Freemasonry in the Ottoman Empire by Dorothe Sommer

Author:Dorothe Sommer [Sommer, Dorothe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Freemasonry & Secret Societies, History, Modern, 18th Century, 19th Century, Social History, Middle East, Turkey & Ottoman Empire, General
ISBN: 9780857739186
Google: UHb3DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-01-30T01:12:14+00:00

CHAPTER 6

FREEMASONRY IN TRIPOLI AND EL MINA

When Tripoli was founded around 900 bc, it merely consisted of a port and a few houses. Today this area constitutes the port district of El Mina, while the main part of the city is further inland. The name Tripoli reputedly stands for the three original parts of the Phoenician confederation, which comprised the city in antiquity.1

Over the course of many centuries Tripoli has seen various occupiers – Fatimids, Crusaders, Mamluks and Ottomans – and through the ages it has been given various names. Sometimes Tripoli is still called Al Fayha’a, which derives from the Arabic verb faha and indicates ‘the spread of a certain smell’, referring to the odour of Tripoli’s orange trees.2

Tripoli’s history also attests to the influence of deep-rooted religious affiliations. The Maronite community in the city, for example, named the river that flows nearby the city as Qadisha or Kadisha, which means ‘holy’ in Aramaic. According to John Gulick, the river received this name in honour of the Maronites, who ‘first took refuge high in the mountains near its source’. As the river reaches the city it is more commonly called by its Arabic name – Abu or Abou ‘Ali, meaning Ali’s father – which has a definite Muslim connotation.3

Like Damascus and Aleppo under the Ottomans, in 1834 Tripoli became the provincial capital of the Tripoli vilayet, which included the coastal area ‘from Jbeil to Tartus and the inland Syrian towns of Homs and Hama’.4 At this time, El Mina had a population of about 5,000 inhabitants, who were predominantly Greek Orthodox.

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