Tripoli Al Sham (a Photographic Journey)

By (author) Badr El Hage
This book is not a conventional history of the city of Tripoli Al-Sham, nor does it attempt to offer a descriptive survey of its quarters, khans, markets, streets, alleys, mosques, churches, or social life. Scholars across different languages have examined these subjects in depth over the years, and I do not seek to replicate or expand upon that body of work. Rather, this book aims to fill a different gap. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first work devoted to documenting Tripoli through photography, covering the period from the early 1840s-when the French pioneer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey (1804-1892) took the first known photograph of the city — to the first half of the twentieth century. The photographs are as important as the text; they are a visual documentation that depict how the urban and architectural structures developed, and what remains of them after decades of changes, natural catastrophes, and demolition due to ignorance and neglect. Foreign photographers took most of the photographs published in this book. Their photographs transmit to us some glimpses of the city in a specific time. They reflect a limited and narrow vision of what Tripoli was like, but at the same time, they are valuable visual documents that sheds light on the city's urban history