Little Syria
A Journey through 1880s-1920s Arab New York City
AP Photo/Andres Kudacki
Introduction
Afifa Karam
Afifa Karam was on the cutting edge of the Diasporic Literary world, and Arabic novels at large, but she remains largely forgotten, which is both frustrating and not very surprising. Her work is slowly seeing the light, with recognition from scholars and even the NYC Mayor’s Office, but she’s still far from being well known.
Photo Credit to Dr. Elizabeth Saylor
The Azeez-Khoury Family
Marie Azeez El-Khoury and Alice Azeez are two iconic figures of New York's first waves of Syrian immigration in the late 1880s. The daughters of Tannous Azeez's Little Shop of T. Azeez, a jewelry shop, Marie inherited the store and turned its jewelry into Vogue-worthy products. Meanwhile, Alice toured the U.S., telling fabricated stories and successfully labelling herself a "Syrian Princess" with rich cousins in Beirut. She did, however, successfully patent a fabric design with the Metropolitan Museum at an impressively young age. Marie, who had dreamt of being a writer when she was younger, had a romantic love affair with the well-known writer Gibran Khalil Gibran.
Little Syria and The Arab Ghosts of New York
Little Syria and The Arab Ghosts of New York
Little Syria Map Based on Atlas of the city of New York, borough of Manhattan. From actual surveys and official plans [1911