House of al-Dahdah


The al-Dahdah family is a noble Maronite Christian family originating from the village of Aqoura in Mount Lebanon, and whose line of descent is attested since the 14th century. It traces back in continuous lineage to Girgis al-Dahdah, the son-in-law of Ghazal al-Qaysi, Muqaddam of Aqoura, who died in 1375 without male issue.
Beginning in 1703, the family received agricultural estates in the Futuh tax-farming district of Mount Lebanon, and in 1705 it settled in the nearby village of Aramoun in the Keserwan District. Its members have collectively held the iqta', or tax-farming concession, for the Futuh district of Mount Lebanon from Ottoman authorities from 1771 until the Ottoman Tanzimat ended the iqta' system in Mount Lebanon in 1859. One branch of the family, that of Mansur al-Dahdah also held the iqta' for the Byblos District for about the same period of time. In the writings of 19th century chroniclers of Mount Lebanon, such as those of Antuniyus Abu Khattar al-'Aynturini, Tannus al-Shidyaq, and Mansur al-Hattuni, the House of al-Dahdah is alternatively referred to as the mashayikh and the muqata'jiyah of the Futuh district of Mount Lebanon.
Among its members were several officials at the court of the Mount Lebanon Emirate, Ottoman consuls in trading cities around the Mediterranean, Papal Counts, and notable Lebanese statesmen, literary men, clergy members, military officers, and senior civil servants. It has consisted of five branches since the early 18th century, of which one is now extinct.

Origins

The family claims descent from an eponymous ancestor, Thabit ibn al-Dahdah, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad and a member of the Sahabah, also known as Abu al-Dahdah, whose descendants are believed to have migrated to Damascus in the wake of Arab conquests, then settled in Aqoura, then an administrative dependency of Damascus, before converting to Christianity. These claims were first made in the early decades of the 20th century, during a time of pan-Arab and pan-Syrian ideological effervescence. The XVIIth and XVIIIth century chronicles of Mount Lebanon do not refer to such an ascendance. Rather, early Islamic jurisprudence dictionaries appear to indicate that the Sahabi Thabit ibn al-Dahdah died without male or female issue, prompting an exceptional ruling from the Prophet Muhammad to allocate his properties to the son of Thabit's sister.

Aqoura period: from 1375 to 1703

The first proven ancestor of the al-Dahdah family is Girgis al-Dahdah, who was the deacon of the Maronite community of Aqoura in Mount Lebanon in the second half of the 14th century. This Girgis was the son-in-law of the Muqaddam Ghazal of Aqoura, the community's secular leader, who had died in 1375. They both belonged to the Qaysi party. Aqoura, in the hinterland of Byblos, appears to have been a focal point of the Qays-Yaman rivalry that was engulfing Mount Lebanon and other rural parts of Bilad al-Sham in the late Mamluk and early Ottoman times, perhaps due to the concentration of clans of Arab tribal origins in the town, and its location as the terminus of an ancient Arab nomadic migration route that has remained in use until recent years.
Following Girgis al-Dahdah, the family's line of descent features at least six successive priests, beginning with his son who became a monk under the name of Mikhail. One of these priests refers to himself as "the priest Hanna son of the priest Ibrahim al-Dahdah" on the margins of a liturgy book dated on from 1572 on the sacrament of marriage for the parish church of Saint Georges of Aqoura, and appears to have copied a similar book in 1560. A paternal cousin of this priest Hanna, Sulayman al-Dahdah is recorded by Patriarch Istifan al-Duwayhi as having copied a liturgy book in Aqoura as early as 1552. Another later al-Dahdah cleric, Ighnatius, is recorded as having overseen the rebuilding of 'Aqura's parish church, named after Saint George in 1730, according to an inscription in the Arabic vernacular language and Garshuni script now located to the left of the western entrance of the 20th century church.
This succession of single children over seven generations has raised many questions about the possible existence of lateral branches of the family which either died out or survived without retaining the al-Dahdah name. Indeed, another one of these priests, Yusuf mentions the existence of several of his own children among other family members, in a blessing he wrote in 1649 on the margins of a prayer book from a church in Aqoura, where he identified himself as "a priest under the name of Yusuf, servitor of Aqoura, ordained by the Patriarch Yuhanna Makhluf , son of the late Mikhail son of the late priest Hanna son of the late priest Ibrahim referred to as ibn al-Dahdah from Aqoura the protected under the care of God in Mount Lebanon the blessed, in the dependency of the country of Baalbeck".
The series of al-Dahdah priests comes to an end with the Shaykh Yusuf al-Dahdah, the grandson of the aforementioned priest Yusuf. Shaykh Yusuf's momentous career is described in detail in Tannus al-Shidyaq's chronicle of the histories of notable families from Mount Lebanon. His existence is otherwise independently confirmed by a colophon he wrote as a youth in Syriac Garshuni script in 1692 on the margins of a liturgy manuscript, now at the French National Library. Yusuf identifies himself in the colophon as the deacon "Yawsep bar Dahdah of the blessed village of 'Aynquro", the Syriac name of Aqoura. Incidentally, the second colophon in the prayer book was written by a "'Imad son of Shi'mun of Aynquro" at the same time. This 'Imad was perhaps 'Imad al-Hashim, a local strongman who drove his rival Shaykh Yusuf al-Dahdah and his family out of Aqoura in 1702.
Father Luwis al-Hachim, in his local history of al-'Aqura, lists numerous properties in Aqoura and its vicinity that still bore the al-Dahdah name long after they had been sold. Among these was the "land of al-Dahdah" in the area of al-'Aqabah, and the "orchard of al-Dahdah" in the locality of 'Ayn al-Lahta, and weekly water usage rights known as "the Mondays of al-Dahdah".

Futuh period: from 1704 to 1856

Shaykh Yusuf al-Dahdah's exile from Aqoura in 1704 marks the irruption of the family on Mount Lebanon's political scene and the rise of its fortunes first as tax administrators for the Hamadah overlords of Northern Mount Lebanon after 1705, and later as associates of the Shihab emirs of the Mount Lebanon Emirate after 1763, and iqta' holders of the Futuh district after 1771.
Ottoman archives in Istanbul show that the Shiite Hamadah Shaykhs played a much larger role in the history of Mount Lebanon in the 17th century than Lebanese chroniclers have recognized. Their semi-autonomous emirate reached the height of its power in the late seventeenth century, when much of North Mount Lebanon, including the seat of the Maronite patriarchate in the Qadisha Valley, was under their effective control. They had collected taxes and policed the largely Maronite tax farm districts of Byblos, the Futuh, Batroun, Jibbat al-Munaytrah and Jibbat Bsharri of Mount Lebanon on behalf of the Ottoman provincial authorities of the Tripoli Eyalet since the 1630s.
As Ottoman iqta' holders with an interest in maximizing tax revenues and hence agricultural output from the districts they had received a fiscal concession for, the Hamada Shaykhs appear to have relied on Shaykh Yusuf al-Dahdah and his sons Mansur and Sulayman after him to administer and develop one of their less populated districts, the Futuh. In 1703, he was granted the agricultural estates of 'Ayn Jwayya, 'Ayn al-Dilbah, 'Ayn Sjaa', 'Ayn al-Gharah and 'Ayn al-Husari in the Futuh district as his private property; in 1704, his servants, properties and cattle and those of his associates were exempted from taxation, and he himself was put in charge of the tax collection and administration of the Futuh district. Indeed, a contemporary reference to him under "Shaykh Yusuf al-Aquri al-Maruni" as collecting Ottoman taxes for areas of the Futuh District on behalf of Shaykh Ismail Hamadah occurs in a biography of Maronite Patriarch and historian Estephan El Douaihy written by Douhaihy's successor Patriarch Jacob Awad.
Annual Iltizam conventions between the Ottoman authorities and the Hamadah Shaykhs in the archives of the Ottoman Sharia Court in the provincial capital of Tripoli show a systematic inclusion of a financial guarantee clause after 1740, perhaps as a result of Hamadah Shaykhs repeatedly defaulting on their tax collection obligations. In almost all cases, the financial guarantors were Maronite shaykhs from areas under Hamadah tutelage. In 1762, Mansur al-Dahdah and his brother Sulayman acted as guarantors on the iltizam contract of the sons of Ismail Hamadah for the Byblos district, and had to sell their personal properties to pay the Ottoman authorities of Tripoli for the sum of 25,000 Ottoman piasters of tax monies owed by the Hamadah Shaykhs when these defaulted on their payments. Local chronicles report the sale by Mansur al-Dahdah and his brothers of the villages of Fatqa and al-Kfur as well as half of Jabal Moussa in payment for the sums owed as guarantee for the Hamadah iltizam.
In 1761 and 1763 respectively, Mussa al-Dahdah and his brother Mansur entered the service of the Shihab emirs of the Shouf in southern Mount Lebanon, as the power of the Hamadah Shaykhs declined following their bankruptcy and multiple Ottoman military campaigns against them, and all their iltizam concessions in Northern Mount Lebanon were transferred to the Shihab emirs in 1763.
The year 1763 and the following years marked the beginning of a long period of association of the al-Dahdah family with the Shihab emirs of Mount of Lebanon. Through the good offices of Mansur al-Dahdah, Emir Yusuf Shihab had received the annual iltizam of the Northern Mount Lebanon districts, which the Ottoman Pashas of Tripoli had previously awarded to different members of the Hamadah clan, and he put members of the al-Dahdah family in charge of administering and collecting imperial taxes from these districts. In 1763, Shaykh Mansur al-Dahdah was put in charge of administering the people and revenues of the Byblos District, a position which was later passed on to his son Hanna and his grandsons Lwis and Jahjah after that; his brother Shaykh Wuhbah al-Dahdah was put in charge of Jubbat al-Munaytra, the former stronghold of the Hamadah Shaykhs. Shaykh Mansur al-Dahdah also received large estates in the Byblos and the Futuh districts, as compensation for the sale of his properties to guarantee the Hamadah obligations under their iltizam.
When in 1771 Emir Yusuf Shihab also took over the iltizam for the districts of Southern Mount Lebanon from his uncle emir Mansur Shihab, he appointed several members of the al-Dahdah family to positions of power and influence. Most significantly, the House of al-Dahdah collectively received the hereditary iqta' for the Futuh muqata'ah. After that date, the family's history becomes intimately intertwined with that of the Shihab emirate of Mount Lebanon under Yusuf Shihab then Bashir Shihab II, with its upheavals and bright spots. Indeed, Emir Bashir Shihab II mainly recruited his advisers among members of the al-Dahdah family. Most prominent among these were Shaykh Sallum al-Dahdah son of Mussa, and Shaykh Mansur al-Dahdah son of Sallum.

Arms

In Lebanon: A cross surrounded by two olive branches, according to family tradition.
In France, where the branch of Count Rochaid Dahdah was admitted into French nobility: "d'or, au cèdre arraché de sinople, au chef du meme"

Branches

The five branches of the al-Dahdah evolved from the five sons of Shaykh Yusuf al-Dahdah: Abu Yunis Ibrahim, extinct in 1883; Abu Dhahir Sulayman; Abu Nassif Mussa, Abu Hanna Mansur; and Abu Sarkis Wahbah.

Place names

Several neighborhoods, streets and public buildings in Middle Eastern and French cities were named after members of the family at various points in history.
1) In Beirut, Lebanon, a neighborhood was known as Hayy al-Dahdah or Mahallat al-Dahdah near the old Damascus road just outside the city's old downtown, and appears in maps as late as 1911. The name of the neighborhood is no longer in use, but a street in the same area carries the name of Rochaid El-Dahdah. Another street in the Achrafieh neighborhood of Beirut carries the name of Mansur al-Dahdah.
2) In Damascus, Syria a neighborhood just north of the old city is still known as Hayy al-Dahdah, and was known as Marj al-Dahdah into the early Middle Ages. Marj al-Dahdah is now the site of al-Dahdah cemetery, one of the cities oldest and largest. Both the field and the cemetery are named after the 10th century CE Hadith scholar Abu al-Dahdah Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Tamimi, who lived and is buried there. Popular lore wrongly attributed the naming of the cemetery to the Sahabi Thabit ibn al-Dahdah, who appears to have died in Medina without issue, and not in Damascus.
3) In Tunis, Tunisia, a public park in the Berges du Lac neighborhood, is named after Count Rochaid al-Dahdah, who was the adviser and personal secretary of the bey of Tunis between 1863 and 1869.
4) In Marseille, France, where Merii Al-Dahdah and Rochaid Al-Dahdah had their commercial headquarters, there remains a
Boulevard Dahdah, in the 4th Arrondissement of Marseille and an Ecole Primaire Dahdah, 15 Boulevard Dahdah, Marseille, 13004 both named after Merii.
5) In Dinard, France, the Rochaid square was named after Count Rochaid Al-Dahdah, the town's principal developer in the 19th century.

Prominent members

Properties and waqfs

In the Futuh District:
In the Byblos District:
In the Batrun District:

Allied families

In addition to its dominant practice of endogamous marriage between members of its different branches, the house of al-Dahdah is mainly allied to the two other families of the Maronite nobility of Kisrawan: the Khazen, and the Hubaysh, and to a lesser extent, to the families of al-Hachem in Aqoura and al-Khouri Salih of Richmayya. For instance, President Shaykh Bechara al-Khoury, the first president of the Lebanese Republic, was the maternal grandson of a woman from the Dahdah family; the sister of Habib al-Saad, who was president of Lebanon under the French Mandate from 1934 to 1936, was married to Iskandar al-Dahdah.