Youth in Mount Lebanon Mokarzel was born into a
Maronite Catholic family from the town of
Freike in
Mount Lebanon, then a semi-autonomous province of the
Ottoman Empire. His father Antoun, a
Maronite priest, and his mother Barbara Mokarzel née Akl were influential figures in local civic and political affairs. Mokarzel attended school at the
Collège de la Sagesse in Beirut and received higher education at the Jesuit
Saint Joseph University in
Beirut. After graduation, Mokarzel moved to
Cairo,
Egypt where he landed a job teaching literature at the Jesuit college; he became ill with fever after a year there and returned to his hometown in 1886 where he founded a boarding school. Mokarzel's return to Lebanon was brief and he soon decided to move to the United States. Mokarzel traveled with two relatives, Abdo Rihani and the latter's nephew,
Ameen, who would become a major figure in the
Mahjar literary movement.
In New York, early careers and turmoil On August 4, 1888, Mokarzel and the Rihanis landed in New York; they lived in the basement of 59
Washington Street in Manhattan, a part of the city that was known as
Little Syria due to the settlement of a growing
Arab Christian immigrant population. The majority of the Syrian and Lebanese immigrants were of modest background and resorted to petty jobs, such as peddling. By contrast, Mokarzel hailed from the Beiruti elite. The Jesuit-educated Mokarzel, who was fluent in
French, was quickly hired to teach the language at the
Saint Francis Xavier's College in Manhattan, a Jesuit institution at the time. Besides teaching, he was also employed as a bookkeeper for different businesses before engaging in a
dry goods commerce venture with Abdo Rihani in 1891. The business failed and Mokarzel consequently departed for Mount Lebanon in 1892. Upon his return to the United States, the
Arbeelys, a Greek Orthodox family of
Damascene origins, had begun printing
Kawkab America (American Star), the first Arabic-language newspaper in
North America; Mokarzel set out to open his own newspaper
Al-ʿAsr (The Epoch) with capital from his wealthy merchant friend, Najeeb Maalouf. Mokarzel and Nageeb Arbeely engaged in a journalistic feud, personally attacking each other resulting in series of lawsuits and counter-suits between the two newspapers. The enterprise floundered and was discontinued less than a year after its commencement. Mokarzel attended medical school for two years before dropping out. Meanwhile, Mokarzel was gaining notoriety for his controversial demeanor; he engaged in brawls and verbal disputes with other Arabic-speaking immigrants and was arrested on several occasions for libel and physical assault against members of the community affiliated with the Arbeely family. The brawls that started as a result of professional competition and personal antipathy evolved into sectarian battles between Mokarzel's Maronite entourage and the Orthodox families of the community. Despite his multiple arrests, Mokarzel was never jailed but the incidents were to continue. In 1895, Tannous Shishim, a Lebanese immigrant, petitioned for
divorce from his wife Sophie on the ground of
adultery and Mokarzel was named
co-respondent in the court proceedings. The Arbeelys were quick to publish the culpable news in their newspaper along with a bilingual transcript of the judge's decision, further tarnishing the reputation of Mokarzel. The accused couple got married and eloped to
Philadelphia to flee the community's public denunciation.
Inception of Al-Hoda In Philadelphia on February 22, 1898, the estranged Mokarzel published the first issue of his second newspaper
Al-Hoda (The Guidance), which became the longest-running Arabic newspaper in the United States. The first issue consisted of 18 pages of three columns each and appeared on a weekly basis. The publication expanded in November 1898 to 24 pages including six full pages of advertisement and was distributed in over forty countries. In early 1899, Mokarzel boasted that the circulation of
Al-Hoda surpassed that of its main competitor, the Orthodox-inclined
Kawkab America. Although claiming to be a non-sectarian publication,
Al-Hoda was, like most of the New York-based Arabic newspapers, a mouthpiece to voice the confessional stances of the paper's owner.
Al-Hoda was aimed primarily at the Arabic-speaking Levantine immigrants, especially the Maronite community; it reported on Ottoman politics in the Levant, political reform in Lebanon and on the environment of immigrant-run businesses. Mokarzel's brother
Salloum traveled to the United States and joined the enterprise that same year. The format of the publication changed after Salloum's arrival;
Al-Hoda began appearing twice weekly and was reduced to eight pages with more space reserved for paid advertisements. Despite his standing in the American Maronite community, infamy and controversy still followed Mokarzel. In 1899, the newlyweds published in
Al-Hoda an
apologetic article of Sophie's divorce from her previous husband and their subsequent marriage. However, Mokarzel's marriage was failing; he separated from Sophie on the same year that their defensive article was published and they divorced in 1902. Sophie returned to New York and took up selling linens before moving to South California where she started a linen shop and married her third husband, a Levantine confectioner. The Mokarzel brothers continued to print
Al-Hoda in Philadelphia until late 1902.
Back in New York In 1902, Naoum and his brother moved back to New York and settled in Brooklyn; they set up their newspaper's office on Manhattan's
West Street. The first issue of
Al-Hoda was published from the New York offices on 25 August 1902 and was since published on a daily basis. In 1904, Mokarzel married Ameen Rihani's sister Saada, who according to Naoum's niece and biographer Mary Mokarzel, was very eager to marry him. Ameen Rihani brokered his sister's marriage to Mokarzel but the two never cohabited and Saada soon returned to Mount Lebanon. In 1908, Mokarzel sued for divorce from Saada
in absentia on the account that she had committing adultery in a hostel in Mount Lebanon. The divorce was settled in May and was followed by a ten-year dispute in which Saada tried to prove her innocence and to win alimony. Mokarzel and Ameen Rihani had a lasting professional collaboration with Ameen publishing a regular section entitled
Kashkoul al-Khawater (Patchwork of Thoughts) from 1901 until 1904. The two writers fell out because of Naoum's divorce from Saada and because of political differences and conflicting values.
Competing newspapers and sects Mokarzel's approach to the Arab American community's other newspapers was contentious and confrontational, and he accused the editors of the other newspapers lacking integrity and professional ethics. The most frequent targets of Mokarzel's attacks were
Kawkab America and
Al-Islah (The Reform). Mokarzel posited ever since the establishment of
Al-Hoda that his newspaper was secular and independent, accusing the other Arabic US-based newspapers of being sectarian and aligned to France, Britain, Russia and to the Ottomans. This position was staunchly upheld by Mokarzel until two Maronite clergymen Yusuf Yazbek and Estephan Qurqumaz sought to publish
Al-Sakhra (The Rock), a newspaper representing American Maronites. Feeling threatened by the looming publication, Mokarzel contravened his previous positions and declared that
Al-Hoda had always served the Maronite sect and nation and accused the clergymen of seeking "personal and dishonorable purposes". Yazbek accused Mokarzel's newspaper of being a mouthpiece of another Maronite priest, Khairallah Stefan. Mokarzel and his newspaper eventually prevailed. The animosity prevailing between the newspapers representing different sects mirrored an intra-communal sectarian strife that turned violent in later years. In August 1905, Mokarzel reported that the Orthodox bishop
Raphael Hawaweeny called upon his followers to "crush" him. The tensions developed into violence in the autumn of 1905 when the partisans of Hawaweeny and Mokarzel sympathizers clashed, resulting in 29 injured. The sectarian tension in Little Syria reached its zenith in 1906 when John Stefan, brother of the priest Khairallah Stephan, was killed in a restaurant brawl on Washington Street. Mokarzel was apprehended by the police for the assault that was linked to the murder. Mokarzel's calumnious accusation and arrest were overturned as the complainant did not show up to the trial. The charge was dismissed and the police authorities settled on an Orthodox man, Elias Zreik, as the murderer. During Zreik's trial, the prosecution held that Elias and his brother George were sent to kill Mokarzel; when they did not find him in his office they set out to the restaurant where his Maronite sympathizers often met.
New Arabic printing era and political involvement In 1910, the Mokarzel brothers decided to adapt the
linotype machine to Arabic script to mitigate the expensive cost and tedious task of manual
typesetting. Naoum Mokarzel imported Arabic
type letters from Egypt and acquired the first such machine for
Al-Hoda from the
Mergenthaler company. While the linotype machine made printing cheaper, there was significant competition for readership since New York's Arabic-speaking community did not exceed 10,000 before World War II. Through his writing in
Al-Hoda and other American journals, Mokarzel was gaining further prominence as a leading figure of the American Maronite community and was seeking a similarly prominent woman to marry. In 1910 he married for the third and last time; his wife, Rose Abillama hailed from the princely
Abillama family and was more than twenty years his minor. Mokarzel did not have any offspring from any of his marriages. In 1911, Mokarzel became the permanent president of the Lebanon League of Progress (Jamʿiyyat al-Nahda al-Lubnaniyya), a Maronite organization established in the US by the journalist Ibrahim Najjar (1882-1957) and dedicated to promoting a French-supported Maronite protectorate in Lebanon. In June 1913, Mokarzel was the Lebanon League of Progress delegate to the
First Arab Congress in Paris where he represented the North American Maronites. Delegates to the congress discussed reforms to grant the
Arabs living under the Ottoman Empire autonomy. The congress did not have a lasting effect, due mostly to the beginning of
World War I. In 1917, Mokarzel sought and collected through
Al-Hoda more than $30,000 US in donations to relieve his compatriots in Mount Lebanon who were experiencing a
great famine due to
Entente and Ottoman blockades. The collected donations were to be personally dispensed by Mokarzel, but half of the money was directed to fund a volunteer armed force that was gathering to enter Lebanon instead of toward
relief aid. Mokarzel incorrectly surmised that the Entente powers would come to the Maronite force's assistance, but they did not take interest in the armed venture. Mokarzel represented the Lebanon League of Progress in the
Paris Peace Conference of 1919 where he advocated French tutelage over Mount Lebanon. On 28 September 1919, when the prospects of French control began to materialize, Mokarzel dispatched a fervent telegram to his New York office announcing that the French army would replace the British forces in
Greater Syria and that Lebanon would come under French guardianship. In 1923, on the occasion of
Al-Hoda's Silver Anniversary, Mokarzel was celebrated as a leading figure by the Maronite and the non-Maronite literary community of America, as well as by a number of American friends.
Last years and death Mokarzel's last years were marked by bed-confining illnesses. He boarded a boat to France on March 18, 1932 despite his deteriorating health condition to attend a Lebanon-related conference in Paris. Mokarzel succumbed to his illnesses on April 5, 1932. His body was sent from Paris to New York where he received a large public funeral. His body was sent to Lebanon and interred in the family cemetery in his hometown of Freike. After his death,
Al-Hoda came under Salloum's management, which passed at the latter's death in 1952 to his daughter Mary. The newspaper closed in 1971. ==Views and activism==