A New York Public Library exhibition features nearly two centuries of cultural, social and political artifacts on Middle Easterners and North Africans in the city.

Charting the History of New York’s Middle Eastern Community

A New York Public Library exhibition features nearly two centuries of cultural, social and political artifacts on Middle Easterners and North Africans in the city.

• Nov. 9, 2025

A wide-ranging exhibition at the New York Public Library’s flagship building on Fifth Avenue aims to shed light on what its curator believes is an overlooked history.

“Niyū Yūrk: Middle Eastern and North African Lives in the City” traces the story of immigrants from the region who decided to call New York home, with works from the mid-19th century to 2024. Hiba Abid, the curator for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the library, said she wanted to amplify the experiences of those people because they “still feel like they are misunderstood.”

“The purpose of the show is first to show that Middle Eastern and North African people belong to the city,” she said.

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The New York Public Library exhibition “Niyū Yūrk: Middle Eastern and North African Lives in the City” traces the history of immigrants from the region who decided to call New York home, with works from the mid-19th century to 2024.

Items on view include a video interview with the Palestinian American academic Edward Said; a photo series on Yemeni bodega owners; and writings by members of the Pen League, an Arab literary society formed in the early 1900s. And there are several mentions of a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan once known as Little Syria, home to a cluster of immigrants from then Greater Syria — what is now Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Israel and Jordan.

Below are some highlights from the show, which runs through March 8.

‘The Sultan and His People’

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“The Sultan and His People” by Christopher Oscanyan on display at the exhibition.

In 1834, American missionaries in Constantinople, now Istanbul, helped send Christopher Oscanyan, an Armenian Christian, to New York to attend what is now New York University. He later worked to challenge stereotypes of the empire through his lectures and writing. He also established a Turkish coffeehouse.

In 1857, he published “The Sultan and His People,” a book that explains the history, politics, religions and customs of the Ottoman Empire. About a decade later, he served as the Ottoman consul general in New York.

Moroccan Performers

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A photo of Hassan Ben Ali, a Moroccan impresario and showman, on display.

North African acrobats started traveling to the United States in the 1840s and performed on vaudeville stages and in circuses through the 20th century, said Linda Jacobs, a historian and author. Among them was Hassan Ben Ali, a Moroccan impresario and showman who toured nationally in the 1880s and performed with his troupe until 1914. His company moved to Coney Island around 1900, performing there and at theaters across the city.

Ibrahim Farrah

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A flier for the Near East Dance Group, part of the exhibition’s section on the Lebanese American dancer and teacher Ibrahim Farrah.

Another performer highlighted in the show is the Lebanese American dancer and teacher Ibrahim Farrah. After moving to New York in the 1960s, he taught at Carnegie Hall, founded the Ibrahim School of Near East Dance and established his dance company, the Ibrahim Farrah Near East Dance Group, which toured North America from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s.

Farrah also founded Arabesque, a magazine about international dance. The publication, Abid said, “speaks to his effort in documenting, writing in a very scholarly way, about the dance traditions of the Middle East and North Africa.”

Arabic-Language Press

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Part of the exhibition is dedicated to Arabic-language publications that sprang up in New York in the late 19th century.

Several Arabic-language publications sprang up in the city in the late 19th century. “A lot of the early immigrants were highly educated,” said Hani Bawardi, an associate professor of History and Arab American Studies at the University of Michigan in Dearborn. “That was a huge ingredient for establishing the Arabic language press.”

Kawkab America, or Star of America, was the first Arabic newspaper to publish in the United States in 1892. It included letters from Syrians across America and commodities prices that were of interest to Syrian merchants in New York, Jacobs said.

Other publications include directories of Syrian and Lebanese American business owners in the United States, language primers and advice manuals and a newspaper called Al-Hoda, or The Guidance. It was founded in Pennsylvania but moved to New York in 1902 and published daily until 1971. In 1912, the first Arabic linotype machine was developed in Manhattan, revolutionizing Arabic printing across the world.

Middle Eastern Music

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In the early- to mid-1900s, New York was home to Middle Eastern record labels and musicians.

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In the early- to mid-1900s, the city was home to Middle Eastern record labels and musicians, including Alexander Maloof. This composer, pianist and music instructor, born in present-day Lebanon, ran his own record label in Little Syria that produced Arabic-language music.

Another, Abraham Joseph (A.J.) Macksoud, also ran labels and a record shop there. “They were aware of this demand coming from this growing community in the Lower West Side,” Abid said. Columbia Records also issued Arabic music.

Activist Traditions

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The cover of a yearbook by the Organization of the Arab Students in the U.S.A., an activist Arab student group that was formed in Michigan in the 1950s.

During the Algerian War of Independence, Djamila Boupacha, a member of the National Liberation Front, was accused of trying to bomb a cafe in Algiers. French military forces tortured her to elicit a confession. In 1962, the French writer Simone de Beauvoir and a French-Tunisian lawyer, Gisèle Halimi, wrote a book about the case and commissioned a portrait of Boupacha from Pablo Picasso for its cover.

A year later, a copy of the portrait graced a yearbook by the Organization of the Arab Students in the U.S.A., an activist group that was formed in Michigan in the 1950s and later headquartered in New York. Abid said the group was influenced by leftist groups in the global south, and “nourished conversations and discussions with the rest of the world.”

“It shows,” she added, “how the communities here are part of a transnational conversation.”

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