The Alarakia Family of HongKong

 Hello everyone. This is a quick word to let you know that I do intend to post more as and when I have something of value. For your information I have found lots of mentions regarding the Alarakia name and variations of. The issue I have is finding evidence to go with those bits of information and linking those to our wider family. Please bear with me and hopefully there will be more to come. Thankyou all for taking the time and interest to read thus far. Ken

 I keep coming across the name Alarakia  being mentioned in the ownership/transportation of slaves in Zanzibar and which is mentioned in government papers regarding Africa(East Coast) and Arabia.  In January of 1878 a chap named only as Alarakia  was deemed the 'owner' of two male slaves who had been illegally conveyed from mainland Africa to Zanzibar which contravened the 1875 'Treaty' banning slavery. Then in March 1888 it would appear that a Dhow owned by a Alarakia Somji was used in the illegal transportation of  three female slaves and was confiscated by the British government. Alarakia Somji appealed the ruling but was unsuccessful even though it was proven the crime had been committed by the the vessels captain without the owners knowledge. Now much as I abhor the thought of our ancestors being involved in owning or trading slaves it certainly looks like some may have. It is mentioned in the papers that Alarakia Somji had been trading in Zanzibar for fort...

 Its been quite a while since my last post. I seem to have come to a halt with my search for information regarding my ancestors. Other Alarakias though have made the news in various ways.  There is the aforementioned Ebraim Alarakia who travelled frequently back and forth from Galle to Sidney. He seems to have been born in Kutch(Cutch) in 1847 making him four years younger than 2nd Great Grandfather Sewjee. I still wonder but do not yet know if he was a sibling.  According to the Indian Statesman newspaper Ebraim appeared in Insolvency Court in may 1872. By 1881 he was a Lascar(Sailor) travelling the Galle to Sidney route. Then in 1887 he purchased a horse from the British Army Stables in the Bombay region after which his trail goes cold. Jonas Alarakia was listed as an Indian merchant in 1858 Mauritius. It is not stated what he traded in but a report in the West Somerset Free Press dated 30 Oct 1869 and also the Englishmans Overland Mail of West Bengal dated 28 Sept 1869...

 I was rather proud of myself when I came up with a possible origin and meaning for the name Alarakia. Earlier in the blog I talked about the idea it was a Persian name that was made up of various elements and I made it sound very grand indeed. Well what do I know. According to a nineteenth century publication entitled 'Notice sur la Regence de Tunis (Note on the Regency of Tunis)  by J.Henry Dunant the word 'Alarakia' is the name of a small calico hat worn under the 'Chechia'. According to the Collins Dictionary the word 'chechia' a noun meaning 'a cylindrical felt cap with a flat top often with a tassel(similar to a FEZ) and its origin comes from the ancient Persian city of Shash which is now Tashkent in Uzbekistan. This is ancient Silk Road territory.  Now while this may well be true and who am I to argue BUT I prefer my version. Looks like the only thing the two have in common is Persia.  Maybe our Alarakia ancestors took the name because they were r...

 I have tried to get to the bottom of Sewjee's arrival in Hong Kong. To be honest it has been very time consuming and not very successful.  What I do know is that the accessible records available for India during the nineteenth century are almost  entirely about  the Anglo/European colonial population, with some about the Eurasian offspring of such. As far as the indigenous Indian and non colonial population is concerned most of the available records are what is given up by the newspapers of the day. A lot of them concern passenger lists and cargo manifests for the middle east and Europe. If you were an Indian and travelled frequently then you would obviously be either a business man/merchant or independently financially secure. It would appear that the name Allarakia and versions of it often appeared on these lists. In the case of the passenger lists it was usually for passage between Bombay and London. Now the spelling of the name Alarakia has thrown me on more tha...

 Whilst going through the many Newspapers and publications of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries I have begun to notice that not only does the spelling of Alarakia differ in many ways, some individual articles are guilty of that trait when referring more than once to the same person. Furthermore I have noticed names like Allarakiabhoy, Mohamedbuoy and Nanjeebhouy along with names such as Peer Mohamed and Peerbhoy  and began to wonder where any such names might fit in the Alarakia family. As best as I can determine use of the name Peer in South Asian cultures is similar to our use of the term  'senior' whilst the word 'bhoy' apparently is the 'Parsi' equivalent of the Indian 'bhai' for brother. So I was thinking are names such as Allarakhiabhoy and Peerbhoy a way of calling someone junior such as Nanjeebhoy Sazon* being the younger brother to Nanjee Sazon?. Like wise someone with the name Peer Mohamed being the 'senior' or elder of a fam...

  Whist trawling through the Bombay Gazette of  4 May 1866 I notice an article documenting a soldiers diary from his travels in the Persian Gulf. In it he mentions a place called Bushire which I had come across when looking at the hand written Family Tree of the Goolam Hoosein Arab descendants. For those of you who looked at the 'Tree' post yesterday you will notice that I had Mahomed Arab as an Indian National. I am afraid to say I am wrong. In the early part of my research I took the Carl Smith Records version of his M Arab's birth place Abushar (Also spelt the same in his Last Will and Testament) as Ambarsar the colloquial name for Amritsar. It is obvious to me now that the spoken Bushire was misspelt as Abushar. It is easy to see how a translated document does not always reflect the original. So I have emended the original and also yesterdays 'Tree' post to reflect this. Whats more, while he was living in India it is highly possible/probable that he was referred...

 Here are the Family Trees as I see them at the moment. Don't be surprised if they change in the future. Hopefully only additions to them will make them change and I do not find myself deleting anyone. If any one is wondering, I have included Usuf as the eldest son of Mahomed and Bibi. I have now seen publications that confirm the previously aforementioned U.Alarakia to be Usuf. It is likely that his life unravelled somewhat after working in China and became the 'lunatic' mentioned in the 1938 Indian Government report.  I have not included the girl Zahara as I still have not established who her parents were.                                                                                                           ...

 Here are a few newspaper articles you might find interesting. 1. The Bombay Gazette 23 Feb 1852 Page 2 (184) This refers to a Export Manifest for a ship load of  Textiles including a shipment of cotton belonging to Alarakia and Joonus Noor Mahomed. This is Adam Allarakia who is named in the blog 'Hong Kong's First Opium Hall of Fame. I will endeavour to find out more about this chap and where he fits in the story. He could be of the same generation as Sewjee Alarakia(if so then possibly an older sibling because Sewjee would have only been nine years of age at the time of this article.It is also very possible that he is Sewjee's own father. Strangely enough Adam Alarakia is named as a Parsi on the Opium Hall of Fame which would bring us back to the Persian origins idea again. Watch this space. 2. Times of India 22 Dec 1881 Page 3 A Defamation case aginst Alarakia Ebramani referred to in the article as Alarakia. Could this chap be one of ours. What was his beef with this see...

  This is Grandfather Ebrahim  Mahomed Alarakia  and with his 2nd wife Mariam and his little troop c1936-37 These next photos are Hanifa (auntie Hani) Abbas and Rubia(my mother Ruby) who are the three eldest children on the family photo. I think the uniform Hanifa is wearing is that of the 'French Convent'  seen below where she and Rubia (Ruby) were educated. Finally this last one is of Hennessey Road where the Alarakia family lived at no 359 a large tenement building. This image is Hennessey Road in 1933

I have amended the main post with the following. I trust you can keep up because  I am not always sure I can. *** He lived with three women in the colony. His principal wife Phoorja an Arab Muslim woman from Bagdad who was most likely the mother to Bibi Arab. His secondary wives were a Malay and a Chinese called Ahoy-Che Oi thought to be a Tanka Boat woman and to whom he had a son ‘Hajee Mahomed’. Another publication states that the land and property Mahomed aquired in the 1840’s was still in his family over 100 years later. His family were joined by marraige to Shaikh Moosdeens family when his Daughter Jara married Abdul Rahim Moosdeen and his grandaughter Zaiton (Cherry) Alarakia married Shaikh Moosdeens grandson Abu Baker Moosdeen.   His extended family consisted of :   Bibi as shown above and the following from his First Wife Phoorja M Arab b? d16.10.1887   Seleria M Arab a daughter b1840 d25.12.1920 Jara a daughter b 1861 d 6.5.1907. She was married t...

Whilst looking through old Hong Kong newspapers I found a lot of articles covering academic achievement  and sport participation. The thing that struck me was in almost every instance the girls were mentioned by their full names whist the boys were for the most part only mentioned by their first initials. This led me to check each person mentioned off against my list of Mahomed Sewjee's children. Now bearing in mind I had stated earlier that Mahomed Sewjee and Bibi had at least fifteen children some of which died as infants I looked  at Auntie Hani's notes and she said that they had sixteen children. The oldest boy being the one missing from my list. According to Auntie Hani he took off for America, but she did not name him. Well I have now got a list of eighteen children including Alfred and Salomon who belonged to Abdulla Sewjee. Of the remaining sixteen, two are unaccounted for. First there is Zahara who appears to be one of the older ones, but whose child was she? Is there...

 The following is a result of Davids (eurasian_david) hard work and dogged determination to assist me with this journey. Annie Hazel Asger  (1877-4th March 1959) was half  Persian  and half  Chinese . Her father was  Mahomed Ebrahim Asger  (aka ' Haji Ali Asge r') (18??-1st Feb 1900). Her mother was  Hung Kung Siu  (or  Chiu ). Her other siblings included  Asadulla Ebrahim Asger  (10th Aug 1878-26th Jan 1967), the well known dental surgeon trained in Illinois, USA,  Mehdy Edward Asger   (1880-26th Dec 1948), sisters  Ada Asger  (5th Dec 1885-19??) and  Bharnoo Asgar ('Ella')  (188?-19??). Ada Asger interestingly was later baptised in adulthood in  St Peter's Church  27th December 1906.  Mahomed Ebrahim Asger  was a cousin to  Hajee Mahomed Sadeck Hajee Esmail  (1843-21st Feb 1905), the latter from Yazd, Persia who settled in HK in the 1860s when he was in his 20s. The...

  This lady is Annie Hazel Asger who was I believe married to Abdulla Sewjee Alarakia and was the mother of his two sons Salomon and Alfred. Annie referred to herself as 'Persian' but it seems she was also part Chinese and  it seems disowned by her own family for marrying a man outside of Islam. The Hong Kong Telegraph has the following:—Engagements have been announced, and marriages will shortly take place, between Dr. Gregory Paul Jordan, nephew of Sir C. Paul Chater, Kt., C.M.G., and Mrs. Marion Josephine Daly (nee Ormsby) ; between Mr. Lennox Godfrey Bird, architect, of Messrs. Palmer and Turner's office, Hong Kong, and Miss Margaret Stuart Cockburn, now en route from borne in the s.s. Eitel Friedrich; between Mr. Henry Bone, of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service, and Miss Annie Alarakia, of Hong Kong, and between Mr. John Johnson, sergeant of the Naval Dockyard Police Force, and Miss Eliza Lyons, of Hong Kong.  I will endeavour to elaborate as I unearth more. The...

The day this blog really started was when this happened.  Married in 1949 Page 2  before travelling back to the UK on the Empire Fowey troopship in July1950 This photo was probably taken in the harbour in Hongkong though it is possible its at the rear/stern of the Empire Fowey. This is the passenger list for the Empire Fowey's return to UK. Many thanks to my partner in crime eurasian_david for the newspaper clip.  

 I have been increasingly frustrated that I cannot find any reference to Mahomeds wife Bibi. I reached out to Eurasian_David on Gwulo looking for clues. He and another user Salmandaw informed me that 'Bibi' is an affectionate name for married women amongst the muslim community. So much so that if they become known by that name(like a nickname) throughout their lives it might be just as likely that burial records and headstones will bear that name also. So assuming the obvious and our Bibi falls into that catagory then I am left wondering what exactly was her name. I have found references to various other daughters of Mahomed Arab and they all have names.The hunt goes on. I have since gone back and reviewed the Carl Smith Records and I found this: Now I don't know why I never noticed this before but the 4th line clearly shows Mrs S Alarakia. If this has been transcribed correctly or if it was a typed card originally then I should be looking for a girl initialled 'S'....

 The following has been forwarded to me by eurasian_david on the Gwulo forum.  Thanks again David, you are a great help. Mahomed Sewjee Alarakia (1866-1920) Your greatgrandfather's wedding Hong Kong evening 23rd May 1884 :   “YESTERDAY evening, a novelty in the way of processions delighted and amused a portion of the native population and foreigners resident in the Colony. About nine o’clock, a bridal party of Mohomedans formed up at the bridegroom’s house in Gage Street, and proceeded slowly along the Central streets to the residence of the bride’s parents. To Europeans, the procession presented a very strange appearance from the fact that in it were mixed up, in the strangest manner possible, oriental customs and western ideas. The relatives and friends of the bridegroom, - some in ordinary European carriages, others on foot and others again on horseback – occupied the interior of the procession, the outside of which was formed by a cordon of youthful Celestials, bearin...

 I have updated the original with the following: The following is taken from an article written for the Juneau Douglas City Museam in Alaska by Mr John L (Cameron) Asp who was Goolam’s grandson: Goolam Hoosein married Annie Von Henriques in Kobe, Japan while on a business trip and they lived in the Kobe International Settlement where they raised eight children. One of those children was Maude Matildae Arab who married and divorced John McMillan Cameron. She had a son John who was adopted at an early age by Maudes second husband Svend (Sam) Asp. John later became an artist known as John L (Cameron) Asp, married Ruth Wison and had two children Jo-Ann and Svend Thomas Asp. There is still a lot to learn about Goolams Family and I shall endeavour to learn more and bring this up to date.  

  My Alarakia Family  by Ken Alarakia-Charles  Preface I have done quite a bit of research but I am left with lots of dots to join up. Google searches have given me a lot more than I started with but also a lot of questions. Questions like where did my grandfathers family originate. I know both his father Mahomed and his grandfather Sewjee came to Hong Kong from India in the mid 1800s. My Great Great Grandfather Sewjee Alarakia was born in India in 1843 and died in Hong Kong 21 Jun 1890. It is  possible that he originated in Cutch an old Princely State also known as the Kingdom of Kutch from 1147 to 1819. I say this because I found a record of traveller named Ebraim Alarakia age 34 who was stated as being from Cutch and sailed regularly from Galle to Sidney NSW in the year 1861. I wonder if Sewjee and Ebaim were related, perhaps brothers with Sewjee being the younger of the two. Ebraim however it seems remained in India through to old age as he was re...