Ottoman History Podcast - Musical Archives of the Midwest Mahjar

Episode Date: February 22, 2021

with Richard Breaux | Richard Breaux needed a hobby. He began collecting 78 rpm records as a break from his work as a professor of Ethnic and Racial Studies at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. But when he stumbled upon a trove of Arabic language records at an estate sale, his hobby became a scholarly project of its own to document and reconstruct the history of the Arab diaspora in La Crosse, Wisconsin and the Greater Midwestern United States. In this episode, we talk about the history of early 78 rpm Arabic records in the United States, the people who owned them, and the story of a forgotten center of the Midwest Mahjar. « Click for More »

There was one estate sale years ago that we went to really before I even collected and my wife said hey look at that record player and it had 78s you know that were being sold with it and she said you need a hobby to keep you from stressing out and you work too much and you work too hard and too long and so you know this is something that'll help you relax and of course what do I do I turn it into an academic enterprise right or a project so my name is Richard Burrow and I am an associate professor of ethnic and racial studies at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and And I am a 78 RPM record collector as well. In 2015, I went to an estate sale

on the north side of La Crosse. They only posted a few photos online. One of those had like a 1960s looking record player and stereo, and then on top of that was like an 80s boombox, right? So I said, well, there's clearly someone listened to music, so I'm just going to give it a shot. I drove to the house and I walked through the kitchen,

walked into another room, saw the stereo there, and then I saw some 78 album booklets. The first one I looked through was kind of your typical what a 78 record collector finds at most estate sales. So there was your Bing Crosby's and your Fink Sinatra's. The next album I opened up was filled with labels I had never seen before, right? So the writing on the labels were either an Arabic script or they were a combination of transliterated Arabic and Arabic. They were, you know, Malouf's and McSood's and Arab phone and Alam phone had no idea how any of it had gotten there or anything like that at first.

And so I bought about 20 discs and I left about 40 or 50 there because I belong to this community of 78 record collectors on Facebook. You know, I snapped a couple of photos and I posted them and I said, well, look what I found here. You know, and so people started to chime in and a couple of people said, oh, man, those are awesome. And I said, yeah, I left probably about like 40 or 50 there. And they said, go back and get them. Right. So, so that's what I did. After doing some, some researching, you know, I realized that La Crosse had a Syrian and Lebanese American community. That was on a Saturday, Monday morning, I was in the public library trying to find out something about this community, who people were. That first group of 78s belonged to Syed Addis, and he was born in 1880 and had

immigrated from Rasha'a Fakar. He was a mill worker here in La Crosse. So La Crosse had a number of lumber mills and had some shoe factories and things like that. And so Addis was a mill worker, but he and his wife raised their eight children in the house where I found the records on the north side. And so his children would grow up to pursue a whole host of professions and things like that. One of his daughters, Elaine Addis, died in 2015. It was her estate, essentially. She was really the last of the first generation u.s born of that household to to live there and to survive and so um you know the family decided that they were gonna put whatever they didn't want up for sale up for sale as a part of this estate up for sale as a part of this estate and you know and and the records were were a part of that

i mean one of the things that you have to remember is around the time one around the time that i i come across the first uh the first collection or the first group of 78s is the same time that the former governor of Wisconsin is saying, I'm not taking any Syrian refugees, right? And the governor of Iowa saying, I'm not taking any Syrian refugee. The La Crosse Syrian and Lebanese American community has been here for well over a hundred years. The La lacrosse community has this direct connection to the Chicago World's Fair, the Columbian Exposition in 1893. There is literally an article in the 1916 Lacrosse Tribune that talks about the fact that a number of the first and founding members of La Crosse's Syrian and Lebanese American community worked at the World's Fair. Some of them were doing pottery there. They had things that were left over, you know, surplus that they didn't sell at the fair. And in deciding to stay in the United States, people, you know, they hit the roads in terms of peddling and things like that. And the

article clearly points out that there's this direct link between people who leave Chicago just after the fair. Some go to Janesville, some go to Milwaukee, some go to Fond du Lac, some go to Eau Claire, which is about an hour north of La Crosse, and some go to La Crosse. And they arrive around 1894 and they have relatives that they send for. Some of them start as peddlers. Like I said, some of them start in the lumber mills. They take on a number of professions, but families hear that these individuals are in Wisconsin, they're in La Crosse, and people begin to come and those numbers grow so that you know by 1906 you have the establishment of a syrian melkite church on lacrosse's north side and what what the lacrosse press called the syrian colony of lacrosse there's a sizable enough population

of about 300 or so by the time the Melkite church is established. So 1906 is about when it's established with Father Philip Salmoni as the priest. And then by 1908, they have a building. A few years later, there's some conflict in the community. So I don't want to paint a picture like everything's rosy and people just come and they immigrate and everyone gets along. So there's conflict within that community and between, you know, one of the parishioners and Father Salmoni and the birth of the Syrian Orthodox Church comes out of that conflict. So this family says, you know what? Yeah, you're not going to insult our family. We're going to establish, so, you know, the Orthodox Church is established by 1909, and by 1912, they have, you know,

they have a building as well. So, you have these community institutions that exist. You have, increasingly by the 1910s, people who are making that transition from peddler to storefront owner. And so in many ways, it's kind of the typical narrative. The Syrian and Lebanese immigrant population are completely transforming La Crosse in some interesting ways. I mean, people establish restaurants. So a guy by the name of Philip Jabbour, you know, he establishes a restaurant downtown. He manages to purchase a small hotel and he's, you know, he runs this hotel and then he purchases a small movie house on the north side. So, I mean, this guy is an entrepreneur, right? I mean, he has a restaurant, a hotel and a movie theater. And it's pretty remarkable. And then, interestingly, he's one of the first people to sign up to fight in World War One from La Crosse County.

So he's just he's just an incredible, incredible figure for for a number of reasons. What is interesting about lacrosse and makes it unique from some of the larger cities like Boston and Detroit and New York is that in lacrosse, the population of Arab Americans peaks around 1917 1918 and there are a number of things going on the lumber industry is starting to collapse and so that contributes to the economy falling but also lacrosse isn't immune to racism. You know, in 1915, Birth of a Nation shows in the theater locally. You begin to see reports in the newspaper by 1920, peaking about 1922 and through like 1925, 26 of local chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. Most Syrian and Lebanese immigrants, particularly that came to La Crosse, were not Protestant. And so the Klan is amping up some of the terror towards people who are not Protestant. And Syrian Americans are, and Syrian immigrants are among those people. And so some of those folks leave

about this time. Our Lady of Lord Syrian Malachi Church closes by the mid-1920s. So it doesn't have enough of a congregation to even maintain itself anymore. And people begin to migrate on to California. Some go to Toledo, Ohio. Some also go to Detroit, just north of Detroit, the Port Huron area and Marysville, Michigan. And so there are people who leave La Crosse and go to those communities as well. to find this additional information about the i mean the serious presence of the kuklutz clan here in lacrosse and in some ways it made it all make sense, right? And that's because if you study race and ethnicity in the United States, it's almost that I expect it rather than not. And so I was waiting for something to show up. I didn't know exactly what,

but then once the evidence is there in terms of the documentation, you know, it's as clear as day in terms of what happens. There's obviously this backlash. And the interesting the interesting part of this is that La Crosse pretty much becomes a sundown town by the 1920s as well. And so there are very few opportunities for other people of color. And so for African-Americans, there are very limited opportunities. They weren't a strict sundown town in the sense that they didn't allow anyone to live within the city limits who was not white. But what they did was they restricted the employment opportunities to such that people didn't want to stay. And so those shrinking economic opportunities then essentially forced people to want to leave because there's not much here for them. And, you know, so it's not surprising to me.

There's both a black exodus and an immigrant Arab American exodus. At least some of the Arab Americans who were established enough to have their own family business often stayed. And their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, in some cases, are here in La Crosse. But if you were dependent on something other than yourself to make a living or an income, things became pretty rough. You know, I can't blame anyone for packing up and saying, okay, you know what? Let's go to Toledo where some other people are Arabic speaking or our cousin or our uncle lives. Whoever got a job at the tire factory or the automobile plant, let's go there instead.

And people certainly did that, including a really interesting character who you probably have heard of before. But George Addis was an early activist with the United Auto Workers. And he lived in Toledo for a time. And he he lived in Toledo for a time, and I know that he had some involvement with the huge Toledo strikes in terms of the automobile plants there. And then he becomes one of the first secretary treasurers of the United Auto Workers. Well, he is a cousin of the Yadis family, where I found the first set of 78. And so you have these stories that become really intertwined with some of the larger social and political movements, not only involving Arab American labor history, but just American labor history. And Arab Americans are a part of that narrative and that story. And it's not a story that's not an aspect of that story that gets talked about much unless you're already studying the area of Arab American history or, you know, you happen to go to the

Arab American National Museum and you see the photo of, you know, George Addis there as well, then perhaps you can, you know, you start to make some of those connections. But there's so many things that overlap between Arab American history and African American history and Latino history for, you know, for example, I mean, I think it's the work of Sarah Gualtieri. I think her most recent work kind of looks at some of the intersections between the Latinx community and the Arab American community. And so in some ways you can see similar things in terms of African American communities and history and Arab American history. So for example, at the same time you have the Penn League with Khalil Gibran and Amin Rahani and that group in New York, that's all happening roughly at the same

time that the Harlem Renaissance is happening, right? One's downtown, one's uptown. It's all happening at the same time and literally almost in the same geographic space, at least in terms of a city. Now, the extent to which there's there's serious interaction. I haven't found much of that in the 1920s. There is more of that. My understanding is by the 1940s and 1950s. So in some ways, the community is similar. Their story is similar to the story of Arab Americans in many smaller communities in the United States.

Like I said, they're unlike some of the larger communities in that they don't get a boost from the second or third wave. Right. So if you're in New York, if you're in Boston, you're in Detroit or even like L.A. or San Francisco or something like that. You know, when the second wave of Arab immigrants begins to come to the United States in the 1940s, or even a third wave after 65, La Crosse doesn't get that kind of boost because it's such a small community that's just kind of struggling and limping along, so to speak. And so the people who are here and who remain here, you know, they have to find a way to survive. And so for certain generations, that is, you know, retaining whatever aspects of culture one can. And in some cases, that means, you know, these records become that much more valuable because one of the things that

happens, as you know, without that boost and wave of additional people coming who are Arabic speaking, then the second generation born in the United States, the third generation born in the United States, they are much less likely to speak Arabic or they might speak what some scholars have called kitchen Arabic, right? I mean, they know the foods, they know that, you know, they might be able to tell you the ingredients using Arabic words, but they're not really conversational. And they're certainly not bilingual or able to to read Arabic. And so, you know, the music becomes nostalgic or a part of nostalgia for a time where you were young and your grandparents perhaps were here or your parents were here. And that's the music that those individuals listen to.

So material culture plays a huge part in creating memory and creating collective memory and nostalgia. And so for at least some, that's true with the 78 RPM records. Elias Wardini, he's more commonly known as Louis Wardini, but he's an interesting musician for a number of reasons, but he's become one of my favorite because he's so persistent. I've come to admire that about him, that I can tell he was born in Beirut. He immigrates to the United States about 1904, And from what I can tell, he and his family, you know, land in one of the more obvious places. So they come through Ellis Island. And of course, they go almost directly to Little Syria and lower Manhattan. And so he and the family lived there for some time, I have the sense that he was likely a musician or a budding musician anyway,

because by 1917, he makes his way to the Victor Talking Machine Company's recording studios. Wardini shows up at Victor. He records. He's an oud player. Obviously, they like what they hear. player. Obviously they like what they hear. He records 12 sides on six records and so he's probably like I said one of the most recorded on Victor of Arab immigrants to the United States at this at this time period. For a number of reasons, by 1919, 1920, Victor pretty much stops recording Arabic language musicians in the United States. By 1921, you know, he's traveling throughout the United States. He shows up in Louisiana. He's peddling and trying to do other things to earn money. He

comes back to New York. Mordini is one of only a handful, though, who records both for the Maloof label and A.J. McSood's label as well. So some of those singers and some of those musicians are kind of like exclusive to a label. But for whatever reason that I can't quite figure out, Wardini is one of these people who records quite prolifically on both Malouf and Maksoud. And so he has this career in the 1920s, mostly as a musician. And he is traveling around the East Coast, up and down the East Coast, in what becomes sort of the infant years of the Hafla and the Marajan circuit, quite interestingly, which grows to this sort of huge network of cultural and music events by the 1940s. But, you know, in the 1920s,

it's really kind of a budding circuit. But he does this whole circuit of Melkite churches, Orthodox churches. Sometimes those churches rent out social halls for events, and so he's playing those events. ... ... ... ... He, by the 1930s, things slowed down because of the Depression, but he gets married, but by the 1940s,

he's back on the music scene, traveling from place to place, and now meeting up and performing with other musicians including wadi baghdad who himself had been a recording artist for miksud now he's on the road with other people who have been you know performing on these labels and in the 1920s. There's a whole group of Arab American labels that emerged in the 1940s, mostly in Brooklyn. Some start out in Manhattan and then make their way to Brooklyn. Wardini in 1951 starts his own label, right? He's like, okay, I've been in the business long enough. I'm just going to start my own label. So he starts his own label, Watertone. What is fascinating and somewhat shocking even to me was that there was a short story written up about Wardini and Watertone in Billboard magazine of all places. If you're in Billboard, you've reached a level of notoriety where someone is paying attention to what you're doing. And so in some ways, you know, I can imagine that there

would have been a segment of the population that looked at this and said, oh, you know, I wonder who this Wardini guy is. And, you know, and it says specifically he's you know he's recording in Arabic and and I think it lists the first two singles for his company but what's you know what's really fascinating like I said is he's really one of those early pioneers on the Victor label who then you know and then records on on Arab American labels and then eventually establishes his own label. And so to me, that is a story of persistence. You know, he obviously loved his craft. He loves music.

And he is going to find a way to play music and entertain people however he can. people, however he can. And at the same time, as a musician, you know, he's serving this function of helping people retain certain aspects of Arab expressive culture. And so, yeah, it's just, he's an interesting character. And he kind of disappears after the 1950s. I couldn't really track him down until I found a death notice for him in August of 1990. He died in Beirut. So that means at some point, he decides to leave the United States, goes back to Lebanon, and he dies there. And so that explains in part why you have the disappearance, because he's lost the grid in terms of the u.s press and and no one seems to be looking for him at least during that time period so you have musicians like hordini you have jamila matuk who you know i find fascinating because frankly she was the absolute

first arab american 78 i played of all of the group that I found with that first collection at the Addis's. For no reason, I just, you know, I was like, oh, okay, let's, let's see what this, and so from that moment, I really tried to search and figure out what her story is. From the beginning, from the end, from the beginning, and the end of the world, and life. She's what some people would call a middle period musician. And that's because the height of her performance career is the 40s and the 50s before the so-called nightclub era, so to speak. But it is clearly, you know, not as early as some of your early Malouf or Wardini or, you know, or some of the other musicians or

singers that I talk about on the blog. And so her story and the story of Asad Dakrub really kind of capture the complexity of the Makjar and the Syrian Lebanese diaspora, because for Jamila Matouk, you know, she leaves Lebanon, but goes to Brazil for a while and lives with family there. That I could tell she seemed to have some relatives in Haiti and Cuba as well, who had obviously immigrated, you know, to those places. And although she's born in 1911, she doesn't come to the United States until the late 1920s, early 1930s.

And she has brothers who are living in Brooklyn. And so when she comes to the United States, finally, you know, as an immigrant, then she, because she's come from Brazil, I have my thoughts about why some of this is happening. So you have some people who come through, who come from places like Brazil or Venezuela, or in the case of Assad Dakrub, who I'll talk about in a minute, he comes through Mexico into Texas. And my thought is that in some cases, these are folks who are really sophisticated about how they are immigrating post-Johnson Reed, especially for her. And so it looks very different when you're coming from, say, Brazil, right? Then when you're coming from what was still being called Syria and you have this restriction of only 100 people being able to come per year.

So I don't know if that's exactly what's going on, but I have a feeling that something like that is going on. And so places like Brazil, not only are places where, you know, you also have diasporic communities, but they allow people who want to move in the Western hemisphere between places to have that freedom of movement. And so, but she becomes, next to Sana and America Dash, she becomes, you know, one of the superstars, so to speak, for alum phone. and and alaphone records was a recording outfit in brooklyn it actually started in in lower manhattan's little syria as well but it became it becomes best known for its presence on atlantic avenue and that whole community of of arabic speaking people on Atlantic Avenue. But again, she's an alum phone star. She records.

She does the same Hafla Marajan circuit that I mentioned earlier, but that's really developed and really buzzing and filling places to the rafters by this point in the 1940s and the 1950s. She marries and she has children. And it's interesting because her career kind of fades. But there's a report in the Caravan newspaper, which was an Arab American newspaper in Brooklyn. And it mentions the fact that she shows up at one of these haflas. But she's in the audience.

She's sitting and she's listening to the music and enjoying other folks who are up and entertaining. And the report says, you know, people recognize her in the crowd and they're like, oh, it's Jamila Matouk, you know, and so they start to cheer for her and clap for her and things like that until eventually she's pressured to get up on stage and perform. It's quite a fascinating and fun story because you get a sense that people really loved her singing and they really loved her. الدنيا مش مظبوطة مش موزونة عن نقطة شو الفايدة تتعب فكرك تزعل و تأثر عمرك الرزقة

والعيشة والموت الدنيا والعيشة نخفى بحيا The last person I will mention that is one of my favorites, and like I said, I think he also represents some of the complexities of the diaspora, of the Lebanese and Syrian diaspora, is Assad Dakrub.

Assad Dakrub Like I mentioned, he comes through Mexico into Texas. He was formally trained in music. He had studied music in Paris, was my understanding, before he had gone to Mexico. He has a really interesting, a really interesting story in that regard. And he spent some time, you know, and if I remember correctly, I think he spent some time in Jakarta, Senegal as well. So he interestingly lists his destination as Michigan City, Indiana, which both then and now for a smallish Midwest city has a sizable Lebanese American and Syrian American population. Dhakroub makes his way through Texas up to Indiana and he eventually

moves to Detroit. His story is unique because he's among that 25% or so who are Muslim, not Christian. And so what's fascinating to me is that the places that Dr. Rub seems to go are places where there are Syrian Muslim communities. you know, in the early 1920s at the same time that there's a mosque being established in Highland Park, Michigan, and one of the earliest mosques in the United States. Right. And so he shows up in the directory, the city directory. You know, you can see that he's an Arabic language teacher. So he is teaching Arabic in some communities. He's also listed as a music teacher. And so he's doing, you know, he's doing a little bit of both. But what you have to understand for most Arab American musicians is they could not make livelihoods as musicians, right? We think of

musicians now, or at least some of us do, and we think of big name musicians who can just be singers or be performers and that's it and that's all they have to do. But the fact of the matter is, you know, most of these folks have to work, if not a nine-to-five, you know, a seven-to-seven. He stays in the Detroit-Dearborn area at least through the early 1930s. And then he heads west. I'm not sure why, but again, he heads west to communities that, you know, are fairly well established at that point. So he heads to a Syrian-American community in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. American community in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I know by listening to your podcast that you, you know, you did an episode on, you know, Syrians in Sioux Falls. So it doesn't come as a surprise to you that he, you know, that he ends up in, in Sioux Falls. But to me, I'm thinking Sioux Falls,

you know, what's, what's going on? So, so, you know, so Dhakrub is there he's an arabic he's listed as an arabic teacher but but really he's he's following those those those paths that other lebanese and syrian immigrants had had followed before him so it begins to make sense that he you know that he ends up in Sioux Falls for a while and then circles back and that I can tell um spends time in Michigan City again and then moves back to the Detroit to the Detroit area he recorded for McSood you know during the 1920s and I have several of his his 78s many of those were were in the Addis collection. And so when you put these together, what you see is this community of musicians.

Sometimes they know the other musicians who are recording on the label. Sometimes they don't. They are really well connected to the diasporic communities across the United States, but not only that, they're connected in some cases to the diasporic communities in Brazil and Venezuela. Just, you know, they're really representative of people who are on the move and are establishing communities around the world, much less across the United States.

I remember when I interviewed Fadwa Abed, who, you know, was huge in the United States in the 1950s, but was even bigger in Lebanon. She's one of the people who is an American-born person of Arab descent who has a musical career here, but she discovers that if she goes to Lebanon, she has a much more lucrative career where there's much more interest. Even though she's born in Los Angeles, she lives most of her life in Lebanon and then doesn't come back to the United States until around the time of the Lebanese Civil War. That time between 50 and the mid-1970s, the 50s and 1970s, she's there. And so she has this career. 1970s, she's there and so she has this career. But one of the things she said to me was, oh well sometimes Arab American musicians use Motown studios that she personally knows. And I asked her, I said, well can can you document that? Is there anything that, you know, that you can, even a photo that shows, you know, Arab American musicians inside of one of... And she didn't have any documentation, but she suggested that that type of thing was happening. Ian Nagowski does some of this work where he looks at like Naeem Karakhan and Muhammad

al-Bakar, I believe, who are playing with Thelonious Monk's bass player, right? And they cut this Jazz Sahara album. I mean, so by the 1940s and 50s, there is absolutely interaction between musicians there. These are musicians who are part of the same community. You have African-Americans experimenting with Arabic music and hiring Arab-American musicians. Of course, Albert Rashid. So Albert rashid ran al shark records in brooklyn but his you know his his sons talk about people like malcolm x coming into the store to buy music for for the harlem mosque and so they're absolutely there's there's so much waiting to

be uncovered i know robin kelly talks a little bit about, like I said, some of that overlap in Africa Speaks, but there's so much more that's left to uncover. I've always made it my policy to, you know, send an MP3 or a WAV file to the families just so they have a digital copy of their relatives singing. So I feel like it's the least I could do. Sometimes, particularly with the earlier generations, sometimes those families don't know that their relatives record it. And so when I contact them, it's out of the blue in the sense that they're like, what? Who are you?

And La Crosse, Wisconsin. And wait a minute. Again, about, you know, a relative recording something. Sometimes people are just absolutely stunned and flabbergasted, but we talked a lot about commercial recordings. What I also found were homemade family 78s. At least one of the recordings was just labeled. It just said, Pauline's Wedding Party.

Do not throw away. And so I'm like, okay, so what's what's this? I got to play. I got to put this on. I got to play it. I got to listen to it. What have you got to say about some certain thing in there? How about you? Josie, do you want to say something? Come on. I bet this is one of the nicest weddings for one of my best friends, my jewelry denim. And what it is is it's a recording, because none of this is from literally that was all that was written.

So I have no idea who Pauline is, right? I start to search around in newspapers. So it turns out that that story is of Crosse-born Pauline Ferris, who is Lebanese-American, marries a guy by the name of Francis Ramia, who is Damascus-born. They get married in April of 1940 in Marysville, Michigan. So that area I said that's just north of Detroit, around the Port Huron area. What you hear on the recording is Pauline speaking to some of the guests who are leaving her wedding. So some of them clearly are not Arab American because they say things like, well, you know, I've never been to a Syrian wedding, but this has been so lovely.

Oh, no, I've got to go home. I'm sorry. I hate to go, but I'm loved. But you enjoyed yourself? Oh, that everything was grand. Just marvelous. You enjoyed having your wedding? Well, it was lovely.

I enjoyed meeting everybody and certainly enjoyed a Syrian wedding, which I've never been present at before. And then you also have friends and relatives who come up to speak to her and are being recorded and are speaking in Arabic. By a few of them here. How about you, Mr. Stout?

That's Mr. Stout from Detroit. This is John from Port York. John, what did you have to say? Say material culture and recorded history, like that, it's amazing because it moves beyond kind of the performance, the documentation meant for public consumption. really begins to to personalize and to put you in touch with this this this community and some of the many people who were you know living in La Crosse whether they decided to stay or leave or or whatever and and I can tell you that the family absolutely loved that I digitized it and sent it to them. My wife and kids kind of joke but you know I get invited to people's family reunions because they know who I am. Those are the parts of this work that are really rewarding.

Where you know someone says you know that's my grandmother and, you know, someone says, you know, that's my grandmother. And I, you know, I remember her voice, but only from when I was a little kid. And to hear it again, just brings back so many memories. I mean, that's, that's the really rewarding and fun stuff for me. So, yeah. That's Richard Breaux. His website is Midwest Mahjar, and you can visit it at Syrian-Lebanese-Diaspora-Sound.blogspot.com. He was interviewed by Chris Creighton. He was interviewed by Chris Grayton. Of course, as always, you can find more information on our website, OttomanHistoryPodcast.com, including suggestions for further reading,

images, and links to the music played in this episode, which comes from the collections of the Addis, Mansour, and Milan families of Wisconsin. You can also join us on Facebook, where the community of listeners is over 35,000 strong. That's it for this episode of the Ottoman History Podcast. I'm Sam Dolby. Until next time, take care. Thank you.