This is not a complete review of Lebanese Architecture but a brief pictorial study of the kind of old houses still present or had been present in the District of Zgharta Zawieh.
The Lebanese house in Zgharta Zawieh
The Lebanese people of Mount Lebanon (from Zawieh to Jezzine), intelligent and active, worked hard through more then a dozen centuries for the development of their national life. They succeeded to create an intellectual and artistic patrimony, prosperity and a proper civilization. A particular civilization, admired by European voyagers and Arabs, that remained intact for many centuries but finally didn't survive the 20th century.
In the last quarter of the 19th century and because of the deteriorating economic situation and oppression caused by the Ottoman rule, the residents of Mount Lebanon began an emigration process toward Europe and the two Americas, in search for fortune, better life, freedom and security. The picture on the right shows Lebanese peasant houses in the mountains abandoned since WWI period. When some came back to their mountains, they brought with them new "ways of life".
By the middle of the 20th century, everything changed in the cities and the rural community. Western civilization had a big impact on that "Mount Lebanon" that lived centuries according to its traditions and its "static" civilization. Dramatic changes were done in the art of construction and management of the houses in the mountains.
What had happened to this famous Lebanese House …
The House ( Al Bayt )
The Lebanese word for house is Bayt. The Lebanese "Bayt" is almost the same and did not know any major modifications throughout many centuries. A common way of constructing, the same orientation of the houses, a common type of furniture and the same way of life prevailed in all the villages of Mount Lebanon. The dimensions of the house depended on the welfare or the number of children in the family but all the houses had in common the same design. They were regtangular and all oriented toward the sea as the villages in Mount Lebanon are constructed on the western slope like an amphitheatre facing the sea.
A typical peasant house (left) and a longitudinal
section of the peasant house ( right ).
The Walls
In Lebanon, the "maamarjeh" was a very important person whose title is "mo'allem" or "master". He used to be the mason, the architect and the engineer of the house. He configures and executes the building with his assistants and the "fe'aleh" or workers who prepare the foundations ( asasat ) by digging the ground surface till the rocks appear.
Left: Abou Habib Al Ehdeni working a stone. Abou Habib is surely of the Dahdah family because all the Dahdah of Zgharta used to work in the stone business. They were tall and strong, they were athletes.
Above: Instruments used to work the stones for constructions
Stones for the construction of walls were
bought from the "maqlaa" ( stone extracting and shaping site) and
transported by mules or carried on the back by people if the "maqlaa" was
very near. The "maamarjeh" used to begin by the foundations then the
construction of the walls (hitan). The four external walls were: "Hayt al
Bahri" the wall facing the sea (west), "Hayt al Sharq" the wall facing the
orient (east), "Hayt al Gharbi" the wall facing the South although Gharbi
means west, "Hayt al Shemali" the wall to the north. The first two were
parallel and longer then the other two walls. The height of the walls was 4
meters and their width 1 meter. No mortar was used in these double sided
walls (kallin). The space between the inner and outer sides was called "rakkeh"
and was filled with gravel.
The outer wall ( Hayt berraneh) called also "waj'ha" or "façade" was built by well shaped stones or "hjara mqasbeh". Every row of stones was called "medmak". The stones of the inner walls were less perfect because they were covered with "houwarah", some kind of white plaster.
Once the walls achieved, the "maamarjeh"
begins with the "qnater" or arcades that usually cut the house in two in the
direction north-south. The main object of the "qnater" is to support the
roof (saqf ) along with the walls and to divide the
house interior into
large rooms. Sometimes a house may have one, two or even three rows of
arcades, depending on the number of rooms it contains. The house is thus
divided into long rooms called "souq". A "souq" is a long hall limited by a
wall and a row of arcades, or by two rows of arcades in large houses. A
house may have one, two, three or even four "souqs". In the houses facing
the sea, the floor level "souq foukani" or "the upper room" limited by the
arcade and the eastern wall is usually higher by nearly 8 cm then the floor
of the "souq tehtani" or lower room. In other houses, differently oriented,
there was always a room higher then the others called "mastbeh" and used as
the "maqa'ad" or living room.
The floor of the house ( ardieh ) was generally clean and well preserved.
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