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History Happened Here — Hudson’s own Mohammedan
By Andrew Amelinckx
HUDSON — A large group of influential Muslim leaders shook Alexander Russell Webb’s hand and wished him well on his journey as he prepared to leave Bombay. It was December 1892 and Webb was on a mission to establish a foothold in America for the religion he had become a convert to a few years before.
He planned to quickly establish a weekly journal “to be dedicated to an exposition of Islam,” according to The New York Times, which he would edit. He also had plans for founding a publishing company.
Webb was intimately familiar with the publishing business, was the publisher of a weekly newspaper in Missouri and an editor in St. Louis and Chicago. Beyond that, his father, Alexander Nelson Webb, had been in the publishing business as well. He was editor of the Hudson Daily Star and was credited with introducing daily coverage.
The younger Webb was born in Hudson in 1846 to Presbyterian parents, but even as a youngster had doubts about Christianity.
“I was not born, like some boys, with a fervently religious strain in my character ... I attended the Presbyterian Sunday school of my native town, when I could not avoid it, impatient to get out into the glad sunshine and hear the more satisfying sermons preached by God Himself through the murmuring brooks, the gorgeous flowers, and the joyous birds,” he wrote.
In the mid-19th century when Webb was growing up, Hudson, its environs and especially Western New York was a hotbed of religious fervor with a myriad of mostly Christian offshoots, something that, according to Umar F. Abd-Allah in his 2006 book, “A Muslim in Victorian America,” may have played a part in Webb’s later embracing of the Muslim faith.
“There is no question that the religious ambiance of the times helped form the attitudes and expectations that guided Webb through life,” he wrote.
In the late-1860s Webb moved from Hudson to Chicago and set up a jewelry business, only to lose it — and his first wife — in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
Afterwards he moved around quite a bit, living in a number of cities in Missouri as well as New York City. His apparently restless spirit also led him to an exploration of a religious nature, studying Buddhism, Theosophy and Christianity, before he became interested in Islam.
In 1887 he was appointed by President Grover Cleveland, during his first administration, as consul general to Manilla, in the Philippines. There he connected with a number of Islamic scholars in India and spent as much time as possible studying the religion. The next year he officially declared himself a Muslim. In 1892 he quit his post and traveled through India to study Islam further. His second wife, Ella, and their three children followed suit.
And now he was on his way to establish Islam in America. Three months after he arrived in New York City the first copy of his “Moslem World” came out and for the rest of his life he continued to promote Islam in America — writing, publishing and lecturing on his faith and helping to establish an Islamic foothold in the country.
On Sept. 30, 1901 Webb was honored by the sultan of Turkey with an appointment as honorary consul general of the Turkish government in New York — for life — as well as receiving a medal of merit, the first American to be so honored.
He died from complications of diabetes in Rutherford, N.J. on Oct. 1, 1916.
According to Nadirah Florence Ives Osman, Webb died a Muslim and a simple stone marks his grave.
“I have been touched by the sight of his last photograph, taken shortly before he passed away, a likeness that displays his shining, resigned face, crowned with snowy hair, as he stands in the midst of his family, his beard still uncut in the shaven America of 1916,” he said in a lecture on Webb given in 1943 in New York City.
To reach reporter Andrew Amelinckx please call 518-828-1616, ext. 2267, or e-mail aamelinckx@registerstar.com.
He planned to quickly establish a weekly journal “to be dedicated to an exposition of Islam,” according to The New York Times, which he would edit. He also had plans for founding a publishing company.
Webb was intimately familiar with the publishing business, was the publisher of a weekly newspaper in Missouri and an editor in St. Louis and Chicago. Beyond that, his father, Alexander Nelson Webb, had been in the publishing business as well. He was editor of the Hudson Daily Star and was credited with introducing daily coverage.
The younger Webb was born in Hudson in 1846 to Presbyterian parents, but even as a youngster had doubts about Christianity.
“I was not born, like some boys, with a fervently religious strain in my character ... I attended the Presbyterian Sunday school of my native town, when I could not avoid it, impatient to get out into the glad sunshine and hear the more satisfying sermons preached by God Himself through the murmuring brooks, the gorgeous flowers, and the joyous birds,” he wrote.
In the mid-19th century when Webb was growing up, Hudson, its environs and especially Western New York was a hotbed of religious fervor with a myriad of mostly Christian offshoots, something that, according to Umar F. Abd-Allah in his 2006 book, “A Muslim in Victorian America,” may have played a part in Webb’s later embracing of the Muslim faith.
“There is no question that the religious ambiance of the times helped form the attitudes and expectations that guided Webb through life,” he wrote.
In the late-1860s Webb moved from Hudson to Chicago and set up a jewelry business, only to lose it — and his first wife — in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
Afterwards he moved around quite a bit, living in a number of cities in Missouri as well as New York City. His apparently restless spirit also led him to an exploration of a religious nature, studying Buddhism, Theosophy and Christianity, before he became interested in Islam.
In 1887 he was appointed by President Grover Cleveland, during his first administration, as consul general to Manilla, in the Philippines. There he connected with a number of Islamic scholars in India and spent as much time as possible studying the religion. The next year he officially declared himself a Muslim. In 1892 he quit his post and traveled through India to study Islam further. His second wife, Ella, and their three children followed suit.
And now he was on his way to establish Islam in America. Three months after he arrived in New York City the first copy of his “Moslem World” came out and for the rest of his life he continued to promote Islam in America — writing, publishing and lecturing on his faith and helping to establish an Islamic foothold in the country.
On Sept. 30, 1901 Webb was honored by the sultan of Turkey with an appointment as honorary consul general of the Turkish government in New York — for life — as well as receiving a medal of merit, the first American to be so honored.
He died from complications of diabetes in Rutherford, N.J. on Oct. 1, 1916.
According to Nadirah Florence Ives Osman, Webb died a Muslim and a simple stone marks his grave.
“I have been touched by the sight of his last photograph, taken shortly before he passed away, a likeness that displays his shining, resigned face, crowned with snowy hair, as he stands in the midst of his family, his beard still uncut in the shaven America of 1916,” he said in a lecture on Webb given in 1943 in New York City.
To reach reporter Andrew Amelinckx please call 518-828-1616, ext. 2267, or e-mail aamelinckx@registerstar.com.
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