The
History of Photography in Lebanon from its Beginnings (second page)
Extracts
of the book "Sarrafian - Liban 1900 - 1930"
While the technology of photography was developing fast during the first half of the 19th century, Lebanon suffered many tragedies and historic upheavals.
In 1805, Muhammad Ali proclaimed himself Pasha of Egypt and set about the difficult task of modernizing his country. He ruled the country with an iron hand and so there were several periods marked politically by uprisings. There was for example the massacre of the Mamelukes in 1811, an event which later inspired a number of orientalist painters. His ambitions took him even to invading Mecca in 1813 and later between 1822 and 1829 to playing a role in the Greek war of independence. In 1831 he conquered Mount Lebanon. Bashir II, emir of the central province of Mount Lebanon and allied to the viceroy of Egypt, advised him to occupy the Lebanese coastal towns without any delay, for he himself had the secret personal aim of throwing off the Ottoman yoke. The Egyptian occupation of Mount Lebanon terminated at the end of the year 1940. Muhammad Ali had to beat a retreat back to Egypt under the joint pressures of the British and the Ottomans, added to the uprising of the local population of Mount Lebanon under their traditional leadership; this population was exasperated by the Egyptian administration’s demand for work without financial compensation, its imposition of forced labor, its measures of taxation and its efforts to disarm the inhabitants. The regime of the double qaimaqamate, Druze and Maronite, was then adopted for Lebanon, but this ran into serious difficulties from the very beginning. Admittedly, the year 1840 saw the end of the Emirate, but it saw also the beginning of an insurrection and of a period of serious trouble, culminating in the massacre of the Christians of Lebanon provoked by the Wali (governor) of Damascus despite the fierce resistance led by the three principal chiefs, Youssef Bey Karam in North Lebanon, Youssef el-Shantiry in the Metn, and Abu Samra Ghanem at Jezzine. These hostilities first broke out in Syria, particularly Damascus, in 1860. Some 20,000 Christians fell victims to the slaughter. The massacres continued in Lebanon throughout the months of June and July until the Ottomans made up their mind to intervene. Finally, under international pressure, Khurshid Pasha convoked the Christian and Druze chiefs to a meeting in Beirut and made them peace proposals which were immediately accepted, both sides agreeing to forget the past.
Youssef el-Shantiry
with his weapons
These dramatic events of 1860 led to the arrival of a French expeditionary corps in Beirut and the Shouf. Having become submitted to international law, Lebanon was the official subject of diplomatic conferences. From now on, its destiny was legally no longer under the exclusive authority of the Sultan at Constantinople.
An international commission representing Great Britain, France, Austria, Russia, Prussia and the Ottoman Empire was set up in Beirut, which held a first session on 5th October, 1860 in order to calm the situation, fix responsibility for the conflict, and evaluate the indemnities to be paid to the victims. The commission wished to use the occasion to profoundly modify the administrative organization of the Mountain. After eight months of unceasing efforts, deep divergences appeared between the three most influential members of the commission. Throughout the whole conference, the representative of France, Bêchard, continually urged the interests of Lebanon with greater autonomy and wider territory, while the representative of the Sublime Porte, Fouad Pasha, and the British representative, Lord Dufferin, opposed the French concerns. The representative of Austria, Russia and Prussia played a conciliatory role. Finally on 9th June, 1861 an Organic Statue for the Lebanon on which the members of the Beirut commission had agreed was signed. This Statute, known as the Organic Settlement, made Lebanon an autonomous province of the Ottoman Empire with guarantees from the six signatory Powers. In 1867, Italy adhered to the Statute as a seventh guarantor.
Napoleon III of France then considered that the mission given the expeditionary corps was terminated and withdrew his troops from Lebanon. The French government obtained the insertion of an import clause in the Organic Settlement prohibiting the Ottoman authority access to Lebanese territory. So under the regime in force after 1861, a Christian governor directly under the Sublime Porte was nominated. The nomination of the local qaimaqams (local governors), the application of the Organic Settlement and the amendment of its dispositions depended henceforth from the seven Powers. With this regime of independence, Lebanon was cut down and confessionalism established; each of the seven administrative districts was to be governed by a qaimaqam belonging to the religious confession of the local majority – a Maronite for Batroun, Kesrouan, Metn and Jezzine, a Greek Orthodox for Koura, a Greek Catholic for Zahleh and a Druze for the Shouf. The Court of Appeal was to be under the direction of a Druze, political affairs under a Greek Orthodox and a Muslim, and the Bureau under a Turk. This repartition extended even to the minor functions and so confessionalism was destined to long dominate the future of Lebanon, preventing even in our own day the institution of a true civil law society, for it imposed religious marriage and a confessional distribution of ministers, members of parliament, army functions and public administration.
Undoubtedly Lebanon remained unable to prosper economically following the events described above. However, a number of factors converged at this time to favor the development of Beirut and Mount Lebanon. Once the Egyptian occupation was ended, the Port of Beirut became the principal port of the region and measures were taken to improve the infrastructure and to centralize the administrative bodies. For the first time the people of Beirut could participate directly in the running of their city, by means of a municipal council as in Europe and as introduced into Egypt by the French occupation under Bonaparte; the streets were paved, the quays and the depots enlarged, and a quarantine service set up.
Further, the second half of the nineteenth century, a period of expansion and massive industrialization, was one of the most prosperous periods for Mount Lebanon thanks to silk production.
The European textile industry, especially that of silk, underwent exceptional development in the second half of the nineteenth century. So it was under the impulsion of the constant needs of French industry, particularly silk, that the production of silk thread experienced growth in Lebanon.
Mount Lebanon offered the ideal climatic conditions for mulberry trees and the raising of silkworms. The hand labor was skilled and cheap, Christian in the main (about ten thousand workers with an overwhelming majority of women), for it was not the custom for Muslim women to work in the factories.
There were two hundred shops producing silk thread in Lebanon, mostly run by the French. They belonged to prodigious families of the European silk industry, Mourgue d’Algue, Eynard or la Veuve Guérin. The local Akl Shedid, Youssef Tohmeh and Assaad Toubia for their part were among the best reputed.
With the dawn of the nineteen-hundreds, the growing of mulberry trees began to decline because of the competition of the Far East on the silk market. The mulberry trees were replaced by citrus on the coast and by tobacco, vines and fruit trees in the mountainous regions.
Travel then took on a very particular symbolic aspect, with the search for truth, immortality and spirituality.
With the increasing European colonial expansion at this time, there was growing intellectual, artistic and scientific interest in exotic distant locations, the countries of the Near East included. Even if to begin with only the aristocracy could afford such a costly adventure, the Prince of Wales and Count Chambord and their courts traveling much in this region, a voyage in the direction of the East was fast becoming the fashion.
Little by little the enlarged Port of Beirut received more and more
ships, the region became more sought-after, and there was a development
of organized tours towards the Near East. These expeditions run
by Thomas Cook allowed the East to be opened up to a new class of
travelers. However, such enthusiasm was of short duration; ten or
twenty years later the trip to the Orient had already lost much
of its attraction. The “serious” traveler began to complain about
the “noisy parties” and their “revolting attitude”. Towards the
end of the century, Pierre Loti could rave when recalling his visit
to Jerusalem:
“Two other convoys arrived full of those tourists on ‘organized
trips’ the men in cheap hats, fat women in bucket hats with green
veils... Oh! their manners, their cries, their bursts of laughter
in these Holy Places where one normally arrived with humility and
recollection when walking in the footsteps of the prophets!”
The tourists traveling on Cook’s Tours were laughingly called “Cooks
and Cookesses”, while the locals began to refer to them as “Kukkiyeh”.
However, not all were against these Cook’s Tours, and Dame Isabel
Burton, who then was living in Beirut, noted in 1871 that “...one
cannot speak sufficiently well of Mr. Cook and his institution.
It allows thousands who would never otherwise have the opportunity
to take advantage of the education derived from travel.”
For the European of the eighteen-sixties, the voyage to the East
had become a middle class initiation rite through which a twofold
purpose was achieved: a knowledge of the region, with a visit to
such legendary cities as Baghdad, and the rediscovery of a lost
heritage and a return to one’s cultural sources. The roots of the
religions and the civilization of the Western World were closely
connected with many places in the East whose names, such as that
of Jerusalem, shone with a gleaming aura.
The nineteenth century saw the East through images of a magical
and symbolic character drawn largely from the literature of the
period. Every place represented (and even now represents) something
deeply moving for Westerners. In 1852, Bridges cited Dr. Samuel
Johnson in a short paragraph which sums up perfectly the attraction
exercised by the Levant over the West:
“The purpose of the voyage is to see the shores of the Mediterranean.
On these shores there prospered the four greatest empires of the
world – Assyrian, Persian, Greek and Roman. All our religions, almost
all our laws, almost all our arts, almost everything that separates
us from savages, came to us from the coasts of the Mediterranean.”
When the maritime line between Marseille and Alexandria was established
in 1835, large numbers of travelers began to sail across the Mediterranean
to the East. At that time several Frenchmen occupied important positions
in Egypt, the engineer Linant de Bellefonds, for example, was Director
of Public Works and the archeologist Auguste Mariette became Director
of Antiquities and founded the Boulad Museum of Archeology in Cairo.
Most places in the East had a quasi-magical attraction for Europeans.
The biblical and religious importance of such sites as Jerusalem,
Nazareth, Jericho, Jordan and also Mount Sinai aroused deep emotions
expressed in the writings of the nineteenth-century authors. Perhaps
this may be better understood from the preface written by W.H. Barlett
in his book Forty Days in the Desert:
“It is said that he who has drunk of the waters of the Nile will
know no peace until he tastes them again... The East must for ever
remain the land of the imagination, for it is the cradle of the
history of art, of science and of poetry, the cradle of our religion...
Our feet follow for ever in the footsteps of the sages, the poets,
the prophets and the apostles, or of Him who is greater than them
all.”
In ever greater numbers came the travelers who landed at Beirut
on their way to Jerusalem or Egypt, and who stopped at certain points
such as Baalbek, Tyre and Sidon, turning sometimes aside for a halt
in the monasteries up in the mountains.
The second half of the nineteenth century was the period
of greatest activity for the development of the city of Beirut.
It is only right to recall certain events which contributed to the
expansion of Beirut and Mount Lebanon, namely the development of
silk production in Mount Lebanon, the sale of bales of silk from
the workshops in Lebanon and sold to Lyon in France, the construction
of the route Beirut-Damascus confided to Count Perthuis, the laying
down of the railway, and the enlargement of the Port of Beirut.
In addition journalism, printing and publication developed steadily.
In 1885 the Mutassarif of Beirut, in agreement with the Municipality,
decided to to build a new seray (government house) outside the walls
of the old city and to install a public garden in the center of
the Burj, which became a most attractive site with a bandstand.
The buildings around it were put up in conformity with the principles
of town planning, taking into consideration the esthetic aspect,
the views and the circulation of the horse-cabs.
All around, edifices of two or three stories were put up. They followed
a careful architectural style harmoniously blending European and
local forms. It was in this area that the offices of public administration,
of the gendarmerie, of the Water Company, the Railway and the Ottoman
Bank were installed.
The demand for the construction of hotels increased, with all that
implied in the way of cafés, bars and restaurants. The town
began to expand, roads were traced, and the various districts were
rapidly populated by people come down from the nearby mountains.
The ground-floors were taken over by new commercial premises, such
as pharmacies, dress-makers, newsagent-bookshops, and retailers
of every description. The Sarrafian brothers took space in Bab Idriss.
Trams clanked through the town and in 1892 the first film was shown
in the café-theatre Zahret Souriya near Khan el-Tyan by the
Burj. This place soon became the café Parisiana, much frequented
by French officers under the Mandate.
The tangle of houses and narrow winding paved alleys within the
walls of Beirut gave way to wider roads connecting the old town
to more recent suburbs. Under the picks and shovels of demolition
men working under the orders of the Wali of Beirut there appeared
the remains of a Byzantine basilica, remains which now exist only
immortalized in a photo by Sarrafian. Under the French Mandate,
new buildings sprang up along the new avenues Foch and Allenby.
Postcards are faithful witnesses of what Lebanon was like in the
twentieth century, without addition or touching up.
With the appearance of Beirut changing from day to day, purchasers
of postcards no longer find shots showing what the town is really
like, for the production of postcards has followed the evolution
neither of the capital with all its changes, nor that of the coastal
towns and the mountain resorts.
With the passing of time, postcards became used less and less for
sending messages. Rather they became simple views without any correspondence,
acquired for themselves to keep as a record. In fact, travelers
began to purchase large numbers of postcards as simple souvenirs
of their travels or as bright images to send to their relatives
and friends, exotic scenes bathed in bright sunshine far from the
grayness of Europe.
Beirut became a regional center for trade, an inevitable destination
for missionaries and for journalists, for trippers and for famous
authors. The construction of the Beirut-Damascus road, confided
to Count Perthuis, the railway line laid down in 1893, the enlargement
of the port of Beirut, together with journalism, printing and book
publication, all promoted the development of these regions.
The rising number of travelers coming to the Near East created,
moreover, new tourist routes and engendered an unprecedented demand
for postal services, with postcards and photograph shops all encouraging
the development of photography.
The influx of tourists meant an increasingly impressive demand for
postcards. The first postcards from Lebanon, dating from the end
of the nineteenth century, showed general views of Beirut and Baalbek,
printed in medallions with the inscription Gruss aus, signifying
souvenir from. Produced in Germany and Austria, they were sold in
the bookshops of Beirut.
One of the first photographers to set up business in Lebanon was
Félix Bonfils, who came in 1867 and whose work contributed
considerably to the development of photographic art in the country.
Other photographers followed him and started Business in Lebanon,
such as Abraham Gargossian.
As from 1900, postcards came to be directly edited, printed and
sold in the souvenir and antique shops of Beirut, such as those
of Dimitri Tarazi and Dimitri Habis. The number of shops in Lebanon
selling photographs grew steadily. The development of printing permitted
the marketing of postcards costing less and available to the general
public.
Among the 120 known editors, the Sarrafian brothers alone
produced one fifth of the postcards printed in Lebanon between 1895
and 1930.
The Sarrafian brothers may be considered the giants of the postcard,
so prolific and varied was their output and so avant-garde, precise
and unique was their witness. Photo reporters of another era, the
Sarrafian brothers had the genius to be in the right place at the
right time, for example at the official opening of the station at
the Port of Beirut, as well as the entry into service of the clock
at the Main Saraglio (Government Office) in 1900 and of the Hamidieh
fountain marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the accession to
the throne of Sultan Hamid. They made a portrait of Sheikh Ibrahim
el-Yazigi, founder of the review Al-Bayan.
They were also present for the inauguration of the School of Arts
and Crafts attended by the Wali and other notables of the city in
1907, and for the inauguration of the Ottoman Post near Khan Antoun
Bey in 1908, also for the official opening of the Asfurieh psychiatric
hospital. in 1900.
Their shots covered the liberation of the nationalist prisoners
returning from exile in 1908, the bombardment of the city of Beirut
by two warships of the Italian fleet and the wreck of the ship Aoun
Allah off the port of Beirut in 1912. Later there were the poignant
pictures of child victims of the famine of 1916 and ones of Beirut
under snow in 1920.
Their inimitable series of daily life in Lebanon covered in turn
with total authenticity all the crafts and scenes of town and country,
often not without a certain gentle humor. At the As-Sour Square,
later Ryad el-Solh Square, at the end of Ramadan it was the custom
to celebrate with a traditional procession during which parents
carried their circumcised children shoulder high. Finally, they
preserved for immortality the old dwellings due for demolition with
the widening of the streets of Beirut named Foch and Allenby.
The Sarrafian brothers were also the official photographers of the
Syrian Protestant College, later known as the American University
of Beirut, for which they published a series of postcards now exceedingly
rare.
Among the souvenirs of our heritage we must not omit the Little
Seraglio of the Place des Canons in Beirut. Built in 1884 according
to the plans of Beshara Effendi, this little jewel of Ottoman architecture
was destroyed in 1951 as a result of official indifference. It was
replaced in 1952 by a modern construction, the Rivoli Building.
During the war of 1975 this too was destroyed and archeological
digging has brought to light the arches of the Little Seraglio basement.
Now one may well ask, could the historic monuments of the past not
be reconstructed, following the example of certain European towns
which survived the disasters of war? For example, in the city of
Dresden, virtually destroyed by Allied aerial bombardment towards
the end of the Second World War, the former buildings have been
faithfully reconstructed so that a period of its history might not
fall into oblivion. This was done in homage to its inhabitants and
out of respect for their memory.
Of the cathedral of Dresden there remained only one section of wall,
starting from which the edifice was restored in all its former splendor.
The population of the city is proud of it.
So what if the Little Seraglio were to be restored? It needs only
the Municipality to throw its efforts into rebuilding this historic
architectural jewel and to give it a prominent place in the City
Center. It should be recalled that Mr. Robert Debbas once asked
me for all the postcards showing the Little Seraglio from every
angle, for after having seen some postcards some months before his
death Prime Minister Hariri had shown interest and even enthusiasm
for its reconstruction.
Translated
from the French by K.J. Mortimer
Beirut
after the snow of 1920
Arts
and Crafts School, run by the Jesuit Fathers
High
Commissariat, Beirut
Inauguration
of the School of Industry
Flight
of Lebanese at the bombardment of the Port of Beirut by the Italians
in 1912
Lebanese
dying of hunger in 1914.
Extracts
of the book "Sarrafian - Liban 1900 - 1930"
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