Skip to main content
NC State Home
Arbeely family: Pioneers to America and founders of the first Arabic language newspaper

Family History

Oct 20, 2023

The Health Consequences of Researching Our Family and Community History

In 1992, I was thirty-nine years old, living in Sydney, Australia, when my father died in South Africa. I was heartbroken, as most migrants are, with the loss of significant others overseas. I began dedicated research into my family history. Every week, I faxed ten questions to my mother; for example, “When and where was…

Feb 22, 2023

Visible at Last

In writing our lives, we find a starting point in a memory or an experience, something we feel it is important to document. As a child, growing up under apartheid in South Africa, there were things I observed for which I had no words. 

Jan 31, 2022

The Moghabghab Family in Cyprus, New York, and Madeira, 1878-1974

The name of Theophilus Mogabgab (1886-1965), a native of Famagusta in Cyprus, was well known to Cypriots and to visitors to the island. He became an authority, entirely self-taught, on the history of the ancient walled town of Famagusta and impressed the many visitors whom he guided with his enthusiasm and extraordinary knowledge of the…

Jul 27, 2021

My Mother’s 78 RPM Arabic Record Collection

My mother used to love to listen to Arabic music, especially when she was working in the kitchen. At first, her Arabic records were 78 RPMs, and later on, Arabic cassettes. As a ten or twelve-year-old, I recall that our family had a console radio that had a turntable on top that was located in…

Mar 4, 2021

Alan Jabbour, “A Cultured Man”: Foodways, Music, and Syria Dreamin’

As we five folklorists conversed with Alan Jabbour about his family immigration saga over the course of ninety minutes, he guided us from stories of his grandfather’s and then his father’s experiences as adult immigrants to his own life as the first of his family to be born and to spend his childhood in America.…

Nov 30, 2016

Arbeely family: Pioneers to America and founders of the first Arabic language newspaper

This article is written by Dr. Akram Khater, Director of the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies and Khayrallah Distinguished Professor of Lebanese Diaspora Studies, and Professor of History at NC State. This research would not have been possible without Ms. Martha Hess, Volunteer in the History Room, Maryville College Archives for her help in providing the…