Loading ...Greater Syrian Diaspora at 78RPM: Mohamed Said ZainEldeen
By: Richard Breaux/Arab America Contributing Writer
What do you do when you find several dozen 78 rpm records all in Arabic and you can neither read, nor speak the language? You research the musicians and record labels and write about them.…at least that’s what Arab America contributing writer, Richard Breaux did. The result is bound to teach you something about Arab American history and heritage in the first half of the 20th Century. Arab America highlights some of the well-known and lesser-known Arab American musicians profiled in this series. This week’s article features Arab American music legend, Samy Attaya.
There are several early-period Arab American musicians for whom we have so little information we can hardly compose a narrative that provides anything other than the most basic biographical information. Walim Kamel and Zakia Agob are among them. For others, we have slightly more, but still incomplete information. The tenor M. ZainEldeen stands out as one.
We’ve long had one M. ZainEldeen 78 RPM record and most recently, after we undertook piecing together scraps of his biographical information, we acquired another. As usual, we scoured over immigration documents, U.S. Census data, city directories, and three-quarters of the way through, we located and corresponded with surviving relatives – here’s what we found. Mohamed ZainEldeen was born 1 November 1892 in Homs, Syria. Originally, his name was Zain Eldeen, but his Declaration of Intention for US Naturalization notes that he was also known as Mohamed Zaineldeen. Following the flood of immigrants from Ottoman-controlled Greater Syria, he arrived in New York on 6 May 1912 by way of Beirut and Patras, Greece. Uniquely, and unlike many of the immigrants from Greater Syria, Mohamed had served three months in the Ottoman Army as a private before coming to the United States.
Previous to 1909, Ottoman authorities required only Muslims to serve in the military. In 1909, however, authorities passed a law that made military service mandatory for all male Ottoman subjects. Minimum service time varied by branch between two years and four years. Mohamed served less than the minimum of three years required for infantry men in the Army.
Muslim immigrants to the United States, like Mohamed ZainEldeen, were a minority within a minority, yet their numbers were sizable enough to establish documented, if not short-lived mosques on Rector Street in lower Manhattan, in Highland Park, Michigan, Ross, North Dakota, and Michigan City, Indiana before a community of Muslims founded a much more viable mosque in Cedar Rapids, Iowa during the 1930s. In Brooklyn, as early as 1907, Muslim Tartars from the Pale of Settlement, where the Imperial Russian Pogroms were previously carried out against Jews and Muslims, created the American Mohammedan Society. Immigrants from the Caribbean also founded the Islamic Mission of America in Brooklyn in 1939. Whether ZainEldeen prayed Salat al-Jummah or Zuhr at either of these remains unknown. Sometimes cultural and ethnic differences influenced whether people chose to attend one masjid or another. ZainEldeen likely prayed most of the Salat, even early-afternoon prayer, at home or privately at work.
The circumstances which brought ZainEldeen to Columbia’s recording studios in the towering Woolworth Building at 233 Broadway in Manhattan remains unclear. It was only a brisk twelve-minute walk from New York’s Little Syrian or Syrian Colony neighborhood to the Columbia offices. A small number of other Arab immigrants and Arab Americans such as Nahum Simon, Rev. George Aziz, Naim Karacand, Walim Kamel, and others recorded songs on the Columbia label before ZainEldeen. In December 1916 (another source gives September), Mohamed ZainEldeen preserved his tenor voice performing seven songs on the following six double-sided discs: “Tair An Nia-Bagdadi 1 & 2,” #E3431; “Khafaratt #1 &2,” E3121; “Lagi Ala Addarr 1 & 2,” # E3124; “Ramatin Soulaima 1 &2,” “Allah hu Akbar 1 & 2,” #E3383; “Ya Rakiban” and “Biabi Ajfan” #E3199. At least one of the musicians who accompanied him was violinist Naim Karacand. Another musician played the kanoon. It is not unusual, in the least, that he did not enjoy a music career that could financially sustain him; most musicians who recorded in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s, could not. What is most remarkable is that these individuals recorded at all and that some of their recordings have survived. Expecting an immigrant or natural-born citizen to earn a living as a musician or singer was a tall order.
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Interestingly, the opportunity to perform on Columbia did not translate into later recordings on Alexander Maloof’s Maloof Phonograph & Music Company or A.J. Macksoud’s Macksoud Records.
Tailoring clothing remained the skill Mohamed ZainEldeen knew best and he moved to Connecticut and Brooklyn, New York, to make use of this talent. A few months after he recorded, ZainEldeen lived in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he operated his own business as a tailor and although he was single and without children, he noted that he was responsible for the care of four other individuals, likely siblings. Later in 1917, he moved to his business to 189 State Street in Brooklyn and he resided at 84 State Street. Back in one of New York City’s two large Arab American communities, Mohamed met Malaki “Margaret” Castley and the two applied for their marriage license on 27 October 1919 and wed 12 December 1919.
Margaret was ten years Mohamed’s junior and born in Rhode Island to parents from Greater Syria. The couple had been married less than one year when Margaret gave birth to their first child named Frederick in September 1920. Fifteen months after Frederick arrived, Marie was born New Year’s Eve 1921. In between the birth of their second and third children’s births, Mohamed filed his “Declaration of Intention” to become a naturalized US Citizen on 7 August 1925. The family lived in a small apartment at 226 Atlantic Avenue in the Brooklyn’s Syrian and Lebanese community. Instead of Rhode Island, on his first papers application, Mohamed listed Margaret’s birthplace as Damascus rather than Rhode Island. We don’t know which of these is most accurate, but if Rhode Island-born, this would have likely expedited Mohamed’s immigration application. Instead the two may have worried about rumors surrounding immigration laws in place from 1907 to 1922 which stripped American women of their US citizenship if they married a non-US citizen ineligible to become a naturalized citizen.
Although this law really only applied to white women who married, non-naturalizable, non-white immigrants, recall that between 1907 and 1915, it took several court decisions to determine the race classification of immigrants from Greater Syria. Syrians had gone from being considered naturalizable whites, to non-naturalizable Asians based on the concept of “common knowledge,” back to white and eligible of naturalized citizenship again. No doubt, this would have been confusing to a good number of people and Mohamed and Margaret could have easily been in this position. It may also be likely that the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act, which limited immigration from Syria to 100 people per year, prompted Mohamed to file his first papers. We just don’t know for sure. With the new year in January 1926, came Rita; the last of the ZainEldeen children born in the 1920s, but not the last ZainEldeen child. There were plenty of mouths to feed and Mohamed and Margaret remained busy through their children’s formative years. Mohamed no longer worked for himself but worked at the New Yorker Hotel as a hired tailor who made adjustments to the clothes of hotel residents and walk-in clients.
Construction workers had just completed the New Yorker in 1929 and Mohamed soon found work there by 1930. Despite regular work, the Depression took its toll on the ZainEldeens. The family lived at 304 Pacific in Brooklyn in 1930 and 158 Court Street in 1933, but moved to 307 Sackett Street by 1940. In addition to the move, Margaret gave birth to Helen in 1934. Fred joined his father working at the New Yorker Hotel by 1940 and Marie found work at a novelty and clothing shop. Mohamed also more regularly used the name Said or Saide in the 1930s and 1940s.
After 1942, we can follow the lives of Fred (1991), Marie (2006), Rita (2000), and Helen ZainEldeen, but Margaret and Mohamed Said disappeared from the public record. We learned from family members that in the 1940s, Mohamed Said and Margaret separated. Margaret left Brooklyn and relocated to Staten Island where she lived into her 90s.
Following his years in Brooklyn, Mohamed Said ZainEldeen moved and found work near Reno, Nevada. While in Nevada, ZainEldeen lost nearly every valuable piece of government-issued identification he owned. According to the Nevada State Journal, “M. Zaineldeen of 522 Lander Street lost “an airmail envelope containing citizenship papers, a marriage license, and various letters and papers valuable to no one but the owner.” We don’t know if the documents were ever recovered and so the question about Zaineldeen’s long journey to naturalization remains a mystery. After Reno, ZainEldeen took work in Schroon Lake, New York in the late-1950s, but returned to Brooklyn where he opened a second-hand shop.
What his grandchildren know with greater certainty is that by 1960, Mohamed Said ZainEldeen went to Syria for a short time, returned to Reno, worked as a tailor, moved to Brooklyn, and legally divorced Margaret. The family believes he remained in the United States until his youngest child, Helen, married and was cared for and some time after May 1961, he packed his belongings and moved back to Homs, Syria. Homs had grown to be a much larger city than it had been when ZainEldeen left – double the size in population. His children, by this point, were well into adulthood and began having families of their own. Although his grandchildren have no memory of ZainEldeen singing, older family members remember that Mohamed Said had a nice singing voice. His son Fred sang while working around the house and on occasion at family parties. None of the children or grandchildren sing professionally, although a few are known to play the piano or sing rather well.
On the first of January 1972, Mohamed Said ZainEldeen died in Homs, Syria. In some ways, he was like Nahum Simon, Rev. George Aziz, Louis Wardiny, and other early Mahjari musicians who returned to the Levant, but were never fully appreciated for their pioneering role in early Arab American recorded music.
Richard M. Breaux is an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse from Oakland, California. His courses and research explore the social and cultural histories of African Americans and Arab Americans in the 20th Century.
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