Naoum Mokarzel ( / ALA-LC: Naʻūm Mukarzil, sometimes spelled "Naʿum Mukarzil"; 2 August 1864 – 5 April 1932) was an influential intellectual and publisher who immigrated to the United States from the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate.
Mokarzel established his first daily publication, Al-ʿAsr (The Epoch) which floundered less than a year after its first issue. He attended medical school for two years before dropping out and became notorious within New York's Arab-speaking community for his aggressive character and controversial demeanor. He engaged in libel and disputes with other immigrants that often became physical and violent. He was arrested on several occasions but was never jailed; his actions stoked politico-sectarian animosity within the Arab-speaking communities of the US.
In 1895 Mokarzel was accused of adultery with a married woman; the two got married and eloped to Philadelphia where, on 22 February 1898, he published the first issue of his second newspaper Al-Hoda (The Guidance). Al-Hoda would grow to become the largest and longest-running Arabic daily newspaper in the United States. In 1902 Mokarzel got divorced, he moved with his brother Salloum back to New York where they set up the newspaper's office. Naoum collaborated with Ameen Rihani who published a regular section in Al-Hoda and he married Rihani's sister, Saada, in 1904. The two men fell out when Mokarzel and Saada divorced and because of political values differences. Mokarzel claimed that his publication was secular but his writings often showed religious bias; he used his publishing house to print and circulate Maronite politics and Lebanese nationalism.
In 1910, Naoum and Salloum adapted the linotype machine to the Arabic script to replace manual typesetting. This contribution paved the way for cheaper and easier publishing for Arabic-speaking communities throughout the world. That same year he married his third wife but he never had children.
Mokarzel was politically engaged and called for the separation of Lebanon from the Ottoman empire. In 1917 he collected more than $30,000 US in donations to relieve the residents of Mount Lebanon during the great famine but he diverted half of the money to fund a volunteer armed force to oust the Ottomans from Lebanon. He represented the Lebanon League of Progress in the post-World War I Paris Peace Conference of 1919 where he advocated for French tutelage over Mount Lebanon; he saw his endeavors materialize in the next few months with the creation of the State of Greater Lebanon. Mokarzel championed freedom of expression, religious tolerance, and women's right for education. He attacked the clergy for sanctioning female illiteracy, and child and forced marriages. He appointed the Lebanese-American journalist Afifa Karam as Director of Women's Issues and had a regular column published about the community's women issues.
Mokarzel died on 5 April 1932 in Paris; his body is interred in his hometown of Freike in Lebanon.
Biography Youth in Mount Lebanon Mokarzel was born into a Maronite Catholic family from the town of Freike in Mount Lebanon, then a semi-autonomous province of the Ottoman Empire. His father Antoun, a Maronite priest, and his mother Barbara Mokarzel née Akl were influential figures in local civic and political affairs. Mokarzel attended school at the Collège de la Sagesse in Beirut and received higher education at the Jesuit Saint Joseph University in Beirut. After graduation, Mokarzel moved to Cairo, Egypt where he landed a job teaching literature at the Jesuit college; he became ill with fever after a year there and returned to his hometown in 1886 where he founded a boarding school. Mokarzel's return to Lebanon was brief and he soon decided to move to the United States. Mokarzel traveled with two relatives, Abdo Rihani and the latter's nephew, Ameen, who would become a major figure in the Mahjar literary movement.
In New York, early careers and turmoil On August 4, 1888, Mokarzel and the Rihanis landed in New York; they lived in the basement of 59 Washington Street in Manhattan, a part of the city that was known as Little Syria due to the settlement of a growing Arab Christian immigrant population. The majority of the Syrian and Lebanese immigrants were of modest background and resorted to petty jobs, such as peddling. By contrast, Mokarzel hailed from the Beiruti elite. The Jesuit-educated Mokarzel, who was fluent in French, was quickly hired to teach the language at the Saint Francis Xavier's College in Manhattan, a Jesuit institution at the time. Besides teaching, he was also employed as a bookkeeper for different businesses before engaging in a dry goods commerce venture with Abdo Rihani in 1891. The business failed and Mokarzel consequently departed for Mount Lebanon in 1892.
Upon his return to the United States, the Arbeelys, a Greek Orthodox family of Damascene origins, had begun printing Kawkab America (American Star), the first Arabic-language newspaper in North America; Mokarzel set out to open his own newspaper Al-ʿAsr (The Epoch) with capital from his wealthy merchant friend, Najeeb Maalouf. Mokarzel and Nageeb Arbeely engaged in a journalistic feud, personally attacking each other resulting in series of lawsuits and counter-suits between the two newspapers. The enterprise floundered and was discontinued less than a year after its commencement. Mokarzel attended medical school for two years before dropping out. Meanwhile, Mokarzel was gaining notoriety for his controversial demeanor; he engaged in brawls and verbal disputes with other Arabic-speaking immigrants and was arrested on several occasions for libel and physical assault against members of the community affiliated with the Arbeely family. The brawls that started as a result of professional competition and personal antipathy evolved into sectarian battles between Mokarzel's Maronite entourage and the Orthodox families of the community. Despite his multiple arrests, Mokarzel was never jailed but the incidents were to continue. In 1895, Tannous Shishim, a Lebanese immigrant, petitioned for divorce from his wife Sophie on the ground of adultery and Mokarzel was named co-respondent in the court proceedings. The Arbeelys were quick to publish the culpable news in their newspaper along with a bilingual transcript of the judge's decision, further tarnishing the reputation of Mokarzel. The accused couple got married and eloped to Philadelphia to flee the community's public denunciation.
Inception of Al-Hoda
In Philadelphia on February 22, 1898, the estranged Mokarzel published the first issue of his second newspaper Al-Hoda (The Guidance), which became the longest-running Arabic newspaper in the United States. The first issue consisted of 18 pages of three columns each and appeared on a weekly basis. The publication expanded in November 1898 to 24 pages including six full pages of advertisement and was distributed in over forty countries. In early 1899, Mokarzel boasted that the circulation of Al-Hoda surpassed that of its main competitor, the Orthodox-inclined Kawkab America. Although claiming to be a non-sectarian publication, Al-Hoda was, like most of the New York-based Arabic newspapers, a mouthpiece to voice the confessional stances of the paper's owner. Al-Hoda was aimed primarily at the Arabic-speaking Levantine immigrants, especially the Maronite community; it reported on Ottoman politics in the Levant, political reform in Lebanon and on the environment of immigrant-run businesses. Mokarzel's brother Salloum traveled to the United States and joined the enterprise that same year. The format of the publication changed after Salloum's arrival; Al-Hoda began appearing twice weekly and was reduced to eight pages with more space reserved for paid advertisements. Despite his standing in the American Maronite community, infamy and controversy still followed Mokarzel. In 1899, the newlyweds published in Al-Hoda an apologetic article of Sophie's divorce from her previous husband and their subsequent marriage. However, Mokarzel's marriage was failing; he separated from Sophie on the same year that their defensive article was published and they divorced in 1902. Sophie returned to New York and took up selling linens before moving to South California where she started a linen shop and married her third husband, a Levantine confectioner. The Mokarzel brothers continued to print Al-Hoda in Philadelphia until late 1902.
Back in New York In 1902, Naoum and his brother moved back to New York and settled in Brooklyn; they set up their newspaper's office on Manhattan's West Street. The first issue of Al-Hoda was published from the New York offices on 25 August 1902 and was since published on a daily basis. In 1904, Mokarzel married Ameen Rihani's sister Saada, who according to Naoum's niece and biographer Mary Mokarzel, was very eager to marry him. Ameen Rihani brokered his sister's marriage to Mokarzel but the two never cohabited and Saada soon returned to Mount Lebanon. In 1908, Mokarzel sued for divorce from Saada in absentia on the account that she had committing adultery in a hostel in Mount Lebanon. The divorce was settled in May and was followed by a ten-year dispute in which Saada tried to prove her innocence and to win alimony.
Mokarzel and Ameen Rihani had a lasting professional collaboration with Ameen publishing a regular section entitled Kashkoul al-Khawater (Patchwork of Thoughts) from 1901 until 1904. The two writers fell out because of Naoum's divorce from Saada and because of political differences and conflicting values.
Competing newspapers and sects Mokarzel's approach to the Arab American community's other newspapers was contentious and confrontational, and he accused the editors of the other newspapers lacking integrity and professional ethics. The most frequent targets of Mokarzel's attacks were Kawkab America and Al-Islah (The Reform). Mokarzel posited ever since the establishment of Al-Hoda that his newspaper was secular and independent, accusing the other Arabic US-based newspapers of being sectarian and aligned to France, Britain, Russia and to the Ottomans. This position was staunchly upheld by Mokarzel until two Maronite clergymen Yusuf Yazbek and Estephan Qurqumaz sought to publish Al-Sakhra (The Rock), a newspaper representing American Maronites. Feeling threatened by the looming publication, Mokarzel contravened his previous positions and declared that Al-Hoda had always served the Maronite sect and nation and accused the clergymen of seeking "personal and dishonorable purposes". Yazbek accused Mokarzel's newspaper of being a mouthpiece of another Maronite priest, Khairallah Stefan. Mokarzel and his newspaper eventually prevailed.
The animosity prevailing between the newspapers representing different sects mirrored an intra-communal sectarian strife that turned violent in later years. In August 1905, Mokarzel reported that the Orthodox bishop Raphael Hawaweeny called upon his followers to "crush" him. The tensions developed into violence in the autumn of 1905 when the partisans of Hawaweeny and Mokarzel sympathizers clashed, resulting in 29 injured.
The sectarian tension in Little Syria reached its zenith in 1906 when John Stefan, brother of the priest Khairallah Stephan, was killed in a restaurant brawl on Washington Street. Mokarzel was apprehended by the police for the assault that was linked to the murder. Mokarzel's calumnious accusation and arrest were overturned as the complainant did not show up to the trial. The charge was dismissed and the police authorities settled on an Orthodox man, Elias Zreik, as the murderer. During Zreik's trial, the prosecution held that Elias and his brother George were sent to kill Mokarzel; when they did not find him in his office they set out to the restaurant where his Maronite sympathizers often met.
New Arabic printing era and political involvement