American Arabesque: Arabs and Islam in the Nineteenth Century Imaginary

287 Pages·2012·19.36 MB·English

by  Jacob Rama Berman

American Arabesque
America and the Long 19th Century
General Editors
David Kazanjian, Elizabeth McHenry, and Priscilla Wald
Black Frankenstein: The Making of an American Metaphor
Elizabeth Young
Neither Fugitive nor Free: Atlantic Slavery, Freedom Suits,
and the Legal Culture of Travel
Edlie L. Wong
Shadowing the White Man’s Burden: U.S. Imperialism
and the Problem of the Color Line
Gretchen Murphy
Bodies of Reform: The Rhetoric of Character in Gilded Age America
James B. Salazar
Empire’s Proxy: American Literature and U.S. Imperialism
in the Philippines
Meg Wesling
Sites Unseen: Architecture, Race, and American Literature
William A. Gleason
Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood
from Slavery to Civil Rights
Robin Bernstein
American Arabesque: Arabs, Islam, and the
19th-Century Imaginary
Jacob Rama Berman
American
Arabesque
Arabs, Islam, and the
19th- Century Imaginary
Jacob Rama Berman
a
New York University Press
New York and London
new york university press
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
© 2012 by New York University
All rights reserved
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Berman, Jacob Rama.
American arabesque : Arabs, Islam, and the 19th-century imaginary /
Jacob Rama Berman.
p. cm. — (America and the long 19th century)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8147-8950-6 (cloth : acid-free paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8147-8950-1 (cloth : acid-free paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8147-4518-2 (pbk. : acid-free paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8147-4518-0 (pbk. : acid-free paper)
[etc.]
1. American literature—19th century—History and
criticism. 2. Arabs in literature. 3. National characteristics,
American, in literature. 4. Islam in literature. 5. Arabs—Race
identity. 6. National characteristics, American—History—19th
century. I. Title.
PS217.A72B47 2012
810.9'3529927—dc23
2011043495
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for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was
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New York University Press books are printed on acid- free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials
to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.
Manufactured in the United States of America
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A book in the American Literatures Initiative (ALI), a collaborative
publishing project of NYU Press, Fordham University Press, Rutgers
University Press, Temple University Press, and the University of Virginia
Press. The Initiative is supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
For more information, please visit www.americanliteratures.org.
To (cid:911)(cid:910)(cid:914)(cid:952)(cid:991)(cid:909)
and their Arab Spring
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Contents
Preface: Roadside Attraction ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: Guest Figures 1
1 The Barbarous Voice of Democracy 31
2 Pentimento Geographies 70
3 Poe’s Taste for the Arabesque 109
4 American Moors and the Barbaresque 138
5 Arab Masquerade: Mahjar Identity Politics
and Transnationalism 179
Afterword: Haunted Houses 211
Notes 217
Bibliography 245
Index 261
About the Author 270
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Preface
Roadside Attraction
Every January 10, the desert city of Quartzite, Arizona, holds
a festival in honor of the “Syrian” camel driver Hi Jolly. Often cited as the
first Arab to make his permanent residence in America, Hi Jolly arrived
in the United States in 1856 as part of Jefferson Davis’s Fort Tejon Camel
Corp experiment. The story of the Camel Corps is a story of fascinating
failure. Davis sought to provide a reliable long- distance supply system for
the dispersed forts on the frontier and commissioned forty or so camels to
be shipped to the American Southwest from the Levant for that purpose.
The camels performed well, but the outbreak of the Civil War made their
job obsolete. Most of the dromedaries were dispersed in the desert. Even-
tually they entered into the myth of the American West spawning numer-
ous folk tales and ghost stories. Reportedly the camels were last sighted
as late as 1946. A man named Hadji Ali was among the camel drivers who
accompanied the beasts of burden from the Levant. When the camels
were released, Ali remained in the Arizona territory, occupying a number
of colorful jobs before his death in 1902. A pyramidal monument marks
Ali’s gravesite in Quartzite’s pioneer cemetery (figure 1). Atop the tomb is
a bronze camel.
The Hi Jolly Memorial is significant not because it marks the burial site
of the “first Arab” to live in America but rather because it demonstrates
the role of translation in creating American images of the Arab, in creat-
ing American arabesques. The plaque adjacent to Ali’s tomb explains that
because the soldiers whom the “Syrian” was tasked with training in the
ways of the camel could not pronounce “Hadji Ali,” they changed it to “Hi
Jolly.” Hadji Ali signifies, to a speaker of Arabic, a devout man who has
made a pilgrimage to Mecca in accordance with religious duty. Hi Jolly,
to an English speaker, is a somewhat ridiculous name that evokes laughter
even as it speaks to the incongruity of a Levantine camel driver trying to
ix