73 Facts About Naoum Mokarzel

Naoum Mokarzel was an influential intellectual and publisher who immigrated to the United States from the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate.

Naoum Mokarzel 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.

Naoum Mokarzel engaged in libel and disputes with other immigrants that often became physical and violent.

Naoum Mokarzel 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 Naoum 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.

In 1902 Naoum Mokarzel got divorced, he moved with his brother Salloum back to New York where they set up the newspaper's office.

Naoum Mokarzel collaborated with Ameen Rihani who published a regular section in Al-Hoda and he married Rihani's sister, Saada, in 1904.

Naoum 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.

Naoum Mokarzel was politically engaged and called for the separation of Lebanon from the Ottoman empire.

Naoum Mokarzel 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.

Naoum Mokarzel championed freedom of expression, religious tolerance, and women's right for education.

Naoum Mokarzel attacked the clergy for sanctioning female illiteracy, and child and forced marriages.

Naoum Mokarzel 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.

Naoum Mokarzel died on 5 April 1932 in Paris; his body is interred in his hometown of Freike in Lebanon.

Naoum 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.

Naoum Mokarzel attended school at the College de la Sagesse in Beirut and received higher education at the Jesuit Saint Joseph University in Beirut.

Naoum Mokarzel traveled with two relatives, Abdo Rihani and the latter's nephew, Ameen, who would become a major figure in the Mahjar literary movement.

The Jesuit-educated Naoum 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.

The business failed and Naoum Mokarzel consequently departed for Mount Lebanon in 1892.

Naoum Mokarzel attended medical school for two years before dropping out.

Meanwhile, Naoum 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.

In 1895, Tannous Shishim, a Lebanese immigrant, petitioned for divorce from his wife Sophie on the ground of adultery and Naoum Mokarzel was named co-respondent in the court proceedings.

In Philadelphia on February 22,1898, the estranged Naoum Mokarzel published the first issue of his second newspaper Al-Hoda, which became the longest-running Arabic newspaper in the United States.

In early 1899, Naoum Mokarzel boasted that the circulation of Al-Hoda surpassed that of its main competitor, the Orthodox-inclined Kawkab America.

However, Naoum Mokarzel's marriage was failing; he separated from Sophie on the same year that their defensive article was published and they divorced in 1902.

The Naoum Mokarzel brothers continued to print Al-Hoda in Philadelphia until late 1902.

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.

In 1908, Naoum Mokarzel sued for divorce from Saada in absentia on the account that she had committing adultery in a hostel in Mount Lebanon.

The most frequent targets of Naoum Mokarzel's attacks were Kawkab America and Al-Islah.

Naoum 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.

The tensions developed into violence in the autumn of 1905 when the partisans of Hawaweeny and Naoum Mokarzel sympathizers clashed, resulting in 29 injured.

Naoum Mokarzel was apprehended by the police for the assault that was linked to the murder.

In 1910, the Naoum Mokarzel brothers decided to adapt the linotype machine to Arabic script to mitigate the expensive cost and tedious task of manual typesetting.

Naoum Mokarzel imported Arabic type letters from Egypt and acquired the first such machine for Al-Hoda from the Mergenthaler company.

Naoum Mokarzel did not have any offspring from any of his marriages.

In 1911, Naoum Mokarzel became the permanent president of the Lebanon League of Progress, a Maronite organization established in the US by the journalist Ibrahim Najjar and dedicated to promoting a French-supported Maronite protectorate in Lebanon.

In June 1913, Naoum Mokarzel was the Lebanon League of Progress delegate to the First Arab Congress in Paris where he represented the North American Maronites.

In 1917, Naoum Mokarzel sought and collected through Al-Hoda more than $30,000 US in donations to relieve his compatriots in Mount Lebanon who were experiencing a great famine due to Entente and Ottoman blockades.

Naoum Mokarzel incorrectly surmised that the Entente powers would come to the Maronite force's assistance, but they did not take interest in the armed venture.

Naoum Mokarzel represented the Lebanon League of Progress in the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 where he advocated French tutelage over Mount Lebanon.

On 28 September 1919, when the prospects of French control began to materialize, Naoum Mokarzel dispatched a fervent telegram to his New York office announcing that the French army would replace the British forces in Greater Syria and that Lebanon would come under French guardianship.

In 1923, on the occasion of Al-Hoda's Silver Anniversary, Naoum Mokarzel was celebrated as a leading figure by the Maronite and the non-Maronite literary community of America, as well as by a number of American friends.

Naoum Mokarzel boarded a boat to France on March 18,1932 despite his deteriorating health condition to attend a Lebanon-related conference in Paris.

Naoum Mokarzel's body was sent from Paris to New York where he received a large public funeral.

Naoum Mokarzel's body was sent to Lebanon and interred in the family cemetery in his hometown of Freike.

Naoum Mokarzel held an esteemed position in New York's Arabic-speaking community at a young age; his political and social views were expressed in Al-Hoda as well as other non-Arabic American newspapers.

Naoum Mokarzel sought to convert detractors to his point of view and he repeatedly made contradictory statements and opinions.

Naoum Mokarzel engaged in many disputes with his detractors and with editors or rival newspapers and responded to criticism with personal attacks and sarcasm.

In 1894, Naoum Mokarzel attended an event honoring the Ottoman sultan, giving an address in French to the assembled notables among whom was the Ottoman consul-general of New York.

In 1899, Naoum Mokarzel criticized the newly established Young Syria Party that aimed to overthrow the Ottoman government and sought to recruit a militia for that purpose.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Naoum Mokarzel began to openly express his disdain for the Ottoman consul in New York.

Naoum Mokarzel represented the Lebanon League of Progress in the Arab Congress of 1913 in Paris advocating for the autonomy of Mount Lebanon within the Ottoman Empire.

In 1917, Naoum Mokarzel urged his readers to join a special battalion and fight alongside France to help force the Ottomans out of Lebanon.

Naoum Mokarzel's call for action was met with distrust and was not successful as there was a growing concern that the recruits would be exploited in occupying Mount Lebanon on behalf of the French, not liberate it from the Turks.

Naoum Mokarzel then engaged in a campaign among the Lebanese communities in the diaspora, especially in the Americas, to change the name of the community and its organizations from "Syrian" to "Lebanese".

Naoum Mokarzel participated in the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and advocated a French Mandate over Mount Lebanon to train the locals in good governance in preparation for independence.

Naoum Mokarzel designed the flag used of Mandatory Lebanon; his calls for the establishment of a French-supported protectorate in Lebanon caused his detractors to accuse his newspaper of being financially supported by French endowments.

Naoum Mokarzel was accused by members of the clergy of being a Freemason.

Naoum Mokarzel criticized the clergy for imposing social and religious barriers on Syrian women which prevented them from receiving a formal education.

Naoum Mokarzel called for freedom of expression and religious tolerance and used the Al-Hoda publishing house to propagate these values.

Notwithstanding his previous calls for secularism, Naoum Mokarzel engaged in a sectarian campaign aimed at Lebanon's Muslim population in November 1925; in a New York Times article, he called for French protection of Lebanese Christians from "the ruthless fanaticism of the Mohammedan element".

Naoum Mokarzel attacked what he called "false modesty" and how the men of the community allowed their women to peddle freely and stay out of town overnight while labeling them as immodest if they became writers or gave public lectures.

Naoum Mokarzel found an ally in Afifa Karam, a stalwart woman writer whom he appointed as "Director of Women's Issues" in Al-Hoda.

Naoum Mokarzel further encouraged female education by offering a free Al-Hoda subscription to any literate woman from the Arabic-speaking community of the United States.

Naoum Mokarzel was against granting women the right to vote and women's involvement in politics.

Naoum Mokarzel condemned forced marriages and child marriage that were still a tradition among Arabic-speaking communities of the US.

Naoum Mokarzel was a vehement opponent of the Great Syrian Revolt of 1925 which pitted Syrian and Lebanese rebels against the French Mandatory authorities.

Naoum Mokarzel formed the "Committee to help the Lebanese victims and the refugees" and initiated a fundraising campaign supervised by the Lebanon League of Progress for the benefit of Lebanese victims of the uprising from Rashaya, Hasbaya and Marjayoun.

Naoum Mokarzel managed to collect more than half a million dollars that were transferred to a committee in Lebanon headed by Moussa Nammour, a member of the Lebanese parliament.

Naoum Mokarzel was opposed to Emir Shakib Arslan, a leading figure of the Druze revolt, with whom he had fundamental political disagreements.

Naoum Mokarzel called on his readers to petition the US government to ask for the deportation of Arslan and of his delegation.

In 1909 Naoum Mokarzel founded the Syrian American Association to defend the eligibility of Syrians to the American citizenship.

Naoum Mokarzel argued that Syrians are of Arab origins, "the purest type of the Semitic race" and that therefore are "free white persons" falling within the meaning of the naturalization statute.