica podcast. I'm Mariam Kazmi. On a Sunday afternoon in the fall, my colleague Harry Bostromagian and I gathered with a group at the gates of Boston's Chinatown to learn about the little-known history of that neighborhood, which was once called Little Syria, and occupied by immigrants from the former Ottoman Empire who came to Boston in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. On the tour, led by Lydia Harrington, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT, and Chloe Bordewick, Public History Postdoctoral Associate at the Boston University Center for Anti-Racist Research, we visited sites that were important to the Little Syria community and heard personal

stories from some of its descendants who still live in the Boston area today. So to get us started, why don't you tell us about your background and how you came to do this public history project on Boston's Little Syria. Okay, so I recently finished my PhD at BU, at Boston University in Islamic Art and Architecture, researching something totally, like mostly unrelated to this topic, late Ottoman architecture. So actually the same time period as a lot of the little Syria history. But Chloe and I actually met while we were doing research for our dissertations in Istanbul, and we somehow, when we came back from research, we had heard there was this little Syria neighborhood in Boston, and we were trying to find a book or some comprehensive narrative source

about it, and we could just find you know blogs on short blog posts about the religious aspect of the neighborhood or food like food blogs are very interested in the neighborhood but there was like very little secondary sources so we just decided like hey we'll do some research on it and it turned into a walking tour. That was the first iteration. And we actually had started the research in February 2020, so we didn't get much done before the pandemic started. But we were doing a little more research until 2022, and we had been busy trying to finish our dissertations

over that year and a half or two year span. And then we started giving the walking tours in May 2020? 2022. 2022. And that morphed into writing an article about it and curating this exhibition. So yeah, it's kind of snowballed in a good way into more projects. So I'll hand it over to you to talk more about it. Yeah, I think for me, I also, my research focused primarily on modern Egypt and not on local history here in Boston. But having lived here now for so many

years, you know, I think I felt, I felt a desire to know more about how the places, now mostly said Egypt, but also the broader Ottoman Empire, were connected with the place that I had been living. And I think often, you know, the universities can, a university campus can be kind of a thing unto itself. And it's wonderful to be able to connect with the communities that are outside the university wall. From our own interest, you know, we started walking in the neighborhood

in the South End and in Chinatown, and the only really remaining shop that still exists on Chalmette Avenue was actually open, and we were able to talk with the proprietors there. And that sort of sparked our desire to get to know some more of the people who really belonged to this community in the past and their descendants in the present. And so that's, as Lydia said, how the project began to evolve. And, you know, I think we've seen, but by exploring the history of Little Syria through different mediums, through the walking tour, through written articles, and then through an exhibition and soon public event and a digital humanities project,

how you can reach different audiences and also take in more information about the neighborhood by connecting with different people. Okay, I think we're going. So we would like to start out first actually by asking you all what brought you to the tour today, what kind of interest you have in Little Syria and then we'll start the tour itself. Well this is where my family lived in the first part of the 20th century? Same with us. Same with us. Our parents met, they fell in love, they got married, and so much of their family history is tied to this part of Austin. Particularly that's interesting. Yeah, that's interesting.

The little Syria neighborhood that we focus on here basically stretches from, well, it's located in what's now Chinatown and part of the South End. So when we do walking tours, we start at the Chinatown Gate, which that's a landmark people are familiar with. And the initial settlement of the area by Syrians, which was in the late 1880s, took place on both sides of the Chinatown Gate. If you're standing in front of the gate, on one side is what's now to your right, Ping An Alley. That was called Oliver Place. And then on the left-hand side, you turn towards Hudson Street and Tyler Street. And those really became the

center of the neighborhood by the turn of the 20th century. So those two streets are really critical in terms of understanding the geography of the neighborhood. And then over time, as more and more people came from Ottoman Syria to Boston, they moved beyond those streets and beyond that area that's now Chinatown into what's the south end. So from the Chinatown South Cove, that's also what that area is called, across what's now the part of the central artery, the highway, over to Chumet Avenue and beyond the neighboring streets over there. So the time period that we're talking about here, just to answer the second part of your question, we focus on the 1880s through the 1950s, but the end is less distinct than the beginning. I mean, we know that it was really the 1880s when people started coming, but there are still some people living in the neighborhood today. So the end is a little bit more protracted. That's important to know. I mean, the 1880s is about the time when Boston's really,

as a city, is booming. I mean, Dorchester becomes a larger part of the system, gets incorporated. And the demographics were changing in many ways, not only in terms of the Syrians. And Lydia can talk more about this, too. But, you know, this was the neighborhood that is now Chinatown and the South Cove. Chinatown and the South Cove, I mean, had been, well, actually on the south end too, you know, had been inhabited by all kinds of different immigrant groups also, and Bostonians, you know, who had been there for generations as well. Many of the buildings on, say, Hudson and Tyler were built in the 1840s, and many are still there now in those particular streets.

And many are still there now in those particular streets. But then there was some demographic change as more immigrants from more different places came. Of course, there was a shift, too, with Chinese coming increasingly as time went on. And Syrians, again, moving somewhat southward towards the south end. Yeah, and just to talk about the demographics changing, there were, if you look at property maps, which I've been doing a lot of, specifically with this great tool called Atlas Scope through the Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library,

you can compare the current city map to any maps between, I think, the early 19th century to about 1938. That must be the latest one. So I'm looking at the 1880s through the last map on there. And you have pretty much just Irish, some Italian, some English names on those properties in what's now Chinatown. And then once you get to the 1890s, there's more Arab names like Abdullah or Shipley. And I mean, there's never like totally like a domination by the Syrians and Lebanese. It's always a mix. So you see more Arab names

and then a little bit after that, Chinese names. Also consistently Jewish names like through from like earlier from the 1880s. So it's pretty like diverse, although there was, you know, it was distinctly known as a Syrian neighborhood, but, you know, always but there was always a mix. Can you tell us a bit about what was going on in the Ottoman Empire at that time and what caused people to come from greater Syria to Boston?

So there were several different factors. I mean, one is economic. There was the decline of the silk industry, which was more in Lebanon, I think. Would you agree? Yeah, I mean, I think actually one thing that we should maybe say is like where they came from specifically, because that is relevant to why. Is this like most came from the corridor

between Zahle, what's now Lebanon, and Damascus. So you have, there are people from the Syrian side of the border, the border that now exists, and the Lebanon side of the border. But, you know, Jebel Lebanon, like this, you know, mountainous part of Lebanon, plus sort of the Damascus city and the city and suburbs of Damascus. But then you do find people from other places too.

There are other pockets, other certain villages that also ended up sending a number of people to Boston. You know, people follow their relatives like in any like any immigrant group. So and then we've also found people even who came from what's now southern like very, very southern most part of Turkey. very southernmost part of Turkey. One of the oral histories, for example, that I listened to, you know, was a family that, you know, an Assyrian family from southern Turkey, what's now Turkey, that migrated because of the massacres in the 1890s of Christians, migrated to Damascus and then to Boston. And so there are these, the fabric is not all uniform, but I think the largest number of people came from that corridor between Zahra and Damascus, which is not enormous actually. And so that's why Lydia said the silk,

the decline of the silk industry was really significant in that area and had economic repercussions for a much wider swath of the region as well. And just to add to the diversity of people coming from that region here, there were also Armenians who had migrated to Aleppo and Damascus and Beirut from the 1890s during the Armenian massacres in Anatolia and then through the Armenian genocide and aftermath. So, I mean, I interviewed one woman who was of an Armenian family who had come from Aleppo, and they spoke both Armenian and Turkish at home here, not Arabic. So it's a diverse neighborhood, and it's not just what we think of as syrian today in that

like nation-state sense but to go back to um yeah why they came i mean there was also in the earlier period a religious persecution like there had been a civil war in syria in 1860 that extended from extended from Damascus to Mount Lebanon um and then you know once it hits World War I you have um the Ottoman conscription and to the army that a lot of Syrian men were trying to flee um as well as just like a large famine on Mount Lebanon. So, I mean, basically reflecting, you know, the effects of World War I in many different places. So people were fleeing, you know, in waves from different places, including from Syria to places like the U.S. I would say, you know, one specific reason some of them wanted to come to the U.S. I would say, you know, one specific reason some of them wanted to come to the U.S. was because of American presence in Lebanon specifically, like Protestant missionaries. And these were Christians. I mean, I think that's important to emphasize, like the Christians who

already had connections through the Protestant missionaries, like some of them had been attending Protestant missionary schools. And so that was kind of how they connected, you know, with, I mean, if they didn't already have family members here, that comes up sometimes. It's not universal at all, but you do find mention of, you know, oh, well, I attended this missionary school in Syria or in Lebanon. Yeah. So it kind of makes that connection that people follow. And so once a few people come to Boston, more follow.

So it's like a pretty standard immigration path for for u.s history um otherwise i mean most people who almost everyone who is settled in what's known as little syria were christian um and either orthodox or catholic we haven't actually found anyone Protestant yet. It's like Maronite, Melkite, and Orthodox pretty much. Yeah. So some people came there. Some went to the Merrimack Valley. So that's between northeastern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire.

Some people went to northern Rhode Island. Lawrence. Lawrence, yeah, to work. And so a lot of immigrants were working in mills in Lawrence wasn't there also a pretty vibrant textile industry

in the northeast of Massachusetts yeah so was that part of the draw was okay I've worked in this this sector of the economy

I understand how it works kind of thing yeah yeah just lots of I mean it was like I think a lot of people are learning how to run a textile machine repetitive movements so inside and outside of boston i mean in the garment district in little syria but also in the mills like in lawrence and yeah

and they didn't need to know english or much english to work there. So you see like in Lawrence, they had a very large, like known as the Bread and Roses strike. And there were Armenians, Syrians, Irish, Jewish, like many different ethnicities who were demanding more rights and, you know, talking about it in their own languages, having people translate. So, yeah, very much a vibrant part of the labor history of Massachusetts, too. Related to where many of these immigrants were from, that sort of that corridor between Beirut and Damascus that Zahle wrote through the Shuf. You know, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that also sort of the location of a lot of monasteries?

So I'm wondering if there was any connection between perhaps the church in Lebanon and its relationship with the Catholic Church and also, you know, New England and Boston, Massachusetts is a pretty vibrant Catholic place. Like, I wonder, did that have anything to do with the choice, the decision to come to Boston, right, as opposed to maybe some other area? It's a really good question. There definitely were ties between, you know, churches in Syria and, you know, the new churches that were being founded here and that and still to this day,

I mean, the churches that were founded here, several of which still exist and, you know, in Boston, in the larger Boston area, you know, they're still connected with specific churches in Syria and Lebanon today and are sending aid and whatnot to churches that they're specifically connected to. So, you know, there were priests coming over as well, and they helped to establish the first churches in Boston and in New York and, you know, elsewhere in the Americas. So I don't know that they thought, oh, Boston, place of churches, but I think as far as maintaining relationships and that these, you know,

there was a kind of, there were not only money, but also, well, money was actually really important. They were sending money back from here, but also priests. I mean, there was an exchange of priests. Well, yeah, that relationship is pretty big. I mean, why would you go, you know, move around the world? Yeah. And, you know, if there aren't others who share the same faith as you, you know, so it kind of makes sense that. Looking at that from a different angle, I mean, it's no accident and therefore assimilable in a way that, say,

Muslim immigrants were not seen at this particular moment. It's a complicated story, but eventually, sort of in the post-World War I period, not before that really, coming to be seen as white immigrants, quote, unquote. When we think of Syrians today, that's not necessarily who we're thinking of. And that didn't that wasn't really resolved until the well, really until the abolition of the quota immigration quotas in the 1960s. But there were a number of cases litigated in the 1940s and so forth that tried to kind of resolve this changing demographic of immigrants from this place, which was not reflective of what the earliest waves demographics were.

The fact that they were Christian was really significant in multiple different ways, both in the eyes of non-Syrian Americans and the U.S. government, actually, specifically, and presumably also in terms of these relationships that were forged between the churches here and the communities.S. government actually specifically and presumably also in terms of these relationships that were forged between the churches here and the communities back home. Oh could I add something? Just I think it's like worth also talking about immigration paths that don't go directly to Boston first of people who ended up here. For example, I some of the people we found, we found just like in our research, we found just through looking at those square signs you see in intersections all over Cambridge, like every. There's like a sign dedicated to somebody everywhere. one in the past few months near Harvard that was the last name looked like Thabit or Thabit and I was like okay this seems like an Arabic name and maybe we'll talk more about this but how they

transliterated names into English was always not very straightforward like that it's an Arab name or they changed the spelling to make it easier for English speakers to pronounce so I looked up the family's history and this guy's like grandfather great grandfather had gone from damascus to new york decided it was too cold and then went to havana and then eventually the family ended up in boston so yeah i would think maybe new york was too cold in comparison to damascus and uh i mean another family we've been talking to their um one branch of the family came to Boston and they were like, we're going to try to make it work in Utah. And they decided, OK, Utah is not working for us. They come back. So I think there's, you know, some people just end up in Boston incidentally or they and that family also had a branch in Montreal and they would go back and forth.

had a branch in Montreal and they would go back and forth. So sometimes it's not always so clear what's drawing them to Boston or it's, you know, they try one place and don't like it and decide I'm going to try another place that I've heard of. So there was mobility. I mean, a lot of mobility. Yeah. Mobility also, I mean, not just within the United States, but also North America more broadly in Latin America. And so there are definitely plenty of documentation of ties between community organizations, at least here, and community organizations that were founded by Syrians in South America as well. These families, especially those that were involved in commerce, often did establish ties through their commercial ventures with other cities and other Syrian communities that were being established in the diaspora. Yeah, I was just wondering, going back to most of the population being Christians, is there evidence that Muslims were actually filtered out who were trying to come here, was it more of um christians having more ties and so

there actually was a muslim population in uh quincy been known i'm not sure if it's known as quincy point still today but we know quincy um and they came to work at the docks and ship building so i think and the turks and peabody yeah and turkish men went to peabody which is for those of you who might not know north of boston um north of salem and uh they worked in leather leather works and the street was known as turkish street because there are so many turkish men and most of them you know made some money then went back to the Ottoman Empire. Only, I think, one stayed who has a gravestone here. So there were Muslims coming. And I think it's just a matter of, you know, you, a few people go and they build a community and more people from the same background or the same villages come. So I think it could also be like village, you know, village to village migration

and just, you know, going where there's a church or a mosque nearby so i don't think muslims were filtered out per se but there might have just been more christians coming to boston i think like it's a little bit of both this was not like a welcoming place to come to immigrate to as a muslim i mean i don't mean just boston specifically i mean like the united states as a whole yeah As I said, 1965, there's a huge demographic change in immigration. And partly it was just the elimination of the quota system that had been in place. But even before, you know, there certainly, that's not to say that there were none. I think it's really important to establish that presence. And as Lydia said, there were these specific communities. They were small, but they were there. And in my own research,

I have come across examples of Muslim immigrants who attempted to settle, to come to Boston, and who were deported. And again, these are anecdotal examples. Statistics were collected about deportations, but it's hard to really be able to map out numbers. And, for example, one document I read was an appeal of a deportation by the brother of a man and his friends who were in the early 20s, who were sent back to Syria on the basis that they were polygamists or would be polygamists, because in fact they had not they were not married, but that they had they had been interrogated at the port of entry in Boston. Actually, potentially, I think they might have been interrogated in New York, but they were en route to Boston and had been asked, you know, what are your views on polygamy? And, you know, would you would you take more than one wife if you had the opportunity? And they said, well, sure, I guess. And then that was documented and they were deported. These kinds of documents

are super interesting because the appeal then brings out a lot more complicated details. You know, they said, well, they didn't speak English. They actually didn't know even what the conversation was. And so I think, you know, there are definitely examples like that. And we can see how the immigration authorities in the United States, federal authorities, worked quite hard to create racial and ethnic categories based on racial pseudoscience that were intended and did not always succeed, but sometimes succeeded in excluding people who they considered to be the least like themselves. And that often included Muslims from all around the world. Great. So we had started talking about some of the industries that Syrian-Americans worked in. I think there was other work that was common, like peddling.

Can you talk a bit more about how they earned a living, both men and women? Yeah. So actually, both men and women did engage in peddling. That was more men, but there were women who peddled too. And peddling is where you sell dry goods, such as appliances for cooking or bed sheets, scarves, you know, different kinds of textiles or metalware, pajamas, things like that on the street, soap, anything that you might want for your house. And it was easy for them to get right into that because you don't have to speak that much English. I can help you learn some English if you don't know it. And you'd have a small wagon or a cart and push that down the street. And the places they got the goods from were Syrians who already owned, like, basically Syrians who had enough money would

buy an apartment building, and they would have a business on the first floor, such as a grocery store, and they would have the goods to peddle in the basement. And then they would live above the store and rent out, you know, five or so other apartments to other families, most of whom were Syrian, but not always. Sometimes it was very mixed. So the peddlers, peddling was one way to earn a living right when you got here. peddling was one way to earn a living right when you got here. One notable trade that women engaged in was lace weaving, and that was something that they had already learned in Syria. It's a well-known Middle Eastern craft. So they would, you know, we've seen photos of women sewing or weaving lace on their front steps, and that was something they could sell.

That was definitely in demand. And other things the people did, we talked about working in textile mills. So that was something pretty easy to just jump into right away. And then there were some individuals who came already trained as teachers, priests, kind of a little bit more white-collar work. But we should emphasize that people who were migrating weren't the poorest Syrians, so not usually farmers, but people who already had somebody here who could pay their way, or they could pay their way themselves. So also people involved in crafts, people who could run a grocery store,

some kind of shop, things like that. Did you want to add anything, Chloe? Maybe just one more thing on women. You know, in some accounts we've heard or read, you know, certain kinds of products and certain kinds of customers actually were suitable, especially suitable for women. And, for example, selling like women's underwear, you know, housewives, for example, who aren't able to go or don't want to go into town. And they live in the suburbs of Boston. I mean, peddlers covered pretty significant distances. I mean, they're across the entire country, but even within the Boston area, it was a way for people who didn't live close to the commercial center of the city to get stuff. And so, you know, women could take women's underwear and scarves and lingerie, whatever, out into these housewives who were at home and sell door to door. And women have a really big presence, actually, in this neighborhood in terms of the social life and the commercial life of the of the place and just like a note on the garment district

um that was you know like the mills were kind of where people would um work in these big rooms and in this case doing piecework so sewing clothes that could be ready made some people also made shoes and that was more in the Leather District, which is nearby. But a lot of those large textile-making buildings are still there. There are, you know, other things today like offices, restaurants in Chinatown. So some of them are still there. And what else? I mean, you see definitely it's like majority people who are like Syrian, Russian, Jewish, Irish, Italian. And then it becomes more and more Chinese until you see more women immigrating in the mid 20th century from China with the changes and immigration laws. And it becomes like the vast majority Chinese. And then the other thing I wanted to say something about, yeah,

there is actually child labor, which is, you know, not specific to that community in the late 19th and early 20th century. So children, you know, working, yeah, maybe peddling, as well as working in the cranberry bogs outside of boston to the west and in rhode island and we've found uh photographs taken by lewis hein who was uh photographing child labor as a way to you know document it so we could change labor laws and so we see a lot of you you know, the photos say like these children, most of whom are Syrian, and they're working picking the cranberries. So,

you know, a lot of those things are either suited to the local environment and the kinds of products that are naturally in Massachusetts or brought from Syria, such as the lace making. If anybody I didn't hear, Richard just pointed out that that tree was once the site of the St. John of Damascus Church. It still exists, it's not in this neighborhood today. We have some parishioners here. You remember the church, don't I? I remember it too. Yeah, to kind of move from, you know, what they did for a living to sort of how they lived, I guess. Can we tell us a little bit about the cultural institutions,

the social and religious sort of institutions that made their way and established themselves in the community? Thinking about, we talked a little bit about churches, but if we could expand on that. And also, I remember on the tour there being a settlement house. If you could tell us a little bit about what that is and was and sort of how that sort of helped build the community. I'm going to start. Do you want to talk about?

I feel like you know a lot about the settlement house. Okay, we can start with that. Well, I think it's important that the churches in the settlement house that I'm going to talk about were clustered together, too. I mean, and also the school, which Lydia can talk about, too. And when I say clustered together, I'm talking about these two streets, Tyler and Hudson, that run parallel to one another in South Cove. And so at the turn of the century, you have the establishment of the first dedicated Syrian churches. St. George's Syrian Orthodox Church, now today is in West Roxbury.

Then you have Our Lady of the Cedars, Lebanese Maronite Church, which is in Jamaica Plain, JP today. which is in Jamaica Plain, JP today. And then you had a couple of additional Orthodox churches that broke away from St. George's. You have St. John of Damascus and later St. Mary's. So anyways, there are a number of different churches there and they're all there together. Church is really significant, I think. And then, of course, the social organizations that cropped up from the churches. So the Lebanese and Syrian Syrian Ladies Aid Association, for example, which is attached to one of the churches. Each of the churches had both male and female and organizations that were focused particularly on. that were focused particularly on, well, actually both aiding communities in the old country and also aiding new immigrants here.

And those really coalesced around World War I too. So we can talk more about why that was such an important catalyzing moment for activism. But the Denison House, which is a settlement house you alluded to, is a really important institution, not is a settlement house you alluded to, is a really important institution not only for the Syrian history of Boston, but also urban history or U.S. history more broadly. Some people might be familiar with Hull House in Chicago.

Denison House was the second and was by settlement house. As an organization, settlement house is both a physical place and also a community, basically a charitable organization where middle class, primarily women, not only workers, would basically aid recently arrived immigrants in multiple different ways. So they would offer, for example, classes. We've seen ESL classes, you know, English as a second language. We've seen like craft classes. We've seen public speaking, even math classes, you know, whatever you might need to be successful, as well as courses for new mothers. Amelia Earhart, actually, maybe familiar with the famous pilot, worked at Denison House and ran the Syrian Mothers Club, for example, while she was training to fly out of, well, it's now Logan Airport, where she left on her transatlantic flight. So she was doing this simultaneously.

left on her transatlantic flight. So she was doing this simultaneously. So Denison House was also an organization that would help connect people with employment opportunities, with housing, really important, locate housing. And as a philosophy, I think this is what's most important, that philosophicallyically they believed that in social mobility, right, that we were here to basically help recently arrived immigrants who may not have means of get to the middle class eventually. so of the philosophies of the late 19th century, but continue to exist and actually was later merged with other community organizations in Boston and exists in kind of a transformed fashion today in Dorchester. So that's really significant as far as the organizations and over the course of the entire period we're talking about. I could talk about the school also, which was right next to, well, across from the settlement house and adjacent to Our Lady of the Cedars Church, which in terms of the reformation of education in the US so before that you had you know either one-room schoolhouses where someone's teaching everybody at once or private tutors things like that and this basically changes that. And you have what's called a double-headed classroom where you have students divided into classes based on age

and, you know, different teachers teaching those students at the same time in different classrooms. So the same system we have today. So it was really big. And that was the first actual, actually the first school in the U.S. that did that. So very revolutionary. So you have these students going to school and this reformed school. And they were attending classes alongside Chinese, Jewish, Russian, Italian, Irish students. We encountered oral history where the woman was saying, you know, we could swear in 10 different languages after having gone to the school. So, so yeah, not, not only Syrians, but we do have, you know, evidence of a lot of Syrians going there, including people we've interviewed or

their family members have gone there. And that actually closed and the school moved a few streets away and still exists now. It's still Quincy School. And that's currently being used. The building is used as the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association of New England. And it looks somewhat the same as it did before. Now it has a giant statue of Confucius in front of it. So it's changed a bit. But it is a giant statue of Confucius in front of it, so it's changed a bit. But it is a registered historic site, and it has a plaque on it,

and there's lots of U.S. Park Service info on the preservation of the building. So some of those things are preserved. I mean, the Denison House is now a hospital, I think. Yeah, that was taken over by the Tufts Medical Center and reconfigured and everything. And then the church next door, I mean, that church moved in the 60s to JP, and now that's, I think, just closed. It was taken over by a Chinese Christian mission, so there's a plaque in Chinese on it. No info about it being Our Lady of the Cedars

and the but the church lives on you know in another neighborhood so some of these things are still still there some mention what they were some don't it's some of the buildings are gone so it's very um very varied you know stages of abuse or disuse. Here we are in another empty lot. Lots of empty lots over here. So here we are on Tyler Street. And I'm here because at 40 Tyler Street were the offices of Boston's Arabic newspaper, beginning just after the turn of the century in 1914.

So a vibrant Arabic language press emerged in several U.S. cities at the turn of the 20th century. One of these new journals was Hattas Boston, The Boston Girl, which unfortunately is slightly cut off here, but I'm still going to pass around this image. You can see what the front page would have looked like. So something I thought was really fascinating from the tour was the Arabic language newspapers, which seemed to be very impressive and how wide their circulation was across North America, I think, and also in Central and South America. So can you talk a bit about those newspapers and how they were used to connect Syrian Americans here and also connecting them to Syria and Lebanon? to Syria and Lebanon? Sure. Yeah. So the main newspaper that was established in Arabic in Boston, it's called Fatah Boston, founded, established right at the beginning of World War

I. It didn't have the longest of runs, I have to say. It was mostly the war years. And there's some indication that it continued a bit just after. There was also an Arabic newspaper published in Lawrence, Al-Wafat, which actually lasted a bit longer. It started a bit earlier and lasted a bit longer. But there were, of course, newspapers also circulating in Boston, Arabic newspapers that were published elsewhere. I mean, New York in particular, where there were, of course, newspapers also circulating in Boston, Arabic newspapers that were published elsewhere. I mean, New York in particular, where there were quite a few, which some listeners may be aware of. But in terms of Feth al-Bostan, so, I mean, that was established by a man named Wadia Shakir, who was a Christian from Lebanon and who came around the turn of the century with his mother as a teenager. And he had, in fact, attended, from what I recall, a mission school and was multilingual

and an avid reader and came to Boston, apparently, according to his descendants, because he heard it was the literary capital of America. And so he thought this is the place to do it. Anyways, and he ran, in addition to the newspaper, I mean, he ran a publishing house or printer, you might say. He was an important figure in the neighborhood. He wanted to use this newspaper as an opportunity for the neighborhood to, or the community to articulate its patriotism, especially during World War I. World War I was such an important moment for Arab and Syrian communities across the United States. And of course, the Ottoman Empire was on the other side of the war from the U.S. And I think there was an anxiety somewhat that for Americans

who didn't understand that Arabs were not necessarily on the side of the Turks, despite being Ottoman Turkish subjects, that, you know, their patriotism could be called into question. And so it was a moment in which they could, that people really seized to loudly articulate how proud they were to be American and how much they wanted to be American and how much they were not Turkish. And, you know, part of that goes back to the fact that census records often enlisted Arabs as Turkish. You know, there was a huge amount of support, basically, for the war effort here, despite, you know, many mixed feelings about participation in World War I across the country as a whole. And so we really see that in the newspaper. I think that's sort of one of the most one of the reasons that this paper is such a great resource, such a great source for studying the community, and conveys news of what's going on in Syria and Iraq

and Lebanon during the war for, you know, members of the diaspora, which is not, you know, you imagine that most Americans who were non-Arab, like reading the news from the war were focused on the European front, and there wasn't a whole lot of reporting being done about the details of the destruction in the Middle East. From a different angle, it's interesting to look at these newspapers because of the ads. And so that's been a major source for us in trying to reconstruct what was where in the neighborhood, because local businesses, of course, advertise in the paper. So we're able to know what was where, what was the address, what did they sell, and what did particular stores have, who owned them, et cetera. Thinking about the important role newspapers played in the process of nationalism,

and this is not unique to Arabs of the Middle East or anything, right? But we do know, though, that the Arabic press did play a very important role. The Lebanese Arabic press in particular played a very important role in Arab nationalism. So thinking about sort of, you know, the ads, it kind of tells you about who they were, what they were, you know, selling, trading, what have you, but also, selling, trading, what have you. But also the contents there around the First World War. Do you feel like they were maybe part of a, you know, a growing international conversation about Arab identity? You know, or were they very much focused on perhaps just Arab-American-ness, if you could call it that? Arab-American-ness, if you could call it that.

I mean, I think the ads we saw were mainly about buying war bonds and then also businesses in the area such as one advertising, gramophone and records, groceries, things like that. The war bonds thing, many of those were actually translated from English, right? Like they were ads that were being published in lots of different languages and different papers around the US or similar. But you'll see like an image, you know, it'll be some dramatic, like somebody, a woman wrapped in a flag or something, and there'll be a caption in Arabic, but the artist is, you know, it's not an Arab name. But I think there's a sense of, I mean, A, that they're connecting with diaspora in other places. So I think that speaks somewhat to your point. You know, the masthead indicates that this paper is available, at least for subscribers.

How many subscribers were there in Havana or, you know, Buenos Aires? Like, possibly not very many. It's hard to say, but that was aspirational, at least. They thought about themselves as being part of a conversation that was much broader than just, you know, Boston, New York, or even like Boston, New York, Beirut or something like that. And so I think it's not just about like our villages in Syria and Lebanon. It's also what's going on in Iraq, what's going on in, you know, Istanbul, Cairo. I wouldn't say that from what I've found, there's a lot of what you might explicitly say, like, this is really Arab nationalist rhetoric. But I think as far as conveying a, well, certainly positioning themselves in a contrary distinction to the Turks, you know, there's a sense of like our brethren, you know, out there.

And we need to aid our people. And our people are the people of Syria and Lebanon and also the broader Arab world. There are also people writing in English for an American audience, such as our friend Frederick Shibley, who went by the pen name Ibn Snubin, which can also be read as Ibn Snubin, so it has a double meaning. We've forgotten. That's a very important newspaper, actually. Not in Arabic, but... Yeah, the Midtown Journal.

And we have access to a lot of the issues through his son, who's graciously shared them with us. And that was covering all the scandal in Boston. It was very entertaining. From the 30s onward. Yeah, very entertaining paper. So I think you have, like, you know, a lot of different angles and people writing with different interests and different languages.

And that's, like, hyper-local in a way, right? on the one hand, you have Al-Fattah or Fattah Boston. I mean, it's a couple, it's, you know, 20 years later and more, but you have them looking to articulate these connections with the wider Arab diaspora, Syrian diaspora. And then you have also, you know, they're very embedded in the community that they're in, too, which is what the Midtown Journal points to is that, I mean, they're really part of Boston. The son of Fred Shibley, who published and wrote every article in the Midtown Journal, told us, you know, it's never really been used as a source before for Arab history of Boston. In fact, it's mostly LGBT history because the neighborhood became, I mean, the South End became a kind of gay hub,

even though his pseudonym was explicitly an Arabic joke. That wasn't where, what it's been used for before. So I think that Boston history could really benefit from seeing this community or these communities as being a part of its history in a much more explicit way and also you know we can look at this neighborhood's history within the wider history of um you know uh the arab diaspora yeah and i just want to add it's a fun point he was a vaudeville acrobat and before he was a journalist so we've come across just really fascinating people this project different professions so yeah there were also vaudeville actor uh acrobats uh

in addition to textile workers so yeah Before we start walking again, I'll just point out two things which you can take note of as we move. One is just behind you over here at the intersection you can see Thomas Kerem Square. So that's a commemorative marker to a Syrian from the neighborhood. And the second thing I want to point out, I want to say something about music. So that's a commemorative marker to a Syrian from the neighborhood. And the second thing I want to point out, I want to say something about music. This is a place where you would have heard some, well for non-Syrians, probably new music. For Syrians, some familiar old music.

At 30 Neyland Street, there was a Syrian grocery. this is here, Semena Suriye, so this was a Syrian grocery store, owned by an Armenian, Michael Adameyan, who advertised as early as 1909 that he was selling the latest recordings from the Arab world, so imported, basically, from Cairo and Syria. So, since we talked about language now, if we could switch a little bit to a discussion on art and music produced by this community. I mean, you get a chance to talk about that a lot actually during the tour. Can you share with us a little bit about sort of the culture around music that is brought from Syria and sort of replicated here?

Yeah. So we, I mean, one person who is featured um distinctly in our exhibition is uh tony abdullahad or anthony abdullahad who um was a oud player who was very famous in this community and he toured across the u.s and canada in the mid-20th century and we actually have one of his records on display as well as his own as well as his own yeah so um he would play a half flat and other kinds of uh like distinctly arab parties and events um and he was born in boston and he actually never even went to the middle east he did play for the king of saudi arabia? Yeah. Yeah. Dignitaries, visiting dignitaries.

Visiting dignitaries. And we have a songbook, and it's very interesting because you can tell he may not have been able to write in Arabic that well, but he was singing in Arabic. Beautifully, yeah. Yeah, very beautifully. So you do see, in some cases, some people are fully fluent, in the second generation generation some aren't so much so the songbook is written and um like basically transliterated into latin script and

then uh and that has the arabic script as well and no english so people like knew the lyrics but they might not be able to read the arabic script but yeah so people playing ode or clarinet or violin, different instruments. And he would also play, we have a photograph of him playing with the Syrian church men's choir. St. John of Damascus. So yeah, for, you know, I mean, playing songs that had already been established in the Middle East. Actually, even pre-World War I, 1909, I think, there was a shop owned by an Armenian, Michael Ajamian, right on Neyland Street that sold all the latest records from the Middle East. And it's notable because that was really early.

I mean, the first commercial records in Arabic were being produced in Cairo just after the turn of the century. So they were making it to Boston really soon, really quickly. And these were big names. Salama Higazi, for example, from Egypt. People would know the names. They're advertised. You can get the latest record from so-and-so. You know, like you can get the latest record from so-and-so. So they, I mean, unsurprisingly, like food and music are really things that were preserved perhaps more than anything else from one's the most famous, but there are these church choirs which performed, sometimes in costume.

But also the churches and community organizations would often host other famous Arab American musicians. And so we often see advertisements for, you know, some Maharajan in, you know, at the St. George's or St. John's Church with somebody from New York or California or Chicago. And they were big names. And Antonia Abdullah had died in 1995. So this was, you know, until fairly recently. And Antonia Abdullah had died in 1995. So this was until fairly recently.

And he has a wonderful website his grandson made. You can listen, hopefully, to some of the music. But as far as art and literature, too, people know about Khalil Gibran. Khalil Gibran still lived in Boston, has a plaque in front of the public library. And he was also connected with the neighborhood. He didn't live his whole life there, but he took art classes at the Denison House, which I spoke about earlier. And that was, by some accounts, at least his entree into the arts scene in Boston, a bohemian, spiritualist scene in Boston. So how are Syrian Americans viewed by the broader society here in Boston?

I would say, you know, foreign yet assimilable. That's what we found in terms of like studies done by, we looked at a study done by a sociologist in the 1920s saying, you know, they're good at trading, they were known for being traders you know obviously plus that they're christian but there's still this tinge of you know kind of suspicious oriental something like that he's generally saying you know they're very patriotic proud of their syrian past um yeah so it's some things end up he's trying to compliment them, but it's a bit of a, you know, insults, too. So it's, yeah, or, you know, being killed in action thatation and fascination with classifying people's like character yeah whole whole country's character traits um and in those and those you know and

in those ratings like lydia was saying i mean they actually the syrians tended to fare pretty well as far as like how the u.s government government ranked like different ethnic groups. But of course, what that means is they were always being positioned against some other group that was like less assimilable. You know, we always have to say that, well, we're not somebody else. And unfortunately, that, you know, the federal government was very susceptible to that kind of rhetoric or was advancing that kind of rhetoric. Like, well, OK, you know, we have, say, 10 major ethnic groups living in downtown Boston. You know, who are the groups that we sort of can work with? And who are the groups who are just sort of beyond repair? Like, these are, they're doomed to poverty forever, you know?

And I think we've seen that kind of language. And so while we see often fairly, kind of, say things like language like, you know, very few Syrians have committed crimes, therefore they're very trustworthy, you know, this kind of broad generalizations. Oh, and also, do they speak English well? And in general, the level of English speaking was pretty high, and not necessarily among those who had just arrived, but, you know, by like the 1910s and 20s, Syrians tend to, partly because of the work they were doing as peddlers, you know, or you learn English fast when you're interacting with lots of different people. So it's, I think it's, it's hard to just say, you know, they were seen positively or they were seen negatively.

Some of the, some of the families we've talked to had memories of in school, for example, you know, their food being seen as kind of different and weird or the language. And so I think it's always a bit complicated. And I think there was definitely, as I said, especially around the war, kind of concern or anxiety about being seen as like a, you know, fifth column or something. We were called everything from dirty Arabs, you know, if we brought any of our ethnic food as lunch to school, we were humiliated. Syrian bread, it's like, what is that?

Now the healthiest food in Rome. Right, right. So, but it was, it was difficult. We were in, West Roxbury was entirely Irish. So we were definitely odd man out. You know, just, just to get a little further into that last bit of sort of integration, and you talked about some of the thousands of little squares we have on each street corner here in Boston. You know, many of them were things like police officers and, you know, and the veterans in the U.S. military.

So do you have anything more to say about that in terms of sort of integration into American life? Was that the path, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Like, if you wanted to become, be viewed by Boston society as someone who is no longer a Syrian, but now an American, do you go to university? You know, do you try to get into Harvard? There's a couple. go to university? You know, do you try to get into Harvard? Do you become a cop? Do you become a, you know, what's the path for the Syrian immigrant? I mean, in terms of, I will focus a bit more on the second generation here who have told us that, you know, our parents wanted us to finish high school and go to college. A lot of women I've talked to became teachers. I think that's, you know, a popular, at least,

I mean, still, but especially earlier in American history, very popular profession for women. So, um, yeah, becoming fluent in English and, um, having a career where you could, you know, English and having a career where you could, you know, make money and become successful was, or just, you know, not have to rely on your family, become independent. That's, you know, also more of an American value. That was something that was held high. So I think, yeah, just getting an education was important. And they eventually become, you know, professionals. And we see a move to the suburbs as people enter jobs such as doctors or teachers or lawyers, coupled with the development of the Mass Pike at the Central Artery downtown.

So that was like partly people wanting to move to the suburbs, which, you know, what's more American than moving to the suburbs, right? Once you're integrated. Partly that and partly being forced out by that project. To step back and to come back to World War I, we do see hundreds of Syrian men in Massachusetts serving in World War I and World War II as well. And so, you know, that not all, but as you pointed out, some of these squares are policemen and so forth.

But many, many commemorate Syrians who were killed or served, usually killed in World war one primarily because there was a big push to erect those squares uh in the immediate post-war years um so several of the places a couple of the those that we point out on the tour specifically fall into that category um and many died and uh and the city did commemorate them yeah to me i mean it it sends me the message that you have to pay the ultimate sacrifice to be considered american which is a little pessimistic to me but um yeah so i think there were different ways you could contribute but that was uh you know seen as very you know loyal to this country if you were willing to sacrifice your life. Yeah.

I just have one follow up question about race, which we talked about earlier. Was there a point I know that there was the George Dow case that was in like the early 20th century. When was it? 1915. 1915. OK. in like the early 20th century. When was it? 1915.

1915, okay. So was there a time before that that Syrians might have identified with another racial category? I just, you know, looking at the draft card that you had in the article, it has like white, Negro, Oriental, Indian. That's exactly kind of the problem with these shifting,

but yet still really pseudoscientific categories that the government was working with. And it's true that in the late 19th century, this was the first time that people were more and more, even more and more people were starting to come from farther and from a wider range of places. And you see this in the U.S. archives, the National Archives, where clearly there were just a lot of people who didn't fit the categories that the familiar categories. And so there were there was constant

litigation over, you know, is this person white or not white? And I think important to know is that, you know, it was again, we're talking about this early period here at the turn of the 20th century. You know, you either had to classify as white or of African ancestry, in other words, like black, to be eligible for naturalization or citizenship. But, you know, it wasn't clearly defined in law what that meant, you know, and you find people contesting whiteness from all kinds of different places and backgrounds. You know, you have, for example, people from upper castes in India saying, well, I'm a Brahmin and so I'm white, but the other castes are non-white, they're Oriental or something. And that's, you see that. You see, you know, Syrians saying,

I'm white. My civilization goes back thousands of years and, you know, we're the birthplace of civilization and, you know, and we're birthplace of civilization and, you know, and we're Christians. And so how can you say that if you are a Christian and you are considered white, how am I not white? Like, what about my, what about me is different from you? You know, different courts even in different parts of the country often reach different conclusions about somebody's eligibility for naturalization. There's a set of cases right around that same moment in the 1910s where Syrians' eligibility for naturalization was contested in court, and ultimately it was determined that they were.

But previous to that, like some won naturalization, others didn't. It sort of depended on where you lived and the judge who was, you know, presiding over your case. So hopefully that. Yeah. Yeah. Very interesting. So we wanted to end by talking about what happened to Little Syria, where the community kind of ended up and what traces of it are left today in Chinatown and in the South End. I take that one, since our exhibition covers a lot of the aspect of informality and just, you know, the transition from a neighborhood being there to changing to something else totally. So by the 1950s, you had, as I said earlier, people moving to the suburbs once they make more money, kind of get into a more professional class.

Churches moving there as well in the 50s and the 60s and 70s and beyond, following the communities. And, you know, you can just have a bigger church further out. The ones in what's now Chinatown are pretty small, and now they're bigger. For example, in, you know, JP or West Roxbury. And that, in combination with the Central Artery Project, which, you know, raised some buildings and forced people out, pushed people out. And I will also say there was a significant number of Syrians and Lebanese, also Greeks, Albanians, Armenians in the West End. And they had, you know, similar experience with that neighborhood being essentially raised for what's now,

you know, government center and an MGH. So, you know, people don't have a lot of um what do i call it they don't have a lot of choice and and and these really top-down decisions um so they unfortunately have to leave um and and a lot of people had you know there was the body called the boston redevelopment authority um who was in charge of that and trying to, you know, help people deal with this transition. And there was just like a big lack of trust that people had in the BRA. And those archives are at Boston City Archives, and we've looked at those. So that's pretty, you know, there's a lot of information there if you want to look at that. So a lot of people have moved out. There's a few people still living there, but they're always, you know, they're quite old or have moved to, you know, Winthrop, West Roxbury, Norwood, Dedham, places like that further out.

A lot of Syrian and Lebanese Americans still here. It's just very spread out. And they come together at places like churches still today. And some of those churches now, we know through more recent waves of people coming due to the Lebanese Civil War in 1975 to 1990, and then the Syrian Civil War from 2011 until today, they've joined those congregations. So they're still, you know, very much connected to what was greater Syria. There's a few businesses, sites that are still there, such as the Syrian import store and that, you know, we talked to them in early 2020, but every time we go by, it's closed. So I don't know what the, I mean, they own it, the family owns it, but we don't know what's going on they own it the family owns it but we

don't know what's you know going on with the business it's hard to go in and shop today yeah i mean the front window looks great they have it looks like they have a lot of nice stuff um and they own this uh which we haven't mentioned yet in the interview but the um syrian sahara restaurant uh a few doors down from that and those are on Chabon Avenue um we're going to move a little bit further down to our final destination the Sahara Syrian restaurant thanks for the famous Sahara it was only actually opened between 1965 and 1970 unfortunately um but we do have an ad that talks about the delicious foods that they were serving it mentions dishes like shish kebab lamb delicacies tempting pastry hummus grape leaves kibbeh as well as steak and chops good for a sultan

and that was open for a few years in the 70s and then has been, you know, shuttered since. And it looks like it's being used for storage. And they have this very iconic, you know, like retro hip looking sign that a lot of people are curious about. And so no one really knows what's going on with that business. But there's other locations too, like Peters Park. And that was named after a family who were syrian and they um their last name was petros and you know that's another aspect of anglophone butros yeah yeah yeah their last name was butros and they um

that's another uh yeah another example of the anglophone assimilation where you just... You see Sadie Peters and it's like Sadie Abutros. So people don't... There's a plaque dedicated to her, this large stone, but it's not apparent that she was Syrian. So some things are very obvious, but not really until you look at it and read the site hiding in plain sight is a great way to put it like there's some plaques to ernest deeb who um was not uh it's not a killed in action one but it's just dedicated to him since he was an important member of the community there's one that's for Thomas Karam one for

John Lufty and that was Lutfi but it's changed so people can understand so you have to really you have to be familiar with the Arab names to know and you know Khalil Gibran became Khalil Gibran

so there's all this and there was the restaurant owner too he had a very interesting name transition uh who owned the he owned the cafe that was by the old Shibley place uh who was it Lebanese or Syrian restaurant in Boston oh yeah I can't remember his name Nicholas uh Mac John Nichols, there's Hannah Nicola. Yeah, Hannah Nicola became John Nichols. Yeah, so some of them changed a lot.

I mean, in that case, you know, in Arabic, he advertised his name as Hannah Nicola. But in English, he advertised it as John Nichols, like, you know, bilingual ads. So in some cases, you know, people may have been using their original pronunciation, you know, within the community. But, you know, if they're doing they're doing business with the broader commercial, broader business community, they're like, all right, no one can say Nichols. Yeah. And I think like just to briefly like relate to that, you have the Sahara Syrianrian restaurant which you know the sahara desert is not in syria and they're using like the imagery of the sphinx and the pyramids to advertise and they're advertising you know we have both steak as well as steak and chops and steak and chops so they really are marketing and you know they're kind of showing like hey we're syrian and american and we also saw that on um anton abdullahi's records he uses the sphinx and pyramid imagery so it's like kind of you know using orientalist imagery to promote themselves so yeah it's very there's a

lot of layers capitalizing on i dream of yeah yeah right if americans have heard anything about Middle East, they probably have heard of the pyramids. So let's just go with that. But no, I think just to say one final thing about the transition, just to come back to that question, I think, and the BRA. So Sadie Peters, for example, she was quite active in organizing to at least advocate for the community in the face of these projects, many of which never even came to fruition. The BRA acquired a huge amount of land, initially brought a lot of local community members on board to consult and so forth. But the plans kept changing and the projects transformed.

So there was, I think, a long-term sense of insecurity about people's housing. Like, will my house be the next one raised? Or if it's raised, what will be built here? And in the end, only some of the projects were actually implemented. But by that point, so many people had moved to the suburbs. And, you know, as a result of both, Lydia said, generational change, you know, socioeconomic mobility, and this sense that the neighborhood was being raised and gutted. Thank you. So this is a public history project and very different than the kind of research and writing you do in a Ph.D. I'm curious, though, how has this project sort of informed. I'm curious, though, how has this project sort of informed your other research, you know, in terms of how you think about communities, diasporas, how, you know, any way that it sort of affects your thinking? me I noticed my family came from um like around the same period as the Syrians were coming here

from Bavaria and from Ireland and I just noticed so many similarities and our in our histories like why we came what our experience was when we got here and um and those are also two groups where like they were seen as like sort of white but like you know the lower like the lower whites so you know you see that within whiteness there's so much um like variation and in fighting about that concept and they were catholic so they were like not not like not the good kind of whites you know in yankee america um so yeah i think i just yeah it made me like draw a lot of connections to other immigrant groups and see that you know they're see like notice the patterns and then the pattern to once you're in the city like getting to the next socio-economic level so you can move

to the suburbs so yeah for me it like actually i felt like I had personal connections, but also like, as someone who works on Ottoman and Middle Eastern history, not American history, just like learning about our history as Americans and my own, like, personal connections to migration and family history. Yeah. I think, okay, for me, it's a couple of different things. One has been, well, my current postdoc actually is also public history focused, and I'm working on a project through BU that is actually is focused on the history of Americans of Middle Eastern descent. And so I've some of the research that I've done, the National Archives, for example, has informed the way that I looked at this project,

and vice versa. And I've been able to think more about Boston's specific history in the context of that project as well, which has been really great. Public historians are often think, I think, much more broadly about, like, how do we reach different kinds of audiences? And so, you know, we started with the walking tour, which is, which I will say actually has also been a method for me in terms of my academic research, is that I like to spend a lot of time walking the streets of the places that I'm writing about and looking at the specific sites, whether or not they're still extant. And especially when you're, say, in the field for six months or a year or a year and a half, and then you have to go back and continue to write about these places. It's so important, I think, that they're really imprinted in your brain.

And you can write about, you can evoke place effectively and meaningfully when you're no longer there. And I think I understand this history of Little Syria so much better from having walked it so many times and to understand the relationships of people to place, especially walking the most, I mean, when we walk with you all with some of the members of this community and their descendants and have them be able to comment on specific places we passed and have those places then evoke new memories. I think that was really powerful for me. But, and then, you know, it's again, to come back to this idea of different mediums and different methodologies. From the walking tour, we then transitioned to writing an article and

that article appeared in both English and in Arabic. And so we through the Arabic article, which we published with the Jom Haria magazine online, I mean, that reached, you know, Arab readers, contemporary readers of Arabic in the Syrian diaspora of today. And, you know, they have a whole other kind of perspective on this history. And so it reinforced for me what's also the importance of, A, publishing your work in the language of a place that you are studying. It's just as important that we reach people in Boston who don't know this history and people maybe who might be interested in it who are Arabic speakers you know around the world yeah I agree like same with me with the different mediums and I do curating as part of my career so just like how do we turn a public history project

into an exhibition and reach people which we're doing through this yeah through objects material culture which we're doing now at MIT and then the exhibition will go to Massachusetts Historical Society in April and we'll have a live event and reception um accompanying that and just like how to get Bostonians to be informed about the history that's not just you know a lot of people know about Chinese like Chinatown Irish immigration Italian like with the north end and this is just like not really in Boston's historiography that much so we want to enrich that and it has like made me think about my own research in a different way since I'm researching Ottoman schools and some of them are not there at all I guess I have to find them in

the archives. So that's kind of a parallel. So I'm thinking, you know, what are different ways I can understand these buildings that aren't there anymore? And also even comparing, like, Ottoman schools to things like the Quincy Grammar School, where, like, in this school they're learning all about how to be American, and in those schools they're learning all about how to be Ottoman. Although I will say in the Ottoman schools learning you know four languages whereas I think in the American schools they're only learning one so there is I I did see like are the Syrians like do they really have a better education here is it just that it's in English

um so yeah I think that connects a bit to like this global history of education and um and craft education that I'm doing as a separate project, but I have seen some different links. So, yeah, it's definitely made us think about our very many different products. You know, we both work on the late 19th and early 20th century. And so I think always thinking about what's going on in a different part of the world at the same time and how these worlds are connected. You know, I was doing research in the Ottoman archives in Istanbul and I came across, you know, lists of newspapers and books that were censored, you know, by Ottoman officials, by the Ottoman authorities. And they're things that are published all over the world. and they're things that are published all over the world.

But among other places, things that were published in Boston were being read and censored, or let's say read and prohibited from entry into the empire by the censors in Istanbul. So you find these kind of peculiar connections. Another great one, I should say, along those lines is the detective agencies that were hired by the Ottoman consul here in Boston to monitor and surveil Armenians in Watertown. You know, local Boston detective agencies being hired to track people, but also just like collect and read whatever was being written by Armenians. and you know by Armenian so this is part of that's is and I guess in a sense it is part of this larger

history of autumn in Boston that we've been trying to contribute to it's just that it's so rich that there are many many pieces to get into kind of reinforces the idea that local history is global history and global history is local absolutely yeah going off of what you said before about like connection, like since we work on this period, I think something that's been a real joy for us is to actually talk to people who grew up in the neighborhood. Because since we research, like I'm researching Ottoman architecture, you're researching earlier Egyptian history, everyone's dead. We can only talk to the documents and see what they try to say. And so it's like a real pleasure to talk to these families. And they are so excited that, you know, this history is finally being looked at and, you know, having a light shine on it. And just, you know, the churches

are living. We can go, you know, talk to people, priests who work there. So it's just like it's really nice to, you know, work on something that's a bit more contemporary and, you know talk to people priests who work there so it's just like it's really nice to you know work on something that's a bit more contemporary and you know where you can see that people are really excited about it so there's a sense of ownership of this history too and that where our role is less to just research and put something out there but also to and connect the dots between people families who's who's in many cases we find, I mean, they all, their parents or grandparents all knew each other well and, you know, had all these overlapping connections, but because they've spread out now into the different

suburbs, if they go to different churches, for example, they're no longer connected with one another. And so one of the most satisfying roles we can play is reconnecting the dots and being able to situate that and this neighborhood within this much broader context. To learn more about Boston's Little Syria, visit bostonlittlesyria.org, where you can find information about walking tours, exhibits and media coverage. You can also find links to pictures from the tour and Tony Abdullahad's website, where you can listen to more of his music in the show notes for this episode.

We hope you'll subscribe to the Harvard Islamica podcast for more interviews on research related to Islam and Muslim societies past and present. I'm Mariam Kazmi. Thanks as always for listening.