Ottoman History Podcast - Ottoman New York

Episode Date: June 24, 2017

Episode 320 featuring Bruce Burnside & Sam Dolbee Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud The distance between the shores of the Ottoman Empire and New York City may be great, but, as this episode suggests, a great many connections exist between these places, too. This episode explores both the everyday lives of those hailing from the Ottoman domains over several centuries in the Big Apple, as well as the perceptions New Yorkers and Americans more generally had of the Ottoman Empire. Through visits to sites across the island of Manhattan, we shed light on the long and largely forgotten shared history of the Ottoman Empire and New York City, and we find it in unlikely places – such as a modest walk-up apartment on the Upper East Side – as well as in the shadow of New York landmarks like 1 World Trade Center and the Stonewall Inn. « Click for More »

Hello, and welcome to a special episode of the Ottoman History Podcast. I'm Sam Dolby, and this is Ottoman New York, a city that some love, others love so much that they wear shirts proclaiming their love of it, and still others love so much that they wear shirts proclaiming their love of it, and still others love so much that they wear shirts proclaiming their love of it while taking photos of squirrels. I saw that happen a few days ago. Whatever your feelings toward the metropolis or its adulatory outerwear, it's difficult to ignore. The city is the birthplace of no shortage of world historical figures, and no shortage of world historical figures have called it home. A hopelessly abbreviated list of those who fall into one of those two categories includes such luminaries as Eleanor Roosevelt, Sonia Sotomayor,

Leon Trotsky, Malcolm X, and Larry David. There are no Ottomans on that list, and there are no Ottomans, as far as I can tell, in the various anthemic odes to the Big Apple. Not in Frank Sinatra's New York, New York. Not in Taylor Swift's Welcome to New York. The closest we come to the Ottoman Empire is with Jay-Z and Alicia Keys and Empire State of Mind. Okay, Dwayne Wade and other people name-dropped in the song aren't secretly Ottomans, but at least the title mentions empire, right? Nevertheless, as will likely be no surprise to you, dear listeners,

Ottomans have been a part of New York history from even before it became called New York. And today we'll bring you their stories. from even before it became called New York. And today we'll bring you their stories. We'll also bring you stories of how Americans imagined the Ottoman Empire and its residents. Amidst these tales of migration, community, racism, and identity, we'll find connections to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the American Civil War, and the architecture around Washington Square Park. And finally, we'll explain how one of the descendants of the House of Osman, the family that ruled a great swath of the world for six centuries, ended up in a walk-up apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Our journey in this episode will have a guide, and the person leading us through the turnstiles and across the grid will be Bruce Burnside, a dear friend, an intrepid wanderer, and a new dad. Bruce is a PhD student in anthropology and education at Teachers College in New York City. He has previously been a tour guide in Berlin, and he currently has his own tour podcast in New York City. He has previously been a tour guide in Berlin, and he currently has his own tour podcast in New York City called City Between, and we'll provide more information about that project later. The first stop on this journey is the foundation of the City Hall of New

Amsterdam, which of course was the name of New York while it was under Dutch control in the early to mid-17th century. Muslims were there from the beginning, most notably among people, enslaved and otherwise, who found their way to the city from West Africa. In this segment, we'll focus on someone from North Africa who gained notoriety in New Amsterdam. In a story about race and the silences that permeate this topic in American history, we'll even find a link to one of the most storied figures in 20th century American life. It starts on Pearl Street. Okay, not much sunlight here. Not much sunlight here. There's a few 19th century buildings

around on this corner to give it some character, but otherwise many other skyscrapers blocking away all that sun. Now the city hall itself, the Dutch city hall, they never ever found those ruins. They were done away with at some point, but they did helpfully trace out where that city hall stood in yellow brick. It's not very well marked, but if you come down here looking for it, you can get a sense of how big that city hall was, the Dutch city hall. You only have to remember that here on Pearl Street, once upon a time, that used to be the waterfront. Today, it's three blocks away, the East River. So over a couple hundred years, the city kept expanding the land further and further out. And what does this have to do with Ottoman history, Bruce? Well, we have the odd story that most likely, most probably, there was a Muslim in the New Amsterdam, New

Netherlands colony by the name of Anthony Jensen Fonsalais, otherwise known as the Troublesome Turk. Tell us more about this Troubles troublesome Turk. Well, as you can probably sense from the name, it doesn't sound very Turkish. And indeed, Anthony Janssen's father was Dutch. His name was Jan Janssen, hence Anthony Janssen's name. His father was from Harlem. Okay, so that's not Harlem in New York City. No. The Harlem in New York City is, of course, named after the one in the Netherlands. And his father was a pretty famous pirate, and he was down there in the Mediterranean, parading on all kinds of ships, and as wasn't so uncommon at the time,

he was captured by Algerian pirates. And after capture, he was forced to convert to Islam, which he seems to have done without perhaps too much protest, because he then began working himself as an Algerian pirate out of the Algerian port. And what about this part of his name that suggests he might be from Saleh? Well, indeed, Jan Janssen, after he converted, he took on a new name, Murat Reis, and eventually got tired of working for the Algerians and hence at least in nominal tribute to the Ottoman Sultan. So he went

around to the Atlantic seaboard to the Moroccan town of Salé, where he essentially became the kind of de facto ruler of what was basically a pirate town, though they themselves gave tribute to the Moroccan Sultan. And it was in Salé that he seems to have married a young Moorish girl, and that young Moorish girl was probably Anthony Jansen's mother. Okay, and what do we mean by Moorish in this context? How do we translate that into terms we're more familiar with today, perhaps? Well, some of today's story is coming from Peter Lamborn Wilson's book, Pirate Utopias, and he suggests that more that Moorish designation, we don't really have much more evidence. So we

don't know if that really meant someone recently exiled from Spain, the kind of Moorish Christians being suspected of being secretly Muslim, or if it meant more of a cultural phenomenon. Islam or for a bit more of a cultural phenomenon. It doesn't seem so much to have linked hard and fast to a race at that time, for example. But it definitely meant some link with the world of Al-Andalus and the Moroccan sultanate. Okay, so this is the father and mother of this troublesome Turk in New Amsterdam. Is that right? That's exactly right. And we don't know exactly how, but somehow or another, Anthony Jansen and actually his brother, Abraham, ended up here in New Amsterdam.

We almost know nothing about his brother, Abraham. We only know that he moved across the East River to what's now brooklyn to wallabout bay where the brooklyn navy yard is today that he married an african-american woman and we know that he left her his property when he died uh but they almost completely disappear from the historical registers at that point uh this is american history and so a, you know, a lot of denial and forgetting and just sheer lack of evidence due to the kind of racialized nature of American history. Right. And what do we know about Anthony Jensen himself? Did he do something to get this nickname of the troublesome Turk? Was he in fact troublesome or is this just people being racist and liking alliteration?

Most certainly they liked alliteration. I mean, that definitely worked. And let's just, the Turk part, probably that was sort of the European euphemism at the time for a Muslim. And it's almost our best evidence that we have that he was actually a Muslim of some sort. We don't have much else. But Anthony Jansen, he got married as well. But he married a white Dutch woman who happened to be the most famous prostitute in New Amsterdam. Her name was Grietje Reyniers. And it turns out that both of them were quite the handful. They made up somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of all of the court cases that came to the Dutch City Hall that we're standing next to. So you're saying that they actually set foot on this ground? Oh, absolutely.

They live nearby. He owned property north of what's now just Wall Street. And they kept getting in trouble for all sorts of things. And they would be cursing someone in the street or it was property disputes or somebody wasn't paying what they promised they were going to pay. And we do know at one point that there was a dispute over the parentage of one of his wife's babies. the parentage of one of his wife's babies. And to settle the issue, the midwife said that the baby actually appeared somewhat brown. And what she meant was that that then linked it to the father. So that's the only slightly indirect evidence we have of Anthony Jansen's skin color. So of course, we know in the early modern world that categories of race and difference were much more malleable than they would become in today's world and, you know, in the 19th century as well.

So on the one hand, we get a glimpse of this sort of melting pot of sorts that was early New York. Yeah, absolutely. Again, I mentioned, you know, there was about 18 languages being spoken here. Yeah, absolutely. Again, I mentioned, you know, there was about 18 languages being spoken here. Certainly a lot of the Dutch traders and colonists who were heavily male definitely had children with the Lenape and other Indian groups. It's not that there wasn't hierarchies or things we might think of as a kind of proto-racial America that we could read back into. But absolutely, this is a freewheeling colony. It's not entirely certain what the future is going to be. And people are moving in all kinds of odd directions. Okay, so what direction does Anthony Jansen move in?

Well, eventually, all the court cases and everything just becomes too much for New Amsterdam. And this, again, it's just lower Manhattan below what's today's Wall Street. It's not that big of a city yet. So they get banished to a far away place called Brooklyn. Terrifying prospect. Terrifying prospect. They have to go across the water and they go down to what's now basically the graves and section of Brooklyn. That's the kind of south shore connecting into what's now Coney

Island. And he set up a big farm there and it was called the Turks Plantation. Very nice. And do we know what happened to him after being banished to Brooklyn? Well, it seems that, you know, he of course had lots of lawsuits out there with his neighbors, though he seemed to get along well with his Quaker neighbor, Lady Moody. And eventually his wife, Gritchie, the famous prostitute, dies, and he moves back into New Amsterdam. And then in 1664, the English take over the colony, and presumably he gave the oath of allegiance. And he seemed to die just around the corner from here on Broad Street, a gentleman, a man of means. The last time he got in trouble was for harboring a Quaker. So take that for whatever you would. So Anthony Jansen seems to

found one of the families through intermarriage with the English elite, one of those Anglo-Dutch families. It's going to go on to help found the kind of powerful families of New York City and of the United States, including the Roosevelts, the Skirmerhorns, the Stuyvesants. These are, of course, all still prominent names in New York City today. And one of those descendants actually was Jackie Kennedy. Was she proud of that lineage? She actually was aware of it, which is maybe something we should, you know, remember. But she was, the reason we even know that she was aware

of it was because right when her husband's administration started, they were campaigning for the Civil Rights Act. And some of the campaigners came to her and they said, you know, First Lady Kennedy, you have an African ancestor, Anthony Jansen Fonsalé. This is amazing. Can we use this for our campaign for civil rights? And she basically said no. And they, you know, she didn't like that they were suggesting that he was a Muslim. She actually said that they were confused and that he was Jewish. We don't even

know where she got that story from or what evidence she might have had. Right, but clearly the racial lines had been drawn in a different way. Yes, and that was a little too much to suggest he was African and to link him through that kind of racial struggle which you know presumably she was sympathetic to but still a little too much but in the very early 1900s another one of anthony jensen's ancestors was looking for information and evidence of his ancestor and what they found out was that in in the 1880s, another descendant of the family had discovered in his attic a book with some odd quirky writing in it, and he had no idea what it was. He then sold that book to another family member who thought, he also didn't know what it was, but he thought it was interesting, so he began taking it around town, showing it to everybody, and eventually he was pointed to what was called a curiosity shop in Trenton, New Jersey, which was run by a Jewish man who went by the name Jerusalem. And Jerusalem

quickly identified the book as a Quran. There was also a brass kind of tea kettle sort of thing that was part of the family heirlooms. And that descendant decided to sell these items to Jerusalem for $50 and he paid the first $25 down and then before he could collect the second half, Jerusalem died. The Quran disappeared and we have no idea where it went. But we're assuming this was probably Anthony Jansen's Quran. So if you have any information, let us know. Our next stop involves us jumping some 150 years

to a time when not only had New York become New York, but it was also becoming one of the booming ports of the nascent United States of America. To explore New York become New York, but it was also becoming one of the booming ports of the nascent United States of America. To explore New York's Ottoman legacy, or as you'll see, what we might call an anti-Ottoman legacy, we're going to move about two miles north of Pearl Street to Washington Square Park, which is today home to New York University. A huge population of local residents, tourists, students, performers by day, and a terrifyingly large population of rats by night. This is Westport Street, Washington Square.

Transfer here for the A to C and E at the level B, C. Service on this level. so bruce we're sitting in washington square park what does this have to do with the ottoman empire well maybe nothing but i actually want to try to make an argument and convince you that, in fact, one of the major icons of the square does have an Ottoman connection. And that is the beautiful Greek revival townhouses on the north side of the square. Okay, so I can see them on the north edge of the square. I can look toward them across the waves of NYU students walking to class or lunch through the trees across a playground. I can see these red brick buildings, most of them NYU administrative buildings, and they have some columns on their facades. Yeah, it's pretty subtle, what we call Greek revival, but those columns are important.

The kind of classical proportions, the cornices above the columns over the doorway. This is typically what's referred to as Greek revival architecture. It's very familiar throughout the United States and elsewhere, particularly with our civic buildings, uh, and things like banks, libraries, those sorts of things. So Washington DC and almost any prominent building in any small town. Absolutely. Evoking those ideals, imagined ideals, perhaps of ancient Greece. Okay. But what does this have to do with

the Ottoman Empire? Well, these townhouses in particular, I think we need to know when they were built. And that's in the late 1820s. This is Manhattan's expanding at that time, New York City's borders are expanding. Where you and I are now sitting on the eastern side of Washington Square Park was a massive graveyard for the poor. was about 20 000 bodies buried here uh and they're still buried here i just got full okay so they nicely covered it up and made it into a beautiful park and eventually into an iconic square so that meant these houses were first erected here in the late 1820s. Now, as many of the listeners might know, 1821 began a Greek struggle for independence on the Greek peninsula. And this captured the attention of people around the world.

Absolutely. And also here in New York. Greek propagandists petitioned uh john quincy adams the congress they were looking for supporters here in the u.s they made the case you were inspired by ancient greek democracy hey we're also greece uh let's get on board supporting our cause we are under ottoman slavery right that was the claim um and new york got deeply involved it was actually called greek mania greek mania what did that look like it looked like lots of different things um it kind of influenced fashion women sometimes wore what they thought were greek

inspired simpler republican costumes uh it inspired massive fundraising dinners uh throughout the city to raise money to be sent to help the greek cause um at one of those dinners a toast was raised and the toast went like this may the grecian cross be planted from village to village and from steeple to steeple until it rests on the dome of saint sophia okay so this is referring to iso phil which of course at that time is a mosque there's a clear religious dimension to the support of no doubt that um what a group calling themselves the greek ladies of bro of Brooklyn raised a gigantic Greek cross on Brooklyn Heights. This is just opposite Lower Manhattan, so everyone could see it. And it said

sacred to the Greek cause, right? And just in Wallabout Bay in Brooklyn in the Navy Yard, they had a big commission of ships to be built to go fight for greece these were going to be owned by greece these weren't american uh this was not the american navy uh young men volunteered to go fight many in the medical corps of course lord byron the english poet uh once he joined that group fight that's was he was already a popular author and poet. And so that was a big galvanizing thing for the fashionable Greek mania here in the city. There's a sort of irony here too, right? Because there aren't that many Greek immigrants in the United States at this time. No.

And the WASP elite of New York probably didn't look too kindly on anyone from that part of the world. I think a lot of it had to do with the fantasy of ancient greece right certainly there probably would have been more confusion for those who actually arrived in the you know newly forged kingdom of greece and probably found what we would consider maybe a more ottoman place right athens since the mid 1400s had been under ottoman control control, for example. But this was the beginning of this kind of Greek nationalism as a fight. Now, another big consequence of Greek mania here in New York City

was to have Greek revival architecture. It became the thing, all things Greekreek including buildings right and a number of building firms started specializing in this architecture so in the as this long war drew out um and new york kept up its its part in propagating it and petitioning um the congress as well houses like these in the northern part of this Washington Square Park were built. So the case I'm ultimately making is that we call these Greek revival townhomes, but perhaps a better name would be the anti-Ottoman townhouses of Washington Square Park. So there you have it, Washington Square Park, center of anti-Ottomanism since the 1820s.

So thus far, we've seen examples of racism and xenophobia that have characterized views of the Ottoman Empire and Muslims more generally. But as is so often the case, alongside antagonism, there lurks appropriation. And to explore this theme through the lens of clothing, we're going to move a few blocks west of Washington Square Park, where we'll visit an easily ignored historical marker to a person named Elmer Ellsworth. Elmer Ellsworth. As I was just taking a picture from Elmer Ellsworth's plaque,

someone glanced at it, thinking maybe it was important if I was taking a picture of it. And then very quickly, they decided it wasn't important enough to read. Should they have read it? I think only the uh student of ottoman history or culture might even bother to pause at this flagstaff even if you bothered to

pause it's difficult to even see and then read it well we're standing at the tip of christopher street park in the west village in man. And most significantly, of course, on this park is the Stonewall Inn, the National Historic Monument, or Historic Place, I should say, commemorating the 1968 Stonewall Riots, which, of course, is kind of foundational for gay liberation in the United States. But there's a couple of other monuments in this park. There's one to Civil War General Sheridan. There's the monument to gay liberation itself, four figures further into the park. And then there is a kind of lonely flagstaff here at the tip of the park, which is dedicated to a young man who died in the Civil War,

dedicated to a young man who died in the Civil War, whose name was Ephraim Elmer Ellsworth. Something might spark your interest with this flagstaff, and that is the fact that Ellsworth founded a military group during the Civil War called the Fire Zuaves. Okay, explain both of those words to me. I mean, I know what fire means but i have no idea what it means in this context right so actually the the zuaves uh i first came across in the new york historical society had a strange civil war uniform that was composed of a fez

a kind of north african looking jacket or vest, and kind of pantaloons. Okay, so this was some sort of vision of what people in the Muslim world dressed like. Yeah. So this is actually referring to a specific military group in Algeria. Okay. Initially, it was a Berber group

that were called the perhaps Zawawa. Pardon on any of my Berber pronunciation. And then that was translated, mispronunciated into French as Zawaves. Okay. That group kept its fighting reputation into French Algeria. Okay. They were always formerly part of the French army, not known as the Duabes. So this was sort of seen as a native auxiliary of the French military

or groups of French soldiers who were dressed up like these fierce warriors within Algeria, something of that sort. And then it gets translated into America and into American history so that there were in fact civil war soldiers who were wearing fezzes exactly and i mean we really have to understand this that the zuaves were the equivalent of the green berets okay the equivalent of in the vernacular of just badasses right when people thought about the military they thought about people doing crazy amazing scary things they thought about the zu, they thought about people doing crazy, amazing, scary things.

They thought about the Zouaves. And when Ellsworth was training to be an officer, his commander gave him a Zouaves manual from the French army. And he was very inspired. And he came to New York when the Civil War started. And the fire part of the Zouaves is he came and he recruited soldiers from the fire departments in New York City to join his brigade. And that was about 1,100 people. And so it wasn't that the people in the fire department were already wearing fezes. They started wearing fezes as they joined up.

In fact, they were issued fezes by the United States Army. Sorry, I'm belaboring the fez point. It's just entrancing. Yes, they were red fezes by the United States Army. Sorry, I'm belaboring the fez point. It's just entrancing. Yes, they were red fezes with blue tassels. And in fact, there were 70 different Zouaves groups. Okay. So this is a significant amount of people. And they had a slightly different fighting style.

They didn't march shoulder to shoulder. They tended to kind of charge several arm lengths apart okay they were um they would do it in double time they had unusual way of loading their rifles when they needed a fire again they would fall onto their backs and load their rifles on their backs and then roll over again to fire and charge once more um so again we see an american idea perhaps borrowed from the french of the fierceness of the muslim world or i mean this is a true a translation at best right of um but we can kind of see this inner working of um something from you know what was once part of the ottoman empire finding its way to this kind of iconic uh war in the united states that's going to divide

the country and kind of uh you know ways that we're still working through the consequences of today sure now just a quick word about elmsworth the reason partly he got the monument he was here in new york and he was also the first kind of officer of his rank as it says to have been killed and they were in dc and uh right at the beginning of the war and across the river in Alexandria, there was an inn flying the Confederate flag as a kind of, you know, gesture, we should say, to the Union Army. So he took a little brigade over, his Zouaves, and they went over to take down the flag. And they went into the inn and they told the innkeeper, you got on that flag and he says oh it's just a bunch of you know confederate rascals who are here i'll go take it down he went into a room came back out with a

rifle and he shot okay and then one of elworth's uh zuaves then killed the innkeeper okay um and so elseworth was then kind of elevated to a heroic status. The Zouaves would, you know, scream, remember Ellsworth before they charged into battles. But the fire Zouaves went on to fight throughout the Civil War. Okay. So come here. Check out Ellsworth's monument. Check out the Stonewall Inn.

There's also a store with lots of puppies. Bring your fats. Bye-bye. lots of puppies. Bring your fats. By the late 19th century, the Ottoman world was no longer just a target of New Yorkers' scorn or wonder. Of course, these tendencies didn't go away, but by the 1880s, New York could boast for the first time a significant population hailing from the Ottoman Empire. It took the form of a diverse community that came to be referred to as Little Syria, composed of the many migrants, Christian and Muslim alike, who left Bilal-e-Sham in the late 19th century to find their fortunes elsewhere. When they came to New York, they gathered in lower Manhattan's Washington Street, where they established shops, restaurants, coffee houses,

newspapers, and cultural organizations. New York took notice. One newspaper story about the community in the late 1890s was suggestively titled, Red Fez'd Heads, Langorous Eyes. See what I said about scorn and wonder not going away? But of course, the fact that the community was there, and not simply a group upon which to project fantasies, meant that such descriptions could be challenged. As a subsequent New York Times article complained, there is nothing gorgeously romantic about this tussled, unwashed section of New York, and the article writer actually had a hard time finding both languorous eyes and red fezzes. The author of the article did, however, find a nice Syrian restaurant,

the menu of which helpfully explained to potentially confused New Yorkers that okra was, quote, a vegetable resembling beans, unquote. Oh dear ignorant of okra New Yorkers of the early 20th century, it is so much more than that. For more on Little Syria and what it looks like today, we'll go to Bruce. Well, we're standing on Washington Street near the intersection of Washington and Rector. We're only about two or three blocks south of the World Trade Center site, so we are in Lower Manhattan. And so often in Lower Manhattan, we are in the shadow of many skys Trade Center site. So we are in Lower Manhattan. And so often in Lower Manhattan, we are in the shadow of many skyscrapers.

We're here because we're at the center of what was once the thriving colony of Little Syria. And we're standing in front of the two remaining buildings in Manhattan that had something to do with Little Syria. Lots of stores selling oriental wares and curiosities and so forth. And there was also a church on that street. And in fact, it seems like that church is still here. Yeah, it's actually an older building from 1812. And it was made into a church in 1925 into the Syrian Catholic Church of St. George's.

And it was given a brand new facade that gives it its churchy feel. There's a beautiful shot of St. George killing the dragon on the facade. It's also changed from one denomination to another, from St. George's Catholic Church to St. George's Bar. Looks like they have some happy hour specials. And not to forget the Chinese restaurant, Tipsy Shanghai, on the second floor, which you can also visit today. And it's probably not so unusual that we're seeing a church. We know that many, if not most, of those Ottomans probably were Christians of one sort or another. So next door to St. George, we have another building that looks kind of like your basic American colonial vague style from the 19th century.

The well-known colonial vague style. I'm seeing some figures above the windows that look, they fit uncomfortably with the colonial vague style i'm seeing some figures above the windows that that look they fit uncomfortably with the colonial vague style and they fit uncomfortably with the idea of a little siri as well and that's the there's above the second floor windows um above the cornices there is a buddha above each of the five windows okay um those buddhas came later they came in the 1960s when this briefly served as some kind of Zen temple for hippies. Okay, great. Probably more to our purposes are the American eagles above the cornices of the third floor windows.

And so those were probably in place at the time when this was a tenement building of sorts? This was actually built as a kind of community center. They were very common at the time. They were very intentional, and they were meant to help assimilate immigrants. This one was set up for the little Syria colony. There had been Irish immigrants here before, so those Irish immigrants remaining in the neighborhood would also have used this. But this is a place to have language classes, cooking classes, hygiene classes,

all the classic American assimilation stories of the late 19th century. So on the topic of assimilation, the community on Washington Street, like most migrant communities anywhere, tried to strike a balance between their connections to home and their connections to the community around themselves. So if you look at the newspaper reports in New York about this community, you will see in August of 1908 that there were reports of plans to raise money to purchase a battleship for the Ottoman Sultan in recognition of the restoration of the constitution. You'll also see in 1909 a response written by one member of this community, a man

named Saloum Mokarzil, who was the editor of the Arabic language newspaper Al-Hoda. In fact, there were 21 Arabic language dailies in the United States between 1892 and 1907, and 17 of them were in New York. So there's a very vibrant press culture. And in any case, this guy, Selim Mokharzo, he's responding to an editorial that had appeared in the New York Times a few days before. And the title of the New York Times editorial is, Is the Turk a White Man? And as you can imagine from the racialized language that they're using, they're trying to decide whether Turkish immigrants are eligible for American citizenship, which at this time is defined essentially as being white. To summarize what this article said,

they said, yes, the Turk is a white man. And to give you a sense of the type of reasoning that was going on at this time, one line in the editorial is, they are a cruel and massacring people. This is, of course, referring to the Turk. And they have lost none of their ancient proclivities. But they are also Europeans, as much white people as the Huns, Finns, and Cossacks. So here is the New York Times ruling in favor of Turks being eligible for citizenship in the United States on the basis of some phony racial science. And Salim Makarzel, a native of Mount Lebanon, the newspaper man, one of the leaders of the Washington street community. His response is, uh, I'll, I'll read a bit of his response. He writes the attitude you have assumed in the question,

is the Turk a white man as expounded in your editorial under the above title on the 30th Ultimo should be readily approved and commended by those much qualified to judge as to the origin and evolution of the Turkish race. Your brief analysis of Turkish history is correct and authentic, but the main point and issue in this question, as it appears to me, is not the practicability of considering the Turk a white man, but the possibility of considering every Turkish subject a Turk, eliminating in this general classification all distinction of race, language, and religion, inasmuch as the cause which prompted this inquiry and discussion is the eligibility of Turkish subjects to American citizenship. So here again you see kind of the tortured racial logic

of early 20th century America, and we should also note that they're talking specifically about white men, white man is the classification for citizenship. And Mokarzil's response is essentially, OK, that's great. I agree with this argument that the Turk is a white man. But the problem is that not all people in the Ottoman Empire are Turks. So what happens with that? So we get a glimpse of the ways that migrants to the United States are trying to balance between the demands on them to justify their citizenship in terms of American racial politics and the fact that they live in a multicultural empire that doesn't necessarily

fit easily with these categories. And if I can add to the mystery here of who exactly was in this little Syria. Now certainly again there was many people from the Mount Lebanon greater Syria area but particularly following it seems the Young Turk revolution there seems to have been perhaps more Muslims arriving and some evidence of that that we have is from a mosque that once stood around the corner from where we are at 17 Rector Street. And the evidence for this mosque just came back to kind of public consciousness about a year ago. There was a couple stories in the New York Times and I believe in The Guardian. And an old story from the New York Sun was dug up from 1912,

in which a reporter had heard about a mosque down here. He calls it a Muslim chapel in some places, and he calls it a masjid in others. And he came down to try to find it. And at that time, there was a six-story tenement building. It's no longer there. It was called The Oriental. And on the third floor, there was a mosque. And so he went there to find what he was calling the priest at the mosque

and looked around for him. And he saw kind of a big open room that would hold about 70 to 100 people. He didn't find anybody. And on the first and second floors, they were just selling kind of oriental wares. And on the basement floor, there was a barbershop. Eventually, he finds the imam in the Ottoman consulate here in New York. And the imam, he is shocked to see in Western, what he thinks of as kind of Western business clothes. And he says, you wouldn't be able to distinguish this guy from a German professor.

Wait, so this is the imam dressed up in Western business clothes. Yes. This totally throws off the reporter. This throws off the reporter. He says, it looks like a German professor. That's his kind of way of categorizing what he's seeing. And he gets into a long conversation. Do we have any sense of where the imam is from or we do he was born in well in what he says is now a russian territory

right so at some point during um the russo ottoman conflict his family fled that territory we don't know exactly where. So one of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of refugees who are coming into the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century. But he was kind of a young radical under Abdulhamid II. And so he was driven into exile himself. And he became a kind of itinerant imam. And we know he was kind of traveled throughout the world from zanzibar to ceylon to mauritius he gets all the way to french indo-china where he's apparently

administering to muslims but after the young turk revolution he's invited back to the capital and then given this nice post as the imam to the United States. So, yeah, he goes to D.C. They've already built a mosque there, but there's not really any Muslims in D.C., so they send him up to New York. And in 1910, they establish this mosque here at 17 Rector Street. Of course, today, if people want to find Lebanese or Syrian pastries or other delicacies in New York. There are lots of places one could go. One could go to Bay Ridge. But there's also a famous community on Atlantic Avenue

in Brooklyn. Is there a connection between Atlantic Avenue and this community on Washington Street? Yeah, some of you might be able to picture this. That's where Sahadi's Groceries is and Damascus Bakery. And those are direct linkages to this neighborhood. Basically, as this neighborhood expanded and people grew a little wealthier, you could take the ferry right from Battery Park at the foot of Washington Street to the foot of Atlantic Avenue. And there was a nice trolley line would carry you up the street. And that's what was basically an extension of the Syrian colony. And so why is this no longer the Syrian colony today? Well, it was a man by the name of Robert Moses, one of the great civil engineers of New York City

who built most of its highways and tunnels and bridges. And also infamous for cutting through many neighborhoods. I think he destroyed a couple dozen neighborhoods in the process, including ultimately this one, when he had the Battery Park Tunnel built, a gigantic tunnel going under the bay connecting Manhattan to Brooklyn. And that really kind of spelled the end of this neighborhood. And when is that? That's in the 1940s. Okay. There is not much left to see here besides St. George's Bar.

But I do want to mention there is a small park one block over at the foot of Greenwich Street that the Washington Street Historical Society, they're basically the caretakers of the memory of Little Syria. They had some nice signs put up on the benches there, and it's part of the descriptive sign of the park itself about three years ago. Of course, that is signs to the luminaries of the community, among them Khalil Gibran and Rihani.

So that is also something that you can see. And we'll have links to the Washington Street memorial effort. Yeah, and come down to St. George's and raise a glass. While migrants from the Ottoman world were introducing New Yorkers to the pleasures of okra downtown on Washington Street, other things were happening uptown in Morningside Heights on the campus of

Columbia University. It's here that we'll see another example of what happens when talk of civilizational difference meets the everyday life of people far from home. And we'll see, too, what life becomes for these people far from home once their political world begins to disintegrate. Okay, Bruce, so we're sitting outside of Earl Hall on the campus of Columbia University.

Yeah, Earl Hall, students at Columbia know, is a resource for students, international students in particular, but also students of differing religions. For example, the Muslim chaplain and some other um pastor like figures are in here and i say of different religions than the university's official religion which is episcopalianism um you know columbia has its roots roots in the anglican church and even until the 1890s columbia's president had to be an episcopalian and one of the last ones who had to follow this and had to convert was a man named seth lowe who really helped fund and build this beautiful campus here at morningside heights it was his idea to build a beautiful library off of uh opposite us today it's the lowe Library. It's mostly administrative buildings. And then right behind us, Earl Hall.

Earl Hall mirrors an Episcopalian church on the other side of the Lowe Library, St. Paul's. But St. Paul's wasn't built yet when Earl Hall was erected. That showed some of Lowe's priorities. He wasn't really big into the Hall. So Seth Lowe, who converted to Episcopalianism. Yeah, from being a Unitarian. From being a Unitarian. Yeah.

Perhaps revealed his true priorities by not building a church first. Much to the frustration of some later presidents. So this had become a place for international students to meet by the early 1900s. And it's in that period that we find a very interesting student club called the Ottoman Student Club. The Ottoman Student Club. What did the Ottoman Student Club do? Well, it's probably no surprise they were actually students from the Ottoman Empire. But the club was formed at a really special moment for the Ottoman Empire. And that was just after the Young Turk Revolution when the CUP took over.

And many Americans, including several Columbia professors working in the Ottoman Empire, particularly with Robert College and some of the other American colleges, saw this as a new opportunity to establish ties. And so they set up a scholarship program for Ottoman students. And they brought over in 1911, five Ottoman students. And it was those students who formed the club. And we see at their first meeting, there was already 15 students from the Ottoman Empire who showed up at the club. So there was clearly already more Ottoman students here at Columbia in 1911 than just those brought over by the scholarship. And the spectator, the student newspaper reporting on it hinted at many more Ottoman students. And they were welcomed with some pretty grand words by the president, President Butler of Colombia. He noted that he hoped that this exchange program, or this scholarship program, I should say, would help modern civilization break down the walls between East and West.

And perhaps a little more to our sentiments today, he said that taking in the Ottoman students was in fact a small repayment, as he called it, of the debt which the West owes the East. And they had the consul, Jalal Bey, here in New York. He had welcomed the students as well. He was a frequent visitor. They made the ambassador in Washington, Zia Pasha, the honorary president. So it was a very high-minded affair, at least in its founding.

So there's a clear sense of the civilizational import, at least on the level of university officials and local Ottoman officials. Did they live up to those aims? You know, probably to some degree. What they did was what most student clubs do, which is throw parties. They had lots of what they called Turkish soirees. And basically they'd invite students from the university. They'd come drink Turkish coffee, eat sweets, smoke, stay up late, dance.

Some of these parties would go until midnight. They became kind of big affairs here on the campus. And it was very clear that the students were a big mix of different ethnic and religious groups from the Ottoman Empire. So they might have had Turkish soirees but they were not all necessarily identifying. Only a minority were what we would kind of think of as maybe Muslim Turk in those terms. There was many Armenians, Syrians, you know these are the terms they were using, Jews who all come participate in this kind of fun student club. They also here at Earl Hall, this is where the student clubs met, they also had these wonderful Sunday dinners for international students.

We have a great letter from one of the Ottoman students writing in to the spectator. I think the funding was about to be cut off and so uh he is making the case that they should keep them and he's basically just talking about um how you get to meet all these different different people from all over the world but one of the fun parts is that you're constantly basically putting your foot in your mouth because he is he puts it you know you mistake somebody who's Japanese as being from China. You mistake somebody who, for being a Yankee, who's really from Virginia and so on. And you get the politics of their home country mixed up and they get angry at you.

So he has this kind of, you know, funny story about every, you approach each new conversation with great trepidation worried that you're going to embarrass yourself again uh he clearly really loved these dinners he compared the the food to almost you know almost topping oriental as he called it oriental hospitality with the mounds of beans and sandwiches and apples and dainties um so clearly they were having a pretty fun time one of their highlights was they actually got a big celebrity in the ottoman world a frenchman named pierre loti uh to come and visit the student club on a press tour and it's pretty hilarious because he only stayed for five minutes

just enough time to shake hands with all the members of the club and one of the faculty members and presumably say thank you for having me and the spectator reporter um you know makes a few jokes about how quickly he was running off and his handlers were refusing interview interviews in monosyllables. He's a busy man. Busy man. He went to the plaza next. So, you know, he had fancier places to be.

But the student club, it lasts from 1911, but it only lasts a couple of years because, of course, March 1914 is their last meeting. They don't get to have the fall meeting because of what happens in August of 1914, which is World War I. And so what does World War I mean for their status as Ottoman students supposedly representing the East and the great Western civilization? You know, at first it was just about,

are they even allowed to stay? They're told to go home. They're told to use their August stipends to go home in August of 1914. But they begged to stay. And eventually funding is arranged through the Carnegie Endowment, actually, to keep them here for a while. Then eventually the Ottomans start paying again so they can finish their degrees. Most of them had about two years left. So clearly they wanted to continue this mission.

It was important enough to the Columbia administration for them to finish. But by the time most of them actually finished, they couldn't get home. It was 1916. It was still the middle of the war. Right, it was the middle of the war. Yeah, and they became entangled even here in the United States in various ways. They just got, you know, got involved. They didn't know who to believe between what the consul was telling them, what Columbia was telling them, what they were reading in the newspapers. But we do have some kind of interesting firsthand accounts of how they saw the war going. And one of the most fascinating was the December of 1915.

That, as the World War I buffs might know, was the defeat of the Allies at Gallipoli. Right? I mean, in looking back history today, contemporary history today, this is not necessarily seen even for the Ottomans as some kind of heroic moment, right? But for one of the students here, his name was Jehova Ayyub. He was writing to the New York Times. He linked Gallipoli symbolically to the battle led 631 years before by Ertugrul, the father of Osman, of course, the founder of the Ottoman dynasty. And he, you know, acknowledged that the Ottoman Empire lately had fallen to a

little bit of an endear, right, with the defeat in the Balkans. But Gallipoli was the history basically repeating itself. And that means it spelled a new beginning for the Ottomans. And he wrote that, quote, this will mark the beginning of a new ascending curve in Turkish history, which will mean not only rise in power, but also in culture, right, using the German. It will represent not a civilization as ordinarily conceived,

which for an idealist is aimless and blind, but something different. The junction of the East and West will be the exponent of a newer form of attitude towards progress which will combine the complacency and spirituality of the east with the material advancement of the west so it's interesting because he's presenting this event as the moment in which the ottoman empire be reborn. And of course, in Turkish nationalism, the story is that Gallipoli was the point at which Turkish nationalism was reborn in a lot

of ways with Mustafa Kemal, of course, figuring prominently. Yeah. And maybe he eventually reread his own article as somehow predicting that but clearly what he's thinking is the Ottoman Empire is going to go on right for another right many hundreds of years um and this is just the beginning it just gives us that sense in the contemporary moment it can be hard to predict the future it's always hard of course yeah um so know, eventually the students were able to make, most of them make their way home. Do we know what happened with this prescient letter writer? He had the very good fortune of meeting a girl from Brooklyn, marrying her, and they moved to Park Slope. Living happily ever after?

So I trust. Okay. Earl Hall, like many of the sites we've visited so far, bears little trace of its Ottoman past. And you probably wouldn't know of it unless you, too, have a habit of reading old issues of the Columbia Spectator, or you had the luck of bumping into me and Bruce with a microphone in front of the building on a sunny February afternoon. Our next stop is slightly less subtle than Earl Hall, though it's probably not something you would stumble upon by accident. If Topkapi Palace in Istanbul attests to the opulence of a glorious empire, this next site attests to something different, a glimpse of the complicated afterlives of this political entity. I find that I get pretty nervous when I'm on the mic, and I'm unable to say anything.

finally the secret is tricking yourself this is it that's crazy okay bruce we're standing on 73rd and Lexington. Why are we here? Well, you and I just walked past a very humble three-story apartment building on Lexington with a steakhouse on its ground floor, storage space maybe on the second floor, and an apartment on the third floor. And we took a look at the doorbellbell and the doorbell is for a family called the osmans the osmans i've heard i've heard of the osmans famous family famous family in turkey how how did they end up there living over a steakhouse well the apartment was home for 64 years to Ertuğrul Osman.

And he was the last heir to the Ottoman throne born in the time of the Ottoman Empire. He lived to be 97, so he only died in 2009. There was a big obituary about him in the New York Times because he'd lived here since the 1940s. So how did he end up coming here? Well, as many of the listeners know, at the end of the Ottoman Empire, in the beginning of the Turkish Republic,

there was a few juggling around of possible roles for the Ottoman royal family. It was decided that, in in fact they had to go they risked too much of a risk of you know wanting power back or some such and so they were banished in 1924 and at that time um erturul's cousin was the caliph um his so etrur's grandfather was uh abdulhamid the second and at that time etrur was actually not in in istanbul he was in uh vienna in boarding school playing soccer when he got the news that he couldn't go home um so he basically like all the others in the osman family he had to find his way elsewise in the world. And he eventually invested in some mining companies in South America,

but eventually ended up here in New York. And he married another daughter of royalty. She was the niece to the former king of Afghanistan and the daughter of one of Turkey's first gynecologists. And she presumably is still living at the apartment we just walked by. And they lived here in the Upper East Side. They were well known around the neighborhood, and particularly because they had 12 dogs. And because they also lived in a rent-controlled apartment,

which is the great envy of every New Yorker. They paid just a few hundred dollars a month for decades. So an heir to one of the most powerful empires in world history ends up in a rent-controlled apartment. Yeah, and to be fair, they did take Domo Bacha Palace away from him as Osman V. control department yeah and to be fair they did take domo bacha palace away from him uh as osman the fifth so you know you have to have a small uh small compensation but um he was allowed to return to turkey in 1992 okay at that time and he hadn't been there in the interim he had not

nope nobody been allowed and in terms of of citizenship, was he a Turkish citizen? Well, late in life, he eventually was. But very interestingly, he never became an American citizen. In fact, he kept his Ottoman passport. And he insisted on traveling on his Ottoman passport. He had a lawyer draw up a nice letter explaining that he was an Ottoman citizen, even though this place no longer existed, and that he should be allowed to pass. Certainly, his pedigree must have helped that work. And actually, he traveled on that passport

until September 11, 2001. It was only after that when American security measures and world security measures really, you know, got much more strict that he was forced to take a passport, and he took a Turkish passport at that point. So we might say that 9-11 ultimately ends the meaning of the Ottoman Empire. Certainly, I mean, undoubtedly, he was the last Ottoman citizen traveling on an Ottoman passport. You know, if we're thinking about the last Ottoman in so many different ways here, the last to be born in the time of the empire,

and certainly the last to carry that passport for so many decades. And when he returned to Turkey, you know, he was very humble. Besides his little passport thing, he wasn't political in any way. And of course, he had renounced all claims to his throne. thing. He wasn't political in any way. And of course he had renounced all claims to his throne. Um, but he was allowed to go visit Dhammabhata palace and very typical of him. He insisted on going on the public tour. You know, it's hard to imagine because this is of course a place he had played as a child. And, uh, I'm sure getting to see it again was something special. He made one or two other state visits, the mid-2000s. But it was here in New York that he died in 2009.

I'm going back down to NYU. OK. Are you getting a cue over here? Are you getting a cue? Turn it over here, guys. OK. Hello, guys. So, guys. Take a ride.

This has been a special episode of the Ottoman History Podcast. It was produced by Chris Grayton and Sachil Yilmaz and received editing help from Ariane Urus. Please visit our website at ottomanhistorypodcast.com where you can find a bibliography, a map, as well as photographs of some of the sites we visited. You'll also find links to Bruce Burnside's New York City History and Walking Tour podcast,

which is entitled City Between, and I highly recommend it. City Between features stories ranging from the birth of Santa Claus as we know him, to the legacy of slavery on Wall Street. We're also aware that there are plenty of stories left out of this account of Ottoman New York. If there are stories that you'd like to share, leave us a comment and let us know. الجنة حستنا عشر اماطين بعد الملابس داعتنا احسن بكتين بعد الملابس داعتنا احسن بكتين لو صرلي براس الجنة ميدان أسور

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