Project MUSE - Orientalist Infotainment and the Us Lecture Tour of Gregory M. Wortabet (1828–93) (2024)

NOTES

1. This research was made possible by a Washington and Lee University 2022 Summer Lenfest Grant. I am thankful to Christine B. Lindner at Murray State University and Timothy H. Horning at the University of Pennsylvania for help with primary sources and alumni records. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers whose feedback strengthened the article.

2. “Strangers in New York,” New York Herald, 11 May 1852, 1.

3. Antuniyus al-Bishʿallani (1827–56) arrived in 1854 and traditionally is considered “the first Syrian immigrant to the new world.” Philip Hitti, Antuniyus al-Bishʿallani: Awwal Muhajir Suri ila l-ʿAlam al-Jadid (New York, 1919). For more on Arab migration to the United States, see Charlotte Karem Albrecht, Possible Histories: Arab Americans and the Queer Ecology of Peddling (Oakland: University of California Press, 2023); Linda K. Jacobs, Strangers No More: Syrians in the United States 1880–1900 (New York: Kalimah Press, 2019); Alixa Naff, Becoming American: The Early Arab Immigrant Experience (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985); Adele L. Younis, The Coming of the Arabic-Speaking People to the United States, ed. Philip M. Kayal (Staten Island, NY: Center for Migration Studies, 1995).

4. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 1.

5. David H. Finnie, Pioneers East: The Early American Experience in the Middle East (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967); Michael B. Oren, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008); Fuad Sha’ban, Islam and Arabs in Early American Thought: The Roots of Orientalism in America (Durham, NC: Acorn Press, 1991).

6. Hilton Obenzinger, American Palestine: Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); Stephanie Stidham Rogers, Inventing the Holy Land: American Protestant Pilgrimage to Palestine, 1845–1941 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011).

7. David D. Grafton, An American Biblical Orientalism: The Construction of Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Nineteenth Century American Evangelical Piety (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019), 2.

8. Daniel Martin Varisco, “Orientalism and Bibliolatry: Framing the Holy Land in Nineteenth-Century Protestant Bible Customs Texts,” in Orientalism Revisited: Art, Land and Voyage, ed. Ian Richard Netton (London: Routledge, 2012), 187–204.

9. The origins of the Missionary Herald can be traced to the Panoplist (1805/6). For the digital archive of these sources, see “Missionary Herald / Panoplist, and Missionary Magazine,” Mission Periodicals Online, Yale University Library Research Guides, accessed 25 July 2023, https://guides.library.yale.edu/c.php?g=296315&p=1976905.

10. Rogers, Inventing the Holy Land; Brian Yothers, The Romance of the Holy Land in American Travel Writing, 1790–1876 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007).

11. Edward Robinson, Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai and Arabia Petraea, 3 vols. (Boston, MA: Crocker and Brewster, 1841); William McClure Thomson, The Land and the Book, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1858–60).

12. Grafton, An American Biblical Orientalism, 103, 147–48.

13. Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims’ Progress (Hartford, CT: American Publishing Company, 1869).

14. Susan Nance, How the Arabian Nights Inspired the American Dream, 1790– 1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2009); Obenzinger, American Palestine, 159–273.

15. Said, Orientalism, 52.

16. Donald M. Scott, “Print and the Public Lecture System, 1840–60,” in Printing and Society in Early America, eds. William L. Joyce, David D. Hall, Richard D. Brown, and John B. Hench (Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1983), 280.

17. Nance, Arabian Nights, 65–78.

18. Edward Ziter, “Teaching Nineteenth-Century Orientalist Entertainments,” in Interrogating Orientalism: Contextual Approaches and Pedagogical Practices, eds. Diane Long Hoeveler and Jeffrey Cass (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006), 224.

19. Linda K. Jacobs, “‘Playing East’: Arabs Play Arabs in Nineteenth Century America,” Mashriq & Mahjar 2, no. 2 (2014): 85.

20. Amanda Eads, “Rahme Haidar–The Performer,” Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies News, 17 March 2016, https://lebanesestudies.news.chass.ncsu.edu/2016/03/17/rahme-haidarthe-performer/; Linda K. Jacobs, Strangers in the West: The Syrian Colony of New York City, 1880–1900 (New York: Kalimah Press, 2015), 243–56, 312–33; Lhoussain Simour, “American Fair Expositions Revisited: Morocco’s Acrobatic Performers between the Industry of Entertainment and the Violence of Racial Display,” Journal for Cultural Research 17, no. 3 (2013): 295– 322; Younis, The Coming of the Arabic-Speaking People, 142–66.

21. Shedoody and Wortabet attended the Boys’ School in Beirut together. “Records of the Beirut Station,” 8 December 1835, Syrian Mission, 1823–1871, ABC 1–91, ABC 16.8.1, vol. 8, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions Archives, Houghton Library, Harvard University (hereafter cited as ABC).

22. Nora Lessersohn, “A Life of Longing and Belonging: The Ottoman Armenian American Worldview of Christopher Oscanyan (1815–96),” Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 4, no. 2 (2017): 261–85; Simour, “American Fair Expositions Revisited,” 298–99; Younis, The Coming of the Arabic-Speaking People, 93–96.

23. Rufus Anderson, History of the Missions of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to the Oriental Churches (Boston, MA: Congregational Publishing Society, 1872), 1:224–27.

24. Missionary Herald, May 1828, 137–41; Missionary Herald, June 1828, 169–71; Missionary Herald, July 1828, 201–6. The quote is from Henry Harris Jessup, Fifty-Three Years in Syria (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1910), 1:48.

25. “Gregory M. Wortabet,” 1851 Scotland Census, accessed 1 August 2023, Ancestry.com; Gregory M. Wortabet, “Syria: Its Climate, Inhabitants, Diseases, Medical Practitioners and Native Drugs” (MD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1859), 378.748 POM 1859.4.2 Pt.1, Rare Book Collection, Kislak Center for Special Collections, University of Pennsylvania; “Wortabet, Gregory Morgan,” England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858–1995, accessed 29 March 2021, Ancestry.com; “Wortabet, Gregory Moorjan,” England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1837–1915, accessed 1 August 2023, Ancestry.com; Missionary Herald, May 1828, 140.

26. Tarek El-Ariss, ed., The Arab Renaissance: A Bilingual Anthology of the Nahda (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2018), xv. For a study on broad semantics of the term, see Hannah Scott Deuchar, “‘Nahḍa’: Mapping a Keyword in Cultural Discourse,” in “Literature and Journalism,” ed. Hala Halim, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 37 (2017): 50–84.

27. Hala Auji, Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and The American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut (Leiden: Brill, 2016); Jens Hanssen, Fin de Siècle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Peter Hill, Utopia and Civilisation in the Arab Nahda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020); Stephen Sheehi, Foundations of Modern Arab Identity (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004); Fruma Zachs, The Making of a Syrian Identity: Intellectuals and Merchants in Nineteenth Century Beirut (Leiden: Brill, 2005).

28. Gregory M. Wortabet, Syria and the Syrians; Or, Turkey in the Dependencies, 2 vols. (London: James Madden, 1856), 1:frontispiece.

29. An exception is the Egyptian occupation from 1831 to 1841. Bruce Masters, The Arabs of the Ottoman Empire, 1516–1918: A Social and Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

30. Zachs, Making of a Syrian Identity, 248–50.

31. Roderic H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963).

32. Ussama Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 184.

33. Wortabet appears briefly in English scholarship. Louise Seymour Houghton, “Syrians in the United States: Sources and Settlement,” Survey 26, no. 14 (1 July 1911): 483; Jacqueline Jondot, “Gregory Wortabet ‘of Beyroot, Syria’: A Failed Encounter?,” in Geographies of Contact: Britain, the Middle East and the Circulation of Knowledge, eds. Hélène Ibata, Caroline Lehni, Fanny Moghaddassi, and Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam (Strasbourg: Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 2017), 31–41; Christine Beth Lindner, “Negotiating the Field: American Protestant Missionaries in Ottoman Syria, 1823 to 1860” (PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 2009), 147–48.

34. For early Arab views of the United States, see Ami Ayalon, “The Arab Discovery of America in the Nineteenth Century,” Middle Eastern Studies 20, no. 4 (1984): 5–17.

35. Gregory M. Wortabet, Syria and the Holy Land, Being a Course of Lectures (Halifax, Nova Scotia: Printed at the “Morning Journal” Office: 1856), [1]. Editorial emendations cannot be conclusively discounted; nonetheless, internal evidence (e.g., italicization to indicate his intonation, and parentheses and brackets to demarcate what the amanuensis inserted) suggests that the publication is a fair textual recording.

36. “Records of the Beirut Missionary Church,” ABC 16.8.1, vol. 8. Why Wortabet regularly counted c. 1830 as his birth year remains a mystery. He knew that his birth took place in 1828 and acknowledged it in a lecture: “I was born before she [my mother] was fourteen [in 1828]. At eighteen [in 1832] she was a widow.” “Gregory M. Wortabet,” 1851 Scotland Census, Ancestry.com; Wortabet, Syria and the Holy Land, 23.

37. Missionary Herald, July 1828, 205–6.

38. The translation of the New Testament was completed in 1830. E. D. G. Prime, Forty Years in the Turkish Empire; Or Memoirs of Rev. William Goodell (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1875), 110.

39. Anderson, History of the Missions, 1:226; Wortabet, Syria and the Syrians, 1:56.

40. Wortabet, Syria and the Holy Land, 23. Gregory M.’s siblings were Yuhanna (John) (1827–1908), Hannah (b. 1831), and Yaʿqub (Jacob) (b. 1832). Yaʿqub was born soon after Wortabet, the father, passed away. Missionary Herald, February 1833, 78.

41. The missionaries managed a fund to care for children until at least 1845. “Records of the Beirut Station,” 1 September 1835, ABC 16.8.1, vol. 8; “Records of the Syrian Mission,” 16 January 1845, ABC 16.8.1, vol. 8.

42. Wortabet, Syria and the Holy Land, 35–36; Wortabet, Syria and the Syrians, 1:59–60.

43. Postscript by Leander Thompson, in Gregory M. Wortabet to Rev. and Mrs. Eli Moody, 27 August 1841, Family and Personal Papers, Correspondence of Leander Thompson, 1840–1841, Mss A 1898, fol. 2, R. Stanton Avery Special Collections, New England Historic Genealogical Society, available online, https://digital.americanancestors.org/digital/collection/p15869coll16/id/1 44.

44. Butrus al-Bustani to Eli Smith, 10 January 1846, Smith, Eli. (Syria, 1821– 1857), Arabic Papers, circa 1826–1857, box 2, ABC 1–91, ABC 50; Butrus al-Bustani, ed., Aʿmal al-Jamʿiyya al-Suriyya (Beirut: American Mission Press, 1852), [iii]. For a history of the theological group, see Anthony Edwards, “Revisiting a Nahḍa Origin Story: Majmaʿ al-Tahdhīb and the Protestant Community in 1840s Beirut,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 82, no. 3 (2019): 427–51.

45. Abdoullah Ydlibi, “To the Editor of the Manchester Courier,” Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 31 January 1852, 59/11.

46. He commenced his international travels on 16 September 1850. Gregory M. Wortabet, “Letters from the ‘Syrian Traveller,’” Weekly Wisconsin, 6 October 1852, 2.

47. “The Syro-Lebanon Company,” Morning Chronicle, 28 August 1851, 5; “Extraordinary Novelty from the East,” Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, 14 October 1851, 1. Italics in the original.

48. The show closed in January 1852, after Wortabet and his partners were accused of mispresenting the ensemble as “persecuted [Ottoman] Christians.” “The Syrian Christians,” Manchester Examiner and Times, 31 January 1852, 5.

49. Wortabet, Syria and the Syrians, 1:28, 2:336.

50. “Lecture on Syria,” Caledonian Mercury, 19 June 1854, 3; “Syria and the Holy Land,” Daily News, 29 May 1855, 4; “Lectures on Syria and the Holy Land,” Belfast News-Letter, 21 January 1856, 2; “Lectures of the New York Young Men’s Christian Association,” New York Daily Tribune, 10 April 1856, 7; “The Lecture at Lafayette Hall,” Pittsburg Daily Post, 14 February 1857, 3; Wortabet, Syria and the Holy Land, [1].

51. Wortabet, Syria and the Holy Land, 32.

52. “Naturalisation Papers: Nauphal, Selim, from Tripoli,” 20 May 1852, Certificate 1387, HO 1/44/1387, National Archives, Kew; “Naturalisation Certificate: Antonius Ameuney, from Turkey,” 10 August 1876, Certificate A1974, HO 334/6/1974, National Archives, Kew.

53. Wortabet, Syria and the Holy Land, 4, 35.

54. Akram Fouad Khater, “Becoming ‘Syrian’ in America: A Global Geography of Ethnicity and Nation,” Diaspora 14, nos. 2/3 (2005): 303–4.

55. Missionary Herald, 24 May 1828, 137.

56. Wortabet, Syria and the Holy Land, 11.

57. John Wortabet to Eli Smith, 13 January 1852, Smith, Eli. (Syria, 1821–1857), Papers, 1819–1869, ABC 1–91, ABC 60.98.

58. Lindner, “Negotiating the Field,” 147–48; Mehitable (Hetty) Butler Smith to Sister, 1 May [1855?], box 1, fol. 23, Correspondence M. S. B. Smith to Family 1854–56, Eli Smith Group 124, Yale Divinity College. Italics in the original.

59. Wortabet, Syria and the Syrians, 1:130–32, 2:78, 109; “Letters from the ‘Syrian Traveller,’” Weekly Wisconsin, 29 September 1852, 3.

60. Wortabet, Syria and the Syrians, 1:56–57. Italics in the original.

61. Uta Zeuge-Buberl, “Misinterpretations of a Missionary Policy? The American Syria Mission’s Conflict with Buṭrus al-Bustānī, and Yuḥannā Wurtabāt,” Theological Review 36 (2015): 38–41.

62. His thesis examined the state of the medical profession in Ottoman Syria. Wortabet, “Syria”; “Wortabet, Gregory M.,” UPF 1.9AR: Alumni Records Collection, box 3050, University Archives and Records Center, University of Pennsylvania.

63. “Turkish Missions Aid Society,” Western Daily Press, 9 December 1873, 3; Michael Christopher Low, Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020), 142; John Wortabet, “A Short Sketch of the Recent Visitation of the Plague in Bagdad and its Vicinity, 1867–1877 [Part 1],” Edinburgh Medical Journal, 25 September 1879, 222.

64. “Wortabet, Gregory Morgan,” England & Wales, National Probate Calendar, 1858–1995.

65. Scott, “Print and the Public Lecture System,” 292.

66. “71 Gregory Wortabet,” New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820–1957, accessed 5 September 2022, Ancestry.com.

67. Wortabet addressed audiences in 26 of the 31 states. Geo. T. Brown, “The Syrian Trler,” Alton Daily Courier, 3 August 1853, 2. I can confirm that between 1852 and 1857 he visited Illinois, Indiana, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

68. “A Stranger from an Old Country,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, 10 September 1852, 1. He might have hoped to visit his younger brother Yaʿqub who had immigrated to the United States, become a naturalized citizen in April 1850, and settled in San Francisco. “If Jacob Wortabet from Beyrout,” San Francisco Chronicle, 24 May 1878, 1; “Jacob Wortabet,” New York, US, State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794–1943, accessed 5 September 2022, Ancestry.com.

69. “Wortabet’s Lectures on Syria and the Holy Land,” North American and United States Gazette, 16 May 1856, 1.

70. “Mr. G. M. Wortabet,” Glasgow Herald, 26 June 1854, 5.

71. “The Syrian Traveler,” Cleveland Daily Herald, 23 August 1852, 1; “On Sunday night,” St. Joseph Gazette, 20 July 1853, 2.

72. Wortabet, Syria and the Holy Land, 3.

73. “A Pilgrim from the Holy Land,” Weekly Minnesotian, 2 October 1852, 2; “Syrian Traveller,” North American and United States Gazette, 29 December 1853, 1.

74. “The Exhibition,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, 13 September 1852, 1.

75. “Wortabet—the Syrian,” Detroit Free Press, 1 September 1852, 3.

76. “Letter from the ‘Syrian Traveller,’” Weekly Wisconsin, 18 September 1852, 2.

77. “A Stranger from an Old Country,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, 1; “Mr. Wortabet, a native of Beyrout, Syria,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, 7 April 1853, 1.

78. Wortabet, Syria and the Holy Land, [3].

79. Jondot, “Gregory Wortabet ‘of Beyroot, Syria,’” 37.

80. Jacobs, “‘Playing East.’”

81. Ibid., 88; Eads, “Rahme Haidar.”

82. It has been reported since the 1950s that Taylor regularly gave his lectures dressed in Arab costume, brandishing a dagger at his side. Nance, Arabian Nights, 76.

83. “A Stranger from an Old Country,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, 1; “Wortabet—the Syrian,” 3.

84. Wortabet, Syria and the Syrians, 1:59–60.

85. Wortabet, Syria and the Holy Land, 36.

86. “The ‘Syrian Traveller,’” Weekly Wisconsin, 13 October 1852, 1.

87. “Lectures on Syria,” New York Times, 29 May 1852, 1; “The Religious Exercises at the various churches,” Weekly Wisconsin, 15 September 1852, 3.

88. Wortabet, Syria and the Holy Land, 9, 39. Italics in the original.

89. Ibid., [3].

90. Nance, Arabian Nights, 10–11.

91. “On Sunday Night,” 2.

92. “Lectures on Syria and the Syrians,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 20 May 1852, 2; “Mr. Gregory M. Wortabet,” Daily Picayune, 21 May 1853, 3; “Public lecture,” Charleston Mercury, 4 January 1854, 3.

94. “The Syrian Traveler,” 1.

95. “Lectures on Syria,” 1; “Horticultural Society,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, 11 September 1852, 1; “A Pilgrim from the Holy Land,” 2; “A Syrian Traveler,” Daily Picayune, 20 May 1853, 2.

96. “The Holy Land—Syria and the Syrians—Marriages in the East,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 28 May 1852, 3; “Marriages in the East,” Daily News and Herald, 4 June 1852, 1; “Public Lecture,” 3.

97. “Holy Land—Syria and the Syrians,” 3.

98. Scott, “Print and the Public Lecture System,” 285.

99. “Syria and the Holy Land,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 19 May 1852, 2; “Mr. Wortabet’s Lecture,” Alton Daily Courier, 3 August 1853, 2.

100. Washington, DC, and Philadelphia newspapers picked up reports on his travels from the Chicago Tribune. “A Stranger from an Old Country,” Daily Republic, 20 September 1852, 2; “A Stranger from an Old Country,” North American and United States Gazette, 21 September 1852, 1.

101. “Syria and the Holy Land,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 19 May 1852, 2.

102. “On Sunday Night,” 2; “Wortabet—the Syrian,” 3.

103. “The Syrian Traveler,” 1; “Lectures on Syria,” 1.

104. Wortabet, Syria and the Holy Land, [3], 11, 14, 30. Italics in the original.

105. Tom F. Wright, ed., The Cosmopolitan Lyceum: Lecture Culture and the Globe in Nineteenth-Century America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2013); Tom F. Wright, Lecturing the Atlantic: Speech, Print, and an Anglo-American Commons 1830–1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

106. Angela G. Ray, The Lyceum and Public Culture in the Nineteenth-Century United States (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2005).

107. Grafton, An American Biblical Orientalism, 19.

108. Wortabet, Syria and the Holy Land, 5.

109. Matt. 25:14–30.

110. Wortabet, Syria and the Holy Land, 18.

111. Ibid., 18. Italics in the original.

113. Matt. 25:21 (King James Version) reads: “His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.”

114. George Hurter to Rufus Anderson, 2 February 1852, ABC 16.8.1, vol. 5; Mehitable (Hetty) Butler Smith to Sister, 1 May [1855?].

115. “Records of the Syrian Mission,” 29 March 1853, ABC 16.8.1, vol. 8.

116. Mehitable (Hetty) Butler Smith to Sister, 1 May [1855?].

117. Wortabet, Syria and the Holy Land, 5, 31. Italics in the original.

119. Ibid., 10, 23. See Gen. 5:3–32; Gen. 11:10–26; Num. 13:22–24.

120. He overlooked the Greek Catholics, as well as the Alawites, Druze, and Shiites, in his lectures.

121. Wortabet, Syria and the Holy Land, 25. He asserted that just 5 percent of “nominal Christians and Mahometans [sic]” could read.

123. Ibid., 5, 26.

124. Ibid., 12, 20.

125. Ibid., 11, 19. Italics in the original.

127. Ibid., 25–26.

128. Ibid., 25–26.

130. Ibid., 21. Italics in the original.

132. Grafton, An American Biblical Orientalism, 65–96, 147–80.

133. Wortabet, Syria and the Holy Land, 8, 11, 19.

135. Ibid., 35, 37.

136. Ibid., 36–37. Italics in the original.

137. Ibid., 37. Italics in the original.

138. Ibid., 22. Italics in the original.

141. Grafton, An American Biblical Orientalism, 202–5.

142. Edward Robinson, Later Biblical Researches in Palestine and in the Adjacent Regions (Boston: Crocker and Brewster, 1856), 27–28.

143. In his book, Wortabet noted the social and political reforms of the Tanzimat but refused to comment given their recent promulgation. Wortabet, Syria and the Syrians, 1:80.

144. Wortabet, Syria and the Holy Land, 30. Italics in the original. See Ozan Ozavci, Dangerous Gifts: Imperialism, Security, and Civil Wars in the Levant, 1798–1864 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).

145. Anthony Edwards, “An Incomplete Journey Away from the Past: The Life and Ideas of Antonius Ameuney (1821–1881),” Philological Encounters 6 (2023): 322, 324.

146. Ibid., 329–30.

147. Wortabet, Syria and the Holy Land, 32–33.

148. Wortabet, Syria and the Syrians, 1:348, 1:350.

149. Ibid., 1:351.

150. Wortabet, Syria and the Holy Land, 33, 38.

151. Grafton, An American Biblical Orientalism, 2.

152. “The ‘Syrian Traveller,’” 1. Italics in the original.

153. George P. Buell, ed., “Poetry, Woman, and the Anglo-Saxon,” Western Democratic Review 1 (January 1854): 15.

154. “Literature,” Economist, 19 April 1856, 424; “Wortabet’s Syria and the Syrians,” Spectator, 3 May 1856, 486.

155. “Syria,” Morning Journal and Commercial Advertiser, 12 September 1856, 2. Italics in the original.

156. “Literature,” 424.

157. “Reviews,” Athenaeum, 22 March 1856, 354–55.

158. “Turkey in the Dependencies,” Sydney Morning Herald, 29 July 1856, 2.

160. “Reviews,” 355.

161. “Wortabet’s Syria and the Syrians,” 487.

162. Wortabet, Syria and the Syrians, 1:xvi.

163. “Miscellaneous Reviews,” Gentleman’s Magazine, May 1856, 495.

164. Talent Recap, “Messoudi Brothers: SEXY Brothers with Powerful Acrobatics, America’s Got Talent 2019,” 4 June 2019, YouTube video, 4:54, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI9VTVnKoro; America’s Got Talent, “Golden Buzzer: Mayyas’ Breathtaking Audition Captivates Sofia Vergaga, AGT 2022,” 21 June 2022, YouTube video, 9:20, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD0doCSkBY8.

165. America’s Got Talent, “Golden Buzzer.”