Culture

For generations, traditional Lebanese houses with red tiled roofs, triple arched windows and stone balconies defined neighborhoods across Beirut and Mount Lebanon.

In Lebanon, asking someone “Where are you from?” rarely means asking which country they belong to. More often, the question refers to their ancestral village, town or region, even if they were born and raised in Beirut or have never lived in that place themselves.

A few steps apart in Zokak el-Blat stand two fading nineteenth-century mansions: Ziade Palace and Heneine Palace, better known to many Beirutis as Dahesh Palace.

Before modern hospitals and pharmacies became widely accessible, Lebanese families relied on herbs, olive oil, honey, household preparations and the knowledge of village healers and midwives.

Long before some of the best remembered women of the Arab Nahda rose to prominence, Esther Azhari Moyal, a Jewish woman born in Beirut in 1873, was writing in Arabic, organizing women, translating European literature and publicly challenging arguments about women’s intellectual abilities.

When Lebanese emigrants began spreading across the world in the late nineteenth century, they carried their food with them. But kibbeh, sfeeha and other familiar dishes did not remain unchanged. They encountered new ingredients, new customers and new cultures.