One nineteenth century couple are an early example of an intercultural Muslim marriage. They were Ali and Amy Mokaiesh who...
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Manchester's Arab Cotton Traders (19th-20th Centuries)
In the mid-nineteenth century, cotton traders from Beirut settled in Manchester, forming one of the very earliest communities. In 1882, there were 62 Levantine firms in the city, a mix of Muslim Arab, Aremenian, Sephardic Jews and Greeks, all of whom were Ottoman citizens. There was also a smaller distinct group of Moroccan merchants from Fes who were the earliest pioneers. By the end of the nineteenth century, 150 Middle Eastern merchant houses had been established in Manchester. The Moroccans left Manchester in the 1930s, while the Lebanese-Syrian community seem to have dispersed, some back to the Middle East while others follows other parts of their diaspora to countries like America and a few to Africa. By 1975, about 30-35 of the older families remained from this community, most highly assimilated and successful.
According to Fred Halliday, Muslim Arabs formed a minority of this cosmopolitan Ottoman millet. Politically, they leaned towards the Ottomans. They tended to congregate in Didsbury, but also in Moss Side, Hulme and Chorlton. In 1902, they numbered around 50 in total. It was a practice among them to take British wives, some of whom converted to Islam. Recent research by Riordan Macnamara suggests that this millet was more highly integrated than Halliday suggested due in part to these marriage practices.
Mustapha Karsa (pictured circa 1900) was born in Damascus in around 1848 to a wealthy landowning family. In 1880-1, Karsa...
Abdullah Ydlibi [Idlibi] (c.1820-85) came from a family of Arab notables in administration, politics and trade, with branches in Damascus...
1891
Residence of Ali and Amy Mokaiesh (1891)
One nineteenth century couple are an early example of an intercultural Muslim marriage. They were Ali and Amy Mokaiesh who were listed as living at 53 High Lane, Chorlton, in the 1891 Census.
Amina Mokaiesh (b. 1865) was born Amy Ogden into an Anglican family from Rusholme, Lancashire, the fifth youngest of six children. Amy's father was a paper merchant, a manager at the Bombay Paper Mills in Manchester. In her early twenties, Amy met Ali Mokaiesh (Muhayyish, b. 1856), a Syrian cotton trader from a wealthy Beirut family. He came to Manchester in 1884 to launch the family business there. Amy and Ali were most likely married under Islamic law and had a child, Freda, in 1890, and lived in Didsbury, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, like other Levantine merchants did at the time. Amy was Ali's second wife (the first was back in Beirut). In 1892-3, Amy travelled to the Middle East (most likely to Beirut) with two other English Muslima converts, Fatima Elizabeth Cates (1865-1900) and Leah Zuleika Banks (b.1864), and probably also with Ali and Freda to see her in-laws who lived there. On 1 May 1895, Ali and Amina had a civil marriage in Liverpool, which was witnessed by two of Liverpool Muslim Institute members, Thomas Omar Byrne and George Selim Evans, and for reasons that are unclear, Ali gave Abdullah Quilliam's home address at 21 Fairfield Crescent as his own.
Like the other Syrian Ottoman traders in Manchester, Mokaiesh played an active role in the Liverpool Muslim Institute after its recognition by the Ottomans in 1890, and would travel to Liverpool to attend celebrations such as the two Eids, the Prophet's Birthday (Milad), celebrations for the Sultan's Birthday, or to attend upon Ottoman officials passing through the port and visiting the mosque en route to somewhere else. Sometimes Mokaiesh would led prayers at the Institute when he visited there.
However, Ali's textile trading business did not fare well and he became bankrupt in 1896. He absconded with Amina and Freda to Beirut to escape his creditors. Quilliam would later defend him in absentia in court. Later on, Amina and Ali moved to Cairo where Freda had a career as a famous singer. A few years after Ali lift, the Mohayyish family sent his cousins, Kemal and Selim (pictured) to re-establish the family business in Manchester, which they did, successfully.
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Sources and Attribution
F. Halliday, "The Millet of Manchester", British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 19/2, 1992, 159-176.
R. Macnamara, “From Arab Millet to British Islam: Syrian Muslims in Victorian Manchester”, forthcoming.
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