Ninety-four Jewish and biblical sites across Lebanon: Wadi Abu Jamil and the Deir el-Qamar synagogue, Hiram in his field at Hanaouay, the prophet-tombs of the southern hills. Every claim reaches a source in one hop.
94 sites · 12 chapters · 69 Ḥakhamim · 779 surnames
Plate reserved
Wadi Abu Jamil looking west
undated · rights cleared
sources/photo-curation-plan.md
The memorial thread · Beirut
Five stops down one slope. The quarter held two schools, a talmud torah, the council, the butchers, and at the bottom of the hill a synagogue that still stands with its roof back on.
At the Serail steps
The quarter sat in a fold below the Ottoman Serail, so everyone entered it downhill: from Bab Idriss on foot, from the Grand Theatre by tram. The name is older than the community that filled it.
The spine street
One street carried the whole thing: the kosher butcher, two bakeries, the Alliance boys on their way to French class, the mikveh behind an unmarked door. By 1948 several thousand people lived within four hundred metres of here.
The gate
Built on Sassoon land, roofless from the war, restored from 2009 and locked ever since. It is the last synagogue in Beirut and the reason the community council still exists on paper.
Open the site page →The schools
The Alliance Israélite Universelle school and the Talmud Torah Selim Tarrab stood a hundred metres apart. Between them they moved a generation of Beirut Jews into medicine, law, and the banks, and then out of Lebanon.
Out to the Damascus road
Uphill at Sodeco, the walled cemetery ended up on the line that split the city for fifteen years. It is still tended. The stones are half transcribed.
{{ stepCoord }}
And out to the country
Sixty-nine community sites in cedar green: the synagogues, the quarters, the schools, the cemeteries, from Tripoli down to Marjayoun. Twenty-five biblical sites in rust: Hiram's Tyre, Zarephath, the cedars, and the tombs the Bible names and Lebanon keeps.
Nine are shared shrines, visited by Druze, Muslims, Christians and Jews on the same days. That is the honest through-line, and it is not a rosy one.
The five regions
THE CAPITAL
Wadi Abu Jamil, the school, the council, the cemetery on the Damascus road.
31 sites
THE MOUNTAIN
The Deir el-Qamar synagogue, the summer towns, the shared shrines of the Druze mountain.
18 sites
THE COAST & THE HILLS
Sidon and Tyre, Sarepta, Qana, and the prophet-tombs of Iqlim al-Tuffah.
31 sites
THE VALLEY
Zahle, Rachaya, Karak Nuh, and Baalbek in the shadow of the two ranges.
7 sites
THE OLD PORTS
Tripoli, Byblos of the Giblites, Arqa, and the cedars above Bsharri.
7 sites
Six threads · a lens, not a list
CURATED PATHS ACROSS SITES AND PEOPLEThe biblical north: Hiram's Tyre, the cedars, Zarephath, and Joshua's northern limit at Baʿal Gad.
25 sites
Maqams held in common: Nabi Nuh at Karak, Nabi Ayyub at Niha, Nabi Sujud above the Tuffah.
7 sites
One family from the Chouf to the Wadi to five continents, told through the places it left.
6 sites
1920 to 1948: the Alliance, the banks, the summer houses at Bhamdoun and Aley.
41 sites
1948, 1958, 1967, 1975: four waves out, and the property left in other hands.
51 sites
People
The rabbis and communal officers who held a post in Lebanon, from the Ottoman ḥakham bashi of Beirut to the last chief rabbi to leave. Sixty-nine in all, their lives set out where the record keeps them, hedges where it does not.
The Beirut register
The community register, transcribed. If your family came out of Beirut, Sidon, or the Chouf, the name is probably here.
Choua · Safra · Zilkha · Farḥi · Tarrab · Attieh · Balayla · Stambouli · Picciotto · Douek · Sasson · Anzarut
Search the register →Plan a visit
Numbered stops with coordinates that open in your phone, and the entry reality stated plainly before anything else: Israeli evidence in a passport means refusal at Beirut, and travel between the two countries is illegal from the Israeli side.
Practical information →Sources & method
Renan's 1864 plates, the 1926 run of al-ʿAlam al-Isrāʾīlī, Zeidan, Schulze, Diarna's field records. Where an identification is traditional or contested, the site page says so in the same size type as the claim.
See a site page →Legend
● COMMUNITY · ● BIBLICAL
● SOLID = SURVEYED COORDINATE
○ RINGED = PLACED AT THE TOWN
{{ card.kicker }}
×{{ card.he }}
{{ card.short }}
{{ card.coord }}
{{ card.status }}
{{ site.he }}
{{ site.place }}
Coordinates
{{ site.coord }}
Precision
{{ site.precision }}
Status
{{ site.status }}
Layer
{{ site.layer }}
Plate reserved
{{ site.figCaption }}
rights cleared or public domain only
{{ site.d }}
The honest hedge
{{ site.hedge }}
On the record
{{ site.coordNote }}
Family
{{ site.family }}
Sources
Threads & connections
{{ region.kicker }}
{{ region.blurb }}
{{ region.mapNote }}
The chapter
{{ region.p1 }}
{{ region.p2 }}
{{ region.p3 }}
Plate reserved
{{ region.figCaption }}
rights cleared or public domain only
People · the Ḥakhamim who held office
The rabbis and communal officers who actually held a post in Lebanon: the Beirut chief rabbinate and its dayanim, the ritual officers of Wadi Abu Jamil, the Ḥakhamim of Sidon and the Chouf, and the mukhtars and notables who led the community council. Sixty-nine held office here; fifty of them the record documents in full, and those are set out below with their lives.
A further seventeen sages passed through Lebanon without holding a post here. They are named at the foot of the page and quoted in the chapters where they belong, but they are not counted among the Ḥakhamim of the country.
{{ c.blurb }}
{{ r.he }}
{{ r.meta }}
{{ r.bio }}
Also recorded by the Ke-erez ba-Levanon survey, by name and portrait, no further biography preserved:
{{ r.en }}
{{ r.he }}
{{ r.role }}
Quoted, but not of the country
Seventeen figures the Ke-erez gallery keeps alongside the Lebanese Ḥakhamim held their office elsewhere, in Jerusalem, Tiberias, Safed, Damascus, Aleppo, Rome or Alexandria, and are tied to Lebanon by a visit, a birth, a burial or a passing teaching stint. Their words are cited where they bear on a place or a family; they are not given portraits here.
Portraits and the register of names are reproduced from the Ke-erez ba-Levanon heritage gallery, with credit. Dates and lineages follow the survey; where a field is not settled, the record says so rather than guessing. The Beirut surname register sits alongside this one, searchable here →
People · the Beirut surname register
{{ namesDeck }}
Spelling follows the index, so a family may appear more than one way. Variants and the index's own uncertainty marks are printed under each name.
{{ namesCount }}
{{ nm.name }}
{{ nm.meta }}
{{ namesNote }}
The field guide
Most of the ninety-four sites are reachable in a long weekend from Beirut. A few need a permit, a key, or a local phone call. One thing has to be read before the rest.
Before anything else · entry
Lebanon refuses entry to holders of Israeli passports, and to anyone whose passport, luggage, or phone shows evidence of a visit to Israel. An Israeli birthplace in a foreign passport is grounds for refusal on its own. Refusal happens at the airport, after you land.
From the Israeli side the position is the reverse and equally firm: Lebanon is an enemy state under Israeli law and travel there is prohibited. There is no crossing between the two countries, in either direction, for any purpose.
For a large part of this site's readership that settles the matter: the visit is the map, the photographs, and the pages. It is stated here plainly so nobody plans a trip they cannot take.
Seasons
April to June, and September to early November. The coast is humid in August; the Chouf and the Bekaa are cold and sometimes snowbound from December.
Safety
Check your government's current advice before booking, and again before driving south. Conditions in the border districts change quickly, and the southern sites are the ones affected.
Getting around
A car with a local driver is the practical answer outside Beirut. The Beirut sites are walkable in a morning. Every site page carries a coordinate that opens in your phone.
Access
Maghen Abraham is closed to visitors. Deir el-Qamar needs the municipality. Cemeteries usually need a keeper. The maqams are open, and are working shrines: dress accordingly.
The routes
{{ t.mode }}
{{ t.blurb }}
{{ t.meta }}
Practical A to Z
Cash
Bring dollars in small notes. Cards work in central Beirut and rarely outside it.
Language
Arabic and French carry you everywhere, English is common in Beirut. Site names here are given in all three scripts.
Photography
Ask before photographing people, shrines in use, or anything near a checkpoint. Wadi Abu Jamil sits beside government buildings.
Permits
Some southern districts need army clearance arranged in advance. Your driver will usually know the current rule.
Shabbat
There is no public congregation in Beirut. Do not expect a service anywhere in the country.
Discretion
The subject is sensitive in places. Say you are visiting heritage sites, which is true, and leave it there.
Plan a journey
PHASE 2 · THE TRIP LAYER, THEMED TO THE HOUSEOpen a curated route and edit it: add any of the ninety-four sites, drop the stops you cannot reach, keep the checklist. Every stop carries its coordinate, so the itinerary still works with no signal.
{{ t.mode }} · {{ t.stopCount }}
{{ t.blurb }}
{{ t.meta }}
Stops
{{ tripStats.stops }}
Days
{{ tripStats.days }}
Route length
{{ tripStats.dist }}
Mode
{{ tripStats.mode }}
{{ day.label }}
{{ day.count }}Add a site to the last day