 In the first session, the 20-minute talk followed by 10-minute questions and discussion. The first speaker is Dr. Nawa Hassian-Gully, who is a professor in Ferrari and political theory on gender and women's studies at the American University of Georgia. Hassian-Gully is the author of Reading Arab Women's Autobiographies. Shara Z tells her, editor of Arab Women's Lives Retold, exploring identity through writing, and co-editor of mapping Arab women's movements a century of transformations from within, and guest editor of Hawa, Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic world. In both her research and teaching, Hassian-Gully adopts interdisciplinary approaches in her teaching and research drawing on her interests in critical and literary theory, with the biography theory, cognitive theory, literary theory, post-colonial literatures, and discourses, feminism, and Arab women's writings. Professor Gully is going to present a paper titled My Travels Around the World, a Narrative Opinion, Mobility, and Connection. Thank you, Hazard. Thank you very much. And thank you, everybody, for being here. And thank you for the organizers, there are many, of this great project, this conference on storytelling and travel writing and seafaring. My contribution to this conference is a short version of a long study of a travel book by a great writer who actually wrote a travel book, so she has her own travel account. So I called the title of my talk, My Travels Around the World, which is the title of the book, A Narrative of Freedom, Mobility, and Connection. So when we speak of travel and mobility, especially in relation to women, we usually think of modern times. We do so because we assume that women have obtained the freedom to be mobile as a result of recent development that challenge patriarchal systems that have governed the human societies for a long time. Indeed, the long persistence of patriarchy in our modern history has left us with a misconception, or even with misconceptions about social and cultural structures. Some tend to think of patriarchy, which is the patrilineal arrangement of human societies under systems in which males hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, and social privilege, and control of property. They tend to think of the system as essentially universal, historical, and as ancient as we are. As a result of this misunderstanding, the concept that men may stay at home while independent women venture out into the world is considered a rather modern phenomenon. Well, some of you know that I teach women's studies here at US, and I can see some of my excellent students here. So in women's studies classes, we necessarily refute such misunderstanding. And the students and I are always on the lookout for relevant evidence to contest the unconceived linearity of patriarchy. I recently came across such evidence that is related to the theme of travel. So German archeologists examined the remains of 84 people buried between 2,500 and 1,650 BC discovering that at the end of the Stone Age and in the early Bronze Age, families were established in a surprising manner. The study, which came out September 2017, suggests that, in fact, the practice of women's travel was rooted in ancient times when Bronze Age men stayed at home while adventurous women were the key to spreading culture and ideas. The research reveals that over a period of some 800 years, European women traveled between 300 kilometers and 500 kilometers from their home villages to start families while men tended to stay near where they were born. It seems, then, that women travelers have a much longer history than thought previously. Well, the traveler that I will be speaking of is hardly ancient. She's still alive today. She is one of our own time. Nawal Sadawi. While this ancient tradition might be too remote to contextualize the tradition that I just talked about, one must be too remote to contextualize her writings. A long and more recent history of travel writing predominantly by men starting with the Arab Islamic Medieval in the time of Ibn Battuta, which many people are aware of, provides a greater context. But this is beyond the realm of my presentation today. For those who have not heard of Nawal Sadawi, she is a prolific Egyptian writer, feminist, pioneer feminist, that is, an activist whose words, both fictional and analytical, have been translated into over 30 languages. Born in 1931 in a little village, Kafur-Tahla, in the Egyptian Delta, she was brought up in Cairo by a carriage of two different classes. Her father was an only son to his poor mother, who sacrificed for his education, while not being able to do the same for her daughters. Sadawi's mother, on the other hand, was a Korean upper-class woman. Sadawi developed her gender consciousness, along with her class consciousness, both of which are present in all of her writings. Sadawi was educated at Cairo University, at Columbia University in New York, and also at Ainsham University. In 1955, she worked as a physician at Cairo University, and in the Egyptian Ministry of Health, and became the director general of the health education department within the ministry. In 1968, she founded Health Magazine, which was later shut down by the Egyptian authorities. And in 72, she was expelled from her professional position in the Ministry of Health, because of her book titled, Al-Mar'awal Jins, 1969 in Arabic, Women and Sex, in English, 1972, which was condemned by religious and political authorities. Al-Sadawi was jailed in September 1981, and during her imprisonment, she wrote Muzaqarati, Mencijnil Nisa. My memoirs from the Women's Prison. Sadawi dedicated her life to writing on and campaigning for women's rights, as I just said. The science of the body, though, had always been an important force in her writing. In her work, medicine allows the female physician, who she is, to question games of power and social hierarchy. Sometimes described as the Simone de Beauvoir of the Arab world, she is the founder and president of the Arab Women's Solidarity Association and co-founder of the Arab Association for Human Rights. Now the first association was also closed by the Egyptian authorities. And shut down the magazines that she used to edit out of that association. She has been awarded honorary degrees from different great universities in the world, received many international awards, and held visiting academic positions in prestigious universities in Europe and North America. She is the author of around 50 works, including fiction and non-fiction. Memoirs, novels, short stories, and even plays. Often containing subject matter considered controversial. Her words have been translated into, as I said, more than 30 languages. And some of them are taught in a number of universities in different countries. In her writings, she challenges the status quo of patriarchal, religious, and capitalist power structures. Amongst her works is the travel book titled, Rahalati Haul al-Alam, when it came out in Arabic and then it came out in English as my travels in the world, as in this volume. Which records her impressions of and experiences in the various countries she traveled in. She first departs from her homeland, this is her own word, to attend a medical conference in Algeria. Then it is on to Europe, the United States, followed by Jordan, a stop in Helsinki, and a visit to the Soviet Union, and Central Asia come next, and then Iran. A long visit to India, and then travels in East and West Africa, ending her travel account with a conversation on politics and colonialism with the Sengali's writer and filmmaker, Usman Simbeh, at Dakar Airport. Now, the structure of the book, a little bit about the structure of the book, the original travels, which was, as I said, came out in Arabic in 86, was produced in two volumes, published one month apart. While the English translation came out in one volume, in 91, put the two volumes together and a lot of editorial interference by the editors and an introduction, written especially for the accordion by Saddawi. The travel account covers her travels over the 50s and the 60s, so as you can, the 60s, I'm sorry, the 60s and the 70s, after she had graduated and was able then to travel as a doctor and also for her postgraduate studies. The structure within each chapter, however, is not as simple as the structure of the book, which is chronological, follows her travels from the first trip on. Travel usually refers to movement in space. In Saddawi's travels, there is also a nonlinear movement in time. That is, within each chapter, the chapter itself doesn't necessarily follow the chronological sequence of the trip she is covered. It is in the nature of most travel narratives to focus on the relationship between the subject and the object, that is between the traveler, the people, and the landscape. A narrative of freedom and great motion. My travels around the world is an ideal text for studying the development of subjectivity. In this travel narrative, Saddawi, in Rabbi Saddawi, there is a great emergence of self, from seclusion and an attempt to identify the self with an ever greater range of others in different societies in the globe. Saddawi's book is an autobiographical text, which includes aspects of personal relations and self-revelation and representation. Without ignoring the literariness of the book, my travels around the world, a highly analytical, reflective, and autobiographical narrative, is a new mode of writing about the self. A mode not yet tried by many Arab women writers. In the book, at the time. In the book, Saddawi reflects on her personal experience while analyzing political, social, economic, and cultural aspects of the countries she visits. My travels around the world, therefore, not only to reveal information about various countries and peoples as most travel books do, but also to uncover a culturally determined subjectivity of the traveler in her quest for a transnational identity. On the importance of travel, an outline of the different, I've already spoken about the structure. I'll talk a little bit about the importance of travel as for Saddawi and as in her book. The introduction to the English translation highlights a clear political extension to travel. I'm prompt a political reading of the book throughout. What was the dream of my life, she wrote? I would see myself on a white horse, flying in the air and in my hand a sword with which I would strike enemies and liberate my homeland. Thus, does Saddawi link the world of travel to that of politics and eventually gender in the opening pages of the book. Not unlike other of her words, her travel memoirs are far from innocent documentaries. The boundaries Saddawi crosses are not merely geographical, but literally and political, making her book a narrative of freedom, mobility, connections and transgression at once. At the end of chapter one of the Arabic books Saddawi wrote, I began to realize that traveling outside the homeland is necessary, not only to know other countries and other peoples, but to know who I am and who we are. For knowing the self can only be achieved in the light of knowing the others. In addition to knowing the self as a purpose for her travels and writing about her travels, according to Saddawi, quote, we see our homeland more clearly when we are away from it than when we are in it. I have seen many positives and negatives in the East and the West, which have revealed some of the positives and negatives within my own homeland. Now the homeland, you've heard me using it a number of times. This is her word, Egypt. As an Arab country, it's put the context of East versus West. For the introduction goes on to give a prime political reason for travel in the sense of intellectual recognition of the position of one's own culture and the why the Arab world. It is no accident that Saddawi has politicized the reading of her book. For when she wrote the introduction to the English version in 1990, the USA and its allies were preparing to attack Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait. Saddawi was among the many Arabs who felt that the war should be avoided by peaceful negotiation with Saddam Hussein and the invasion should be contained within the realm of the Arab countries alone. In fact, she was one of the delegations of nine women to Iraq in an attempt to reach some kind of agreement with Hussein. She also supported an international women's initiative for peace in the Gulf and went to New York and accompanied the United Nations Secretary General on a two week tour of the United States designed to rally support for an end to the war and creating just peace in his aftermath. With her actions and outspokenness, Saddawi's travels and other works should always be read in the context of her politics. Saddawi, like many other writers whose official politics is made public, has suffered from censorship, has suffered from censorship, including travel itself, travel the travel book itself. Like all my writing has been subject to the censors, scissors, as she calls them, or publishing difficulties and restrictions. Saddawi speaks of censorship against censorship on every occasion. In reading travel as a journey to the self and to the wider human world, two motifs recurred throughout the book, the mirror and the border crossing. The two motifs are connected. For Saddawi travels out of a double desire to rediscover self through understanding the other and to cross the border of her own country. On the first motif, country which she calls a prison, by the way. So she talks about it only in order to escape that prison that she calls the Big Prison of Egypt. On the first motif, through the looking glass, travel writing uses the other countries as mirrors in which to find one's own country and self. Saddawi travels to different countries as an Egyptian. That is, every time she's introduced to a new culture, she refers back to her Egypt and sees it in a new light. She travels in order to rediscover herself and establish new images about herself or herself. Or she travels as a woman doctor, as a feminist, as a writer, as a United Nations delegate. She travels to attend medical courses and participate in feminist conferences. She travels for different reasons, but always as a woman, except when she chooses to cross the, she crosses and disguises herself in men's clothing in Bangkok in order to see what goes on in Apollo in Bangkok. Travel for Saddawi is not flying in planes, visiting museums, sleeping and eating in luxury hotels. It is, quote, walking around the streets on dusty quarters, discovering people everywhere, especially in those places from which tourists run or where they put their handkerchiefs to their noses should they happen to pass by. Wherever she goes, Egypt and Egyptian children, women and men are recalled to be compared and contrasted with the journey she is in and its people. Initially, this might seem odd for someone who always longed to travel beyond the borders of her homeland prison. My life's dream was flight and escape from prison. However, Saddawi's desire to escape the borders of her country is like her recurrent dream, childhood dream, that her father was dead and later in her youth, her husband was dead or has died. It was a desire for freedom. Although she loved her father, it was the concept of the father as a tyrant that she wished dead. Similarly, she loved Egypt, her homeland, but wished to escape the tyranny of the regime. When she was asked once how she could bear to live in Egypt, she said she believed passionately in her country. She did not know the agony and the pain of other people as she did those of Egyptian people. While studying in Raleigh in North Carolina, she traveled to Chicago to attend a conference of the Arab students organization at the University of Illinois. She found herself standing with 700 students singing an Arab patriotic song in Tunisia. This love-hate relationship with her country traveled with her everywhere she went. She wanted to leave the country forever, but every time she left, she went back to Egypt again. With every trip abroad, I thought I would not return, but I did, every time. The desire to escape, but also to be long, explains Saddawi's position, not just as a traveler, but as a mother too, although being a mother had provided her with feelings that nothing else, quote, no man nor work or travel could. It also meant that there were limits to how far she could go in other fields of life. My longing for my daughter was as contradictory as my longing for the homeland. The desire to be long only equal by the desire to escape. Thus for Saddawi, traveling beyond the borders of the homeland is not necessary and escaped in the negative sense of the world. Distance, she realizes after traveling, makes the heart grow fonder. Seeing other parts of the world and living outside Egypt enabled her to know Egypt better and love it more. Living away from her husband every now and then also made her think that marital relationships were happier if husbands and wives lived apart. Distance weakens the fragile marital relationships, but strengthens firm ones based on feelings of true love, mutual respect and understanding. Saddawi saw Egypt in India. From the very moment she landed in the airport of Nudeli, she saw Egyptian faces in the faces of the poor Indian porters. In India, she was always reminded of Egypt and of Egyptian people. She felt as though I were not in India, but in Egypt. Despite superficial differences, there was a sort of strange resemblance as though roots were the same. Not only people, but also the landscape and the climate always evoked memories of Egypt. The Algerian mountains reminded Saddawi, oh, oh, I'm told to shut up. I still have quite a bit. Can I conclude then? I'm sorry, that's gonna make the scene incoherent, though. For the sake of discussion, I don't know if you can take to the floor. Maybe from the questions I might be able to use. So my conclusion is from private cells to public persona. As I said, the travel book covers the 60s and the 70s. So when she started traveling, she was still like a graduate, a new graduate and just started her career. So she was still not known, maybe in a little way within Egypt, but not outside. But by the end of the 70s, her work started being translated, so she acquired a bit of fame. So she built this kind of public persona. So an analysis of the travels, the book, shows a shift in Saddawi's, analysis of the book as a whole, shows a shift in Saddawi's narrative and language from beginning to end, as she gradually develops into some kind of celebrity. Her narrative moves from being highly personal to becoming more generalized. The parts that cover her early trips during which she had not yet become known outside Egypt are more concerned with the self and its creation. As such, these parts are structured in a sophisticated way around the multiplicity of themes, such as life and death, flight and prison, fatherhood, motherhood, wifehood, all moving in a canvas of dreams and fantasies. The other parts which cover her later trips when she became more or less international figure are less introspective. The self-mobilization, the self-creation and self-questioning which characterize the first part are less dominant in this outcome part. The self becomes less fluid and more of a fixed persona. Saddawi becomes more self-confident, her tone is more assured. So the move in tone in the narrative from being personal, self-reflective and analytical to becoming more political, self-assured and descriptive can be said to mark Saddawi's transformation into a public figure. The self that she tries to discover and construct in the first half of the book seems to be lost behind the public persona in this second half. Paradoxically, she becomes at once more self-assertive yet less concerned with self-execluration and is more turned outward toward concern for other people and for the surroundings. Indeed, the narrative in travels reflects the tension between personal and public identities. The Arab or Egyptian identity that she carries with her everywhere does not take over other identities that Saddawi seems to be willing to embrace. Thank you very much. Saddawi's work, a passage, which is not very much assessed. Question time? Any question? Thank you, no problem. Before my students leave, have you talked a little bit about some of those identities that she's trying to embrace, other than Egyptian identity or Arab identity? Yeah, I have that long section where I'm looking at how she identifies I mentioned one example of her identification with international Arab American students, but then in other parts she finds herself making friends with people from France, from the States, from Finland, from African countries, Asian countries that she thought she would never be able to do. And she started, you know, affiliating with them and understanding there is, you know, no border can stop her from identifying with these people with whom she felt there is intellectual resonance. Right, if there is no other question, I have one. Okay, go ahead, please. Should we just be one of the three and the last interview? Probably, we should leave them. We cannot hear you. I cannot. You can hear me. Or we can just come here. Speak louder. Or shout a little bit. Or we just wait for them to leave and close the door, please. It's our students who have classes, so they can hear us. Yeah, I do understand. I understand this. Now, I believe we can shout. Yeah, okay. Just talking about the last interview, you said I'm from the hands of Simon, but the last interview was a little bit shocking. Yeah, I can't comment on it. I'm just being told about it by my colleague here. I haven't heard it, so I can't really comment unless I hear it. From what I heard, I mean, it is shocking, it's unbelievable, but I would like to wait until I hear it with my own ears. Yeah, thank you. Was it in that political scene in the interview? Okay, okay, right. I mean, it's shocking because she was with the young people in Tahrir Square in the revolution. Late at night, she would be with them, so I would be surprised to hear anything funny or stupid coming out, so I don't know. Perhaps I thought it, like I feel somebody did it for her. I mean, it's not 100% overrun. Yeah, I would be very surprised to hear that she would say anything, not now, I'll sound that way. Okay. Right, I have a question concerning the Sadevi's visibility and circulation, or circulation of her words. I just need to know what you think about the type of a charge against Sadevi and against many other Arab feminists concerning this specific question of visibility, which makes these Arab writers of feminists marketable figures, a type of cultural informants and Sivak's words. I wonder whether Sadevi has questioned her position in this global system of visibility and marketability. Indeed, yes, I understand. It's a dilemma for many of us who include in myself and in my own work, in my own writing. I always, you know, so concerned and worried about how I'm gonna be seen in relation to the culture that I'm critiquing and analyzing. I'm an insider looking at a culture that is not immune to criticism as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, yet, when you do that, you are always accused of how can, yeah? So I think many writers who engage in cultural critiques of their own, say where they come from, can be faced with this charge. So I don't know what we can do about it except that if you are analyzing for the sake of understanding and for the sake of making up for what you don't see to be right, then I don't know if we can stop that because people are charged or accused of criticism for the sake of criticism. Well, I don't think Noa Sadevi, you know, her work fits that she is not criticizing. She is critiquing for the sake of reconstructing, for the sake of understanding. And she does talk about good things and the good, the bad and the ugly. She's not always looking at the bad side of Egypt or of our Arab countries. And as for her realization, I think, yes, she is aware. And yet, what I respect about her that she's still brave enough to maintain her position. And this is why I'm surprised to hear that she said anything funny. That this is why, who I am, this is what I am. I'm proud of where I come from, of the culture I belong to. But I know my culture, like any other culture, has practices that we are not proud of, as simple as that. I mean, she was instrumental in making the Egyptian government think twice about the issue of female genital mutilation, about honor killing, and about so many issues that we know they exist. So who are we fully? Yeah, thank you very much again. Thank you. Dr. Al-Kharid Haider from Oxford University. Dr. Haider is specialized in Arabic and comparative literature, media and literary theory, and a member of the academic teaching and research staff of the Arabic subject group at the Faculty of Oriental Studies University of Oxford. She taught and lectured at other universities and institutions, and has researched and published on Arabic literature, media and cultural history, personal, sorry, and Arabic and cultural history. Dr. Haider's paper is titled, Early Syrian American Immigrants, Transatlantic Voyages and Stories. Thank you very much, and thank you for the organizers and the audience. Once again, yes, to this subject. So narratives on accounts of travels in general and immigration and resettlement are part of the cultural history and national and the stereography of all communities and countries, especially young nations such as the New World. Both intellectual and popular world culture witnessed in the last few decades and observed in interest in writing and reading narratives about travel and travelers mainly due to the development of tourism, intensification of immigration and displacement, and expansion of communication technologies. Arab Americans like all other communities endeavor to write their history which extends about two centuries. However, scholars who researched the first intensive mass migration between 1880 to 1920, which is called the first wave, they find themselves excavating a predominantly Syrian territory because almost all Arabs who lived in America before 1920 immigrated from historical Syria or Greater Syria or La Desham and mainly from modern Syria and Lebanon. As every book that relates the story of Arab Americans will have its first part that extends more than half a century, mainly revolving around Syrian immigrants. Whereas the recent century of Arab Americans, including the Syrians, has relatively received and still receiving good attention in academia and publishing the previous century is still a gray area with many undefined zones. In comparison to other nationalities and ethnic groups of early immigrants, early Arab immigration history, which is here Syrian, is one of the least documented and is still to be researched. Otherwise, the unfinished historiography of early Syrian Americans is a lost episode in the history of Arab Americans and even of the American history as a whole. The studies about Syrian early immigrants expanded in recent decades and the authors enjoyed wide readership. However, this task was faced by difficulties because of the shortage of information about these points in the experience of early immigrants, which I summarized them as this. So in the reconstruction, these are the missing episodes. The original context and motivation in their home countries, the trip, the arrival, and the first stage of resettlement in their new homes. These parts were always difficult to reconstruct because of many obstacles that can be categorized as follows. The first one is the scarcity of official records, reports, documentation, and the chronicles that preserve the necessary data due to many reasons. The biggest reason is, one of the biggest reasons or the biggest incidents was the loss and destruction of most records of first Ellis Island immigration station, which was the main gateway for newcomers in 1897. A fire of unknown origin turned the wooden structure of Ellis Island into ashes and most of the immigration reports after 1855 were destroyed. Ellis Island is a central theme in all narratives that followed the immigrants' stories of arrival and in their new home. The second reason, shortage of written personal narratives about individuals and groups that include relevant information, including memoirs, diaries, biographies, and autobiographies, and family histories that include relevant information about early Syrian immigrants because of lack of resources and difficulty of social and cultural organization among Syrian immigrants fleeing civil conflicts and economic hardship at home and in early stage pre-settling, mostly working as peddlers or traveling salesmen. The peddlers are the salesmen in this street, you can see in that picture. This is very important also seen in Arab American literature. The third reason is the decline of Syrian areas of concentration and social grounds of central exchange and daily interaction that preserve their culture, the demographic changes in American cities during the mid-20th century, 20th century where accompanied by the demolition of many Syrian areas of concentrations which house the right and social grounds that provided meeting places for cultural exchange and daily interaction between them. The most vital among these grounds where was the area known as Little Syria in Manhattan and also called the Syrian Quarter, it was the biggest of several ones called the Syrian Colonies. It was the residential area of early Syrian immigrants and was a lively shopping area full of cafes, restaurants, and cultural centers. These places of sociability in Little Syria were the reservoir of their oral culture and popular tradition for decades. The last and the fourth reason is the difficulty of tracing paths that the roots of the family history of early ones due to many reasons, including assimilation, return to the home countries and registration under Beirut and Tripoli port cities of departure. Another reason which was highlighted by the historian Grigori Ghorfeli is the inclination among the early Syrian immigrants to be discreet and low-profile to avoid discrimination for political reasons. The following section will examine how the major sources by specialists in the field relied on other sources to write their history. In historical studies, the first academic research in the field was written by the renowned Syrian Lebanese and American Syrian Lebanese historian Philip Hitti. It's called The Syrians in America, 1924. It is still the most significant book on Syrian Americans and it played the groundwork for subsequent research on Arab Americans in general. In many places in the book Hitti resorted to folk songs, stories, memories, et cetera, to support his argument. In the following parts, Hitti analyzes the motivation of immigration in the chapter titled Education. He relates stories about the Ottoman official restrictions on education and he narrates, he usually, all the start, is illustrated in the story. So this is very repetitive phrase in his book. Always, he's putting story and he will describe something and he'll say it's illustrated by the story of Dada Dada. The wording of the narration highlights the pioneering attempt to extend the ability of the historical discussion to involve various and conventional sources and narrative systems. The recurrence of this phrase, as I said, also demonstrate the power of storytelling to maintain information and support argument. Sometimes Hitti turns into fine universal storyteller. The stories of early immigrants whom Hitti calls sons of Syria, means historical Syria, are sometimes presented in a comparative light as part of the world culture. He is, as you see, converted to, he said, the romantic story of Garfield and Orlingon. So he repeat the story, what he's telling history. Not all historians at that time, they would do that. Also, he sometimes will go to little Syria to collect stories from the peddlers and also when there are problems. He will not only collect stories, but he will also compare them to media and even sometimes to the court records and police records, like when there was a big riot around, including in little Syria in 1905. So he compared the stories with the official reports. Hitti also examined closely the letters exchanged between immigrants and their communities. So he'll see also the stories traveling between the two countries. Fabricated stories of driving business, success and the quick way. This is typical of immigrants. Traveled back in the post, crossing the nation towards families and friends in Syrian hometowns. He also describes the mode of reception of these stories and in terms of the storytelling devices and uses metaphoric language. You see this, yeah, spreading like a wildfire, he will say about these stories. Sometimes he explains historical facts and called them thrilling stories. He will, like when he told the story of the first Syrian immigrant. He said the first Syrian immigrant was Lebanese, Antonians in 1854. At that time they thought that he's the first, but then I think it was discovered that they're still more before. So sometimes Hitti defines also facts by folk songs, narrative folk songs that narrate a story. Here is the story of, he calls it this. He said this is my favorite time. And he said it was very popular in the 19th century. It is a narrative song of a woman whose husband went to Damascus, which was considered to be a very, yeah, a story, a magic city full of excitement, et cetera. So people will be, yes, because he traveled alone from the Lebanese mountain to Damascus. And the also stories from Ellis Island. So this is one of the main episodes missing in the history and he has lots of stories coming from Ellis Island. He always include enough information about the sources of his stories also. But it's clear that his book reserved some of the lost data of the trip and arrived at Ellis Island. This is a story of a man who, a swim, he was a puddle, I think, swimming, or from there, though he has broken arm, to New Jersey shore. And he risked his life for liberty. More of Ellis Island, it was fit, and the two Syrian boys. So you can read this story, very interesting story. Usually early immigrants, they were always associated with certain illness when they were sent back. So in the Syrian, historical Syria, apparently there was Trauma. So most people who were sent back, they were suspected of having a Trauma, which is eye disease. And the two children were suspected that they had. So they asked them to, they told the mother that she can join the father, because the father was there before. And they asked the two boys to deport it to, they asked the authority to deport the two boys back to Syria. However, it is President Roosevelt interfered personally and he allowed them, because he didn't think that two boys that can be separated. And he also met them later. So this is a story. Also he put some historical facts to, yeah, and stories to illustrate that. He also researched more stories about many biographies and also include them. However, so in addition to his contribution to writing the early history of Arab Americans, this great scholar gave some credibility to stories and folk tales of immigrants as a viable source of information, especially when there are no other source available. However, it took another half a century after he began to have a further boost to credibility of storytelling as a vital source for historical writing. The breakthrough was achieved at the hands of Aleksa Naaf, a professor and historian who was specialized in oral history and folk tales of early Syrian immigrants. She's told the mother of Arab American studies and is still the most quoted in the field. The research on Arab Americans showed slowed down in the following decades after Haiti's book until 67, many Arab scholars including Naaf state that Arab-Israeli war and the loss of the rest of Palestine which aroused more hostility towards the Arab community triggered their interest in writing the history of Arab Americans to counter the polemics and story types spread in the mainstream narrative. Tens of books were published, but the experience of early immigrants was always viewed as a challenging gap in the research. The turning point came with Aleksa Naaf's first book which set the foundation for the following works on the subject. Her book include animated details about the trip by ship where stories are healing and calming, fear and pain. It shows the story and skins of storytelling and the present women as good storytellers as well. So you can see this is one of the stories she narrated. It is very animated, very nice. The travel and the trip in the boats where women even sang and told the stories. She also describes the Syrian Peters in the American scene and she said in 1911 the Syrian Peters by then a familiar figure in American scene captured the imagination of Lossil Balhuin van Sleit who portrayed him romantically and shrouded him in Eastern mystery in her short story. Naaf had been driven throughout America on conducting oral interviews. She collected hundreds of stories, photographs and artifacts directly from the first generation of immigrants or their families from Peter Syria. The term she popularized actually in the field and she always used Peter Syria. She donated the collection of artifacts and records to Museum of American History in Washington DC. Naaf contributed to establishing stories and oral history as a daily and scholarly method of chronicling the lives of immigrants and also in historical studies in general, associative objects of material culture and artifacts which were kept for several generations including personal and household objects, musical instruments, kitchenware and clothing. These artifacts were associated with events and tradition and were animated illustrations of stories and memories. Even somehow the former Executive Director of Arab American Institute in Washington stated some merits of Naaf work. Her ability to tell the story was important in understanding the diversity of Arab American experience even in scholarly circles. Yes, so I summarized the main achievements of Naaf work depending on many commentators and people who reviewed her work. The museum where her collection kept and displayed also highlights her innovative usage of life story and folklore field work which transformed into a narrative. Until the 60s oral history was used to document, they say, this is the museum and the museum website. They also had discussion about Naaf's work. They say until the 60s oral history was used to document the life stories of famous people, predominantly men, but Naaf proposed study of the everyday man and woman who left their homes and traveled to the United States to make new lives, combined oral history practices with the techniques of folklore field work. The resulting interviews recorded the experience of the immigrant generation in their own words which was an achievement also. The development in the field inspired many other historians to expand the practice and travel to the original towns where immigrants were born and lived before immigrating. Gregory Orphelia went to his original town of his and sister. His family left in 1878, so he went to Homs and Arbyn. This is where his family used to be and he collected lots of stories. He took them in a very nice writing because he's a historian, but in the same time he's poet and novelist also. This is what Amazon actually marked in his book, described it as it combines historical research with the story telling. The word story telling and story Naaf is a very common word. It comes from writing history. The field now, these developments in the field marks remarkable shift in academic research. Young historians of an early Syrian immigrants demonstrate the devices of collecting and analyzing stories as part of their training and expertise. For instance, this is one of the pieces that I found in line for Hidhanadi Awadah, submitted as dissertation, academic dissertation. The abstract defines the methodology and content as these pieces will tell the story of the Syrian Lebanese immigrants. So it's a thesis, but it will tell the story. You can totally do from the data. Introduction reads, I would like to especially express my gratitude to Bessalim and Shams, and she said without these stories, without their stories, this paper would not have been possible. So a story can be, stories can make very good material for historical research. Stories here are not only a device, but also a generator of large historical events. Also they repeated the same like Heddi where the stories generated actually immigration sometimes, prompted thousands of villagers to venture in search of gold. I think this was part of universal history. It was everywhere, but including historical Syria. One fair interviewist explains that in the 1890s, some of the early immigrants returned home with the story and evidence of their stunning and swift, yeah, evidence, they also say the way they dress, the way they buy things there, so people will be convinced also that their story is correct and that they are very successful and also they are very wealthy. Such episodes are usually followed by waves of exodus, as she said. And since literary fiction is the treasure house of folk tales, personal and communal stories and memoirs, some researchers were able to find the historical details of a great value in the writing of immigrant novelists. In her article, in her article gendering, sorry, yes, in her article gendering birth and death in 19th century Syria, economy of New York City, the sociologist Linda Jacobs investigates women and children, health situation and women work in the medical sphere. In addition to her archival research, Jaco Jacobs extracted data and evidence from literary texts, investigating lung disease as one of the causes of, is it here actually? No. Yeah, this is Linda Jacobs, she quoted Amir Rehani who wrote the first Arabic novel in America. It's mainly, it would go to a biographical novel. It's called The Book of Khalil. He said, only one block east of Aniston River, the basement flooded every time the time came in and they did shock at home. The men had to save their goods before their persons. So he described, this was all in little Syria, the area that disappeared, but it stayed still alive in stories. So even sociologists, they use this. The last part is about fictional historiography. In fact, The Book of Khalil, which is quoted by Jacobs, is a gold mine for historians of that period. Although it is the first novel of an Arab-American writer in English, it is still largely unknown to Americans as well to Arab leaders. It was composed during a long visit by Rehani spent in the mountains of Lebanon. The autobiographical novel tells the story of two boys named Khalil and Shaqib from Baal Baku immigrated together to the United States. The novel includes the description of all the four missing parts that I identified at the beginning, the trip, the arrival, the early resettlement, the ship, it's everything. So, yes, and little Syria and the work of new comers in peddling and as one of the salesmen. Furthermore, the novel travels between the two countries actually through the writer's memories and stories that voyage between the two worlds. Other novels that will be contributing to the field were published recently, The Observation of Naf and Jacobs about the invisibility of women in the coverage of the experience of early immigrants. So, not only Arabs, but even in the media, the American media usually, it was more, you can see interviews with men and boys, more than women. So, this is maybe addressed recently in the writing of writers now. I'm really sorry to interrupt, you should look at me some times, okay? Okay, this is the end, I'm just saying the conclusion in a minute, yeah? So, this is the sister of Sid Naya, Rose Kalster, her story, The Story of Our Families, put in a fictional narrative last minute. Social media contributed largely to combining written and visual culture and creating grounds for young generation to exchange and preserve stories and pictures. It is possible to view the stories of Syrian immigrants in text and picture, in websites and pages of social media. The experience of early Syrian immigrants is also part of the American history and Arab literature, research the stories and insights of non-Arabic sources. Hitti included, for instance, the autobiography of Seminole War on the story of the two Syrian boys and also, now quoted the short story by the American writer. Also, this picture actually of Little Syria, this is a scene from Little Syria, this is by an American artist, yeah? His name is there. So, this is the last slide and this is my conclusion and finding early Syrian immigrant stories and text and achievements of providing alternative sources by these stories, memoirs, et cetera, and we construct the history of Syrian Lebanese community to support the Olimetal stereotypes about Arabs and to present the cultural wealth and identity of the Arab-American community. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Dr. Feigler. Sorry to have a good attitude, but if it's for the sake... Yeah? 15, you're 20. Really? Okay, thank you. No, I'm 20, thank you. So, you have 20 minutes to explain more, your points and questions, please. So, we have one here, let's go ahead, and another one. We have 10 minutes for questions. So, we already have two questions. Thank you very much for a very interesting talk and I have two questions and they are related. As you were talking, you conflated the term Syrian with Arab. When did the label Syrian in the United States become Arab-American? When did that happen? And the second part of this question is, Philippe Hitti says about Pashalani, the first Syrian was a Lebanese. Yes. Interested in your take, your interpretation of what this meant for Hitti? Yes. Hitti was... I think he published his book first in 1923 somewhere, but the one which is, we have it now, it's 24. At that time, he insisted that throughout his book, he insisted that they're on historical Syria. He, the whole introductory part is about defining Syria as one consistent place. Even his folk songs is to say, to see that it is the interconnection between these cities. He defines it as a historical, natural territory and region alone. And I think it was a very common popular idea at that time. I think the idea of Bilal Shem and historical Syria, I think the word Arab came with the rise more nationalism and maybe during the interwar period started and then after independence more with the rise of nationalist movements. However, Syrians, yes. Then you started to have modern Syria and Lebanon, Palestine, et cetera. But until I think the 40s was common to call that it is Syria. And concerning the research, what I said is any research on Arab-Americans, the first part of it, the first century is a Syrian century because the first people went to America and before 1920, almost all. If I want to say almost all, because I want to be objective. But all, they say all, but they were Syrians. Yes, I think it is very much the word Arab. And I've started to use it after 67, mainly. 67 brought this word because they thought the polemics included everybody and the Syrians failed the responsibility because actually they were the first to be there and they established the idea. So of like the Arab community or identity, though it was Syrian at the end, what? But 67 was the main motivation, even for them, the historians, Hetti didn't use very much the word Arab. He used Syria always. So he said the first, you say, I forget the first, Syrian was Lebanese. He considered, like all, I think it was the idea then. Lebanon was the name of the mountain. Jordan was the name of the river. So that was historical Syria. But now the polemics after 67 were not against Syrians, were against Arabs in general, but Syrians were included. So this is why they started to use the word Arabs, but they always, always continued to use the word Syria, especially when you research, as I said, the first century. Yes, please. I'd like you to tell us a little bit more about it in Syria and when did that disappear? You say it was in Manhattan, and then it all disappeared. And whether that is somehow related to the, how is that related to the radical stereotypes and the stereotypes among Arabs? What were the kind of stereotypes that they had about the Arabs before 1967, or between the two world wars? Were there any kind of political, or were there political stereotypes about the Arabs before the establishment of Israel? And the other, maybe the later question is, when we talk about little Syria, so does it mean that the Arab and Syrian immigrants actually kind of established close communities in the United States, and did they not try to mix with the local people? Little Syria was not really alone, but there were lots of demographic changes in the big cities during the 40s and 50s. So there were, yeah, more quarters replaced the old ones. Maybe, I think some people would think that there was something in, because it's not only the Syrians, but also there were many minorities. Some of them also where the area was demolished and replaced by, so the community will scatter. But however, actually, Little Syria was the main place where newcomers will go there, so they will find their relatives or people they know and et cetera. But also it was many Americans and other nationalities will go there, because as you see, I show it was lots of places of sociability, and even the main writers we know about, actually they were there. I mean, Rihani was there, Zoran, they all went there, especially at the beginning. They used to have lots of gathering, also not only for dancing and singing and eating, but also even cultural events. So I think, yes, it was in the 40s and 50s. Maybe there is a political element, but I wouldn't think it is the only reason. And the stereotype for Syrians were similar to even Italians. Many minorities suffered, Eastern Europeans suffered of these stereotypes. The Arab Americans mainly very much associated with the Palestinian issue, so there was more maybe hostility towards them, and they worked. Little Syria also exists now in lots of narratives of non-Syrian also, non-Arab also writers. Some new, thanks to the social media, we start to know more. If you put Little Syria, you'll see some Americans speaking about also Little Syria. Can I ask you, sorry. Some of the texts you mentioned, are they still in print, or are these like? Which ones? I think I remember the last one was, Say Naya of something. Yeah, this is a new, actually this is published a couple of months ago, yes exactly. This is very new, so this is what I wanted to mention recently. So women, because there was always people complained that of course this is your paper, women's voice is very much suppressed, not only in the Arabic resources, but also even for instance in American media when they relate the stories, they would go to the men to relate. So they strive to compensate for that, so this is, yes, this writer told the history from her own point of view, however in novel, which I call fictional, not me, I mean, but I categorize it as fictional historiography because it tells the untold history, the undocumented history. Thank you very much, Dr. Lothar. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, who's next? Professor Mohamed Alhous. Yeah, Alhous. Okay. The third speaker is Dr. Mohamed Sana'ullah Nadawi, professor of Arabic in the department of Arabic at Alligurth Muslim University, India. He is the author of several books, I'll cite a few of them here in Arabic and in English, in Arabic, The latest one I think published in 2016. In English, the Arab legacy in Latin Europe 2004 and the Arab romance, Pernasus, in 2006. The latest one I think published in 2016. In English, the Arab legacy in Latin Europe 2004 and the Arab romance Pernasus in 2006. Dr. Nadawi is president of India Award in 2007. And we are going to listen to his paper titled Travalogue as a cross-cultural memory, illustrations from India's Arabic and Urdu Travaloves. Then the floor is yours. I think there's trouble in this projection. Someone, perhaps, I may do the piece. I think no one has to log in back, back. I see, but I'm quite the talker. No one log in and you get to log in. Yeah, because he's already logged in, so. I think he'll log in. So I think he'll fix it. Sula'ah, Rahman, Rahim, Mahmood and Sari'a Allah, Sulel, Karima, Maba'at. Ladies and gentlemen, let me start with a thanks, what a thanks for the organizers of this Congress, International Congress on such an important topic that we will deliberate upon, that revisits the stage, the geography, and many other disciplines of etiquette in some well-defined methodological perspectives. I thank them for inviting me to be part of this academic deliberation. My presentation is focused on Thereseology as a Cross-Cultural Memory, illustrations from India's Arabic Persian and Urdu-Haiti Trebloks. Well, let's show a live number of slides, besides some comments. We're starting with the very advent of Islam and what were the very genesis of Trebloks, especially as Trebloks during successive Muslim rules in the Indian subcontinent. What has been the contribution of the Muslim authors through ages as well as local languages like Urdu, Hindi, English, etc. besides Arabic and Persian languages, which have been languages, of course, sometimes in the Indian subcontinent. So in India, we have more than 400 Trebloks in Arabic and Urdu alone. And if we are counting the Trebloks which would be categorized as non-Haiti sector, non-Haiti Treblok, so number would be equal or more than that. So it's around 1,000 pieces of works which are already published. I deliberate on the methodological perspectives of homogeneity, difference and critique when it comes to Trebloks, cross-culture, concepts and projections. When we talk about the Arabism and the perspectives of the legacy in India, of course, we have a large number of ages. And most significantly, the Hajj Treblok or the works which have been produced in different languages in the Indian subcontinent are related to these rules starting from the Arab conquest, then the Ghaznavites, the Ghorais, the slaves, the Khiljis, the Trebloks, the Sajirs, the Lodis, the Mughals, the Ishaptis, the Khandesh, the Bahmanis, the Adil Shahid, the Khutub Shahid, the Nizam Shahid, the Bengal Nababs, the post-independence India, etc. So when it is said that India is subcontinent with the huge legacy of Arabism in terms of Arabic literature, Arabic disciplines, the theological knowledge, etc. Again, it constitutes what could be categorized as the verb, and that actually happens to be one of the topics which we teach in the Indian universities when we teach about the Arabism in historical parlances. Well, there have been historical interactions between Arabia and India from times immemorial. In the Muslim ages, we have a large number of Muslim travellers, well-known Muslim travellers going to the Indian subcontinent and giving details related to democracy, history, sociology, culture, teaching, even castronom, etc., of the Indian peoples. So, Sulaiman Tajir, Abu Zaydah Serafi, Abu Al-Hassan, Al-Mas'oodi, Abu Rahman, Al-Biruni, Ibn Battuta, and finally, Ali Saudar al-Din, Ibn Ma'asum, Ibn Ma'asum at the Stegi al-Mathini. These are some of the important tribal accounts of the Arabian peoples who have visited India. Well, Hashtagology actually constitutes a major segment of the religious economy since Hashtagology and its patronage in medieval India from times dating back at least as we do find the well-recorded evidences in history books, we find that the Mughal emperors, especially Emperor Akbar and Shah-Jana and Aurangzeb, they were very much concerned about the Hajj and they patronized the Hajj at the aesthetic level and sent a number of scholars. At the time we do find a number of leaders belonging to the household of the Nawaf, the rulers of the Mughal dynasty coming to the Arabian Peninsula for performing Hajj. And after that, we have a number of scholars from different states who had embarked upon Hajj. So when we're talking about the Hajj, Tehrology would find a number of scholars and if you classify them, we'll be finding them among the scholars, among the rulers, among the benefactors, among the poets, among other persons. Well, in the pre-independence area we do find what is known as the colonial policy, the colonial policy of Hajj was in 1838, Alexander Ogilvy, the first British consul and East India Company agent in Jeddah facilitated Hajj issue, the government policy was the government has no right to prevent any person who decides to do so from presenting on pilgrimage. So here we find a continuity from the Middle Ages up to the British time, the pre-colonial time. The post-colonial time would define the continuation of this one. Although there were the security concerns like that which had been represented here, the Hajj is the natural asylum for the fanatical Muslim exiles from India who made their lives in a congenial atmosphere of fanaticism. It was told by a friend of the Indian Foreign Department. So of course there were the concerns, but again there was encouragement of Hajj travelogy from the past till present. The other concerns were related to the epidemics like the cholera episode of 1865 that killed 15,000 out of 9,000 pilgrims, destitute pilgrims, but to find 3,000 Indian pilgrims in 1886 in Jeddah area, Arab Revolt in 1916 had the Hashemites and post-war problems, Hajj and Britain's political propaganda back in the Muslim soldiers' pilgrims where you find that around 2,000 soldiers in Egypt participated in Hajj in 1918. As you are discovering in the Indian Ocean from times immemorial, so this was the basic route that you find for India. In India we find in pre-independent India we do find the Bombay, Surat and Karachi as the three major ports of transportation of the Hajjis, the pilgrims from the Indian subcontinent to Arabia. We have Bombay, which still stands as a significant port of transportation. It was known as Bab Makkar, even Surat was known as Bab Makkar because of this background. The Hashtag logs as it had accounted for more than 400 and non-Hajhtag logs, 400 and languages, Arabic, Persian and Urdu. If you classify them, we will find scholars like Aat-ul-Haq Muhadeh said, Shah Boliullah said, Rafiruddin al-Murad-e-Badi said, Al-Qanoji, these are the four most scholars of Arabism and religious sciences in India. They have performed Hajj and they have contributed towards this literature. The poetry and metaphilages, we have Nawab Mustafa Khan-Shifta with his Bahra-e-Aurad, Atta Hussain-Fani, and we have Abdul-Majid-Tariyabadi, we have Shorish Shikashmiri and others. The women travelers, we have Nawab Sikandar Begum, pilgrimist to Makkar, who represents the house of Bhopal. She was one of the rulers of Bhopal state. Nawab Sultan Jihab Begum also, pilgrimist to Hejaz, and Amatul Ghaniq Noor al-Nisa, Rahira Shirwani, and Salvatazaki, these are some of the important female Hajj travelers from the Indian subcontinent. We have the rulers, ruler of Bhopal Nawab Sikandar Begum, pilgrimist of Makkar in 1870, ruler of Bhopal Nawab Shah Jahan Begum, the historian of pilgrimist to Hejaz, 1909, Nawab Khalbe Ali Khan, the Nawab of Rampur in 1872. He was accompanied by famous poet Tabda Heloui, who has written Qindili Haram, then Nawab Muhammad R. Ali Khan of Basola state. So, in recent internet history, we find four Nawabs, the rulers of the kings of the chieftains who have performed Hajj and written their travelogues. They have cartographers like Nawab Muhammad R. Ali Khan, Wazir Hossein, and Sultan Dawood and Shabandi. The Hajj Chakalov which happened in Arabic. It was written in Arabic, originally or translated. It is then we have then we have then we have then we have then we have then we have then we have then we have then we have then we have then we have then we have then we have then we have then we have then we have then we have then we have then we have then we have then we have So in these, we do find a large number of information. So these tableaus are sort of for the treasure troves of the historians when it comes to anything that is related to the history and the geography of India in the context of the religious economy that we find between a sort of shared concern or shared sector between Arabia and the Arabian and the India subcontinent. This is the picture of Nawab Sikander Begum who was the ruler of Gopal. North Sikander Begum, the Trevlog entitled Approved to Makkah recounts the events of the journey by Sikander Begum in 1863 published in London in 1870. Divided into two books, the Trevlog gives a geographical description of Araiglia, the mosques in Makkah and Medina, the places in two cities, names of the peoples that the Begum met, shrines and historical monuments, names of stripes, tribal chitans and even the sheriff of Makkah who unfortunately had created some security and monetary problems for her. The sheriff for example, asking for a particular amount of money as to make the book of, it makes their book of a great historical value. This is a photograph of the Trevlog of Sikander Begum which was published. Now, Sikander Begum of course gives a large chunk of information which aren't very much significant like, you know, what is available in market, whether the peoples of Makkah or the things which are prohibited in, logically in Islam are available in Makkah or Medina or like this. For example, he says, she says that one is completely available but usually consumed by Turks or Indians in page number 115. Lack of schools contributed towards a great number of unliterate children, etc. The, well, what strikes a historian of what it comes to, some international trades which have become points of concern, of course in modern times also in antiquity, other slave trade that was prevalent in Arabia at the time. At least among the Trevlogs, we find two books of paramount significance produced by Indian pilgrims. One of them is Sikander Begum and another is Nawab Siddhi Khasana Khan which will be published later over here. We define a good the account of the details that we find regarding the slave trade in Makkah. So here Nawab Sikander Begum gives a lively account of slave trade in Makkah, the slave market which was known as Ankhasa, thrives in Makkah with a large variety of men and women of different ethnicities. She says African slaves are abundantly available in the market and sale is finalized with receipts. Slaves, men and mates alike from Georgia came to Makkah in Hadid Karaman to be purchased by inhabitants of Makkah and litter sold to the pilgrims. So the mask lasts for two or three days a year. Some of them married and made slaves and later divorced them if they decide to sell. The man is not married except in her first sale and never permitted to sit before her master. The exception is for the maid who has a mother, a child from her master. The aristocrats, nobles purchase the African and Georgian slaves and send them to sacred places for mental services such as cleaning, lighting, etc. Some of such slaves are provided with the basic livelihood for a year. The others purchase by lease while the persons are employed for their personal services and change for new year every year just as we change our old clothes. But the maids who have been given birth to children are not sold again. Similarly, the African slaves are brought by people belonging to lower economic status who imply time for tough men will go such as cleaning, etc., carrying heavy goods, etc. Against two square meals a day and close for a year. So people allow their maid slaves to go out of their home to attend the daily course but charge them money for the same. The ill-tampered slave is sold immediately but normally the slaves are bought and sent here. After a hard work of fetching water, the earning to their master just to get two breads to eat. Well, here also we find some beautiful information regarding Indian rulers' concern to patronize these followers in the field of translation of the Holy Qur'an. So at the time of when she arrived at Makkah, she found that no translation of the Holy Qur'an was developed in Turkish language. So realizing this in the city, she found a scholar, a Dagestani scholar and adjusted him to prepare a translation of the Holy Qur'an. But when she discussed this idea of the Sherif of Makkah, the Sherif of Makkah described her saying that in the logical terms that sort of initiative is to be discouraged because he just decided that translation also the meaning of the Holy Qur'an is simply impossible and it has not been permitted by the scholars. So the idea was resisted or resisted by the Sherif of Makkah. That's why the idea was it was left. This is the picture of Shah Jahan Begha, the ruler of Nawab. And this is the picture of the first edition of the book, the story of Pilgrim Trapejas in 1909. She again gives a lot of information like how she stayed in Yambu near the coast to sea and what was the rent that was to be paid. And this is the picture of the ship that carried her to Makkah. This was another ship that was carrying a German Prince, Turkish troops, the view of Aden in the red sea between Jatta and Yambu. They hurled at the time. This is one of the rare photographs we find in authentic sources. The numerical center of Arabian currencies, what sort of balances were available in Arabia at that time? She gives the value, the exchange rates in the Makkah market. There's a view of Aden, the Tom of Eve in Jatta, the Tom of Eve of the Shrine, the photo of Makkah that was over there at the time, the Saffa and the arches etc. This sort of Saffa details, building details, archaeological details in the holy city, the Hanafi Mosulah, the Dakhili area, Mount Arafat, Turkish troops, part of port of Yambu etc. This is the Nawab Kalb-e-Ali Khan of Rampur, where he performed hajj and his Trabog is known as the Kendi-le-Haram, although it was prepared by the person, the poet accompanying him. Nawab, a Trabog, has been translated into Arabic, it's originally written in Arabic, it has several publications, he says, in the comments, he says, That's sort of a language he uses. This is the Trabog of Rafi'uddin al-Murad Abadi, Rafi'uddin al-Murad Abadi is translated into Arabic from Urdu, and this Urdu translation was originally done from Persian. Again, he refers to the Nakhhasa phenomenon, that is, the Slipray. He gives us another account, a peculiar account for the sociological social values in Hijaz, especially Premanent in Makkah. He says that the first hand account that we find in an authentic Indian source about some social problems and questions prevailing in Haramind. Khwadi Hassan al-Zarmid el-Wayy, who happened to be a Sufi master of great significance because he represents the Sufi order of Sheikh Nizamuddin al-Wayy. Sheikh Nizamuddin al-Wayy was the Sufi master in the chain of the Chishti order and we had initiated a particular order, and this order is known as the Nizami order in Delhi. So he had gone to Hijaz and other places. This is the Urdu original work of Safarnama, his blog. This is the Arabic translation of Rehla Khwadi Hassan al-Zarmid el-Wayy, he gives us a large number of pictures and cartographic details about the things he saw in Egypt, like the Egyptian postage that was prevalent at the time, Egyptian postage. Nizami and Egyptian family dinner, the picture of pyramid, the strings, Milad-e-Nabawi in Egypt, the church of the holy Sepulchre, the pulpit, member of the Qatab inputs, the tom of the tom of Prophet Abraham, the apple of Yathat and Yusuf, Yusuf the king of Egypt, Moses' celebrations in Al-Quds, handing the stone in Al-Quds, Arabic with the Torah in Quds, Nizami with the Turkish governor of Al-Quds, Nizami in the mosque of King Solomon, Umayyad mosque in Damascus, the Sufi music of Malawi order, that is the dervish dance, the dervish dance, there is no Saladin in Damascus that could occur dervish, the Turkish coins, etc. and we have Amir Hassan Ahmed Al-Awi and his blog has been translated into English, that is very significant, with the name of Safar-e-Sa'adat. The narrative run into five, six pages on days that were eventful while it is brief containing more than 50 words on other days, diary noting character, fascinating, insightful, cultural, political and economic aspects of the contemporary life and reveal in his own views on several global issues of tremendous significance about Arab women. He found the moral lives irresponsible, exploitative, may my countrymen have the foresight to be particular of these moral lives who are not present in Makkah during the Hajj and leave their clients to offend for themselves and these views have been echoed by the earlier tellers. So in every log we can say that Muslims in India have written hundreds of thousands of books in a number of Indian and South Asian languages in a plethora of conventional and modern academic and literary disciplines. The Hajj Thalassology illustrated in thousands of books, hundreds of books, tracks and tableaus unveils the religious, social and economic beauty created by Indian Muslims with infused cross-cultural memory, over 400 tableaus written each on Hajj and non-Hajj themes constituted legacy to reconvert in the domain of international tableaus literature and finally such tableaus serve as valuable sources of information and views on history, geography, politics, society, economy, international trade, numismatics, diplomatic, cultural, gastronomy and culinary arts, deropterology, religiosity and literature safari in general and Hajj as in particular that help us revisit, reconstruct and retrospect questions of memory, historicity and coexistence. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Dr. Nairi. 10 minutes for questions. Yes, please. My question is regarding the statement by the first British commissioner that no one is supposed to interfere with the Hajj. What is the context of that statement? Was anyone trying to interfere with the Hajj or why did he feel compelled to... Well, this has a particular and practical relation to the Hajj policy of the encouragement given by the rulers over the ages, especially the Mughal rulers. They were concerned with the safety of Hajj and at the time, at the colonial era, the Arab Peninsula and it seemed that route, the trans-Divine Bombay and Bombay Surat and the Adhan, it was protected, patrolled by the British forces. So they were concerned with the safety of the pilgrims. So the British policy, the British had to formulate a policy that would not be antagonizing the Muslims, providing them safe passage of protection. That's why their commissioner was known as the protector of Hajj. So this was a continuity of this phenomenon. Amid the apprehensions of the British that these Muslims coming for Hajj into the holy land would be conspirators who would be conspirating with the other forces and doing something against the British interest in India. So that's why their approach would be fine, sort of balanced approach. They didn't want to antagonize the Muslims, but again, they didn't let the gate open for all and only for this purpose. I have two points. Would you mind switching back to the image of the Umayyad mosque in Damascus because I'm very much interested in this building and it seems to me that there weren't the mosaics if I wasn't mistaken. I just want to have a closer look. Yes, here it is. Okay, thank you. The second point I want to raise is who was the audience to these several travelogues, i.e. Hajj travelogues to Mecca? And yeah, why were they written? Can you say something about this? With one example or two examples, you didn't mention the audience in your presentation. Okay, some of these travelogues, especially the travelogue of Hajj Hassan Nizami, he was written in all the languages and it is the language of the masses in the Indian subcontinent. So if you're talking in terms of the audience, so the audience accounted for millions. There were millions of audiences. And since this particular, especially Hassan Nizami, happened to be representing the Nizamiya order, so means he was the head of a Sufi center. He happened to be a mystical light of the millions of peoples. So of course the audience was immense. And he wrote it for his followers to know which way to take or how to... Yes, yes, yes. It showed the way, it showed the way and showed the examples to be followed and the geniuses which are to be avoided, etc. Besides recording the historical information, geographic information for future generations. Did the travelogues also have a religious benefit for the writer? Do you earn positive religious credit by writing a travelogue about your Hajj to Medina? Of course it was like that. Because when a traveler undertakes a journey to Makharan, Medina, etc. So it is part of the religious economy and this religious economy has immense appeal among the masses. So it benefits him and the other peoples in terms of religiousity and also in terms of attracting the people to a particular denomination of spirituality. It might be especially true in regard to Shia Khare Hassan Nizami because he was representing the Nizamiya order. One more question. I'm also not sure. I didn't want to raise that point because that would bring us to a specific state. Because it's almost in the museum. It has the Manluk style of architecture with this flag. This has been produced from this first edition of the travelogue, Khajah Hassan Nizami, Babat Shia had a Mr. Philistine Shama Hijaz in the year 1911. And it was printed in 1923. On the other hand, on February 1923. I have reproduced this slide from this Burdu edition of the travelogue. It was misnamed in the book, you know, Ms. Haidu. It has been written that it is the fourth speaker. The fourth speaker. Nesma, Nismi, and Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, Nismi, and the question of gender and hermeneutics and the Quranic text. She did her undergraduate studies at Ayn Shams University, Egypt, when she received a PA in Italian language and literature in 2007. She worked as a teaching assistant of Italian language at Messar University of Science and Technology until 2013. In 2014, she obtained an MA in Modern Languages and Literatures of East and West from University of Palermo and in 2018 she obtained her PhD in Islamic Civilization from Alasa Pienza University of Rome. And Dr. Esakan is going to present a paper titled The Alexandrian Reality in the fictional stories of Fosta, Cialetti, Cialetti and Ibrahim Abdul Mesht. Perhaps you are going to pronounce the first name better than I did. Okay, thank you. So let me first thank the U.S. and Agia, Dr. David Devonison, special thanks to Dr. Noan Shah, friend of mine, also and all the teamwork of Agia. I really enjoyed the conference with you. You are very kind always with us. So today I'm going to talk about a city that has always attracted many persons. So travelers, writers and poets remember it in their writings. It's Alexandria, the eternal city of Alexander the Great. It's Bebelshark, the door of the east, Madina del Fonar, the city of the faro, and Aruz al-Bahra, as Egyptian used to say, the mermaid of the Mediterranean Sea. Alexandria represents a synonym for literature production. It's the city where different people lived and lived traditions and stories that tell about their lives. These elements provide rich material to writers to weave storytelling. I will talk about two novels. The first one is Courtyard in Cleobatra, by the Italian writer Fosta Cialetti. The second one is La Acha d'Yanem de Escondria, where no one sleeps in Alexandria, by the Egyptian writer Ibrahim Abdul-Mujid. Cialetti lived in Alexandria for almost 20 years with her husband in the first half of the 20th century. And Majid, a writer and novelist, is Alexandria in origin. Both of them have novels set in Alexandria during the first half of the 20th century. In 1936, Cialetti published Courtyard, and in 1996, Abdel-Majid published his La Acha in Alexandria. The Italian novel depicts the life of the European Dementines, who lived in Alexandria between the two wars. The Egyptian novel represents the city since the outbreak of the Second World War until the defeat of Germany. The focus is on the Egyptians, especially those who immigrated to Alexandria from upper and lower Egypt besides local people. The aim of this paper is to compare these two novels to show off the characteristics of Cialetti and La Acha in Majid's storytelling. How did they represent the internal reality and have their personal experience as part of their fictional stories? To keep the time, my focus would be on three elements, characters, spaces, and the representation of the city in the two novels. In the first part of the talk, I will summarize a plot of each novel. In the second part, I will focus on the comparison, which will show how the city could gather two writers that never met, but could get in touch among their storytelling. Cortian and Cleopatra tell the story of Marco, a young Italian, who lived in Italy to go to Alexandria, looking for his Greek mother. Marco was born there in the famous district of La Tarin. After he was born, the Italian and his Italian father decided to abandon his wife and return to Italy with his son. In Italy, the son lived a happy childhood. When his father died, he decided to return to Alexandria to find a mother that he never knew. After a long journey, he arrived in Cleopatra, Cortian, an arrow and closed space located on the edge of the city. A kind of mounting pot of different races, Greeks, Italians, Armenians, all lived quietly in Alexandria. Once arrived, Marco began his adventure in the city. Because of his lazy character, he didn't like to work, so he spent his time going around and discovering the city districts. The protagonist fell in love with Dina, daughter of a Jewish Fourier. This relationship brought him to the Levantine bourgeoisie that he would hate and refuse. On the other hand, he found a friend, the Kiki, that was an Arab girl with whom Marco discovered the exotic places of Alexandria, like the white beaches, the water, the red salt lakes, and the desert of Moryut, the life of the farmers, the Bedouins, and the wild nature of the desert. Main themes in this novel is the Levantine bourgeoisie. It is a frequent theme in the work of Fausta Schalende. She was a wife of a Jewish Italian who belonged to the European Levantine elite of Alexandria at the time. Despite being one of this class, Schalende criticised them in her work. Her criticism goes through two levels. On the one hand, she criticised the Levantine bourgeoisie that despises and exploits the poor and the marginalised Levantines. On the other hand, she highlights the marginalisation and total exclusion of the Egyptians by both rich and poor Levantines. Could we say that the author has a neutral position towards everyone? It seems that Schalende rejects any hierarchical attitude both among the Levantine community and between them and the Arab of Alexandria, as she calls them. She doesn't call them the Egyptians. Schalende tried to represent this reality with sincerity. She says, daily life was incredibly sweet and easy and the Levantines posted it as if it was all their merit and their right without looking around and without even bothering to notice that the mass couldn't absolutely enjoy those privileges. On the contrary, I saw how miserable that melt and peaceful people was, a people that was pressed by the hand of colonialism besides the shameful complicity of the very rich infending famous ruling class. La Acha de la Filescandria is a historical social novel. It tells the story of Majlid Din and his wife who left the village in the Egyptian countryside fleeing to Alexandria because of a blood fault. From a small space, they go to live in a metropolis full of different language and religion. It was few times before the Second World War. Majlid Din and his wife were devoted Muslims. Once in Alexandria, the couple went to stay in Ghayt al-Ainab, a poor but beautiful district located in the southern part of the city. The story narrates the relationship between cops and Muslims, young and old persons, immigrants from everywhere in Egypt as well as local people. La Acha de la Filescandria pays more attention to his fellow countrymen, but he doesn't ignore the foreign communities. The focus is on the coexistence in I quote Abdel-Majlid, this great white city that embraces all the people of the whole world without complaining. Majlid Din Meddamian, a southern copte who left his town due to family problems, became close friends. They were often exchanging discourses on the meaning of life, diversity and religion. But the fictions go beyond the religion and the ethnic diversity and focus on human relationship. So the main themes here is one of the main topics is the inter-ethnic conflict between the sons of the same country, between southern and eastern Sa'idah who immigrated to Alexandria and sometimes between Muslims and cops. The author brings the reader into an interactive society which was based on diversity. His goal is to overcome the limits of diversity and focus on human relation in the present and in the past. So now we can see the common points of the two authors. So both the courtyard in Kliobotra and the ones living in Alexandria give way to the soul of the Muhammashi'in or the Sa'idah, the marginalized people, those who live in society without anyone listening to their voices, poor and uprooted living beings and despised exploited ejections find opportunities to be seen and hear by Shalint and Abdel-Majid, the Shul-Shah'in poem, the seamstress, the servant, the poem who sells Nicholas of Fred Jassmin and maybe other part of the marginalized local class of Alexandria. Shalint found in them an emotional dimension that made her close to the different but stimulating world of the Egyptians that she describes in these wars. They were not false, as almost everyone claimed. On the contrary, they were modeled by a polite religion and by an ancient civilization and they were duty-bound to respect that. Should I have shown superiority or arrogance only because I was white? Then we can say that the storytelling of Shalint is influenced by a personal and subjective point of view. No one sleeps in Alexandria, represents the city of the Egyptians, as I said, represents the Egyptians who according to Abdel-Majid are mentioned in Alexandria quartet of Laurence Durham just to complete the image. As an Egyptian writer, he affirms that making of Egyptians the main characters of novel was inevitable because the European literature ignored them. This consideration is thought also by Shalint who admit that European Levantine or not didn't have or even refused to have any contact with the indigenous population. Apart of course, the servants, the suppliers, the workers, Europeans and Levantines used the term indigenous with contempt as if they were talking about a superior race made of slaves. Like Shalint said, the protagonists of Abdel-Majid are one of the protagonists, are the Muhammed, the marginal life. He said that weak people are close to his soul. He lived among them and so how they couldn't create their own life and everything that was happening around was bigger and stronger than them and determined their life. Shalint tells the story of the railway workers who work in silence without complaining and despite the hard work in their free time they love to get there and they make fun of their life and their disappointment. The idea of love about happy workers also is present in courtyard in Cleopatra in a scene where the author describes how the poor people who work on the boats have to resist the tiredness by singing. The difference between Shalint and Abdel-Majid is that Shalint gave voice to an unusual medium for Italian literature for the last century as a contemporary writer Abdel-Majid in his days trains his work in the literature of marginalized people which he also called as body literature. As for foreigners, Abdel-Majid gave them place, especially when he talks about the history of Alexandria he doesn't exclude the cosmopolitan nature of the city nevertheless cosmopolitanism is not the core of his fiction thinking Alexandria just as cosmopolitan city ruins its reality. Through the narrative act, Abdel-Majid refers to the history and goes back to the time of Alexander the Great and his dream to build an eternal city when he talks about history Abdel-Majid uses a very interesting technique or a narrative technique it is the discourse and the dialectic techniques the most important historical events of Alexandria are told in the dialogues between the poor green grocer and Zahra the wife of the protagonist. In No One Sleeps in Alexandria the story is set in three main spaces Masjid-Din Towns in Alexandria and the Alamin Desert the top takes place in the southern part of the city in the poor district it occurs around Teraat el Mahmoudaya and Abdel-Majid maps the streets that lie outside western thickest quarters on the other side of the Mahmoudaya canal and on the other side of the railway tracks quarters with three rural names like Kaffir Ashri and Guitul Ainab that do not even figure in A.M. Forster's Alexandria a history and a guide the authors choose spaces that have never attracted people who visited Alexandria in search of the myth Karmuz in the most described district in the novel the writer was born and raised it's a very historical district in all times Karmuz was called Drachtos it was the land which Alexandria agreed decided to link it to the island of Pharrus in the Italian novel the main space in the courtyard some scenes take place outside the courtyard on the beaches of the Mahmoudaya or in the arc quarters like Shadbir, Ramla also Sharenfi referred to the story in the traditional Alexandria quarter so both authors describe the Alexandria reality at the beginning of the twentieth century according to Fausta Sharenfi the Alexandria reality depicted by European writers such as Laurence Dorrell was more imaginary than real more colourful than cloudy and more mysterious than it ever was Sharenfi and the Mahmoudaya agreed that the European literature reveals only the exotic part of the city and highlight the foreign presence excluding the Egyptian reality both of them try to depict the city in its true area nevertheless we can deny that they show subjective imagination due to their professional experience so the Italian writer reconstructed the missing part in the Alexandria Basel she highlight the multi-ethnic aspects without neglecting the Egyptian continent which was numerically superior this is what makes her work different in European literature on Alexandria she described the luxury of the European neighborhood but she couldn't hide the miserable reality of the poor and barefoot business she doesn't let herself be enchanted by the baroque fiction which was completely separated from concrete reality of Alexandria as for European literature on Alexandria Abdel-Majid claims that it excludes native people however he says that Alexandria is a city of many faces every writer could see one of them but all of them agreed that the city is full of warris, movements sadness and happiness it's the case of all the cities of the poor for this reason Abdel-Majid wanted to emphasize the Egyptian view of the city beside the cosmopolitan aspects so for Abdel-Majid Alexandria or cosmopolitan Alexandria is a city of the world with Egyptians, foreigners Muslims, Christians and all the ethnicities and religions Alexandria was a piece of Europe in food, clothes architecture and more for me such such interweaving is the reason why the city was attractive however Abdel-Majid had a subject imagination of the city due to his origin his identity speaks up in the narration Karmuz is the quarter where he grew up his father was one of the railway workers he talked about and for me his point of view which comes from the inside makes his fictional story one of the most relatable storytelling about Alexandria what unites is the attention to marginalized groups both of them illustrates how these people defeat their tears and disappointment smiling and showing trust and patience for tomorrow both of them search for places that are located on the edge of the city there are places also that don't exist anymore especially in Shalente like at Dust Roads and Lake of Hadra so the story telling of Shalente and Majid is for me a bridge between two worlds east and west but sometimes honestly it seems to don't want to meet sometimes so thank you for this one it's like because of the interest of time we don't have maybe we can take one question or two questions next we have a question we can continue even the discussion in the I think I just want to ask about the image of the 11 time people you said that the writer equated Arabs with Egyptians she said Arabs of Alexander means big Egyptians she means the Egyptian people but not the 11 time Arabs no no but she doesn't use the term Egyptian yes I find this a bit strange because the Arab nation was established at the hands of the Lebanese and they moved the Renaissance from Syria and Lebanon which was the birthplace of the Renaissance to Egypt so the other place they were not presented they actually created the Renaissance in Egypt so first Shalente has a lot of nobles sitting in Alexandria and I thought about this word actually this morning and I asked myself why she used the term phallah or in transcription because the novel is in Italian and she used the term Arab and not Egyptian so I decided to read also the other nobles to see if this is a consistent thing in the other nobles and this is a question that I made yes because they moved their theatres and their newspapers and publishing houses so she didn't see from all these nothing this is very interesting also because another point that I criticized in Shalente even if I still didn't read all her novels that she talks about when she talks about Egyptian they are always ignorant marginalised poor people so I don't know why I want to know why this choice why always talking about marginalised and how however all these nationalism and the projects and the journals and all this cultural life that was already in the first half of the 19th century and she doesn't talk about other aspects of the city or of the Egyptians right thank you very much I think we have a coffee break for now