The Construction of Syrian-American Identity in Abraham Rihbany's A Far Journey and Other ...

66 Pages·2015·20.12 MB·English

The Construction of Syrian-American Identity in Abraham
Rihbany's A Far Journey and Other Writings
This thesis examines A Far Journey (1914), the autobiography by Syrian-American pastor
Abraham Mitrie Rihbany, and parses its relationship and reaction to American nativism and to
the growing Syrian-American community. A Far Journey is more than an autobiography, it
serves as an appeal to Rihbany's American readership for the assimilation and acceptance oft he
Syrian immigrant. Rihbany strategically constructs a view ofS yria and oft he United States
within the framework ofA merican conceptions oft he Holy Land and oft he American nation in
order to win the ear ofh is American reader and promote the Syrian as an appropriate candidate
for Americanization. This thesis reads A Far Journey, and several other ofR ihbany 's works, and
broadens the context through a reading ofS yrian history, American history, and immigration in
the early 20th century. Abraham Rihbany's A Far Journey is a response to American nativism,
Syrian-American efforts for naturalization and acceptance, and an appeal written to Americans,
within an American understanding and discourse, for the assimilation andf air Americanization
ofS yrian migrants.
Jake Hazen
Senior Thesis, Department of History
Haverford College
December 9th, 2014
Acknowledgements
This thesis owes a great deal to the help of the faculty at Haverford College. I extend my thanks
to Professor Alexander Kitroeffwho gave me his help and guidance throughout the years and
was a constant help as my major advisor and primary reader. Professor Paul Smith was an
invaluable aid and friend, providing me with advice and teaching me to hone my writing style
and sharpen my editing. I would also like to offer my thanks to Professor Jamel Velji of the
Religion Department who has been a friend and informal advisor throughout my time at
Haverford.
I also would like to thank Laurie Allen for her help with research. Kristen Lindgren and the
tutors at the Writing Center, including Cruz Arroyo, Daniel Rothschild, and Stephen Profeta
were a constant and indispensable help.
Finally, I'd like to thank my friends and family for their help and support.
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Table of Contents
Timeline ...................................................................................... 4
Introduction ....................................................................... .
Literature Review ........................................................................... .12
The World They Entered: Nativism and Syrian-Americans in the early 1900s..... 5
Crafting Old Zion: Rihbany's Presentation of Syria and the Syrians ............... ..
Coming to the New Zion: Rihbany and America ........................................... 34
Rihbany' s comparison of American and Syrian Natures ....................... .
Becoming American: The Process of Americanization in Rihbany's Writing ....... 47
Conclusion .................................................................................... 59
Bibliography ...................................................................................6 0
Time line
The Life of Abraham Rihbany and Major points in the history of the Syrian-American
community
• 1860- Mount Lebanon War.
• 1869-Abraham Mitrie Rihbany is born in El-Shweir, Modem-day Lebanon.
• 1876- The Centennial International Exposition in Philadelphia.
• 1891- Rihbany arrives in New York City.
• 1892- Rihbany becomes a citizen and participates in his first election.
• 1893- Rihbany leaves New York City to study and preach in the Mid-West.
• 1894- Rihbany studies at Manchester College in Indiana.
• 1895-1896-Rihbany studies at Ohio Wesleyan University
• 1905- In re Najour opens up the decade of Syrian prerequisite cases.
• 1910-1911-Peak of Syrian immigration to the United States.
• 1914- Ex parte Dow, and in re Dow reject Syrian 'whiteness,' World War I begins
cutting off links between Syria and the United States, and Abraham Rihbany publishes A
Far Journey: An Autobiography.
• 1915- Syrians win their whiteness in Dow versus the United States.
• 1916- Rihbany publishes Syrian Christ.
• 1917- The United States enters the war and Rihbany publishes Militant America and
Jesus Christ.
• 1918-World War I ends.
• 1924- The Immigration Act significantly cuts off Syrian immigration.
• 1944-Abraham Rihbany dies in Stamford, Connecticut.
Introduction
The late 19th and early 20th century saw a shift of immigration to the United States;
Northern European immigrants were replaced by those from the Mediterranean and Asia. Castle
Garden and Ellis Island processed hundreds of thousands who came from shtetls in Hungary, the
shores of Sicily, and the mountain hamlets of Lebanon.
Abraham Rihbany, author of A Far Journey, arrived in the United States in 1891 and
settled in Washington Street, the bustling row of streets in New York City which became home
to the burgeoning Syrian community in the United States. It was there, wedged between Battery
Park, Irish neighborhoods, and wharves that Syrians began their journey into America and began
the process of Americanization. Whether in Paterson, New Jersey or Sioux Falls, the swarthy
migrants were met with intense nativism and prejudice which threatened their livelihoods and
place in the United States. Syrians coalesced and combated these prejudicial obstacles in an
effort to secure their position and identity as Syrians in America, and then as Syrian-Americans.
From the printing presses of Atlantic Avenue to the courthouses across the nation in which
Syrians petitioned for and won their naturalization, the Syrian community in America negotiated
their new identities in conversation with the established American biases, expectations, and
prejudices.
In 1914, amidst some of the most rampant nativism and antagonism towards the Syrian
immigrants, Abraham Rihbany, Syrian peddler turned American preacher, published his
autobiography, A Far Journey. Rihbany's narrative, in addition to his later books, negotiates
Syrian-American identity in the same ways that his compatriots, peers, and predecessors did. In
his narrative and his appeal to his American audience for the acceptance and assimilation of the
Syrian community, Rihbany stressed the Syrian's Christian origin and identity as well as the
sacred nature of America.
This thesis will make the argument that Rihbany's emphasis on religion was a calculated,
strategic ingratiation to the mores of his American audience. Both a student of American
missionaries and a Reverend himself, Abraham Rihbany understood the way in which religion
colored American conceptions of the Near East and American self-perception and formatted his
narrative and his argument accordingly. Rihbany' s presentation of Syria in biblical terms and his
narrativization of his Americanization as religious enlightenment was an intentional situation
within American sensibilities and stratifications in order to avoid the marginalization and scorn
leveled at immigrants during this period. A Far Journey is a story of one man's travel and life
but it is, as the author admits, much more, including the story of"children of other lands," and,
ultimately, an appeal for the acceptance and Americanization of the Syrian community.
Literature Review
Much of the scholarship on the Syrian-American community is tucked away in footnotes,
lumped together with Southern European immigrant history, or is kept in dusty, rarely visited
archives. There are, however, some invaluable sources and works on the Syrian immigrants and
their budding community and its place within the larger trends of immigration and assimilation
during the early twentieth century. This thesis draws most heavily on Abraham Rihbany's
autobiography, A Far Journey (1914) and his other works but also uses the work of his peers
within the Syrian mahjar (diaspora) literary community. To understand Abraham Rihbany's role
as a leader, representative, and mediator within an environment of intense nativism and pressure
to assimilate, this thesis will delve into works which explain the history of America's conception
of the Middle East and its own history with Christianity, as well as books which discuss
immigration and assimilation, both the general trends and the specific case of the Syrians. This
grouping of sources, both primary and secondary, holden the context and environment in which
Rihbany wrote and reveal the forces which affected the narrative and themes inA Far Journey
and Rihbany's other works.
A Far Journey, Abraham Rihbany's autobiographical narrative of immigration and
assimilation, is also supplemented by Rihbany's other works. Published shortly after A Far
Journey, Syrian Christ (1916) elaborates on the presentation of Syria as a holy land and parallels
the life of Jesus Christ to that of the ordinary Syrian. Additionally, this thesis draws on America
Save the Near East (1918}, an appeal for American intervention and an American mandate in
Syria, and Wise Men from the East and From the West (1922), a book which compares the
Western and Eastern natures and posits that the Syrian can contribute true Oriental spirituality to
the United States. Rihbany's works build upon the themes and narratives which drive the story of
Rihbany's life inA Far Journey from the spirituality of the East, to the modem superiority of
America, to the Syrian's potential for assimilative good.
Rihbany, as a member of the budding Mahjar emigre literary circle in New York, worked
closely with the major Syrian-American authors, read their works, and incorporated their
arguments and sentiments into his writing. Rihbany's discussion of race and religion in Syria
closely parallel Kahlil Bishara's The Origin oft he Modern Syrian. Similarly, Rihbany's
discussion of Americanization, that melting pot process of comingling the Syrian and American
natures, mirrors the arguments that Philip Khuri Hitti makes in The Syrians in America, the
landmark work on Syrian Americans written ten years after A Far Journey. This parallelism
between Hitti and Rihbany is natural considering that Hitti was a close personal friend of
Rihbany who publicized A Far Journey and organized meet and greets for Rihbany. Rihbany's
language, form and arguments were, in large part, formed in response and conversation with the
works of his peers who, themselves, were reflecting the Syrian-American community's
self-identification in the face of American nativism and prejudices.
Rihbany's relationship to the Syrian American community and their struggle to form an
identity in the States is highlighted in the context of American and Syrian history. To understand
the worlds the Syrian immigrants entered and the systems that confronted them, this thesis looks
to several texts which outline American conceptions of the Near East. The Arabs in the Mind of
America by Michael W. Suleiman, a preeminent Arab-American scholar, is a broad history of
American views of Arabs. A Wild Ass ofa Man by Terry B. Hammons is an extensive history of
American views of the Near East and is most important for this thesis in its history of Puritan,
Protestant conceptions of Arabs within a biblical, and American context. Similarly, Fuad
Sha'ban's For Zion's Sake: The Judea-Christian Tradition in American Culture is an invaluable
source in understanding the Protestant relationship to the Near East and its inhabitants. These
texts help establish the conceptions of Arabs which informed America's founders and American
society.
To read through the system of nativism, prejudice, and misconceptions which greeted and
challenged the Syrian immigrants, this thesis will draw upon histories of immigration and
nativism. Perhaps most important to understanding the trends and origins of nativism in America
is David Higham's Strangers in the Land which outlines the ways in which immigrants were
viewed and marginalized. David Roediger's Working toward Whiteness: How America's
Immigrants Became White argues that before World War II, immigrants from Europe and
Western Asia in the United States existed as "in-between peoples," not necessarily white or
black, Chinese, or another "unpalatable persons." Roediger insists that this "in-between status"
was inherent to the Old Country cultures; this thesis, however, claims that in the Syrian case this
in-between identity was partly inherent but largely formed in reaction to nativism. Nevertheless,
Working toward Whiteness remains an invaluable source for tracing the Syrian assimilation
process along wider trends of foreign assimilation in the face of intense racial and societal
pressures. Coming to America: A History ofI mmigration and Ethnicity in American Life by
Roger Daniels offers another view into those Syrian immigrants and their assimilation alongside