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So, a research friend emailed me asking about some information about the age of girls admitted into mission schools, & of course this lead to a complete unrelated rabbit hole of research on entangled, transnational, mixed race family connections. Here's the thread!
Speaking of Elizabeth Bowen-Thompson & sisters, Jean Said Makdisi wrote "Henry Salt, the British consul in Egypt, was their father's cousin." (Teta, Mother and Me, pg 176).
Bowen-Thompson was a British missionary who, with Selim Kessab (although he is often not given as much credit), est. the British Syrian Schools in Beirut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bowen_Thompson.
The grandmother of Jean (& thus Edward Said), Munira, taught at the BSS, which eventually grew into a series of schools that are now part of the wider network of Protestant ("Evangelical") schools in Lebanon (the division of these schools into groups requires a separate thread)
There is no reference for the source stating that Bowen-Thompson was the cousin with Henry Salt...which probably means that it's local gossip...and thus most likely, in some way, correct (as I have found doing my research)
So who was Henry Salt, he was a British "Artist, Traveller, Diplomat, Egyptologist" https://books.google.com/books?id=JopG0-whvyAC&lpg=PA183&vq=mahbubeh&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q&f=false He is most famous for the Egyptian artifacts he "acquired" and donated to the British Museum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Salt_(Egyptologist)
I'm interested in Henry Salt (who I refer to has Sr.) b/c most biographies skip over the fact that he had relations (long term?) with an Abyssinian/Ethiopian woman named Mahbubeh who bore him an illegitimate son, also named Henry Salt (thus Henry Salt, Jr).
I only just found Mahbubeh's name today!!! https://books.google.com/books?id=JopG0-whvyAC&lpg=PA183&vq=mahbubeh&pg=PA183#v=onepage&q&f=false
While the details are unclear, it appears that Henry Salt Jr. was actually raised in another household, that of Osman Effendi, a Scottish man who was originally enslaved in Egypt & converted to Islam. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20078583
Osman Effendi served as a middle man for various European travelers, inc. J. L. Burckhardt (who he met outside of Mecca). It was Burckhardt who convinced Henry Salt Sr. to have Osman Effendi manumitted. Upon his death, Burckhardt apparently bequeathed his wife to Effendi (WTF)
Effendi also worked with Edward William Lane, and it was Effendi who apparently purchased the 8 year old Greek-Egyptian girl Nafeesah/Anastasia who eventually became Lane's wife. A possible later portrait of her can be found in this article https://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/200802/the.indefatigable.mr.lane.htm
As the Lanes moved from Egypt to Worthing, England in the late 1840s, I am really curious about Nafeesah/Anastasia's thoughts and experiences of this relocation, as well as how she was perceived by the her Victorian neighbors!
Noticeably, it was Nafeesah/Anastasia who, upon Edward's death, donated his work to the British Museum https://www.bl.uk/eblj/1989articles/pdf/article3.pdf
So to recap, Henry Salt Jr, was the son of an English man who was UK consul in Egypt and an Abyssinian woman, who was raised in the house of a Scottish Muslim freed slave who regularly purchased young girls for Orientalists to marry during the early 19th century.
But the real reason that I am interested in Henry Salt Jr. is that he married Julia Phoebe Carabet, daughter of Dionysius Carabet & Maria, two of the first converts to Protestantism in Ottoman Syria!!
To be honest, we don't hear much about Julia Pheobe (or her brother Philippe Jean) in comparison to her sisters Salome & Melita, although it may have been the baptism of Julia Pheobe that lead to the excommunication of Dionyisus and Gregory Wortabet in 1830!
The first time I think I found out about her was from the list of names for those who remains are (supposed to be) in the Charnel House at the Anglo-American Cemetery Beirut https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/160834388/julia-phoebe-salt (ask me another time to do a thread about the removal of the graves)
Despite their fathers being excommunicated, the Carabet and Wortabet children played key roles in the development of Protestantism in Ottoman Syria. I wrote a short piece about Julia Pheobe's sister Melita here …https://anglo-americancemeterybeirut.blogspot.com/2015/07/melita-carabet-student-teacher-sister.html
The 2 families were connected when Julia's sister Salome married John Wortabet--who is famous for being ordained as a Scottish missionary (yep!) and was one of the founding professors at Syrian Protestant College (now the American University of Beirut). https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/31845
One of the thing that I and Uta (whose book I shared in the previous post) explore is the complex racial hierarchies of this community. The Wortabets & Carabets were Armenians who became key figures in the Arabic-English (& German) speaking Protestant community in Ottoman Syria.
But when we add Henry Salt Jr into the mix, through Julia Phoebe, this makes it even more complex!! What did it mean for an Armenian-Arab Protestant woman to marry a half-British/half-Abyssinian, illegitimate man who was raised in a Scottish Muslim household in Egypt?
But of course what I want to really know is what was Elizabeth Bowen-Thompson's reaction when everyone found out that she was (apparently) cousins with Henry Salt, & thus (*clutch my lace collar*) related to the Syrian community she sought to "civilize"?!!!
while there is still a lot to unpack of this story, I wanted to share it (partially so that I don't forget the connections), but also b/c I saw this awesome thread early today that discussed the frustration that women were often erased from family trees https://twitter.com/Ayman_makarem/status/1337891466727735296
