Turning to Turn-of-the-19th-Century Syria

A month ago, I was nearing publication of The Centennial Collection, the third in my series on Sayyida Salme’s life and writings. I had intended this third book to honor her, one hundred years after her passing,[1] and it gave me a chance to share translations of the last two manuscripts her family had preserved.[2] In Nachtrag zu meinen Memoiren (Addendum to My Memoirs), she gave us her side of the story about her second return to Zanzibar in 1888. In Syrische Sitten und Gebräuche (Syrian Customs and Conventions), she related some of her observations about living in Beirut.

And then, in the blink of an eye, Syria experienced its greatest transformation in half a century. It went from a cowering posture of fear to a promising embrace of potential – the windows opened, the sun poured in, the phoenix rose, the masses were unshackled – many vivid images come to mind. This cataclysmic event now offers a historic opening that yearns for space to ripen and be realized, even as other powers-that-be circle the youngling and claw at its prospects, intent on claiming or regaining their primacy.

It is a precarious moment, one when we might do well to look for reminders of what this country – this land, these people, this culture – has been and could be. And just such a reminder was at my fingertips just then. I was writing the background essay about the years Sayyida Salme made Beirut her home, the period between 1892 and 1914, a time when Beirut was still part of Greater Syria under Ottoman rule.[3]

Life, it appears, was good there, so good that Sayyida Salme lasted for more than two decades, choosing this place over her more native Zanzibar and Germany. This corner of land, lying at the pivot between North and South, East and West, and lapping the Mediterranean, not only returned her to the seafront she so yearned for (Memoirs, p. 191), but surely also reminded her of the Stone Town of her youth. It offered a flourishing center of activity, vibrant port, model of mixed religions, confluence of cultures, and nexus between Orient and Occident that surely spoke to her. As the nineteenth century was coming to a close, this thriving cosmopolitan jewel seemed to show that there was room for everyone – for tolerance, for tradition layered with modernity, for shared prosperity.[4]

Her descriptions of Beirut likely reflect early impressions of her time there, with many attributes to praise, including this sampling (from the Collection, pp. 48-50):

With demonstrative talent in making money, even very simple folk often become rich so quickly that they are soon multi-millionaires.

Syrians are very hospitable, and the more guests to care for, the happier they are.

[O]n the subject of learning foreign languages, the Syrians are masterfully predisposed.

The people possess a most astonishing ability to grasp things. A seamstress, for example, … sits on a mat on the floor and, following a picture she has been shown in a fashion magazine, produces the very finest high society and ball outfits.

Sayyida Salme gave us only a tantalizing fragment of her observations. As much as we might wish for a greater sense of how harmony and synergies can work in such a place, this is a very short manuscript.  But I still thought it relevant to the Collection, even for what she did not say. As I note in my accompanying essay, it is perhaps telling that she did not continue to write. It may be a sign of how comfortable she felt, no longer the outsider putting on her comparative lens, but gradually, finally again, becoming an insider, at home in this Arabic-speaking, Western-influenced, multicultural, multifaith, socially-innovating, and intellectually-fermenting place and time.

With all the devastation this part of the world has faced since its turn-of-the-century flourishing, it may be hard to recall a time when this kind of tolerance and togetherness was possible. However, just as we can celebrate Sayyida Salme as an inspiration for today, we can revisit the Syria of times past, not even all that very long ago, to celebrate the confluence of such richness in that thriving, seminal space.

Historians will understand the comings and goings of this part of the world far better than I, but when I read what Sayyida Salme wrote of her time in that place, and sense how much she felt at home there, it gives me hope for the future.

Let history surprise you, let her story inspire you – let her authentic voice speak to you.

Andrea Emily Stumpf

December 28, 2024

Photo credit: From the private collection of Alexander von Brand; photograph of his great-grandmother Antonie's wedding to Eugen Brandeis in 1898 at the Hotel Bassoul in Beirut, with Sayyida Salme standing in black.

[1] Sayyida Salme was with close family in Jena when she died on Leap Day in 1924. For anyone who likes numbers, my 1924-2024 Centennial Compilation, which combines all three books in my series, was released for sale on 12-24-24 (or 24-12-24).

[2] Sayyida Salme’s children prepared a typed set of manuscripts they called the Literarischer Nachlass (Literary Estate) after her death. One such set resides in the Leiden University Libraries at Or. 6281.

[3] Beirut was the capital of a Syrian province (vilayet) at the time and did not become part of Lebanon until after World War I.

[4] I describe this alternate home in Sayyida Salme's later life as a place where she could move beyond “either/or” to more “and.” See my first blog entry The Liminal In-Between.