The Mosques of Beirut in the Late 19th Century: 1850-1914

Abstract

This thesis is a historical and architectural investigation of the fourteen mosques built in Beirut between 1850 and 1914 when the city underwent a drastic change that altered its identity, role, and position in the region. While scholars have studied much about Beirut in this period, the topic of Beirut’s mosques has been relatively ignored. The study is conducted through two significant paths of investigation—the first is a historical, visual, and architectural survey of the mosques and their patrons. The second is a contextual analysis of what was happening in the city economically, politically, socially, and architecturally during this period. The methodology adopted during this research included on-site fieldwork and survey, both architectural and photographic, of the mosques, as well as interviews with several historians specialized in this period of Beirut’s history and interviews with family members of the patrons and residents and regulars of the mosques. In addition to that, historical documents and legal archives were researched to retrieve all the available historical documentation on the mosques. Finally, comprehensive research through scholarship on Beirut’s history in the nineteenth century and on the architecture of the mosque and Beirut’s mosques was necessary to provide the foundation of the analysis. The thesis argues that, architecturally, the buildings form a homogeneous typology that was the product of local initiative. They were an answer to social and urban needs that were catered to by the emerging class of influential Beiruti merchants without interference from the Ottoman authorities. Geographically, their distribution reflects the city's urban expansion and how it grew. The mosques can be understood as the result of political changes during that period that allowed locals more agency and influence in the city and its infrastructure, of the changing economic landscape and social fabric that empowered a new class of merchants and positioned them to shape their communities and legitimize their influence through architectural patronage; of the architectural and urban modernization of building laws and regulations that changed the traditional building practices and reshaped the city. In conclusion, these fourteen mosques were inherently Beiruti- a modest, non-monumental, homogeneous, and identifiable mosque typology born from the needs of a growing and evolving population.