Webb, Alexander Russell, 1846-1916

U.S. consul to Manila and Islamic missionary and publisher, of New York, N.Y.

Alexander Russell Webb (1846-1916) has the distinction of being the first known American convert to Islam and of being the first person to conduct a major effort to spread Islam within the United States. Born in Hudson, New York, he had a short journalistic career as editor of the St. Joseph Gazette and Missouri Republican. In 1887 he was appointed American consul at Manila. There he befriended several Indian Muslim businessmen and studied works about Islam. In 1888 he declared in a pamphlet his conversion to Islam. He resigned from the consular service in 1892 and returned to the U. S. by way of Singapore, Penang, Rangoon, a number of cities in India, and possibly other places. Back in America, Webb established an office in New York City as the Oriental Publishing Co. In May, 1893, he published the first issue of the Moslem World, Devoted to the Interests of the American Islamic Propaganda, the earliest Islamic missionary periodical in America. In connection with his American Mission, as Webb called it, he wrote a number of books and pamphlets among which were several of his lectures in India that were published there during 1892-1893. Biographical information about Webb appears in: Nadim al Maqdissi, The Muslims of America, 80,000 Muslims and 12 Mosques in the United States and Canada, Islamic Review, Vol. 43, No. 6 (June, 1955), pp. 28-29; Nelson R. Burr, Critical Bibliography of Religion in America (Princeton, 1961), pp. 536-538; and V. S. Naipaul, An Islamic Journey, Among the Believers, The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 248, No. 2 (Aug., 1981), p. 63. Copies of the pertinent pages from these sources are filed in the Information Folder in this collection.