Lady Evelyn Cobbold, a Scottish convert to Islam, died in Inverness. Specifically, on her estate in Glencarron, Wester Ross, in...
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1840 - 1865
Abdullah Ydlibi (c. 1820-1885), Manchester's First "Mahommedan"
Abdullah Ydlibi [Idlibi] (c.1820-85) came from a family of Arab notables in administration, politics and trade, with branches in Damascus and Beirut, who originally hailed, as their name suggests, from Idlib. Born in Damascus, Ydlibi arrived in Manchester in around 1840 where he set up the family trading business. He was appointed the first Ottoman Consul for Manchester in 1846 and was styled at the time as "the only Mahommedan inhabitant of the town", and in 1855 he was awarded the Order of the Medjidie for his services. (The historical truth is that Ydlibi was preceded by Moroccan cotton traders in Manchester who were already established when he arrived in around 1840.) Ydlibi married Amelia Jones of Hulme that same year at the Holy Trinity Church. They settled at 3 Moss Side Terrace where three generations of Ydlibis would live. They had a son Ali who was baptized privately as an Anglican. Amelia died three years later. He and his son Ali then moved to Chorlton.
With an English partner, Paul Crabbe, Ydlibi developed a near monopoly of trade in textiles between England and Aleppo. He also exported shipping yarns, prints and shirtings to Damscus and Beirut and imported black madder roots and other Middle Eastern produce. The Ydlibi-Crabbe partnership was the first large Syrian-led import-export business between England and the Levant. Ydlibi came to act as a middleman between Middle Eastern dignitaries looking to increase trade with Manchester, and took Persian and Ottoman diplomats around the city's factories. During the Lancashire Cotton Famine of 1861-5, where thousands and thousands of workers in Lancashire faced starvation for showing solidarity with the abolitionist North in the American Civil War and refusing to take the Southern slaver's cotton, Ydlibi took advantage in 1863 of the desperate search for alternative sources of cotton. He exported steam-powered cotton spinning wheels to Beirut and Damascus, along with cottonseed, to build up cotton growing in the Levant.
Although Ydlibi's role as Consol was meant to have primarily an economic focus in protecting the trading interests of Ottoman citizens in Manchester, he role became politicized as these economic interests were often the subject of political attacks, in particular upon the rights of Christian minorities within the Ottoman domains. In public correspondence, Ydlibi refuted the charge that anti-Christian violence had any official Ottoman sanction, and argued that, to the contrary, the Ottomans were liberal towards their Christian subjects. As Consul, Ydlibi held numerous entertainments at the grand house and grounds, Arlington Place on the Oxford Road, he had been granted. These included celebrations for the British-Ottoman-French-Sardinian victory over the Russians at Sebastopol during the Crimean War for over 200 guests, who were entertained by the city's brass band. While Ydlibi stood out on the streets of Manchester for his penchant for wearing a fez, he was very much part of the Manchester's wealthy trader middle class and its social life. He was a patron of the Theatre Royal of Manchester and donated to the city's Patriotic Fund.
Despite his efforts to find alternatives during the Lancashire Cotton Famine, it wiped him out financially, and he went to Constantinople and entered into the service of Sultan Abdul Aziz, taking his son, Ali, and his new wife, Emma, with him. Emma and Ydlibi had a son, Hassib, who later pursued a successful career as a concession-chaser in Ethiopia. The Ydlibi firm continued to operate out of Marseilles. Abdullah Ydibli was paralyzed by a stoke and died in 1885.
His son Ali married Rebecca Hinchley, an Irishwoman, with whom he had a son, Abdullah James (b. 1871). When the family returned to the Middle East, Abdullah James was educated at the British Protestant College in Beirut. Later he moved to Llandaff in Wales to a pioneering school for the Deaf and Dumb, where he adapted the manual alphabet to Arabic for the first time. He later settled in England where he married Edith Eleanor in 1915, giving up his first name, "Abdullah".
Rebecca agreed to her spouse Ali taking a second wife, who was Syrian. He had two sons by this second marriage, Ozzat (b.1879) and Abdulgani (b.1887), who went back to Manchester at the beginning of the twentieth century where they joined another trading relative, Selim Idielbe, to carry on with the family business. Now known as James Iddleby, he died in Cheshire in 1952.
Marked on the map is the Manchester Royal Exchange. The first exchange (pictured) was built on this site in 1809, where Ydlibi and the other Manchester Arab cotton traders made their deals. Queen Victoria granted the exchange its royal charter in 1851. At its peak, 11,000 licensed cotton traders would come to the Exchange to conduct their business on Tuesdays and Fridays. In its heyday as "King Cotton", Manchester was also known as the Cottonopolis. The original Exchange was knocked down and the expanded, current building (see second picture, dated 1891) was constructed between 1867 and 1874.
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Sources and Attribution
Ancestry.co.uk (subscription only)
Britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk (subscription only)
F. Halliday, "The Millet of Manchester", British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 19/2, 1992, 159-176.
N. Longmate, The Hungry Mills (London: Temple Smith, 1978).
R. Macnamara, "From Arab Millet to British Islam: Syrian Muslims in Victorian Manchester", forthcoming
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