Talk:Najeeb Halaby

Origins of the name "Halaby"
Will a Wikipedian of Syrian origin please tell us if Mr. Halaby's family name ((Arabic: نجيب إلياس حلبي‎) was ) is associated with the Arabic name for the city of Aleppo, Syria (Arabic: حلب‎ ['ħalab])

Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.79.155.202 (talk) 07:15, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm surprised no one has answered this yet, but yes, of course! Halaby translates to "Aleppian"; a person from Aleppo, Syria. George Al-Shami (talk) 21:50, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 15:57, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

So what did he fly? And did he fly at all?
If Halaby indeed made the first transcontinental jet flight in 1945, what did he fly? A P-59? A P-80? Of course the question is moot, since Halaby made no such flight. The first transcontinental jet flight was made by USAAF Col. William Councill, in a Lockheed P-80 in January 1946.173.62.11.254 (talk) 22:09, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Najeeb Halaby Lebanese Origins
Its important to understand that just because a merchant or a merchant family traded in Aleppo and established business there and even one or two generations were born there does not mean the family has to be originally from Aleppo or ethnically Syrian.

A Halabi and the Halabi surname also means those who traded with Aleppo, not just those who are from originally from Aleppo, which is why there are a various Lebanese Christian families with the surname Halabi/Halaby/Halabe as you can see in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabi_(surname). This Halabi merchants traded in Istanbul, Aleppo, Beirut and Cairo/Alexandria and where involved in the domestic/regional/terrestrial trade in that network usually of silk and cotton. A couple of examples are:

-Najeeb Halabi, former CEO of Pam American Airlines and father of Queen Nour of Jordan, who states in his biography that his father emigrated to America from Zahle, Lebanon. Najeeb Halabi thought his ancestors originally came from Aleppo because of his last name but there is no evidence of this and his ancestors could have just been Halabi merchants from Lebanon, not necesarily from Aleppo per se as discussed by Henry Louis Gates in Faces of America in https://books.google.se/books?id=meYbj1E6Ki8C&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=Almas+Mallouk+Halaby&source=bl&ots=rFkkzjZFO4&sig=ACfU3U3hlqMIm1wobTTCA4erRHx_BTcK9A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwij6KK667PoAhXPwosKHYUUDyEQ6AEwAnoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=Almas%20Mallouk%20Halaby&f=false.

-The Daher family of France founders of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daher. The Daher family was a Halabi family that traded wool and cooton that arrived to France from Alepo in the 1850s https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Daher. Some of the families far back ancestors married in Istanbul. https://gw.geneanet.org/wikifrat?lang=en&p=paul&n=daher. However the Dahers are a Christian family originally from Lebanon, having settled there from Iraq in 1600 (original spelling is Dagher) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daher_(disambiguation).Chris O&#39; Hare (talk) 17:39, 26 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Hey Chris, this is an interesting topic, that I will explain in detail. 1) First of all everything on Wikipedia has to be based on sources, we cannot engage in WP:OR. I will look into the city or village where the Halaby family hails from, however it is irrelevant because no WP:OR can take place, it has to be based on the sources.


 * Before August 1920 there was no Lebanese state with the borders that Mark Sykes and Georges Picot drew, there was always Mount Lebanon, but Beirut and Zahle are not part of Mount Lebanon. Modern-day nationalism as we know it today, began after the culmination of the Napoleonic wars that ended after 1815, which preceded the French invasions of surrounding European countries that stoked the nationalism that we have today. This resulted in two watershed or landmarks events, the 1866 Italian unification and the 1871 German unification, which had intense ramifications for the rest for the world. Syria which was under Ottoman occupation was not immune to nationalistic fervor that emanated from Europe. As you probably know Syrian Christians, especially businessmen, had cultural and business ties to Europe, more specifically France and from these connections, came about Syrian nationalism which became pronounced, in the nationalist designations that the Syrian people used to refer to themselves, in the papers, and in the institutions that were created. A sizable percentage of Syrians, more specifically Syrian Christians and to a much lesser extent Muslims, in all of historical Syria (Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan) adopted this nationalistic designation, so much so that when a Beiruti decided to open a local YMCA in Beirut he called it the SYMCA (Syrian Young men's Christian Association). When the Americans built their college in Beirut in 1866 they called it the "Syrian Protestant College". Even the French whose clients became the Maronites, when they landed in Syria in 1920 and just before the creation of Lebanon, they were printing postcards in Beirut with "Beyrouth, Syrie". Anyways there are too many primary documents and examples to back that up.


 * When Syrians started immigrating to America in 1880s, more than half registered themselves as Syrians to immigration officials; however if you check the US immigration files before 1920, none called themselves "Lebanese". Anyways, the Syrian mother colony in the U.S was in Lower Manhattan and it got called Little Syria. And of course what led to the creation of Lebanon was sectarian, in that after the Maronites approved of King Faisal in 1918 in Damascus; when they found out that the Europeans during the 1918 Paris Peace Conference decided to give France a mandate over Syria, the Maronite started to ask for a country separate from Syria. If you check out some of the history books, you will find out that after the creation of "Le grand Liban", Lebanese Christians (more specifically Christian Orthodox and a minority of Maronites) continued to call themselves Syrian in Lebanon up until the the late 1940s, when the French where kicked out of Lebanon and Syria by the English and the two countries went on their separate ways; and after that all Lebanese called themselves Lebanese.  Historically, there is definitely a sectarian twist to this, in that even before 1920, Maronites knew that the Ottoman occupation was going to end and they were not enthusiastic about Muslim control from Damascus, because it was evident that the future capital of Syria would be Damascus, not Beirut. Whereas the Christian Orthodox, didn't have the same reservations about this as the Maronites and a larger percentage of the Orthodox called themselves Syrian; and the Halabys are a Christian Orthodox family.


 * Back in the US, the same thing happened; up until the late 1940s many Lebanese continued to call themselves "Syrian". To give some proof, "Lebanese"-American intellectual Salloum Mokarzel who hailed from Mount Lebanon founded a magazine to appeal to Lebanese/Syrian American children and he called it The Syrian World in 1926, 6 years after the founding of Lebanon!


 * Anyways, the reason why the sources, the newspapers, the authors, and the historians refer to the Lebanese and Syrians in America from 1880 to 1920 as "Syrian/Lebanese or "Syro-Lebanese" is to reconcile the historical reality the I explained above. George Al-Shami (talk) 19:13, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Hi George,

Thanks for your willingness to collaborate and your detailed message. Ultimately it comes down to the present designation of what today or after 1943 it means to be a Syrian and a Lebanese. The Syrians of today are not the Syro-Lebanese of pre 1943. Just like the Syria of today is not what Ottoman Syria was pre 1918. When Lebanon was created those who came from the territory of what became Lebanon started calling themselves Lebanese and saying the father of Najeeb Halaby was a Syrian from Zahle today is not correct and confuses readers. We are in 2020 not 1925.Chris O&#39; Hare (talk) 21:58, 26 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Hello Chris, I should have checked out your sources and what you're tying to do, before explaining why the New York Times source employed "Syrian-Lebanese". I read the Gates source you brought up, I read all 21 pages; a fascinating read. Did you actually read it yourself? Gates researchers couldn't conclude where Elias' family (that's Lisa'a great-grandfather) is from.


 * Brother, what you're trying to do with this Halaby family information by synthesizing from 2 wiki articles and 1 genealogy site is called original research. Wikipedia policy is 100% against that. Please go over WP:SYNTH and WP:OR. The first line explains it succinctly in 1 sentence: "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources." You also did the same thing in the March edit on the same page, using Najeeb's memoir, you used the source because it said that Elias was born in Zahle, but then you disregarded what the following sentence says; that his parents are from Aleppo. That's deceiving to the reader, Chris. Just because he was born in Zahle doesn't mean that his family and roots are from Zahle nor that he immigrated from there. To say that Elias immigrated from Lebanon (even though there was no such thing as Lebanon at the time), because the son Najeeb said he was born there, that's your original research. You have to stick to what the source explicitly says, you can't come up with your own original research.


 * Moreover, many editors who edit Eastern Mediterranean articles, already know that Halabi family is found all over the place in Modern-Day Syria and not just in Modern-day Lebanon. however this info is still irrelevant, you have to stick to what the source says.


 * I happen to own a copy of Lisa Halaby's memoir, on page 9 and 10 she says "My Arab grandfather, Najeeb, and his older brother, Habib, were only twelve and fourteen when they had sailed steerage from Beirut to Ellis Island with their mother, Almas, and younger siblings. They hailed from the Syrian city of Halab, or Aleppo, a great cultural capital and center of learning in the Arab world. My grandfather lived very briefly in the scenic riverside village of Zahle, Lebanon, before joining the family in Beirut for its voyage to the New World."


 * So according to the source, Elias lived in Zahle briefly, that doesn't make him "Lebanese"; let it go man; stop trying to Lebanize this family () and stick to what the source actually says. George Al-Shami (talk) 05:45, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

I see you have deleted the source of Najeeb Halaby's memoir book where he says his father WAS BORN and not just lived there temporarily like you are claiming. Since you deliberately deleted the source I will be reporting you on this.

Cherry picking as per https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking is not allowed here on Wikipedia.

The only thing for sure that we know about Najeeb's father is that he was born in Zahle as per https://books.google.se/books?id=5bQQAQAAMAAJ&q=Crosswinds+airman%27s+memoir+Halaby+Lebanon&dq=Crosswinds+airman%27s+memoir+Halaby+Lebanon&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjIs5mB27PoAhUN7aYKHQB5CzwQ6AEIKDAA

Najeeb claims his grandparents came from Aleppo in that same source yes however Henry Louis Gates says that couldnt be proven in https://books.google.se/books?id=meYbj1E6Ki8C&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=Almas+Mallouk+Halaby&source=bl&ots=rFkkzjZFO4&sig=ACfU3U3hlqMIm1wobTTCA4erRHx_BTcK9A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwij6KK667PoAhXPwosKHYUUDyEQ6AEwAnoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=Almas%20Mallouk%20Halaby&f=false.

Im pretty sure that there is plenty of documentation in Aleppo so if Gates couldnt find any birth or marriages certificates there perhaps Queen Noor of Jordan's great grandparents werent really born or lived there and perhaps she, like her fathe did, was assuming they were from there because that is what her "Halaby" surname "means" when its also known it could mean "those who traded with Aleppo" and as stated by Gates they could have easily been from Zahle as well or Beirut and adopted the surname many generations far back.

And no, i did not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. The memoir of Queen Noor where she says hee greatgrandparents where from Aleppo is from 2003. The book of Gates where it says WE DIDNT KNOW (whichs means both Gates and Queen Noor) where exactly in Syria Noor greatgranfparents Elias and Almas were from is from 2010. So a more recent source says the place of birth of Elias Halaby is currently unknown which is why i left out that Najeebs grandparents where from Aleppo as that is still in doubt qnd only stated what is know for sure which is that he was born un Zahle

I will be reporting you on eliminating THE most important source which is definitely Najeebs own biography and taking away the sentence that said he was born in Zahle.

I know you Syrian Americans have little accomplishments just like the rest of the non-Lebanese Middle Eastern Americans so you resort to stealing the accomplishments of the Lebanese Americans. And when you cant, you resort to saying the Christian Lebanese dont descend from the original Cannanites and Phoenicians and that they are descendands of Arabs to calm down the pathetic insecurity of the Syrians and Palestinians which are 90% arab muslims like you are pushing on the Maronites page where you reverted my edit and kept the Arab descendance of the Maronites backed by a source that i havent been able to verify and is probably fake or doesnt say that. The Syrians and Palestinians stealing the accomplishments and denying the history and legacy of the very same country and people that has taken two million Syrian and Palestinians. Pretty pathetic isnt it.

I will be reporting your cherry picking editsChris O&#39; Hare (talk) 23:20, 3 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Chris, don't get silly man. You can report as much as you want, you have no case. It's you who is engaging in cherry-picking.


 * I removed the sentence with Najeeb's memoir source, because your sentence said "who immigrated to the United States from Zahle", his memoir doesn't say that; that's what I was explaining to you about original research. Don't make things up, here's the diff (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Najeeb_Halaby&type=revision&diff=959107360&oldid=958996232) your sentence didn't say he was born in Zahle. There's no problem whatsoever with that source, if the source says he was born in Zahle, then go ahead and add that, no editor can argue against that. However you have to say in the article that Halaby says that his father "was born in Zahle" and if you include his memoir as the source then there's no problem with that at all.


 * The problem was that you came up with your own synthesis that "he immigrated" from Zahle. The source doesn't say that Chris, you have to stick to what the source actually says. Just because the grandfather was born in Zahle, does not make him "Lebanese" and nor does it prove that the Halabi family is from Zahle. To say that the Halabi family is from Zahle, you need a source that says that.


 * When you say "Jordan's great grandparents werent really born or lived there and perhaps she, like her fatheR did, was assuming they were from there because that is what her "Halaby"..you're still engaging in your own synthesis, personally on the streets you could do that, but you can't add you own synthesis here on Wiki articles. Gates research cannot conclusively discount nor contradict family history and more specifically oral history which could be very accurate. Stop claiming that the Halabis think that they are from Aleppo, because Halab in Arabic means Aleppo, you don't know that as a fact, you're making it up, it's your opinion. We can't go with opinion, we need reputable academic sources.


 * Now, your other silly arguments about the Maronites page and me. Chris you added a lot of unsourced material on that page, if you can find reputable academic sources that back that up, then there's no issue. (A political blog is not an acceptable academic source) You're mixing Maronite political viewpoints with an encyclopedic article that has to be based on academic sources and not on the opinion of a politician or a political group. To be concrete, you removed a line with the cited source, which actually said what that line in question said in the article. I feel kinship with the Lebanese/Palestinian/Jordanian people, please don't engage in drivel that is beneath you.


 * You're obviously not familiar with my edits, because I've been trying to clean up a lot of the unsourced POV that Pan-Arabists have been dumping on the articles that we're interested in for a long time. I'm concerned with making the articles I'm interested in as professional and as encyclopedic as possible.


 * If you're interested in the history of the Maronites and Lebanon, then I highly recommend you buy and read this book (https://www.amazon.com/House-Many-Mansions-History-Reconsidered/dp/0520071964/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=a+house+of+many+mansions+%3B+history+of+lebanon+reconsidered&qid=1591254856&sr=8-1), read all of it - you would definitely pick up on many topics -such as Phoenicianism- that you might not have been familiar with - and then let me know what you think of the book. George Al-Shami (talk) 07:43, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Dont call my arguments silly you arrogant prick.

Najeebs grandfather was born in Zahle and immigrated to America from Beirut according to Queen Noor but so what? Beirut was a port and most people left to America from there but sure i could have said exactly that to satisfy your literal copying from sources demand but its also a wikipedia guideline to keep things concise and avoid unnecesary dribbling.

You on the other hand deleted he came from Zahle (meaning he was a native from there which is what i meant) both in Najeeb' and Queen Noor articles and stated in Queen Noor article Najeebs grandparents hailed from Aleppo which both Gates and Queen Noor in 2010 state they were not sure of.

Only you believe your kingship bullshit but trust me you are not the first Arab American with relatives from todays Syria that i have stopped trying to turn a Lebanese into a todays Syrian. They are all over the internet, same as the Assyrians, trying to get a hold of Lebanese and steal its nationality to make the Syrian kind look better. They arent gonna full anyone just like you arent.

Regarding the Maronires, instead of deleting the only unsourced sentence i add out of all the edits with sources i added along with it to expand on the history of the Maronites you changed or decided to revert it to someone elses that came in and edited and changed it to a "sourced" claim that says the Maronites are of Arab descent when there are reliable notable sources that says about 2500 Maronites out of 1.5 million in Lebanon are descendants of muslim converts to Christianity but of course you being knowledgable about the topic as you claim you are decided to ignore that and keep the arab descendance "sourced" sentence.

You also reverted or actually deleted the ethnic groups they are related to. Before it used to say the first ethnic group they were related to were the Assyrians which is pretty laughable. I came in and added their more closely related groups which indeed are the Cannanites, Phoenicians, Arameans and Jews as already proven by genetic studies by Behar et al. Instead of requesting a source for it you deleted it probably because it didnt say Arab like you wished it said right? Who are you fooling here Al-Shami? Not me thats for sureChris O&#39; Hare (talk) 12:32, 4 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Chris, I never called you silly, I said your arguments were silly and a lot of them were very insulting. I could easily respond with impolite names for you, but I refuse to go down that path, and let's dial down the acrimonious tone. There is no merit nor any evidence to any of your unfair accusations. The addition of the passage that directly states what the source said has not been removed by me, because there is no WP:SYNTH and WP:OR as was the case before. I have added another passage that is directly stated by both memoir sources, please do not remove that. I removed the Lebanon link, because it is not historically accurate, as Lebanon did not exist at the time and neither was Syria independent and that's why we periodically use the Ottoman Syria link for subjects that hailed from that region at that time. To provide you with a similar example, check out the George Washington article, notice for his birth location the British America link is employed, because that is the historically accurate name and article for the reader to read and the U.S did not exist at the time. However if you don't want to add the Ottoman Syria link in the body of the paragraph, we don't have to. We can just keep the names of the two cities. We all strive to keep what the source specifically and directly states to avoid unfairly deceiving the reader and to keep the article as encyclopedic as possible. George Al-Shami (talk) 23:23, 4 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Here you go, I went through some trouble to locate the 1894 Boston Globe article that Henry Gates looked at and to download it for you and other Wiki readers to consume. [[File:The Boston Globe Sat Jun 30 1894 article Crowded out of Syria, Elias Halaby comes from Ancient Damascus.pdf|thumb|1894 Boston Globe article about Syrian immigrant to the U.S]] (when you click on it, you can make it larger). The article does state that the grandfather worked as treasurer in a number of provinces in Syria. However it also mentions that he was living in the city of Damascus before he immigrated to the U.S with 2 of his 7 children, the older Habib aged 15 years and the younger Najeeb aged 13 years. Thus, this primary document (the original source) contradicts what you had written in the article before, Najeeb senior (the grandfather of the Pan Am CEO) immigrated from Damascus, not Zahle. The article is extremely interesting, I hope that you and others enjoy reading it, because Elias Halaby says that in 1891 it was already getting difficult for Christians to live in Syria; very interesting primary document! George Al-Shami (talk) 06:44, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

"RfC on on how to state Najeeb Halaby father of Queen Noor of Jordan ancestral origins from his autobiography"
How should we state in their wiki bios what Najeeb Halaby and Queen Noor of Jordan have said in their autobiography about the origins of his father and her grandfather? Ongoing discussion found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Najeeb_Halaby#Najeeb_Halaby_Lebanese_OriginsChris O&#39; Hare (talk) 15:14, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

The first to fly a jet across the US
Who was the first to fly a jet across the United States? Najeeb Halaby or Jack Woolams Whatsupkarren (talk) 18:45, 6 July 2024 (UTC)