Al Qalam: Poets in the Park

Coming soon

Just steps away from this park, the first Arabic-speaking community in the United States took root. From 1880 to 1940, immigrants from present-day Lebanon and Syria made their home on Washington Street between The Battery and Albany Street. Known to New Yorkers as “the Syrian quarter,” “the Syrian colony,” or sometimes “Little Syria,” about 1500 “Syrians,” as they were called, lived on the east side of Washington Street. Their homes were crowded tenements that had been carved from single-family residences built in the early nineteenth century. Like their Irish, German, and Eastern European neighbors, the Syrians lived with no indoor plumbing and no access to fresh air or light. Infant mortality rates were tragically high. Yet the Syrians not only survived but thrived.

Most of them peddled when they first arrived, but by 1900, the street boasted Arabic shops, factories, and restaurants; four chapels; a Syrian school to teach adults English and children American history; and a half-dozen Arabic newspapers. Musicians and poets were respected members of the community, performing extemporaneously at weddings, baptisms, and social gatherings. Poetry was regularly published in the newspapers and by the early twentieth century, the Syrians had begun to publish books and magazines in both Arabic and English. Among these writers were Kahlil Gibran, Ameen Rihani, Nassib Arida, and Ilya Abu Madi, who were instrumental in the formation of a writers’ association called al Rabitah al Qalamiyah (The Pen Bond).