Presentation for Paper Delivered at the Middle East Studies Annual Meeting 2013, in New Orleans, LA
Abstract:
"This paper locates Brazil as a major site of Syrian patriotic culture by examining philanthropic and activist networks between the city of Homs and a Syrian club in Sao Paulo, the Nadi Homsi. Established in 1920, Nadi Homsi was a Syrian young men's club linked first to Emir Faysal's Arab Nationalist government, and later to the Syrian National Bloc. During the 1920s, members presided over a distinctly anti-colonial political culture that analogized between the fortitude of Syrian masculinity and the will to sovereignty and independence for Syria. The Nadi prescribed a rigorous program for young men comprising charity, self-improvement, intensive ideological training, and corporeal discipline through sports. Merging Brazilian machismo with Syrian territorial nationalism, the club sponsored new schools, orphanages, and newspapers in Homs, altering Syrian social infrastructure. By the late twenties the Nadi promoted return migration of young Syrian men, with the aim of spreading a politics of patriotism grown in the diaspora. By “making Syrian men” in Brazil, the Nadi Homsi hoped to ultimately usher in a new political renaissance at home. In the process, the club inscribed new political meanings on young men's bodies and minds, making boys objects for nationalist political reform."
Good Stuff Happens in 1:1 Meetings: Why you need them and how to do them well
"Sounds Minds in Sound Bodies:" Transnational Philanthropy and Patriotic Masculinity in Nadi Homsi and Syrian Brazil
1. Sound Minds in Sound Bodies: Transnational
Philanthropy and Patriotic Masculinity in
Nadi Homsi and Syrian Brazil, 1920-1932
Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting 2013
Stacy Fahrenthold, PhD Candidate, Northeastern University
4. Nadi Homsi Clubhouse Foyer c. 1923. Portraits are Founders and Syrian Nationalist Personalities, including:
Bishop Athanasius ‘Atallah (center); Top from Left: Ibrahim al-Hourani; ‘Abd al-Hadmi al-Zahrawi (2); Yusuf
Shahin; Bottom from Right: ‘Abd al-Massih Haddad (1); Hanna Khabbaz (2); ‘Isa As’ad (4).
5. Nadi Homsi’s First Executive Board, c. 1920. (Founder Jurj Atlas, front row, second from right)
Most were previously members of the clandestine political party al-Fatat, allied with Emir Faysal
11. The Crying Boys Poll, al-Karma Magazine, January 1927
“What makes these boys cry as they do?”
- “this boy cries because his mother took fancy buttons from her
kasheh (pack used in peddling trade) and gave them to his sister.”
- “he cries because his parents have returned from the homeland,
and he's forgotten his Arabic.”
- “he cries because his father is absent, and has gone to assist those
devastated in the homeland (al-mankūbīn fi-l-waṭan).” (Syria was
still reeling after France’s bombardment of Damascus)
- “because his parents have forsaken him.”
- “because he sees São Paulo's orphans in the Dar al-Aytam al-Suri,
and he fears he might (also) become one.”
12. Nadi Homsi: Intellectual Amenities
Members of the
al-’Usba al-
Andalucia, “The
Andalusian
League,” c. 1932
Habib Mas’ud Husni Gharrab Daud Shakkur Fawzi Ma’luf Nazir Zaytun
Ilyas Farhat Shafiq Ma’luf Rashid al-Khuri Salim Lutfallah Nasr Sam’an
13. Nadi Homsi founder Jurj Atlas, on sports: “It is commonly said that 'a sound
mind (rests) in a sound body' (al-ʿaqlal-salīm fi-l-jism al-salīm) because
the security of the whole ensures that of all parts… the mind is merely one
part of that whole totality.”
15. “Trader and writer, poor and
rich, strong and weak alike...
have their obligatory work on
the field and in the nation. The
enlightened man knows each
role is of equal worth.” “Their
bodies tired from practice and
toil, and minds exhausted by
hope, Syria’s true athletes will
strive and struggle together.”
Rashid Salim al-Khuri
“al-Sha’ir al-Qarawi”
