2016 marks the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the American University of Beirut, one of the institutions responsible for the establishment of the AAC, its restoration and current functioning. As part of the anniversary's commemorations, Christine Lindner contributed a chapter to the edited volume One Hundred and Fifty, edited by Nadia Maria el Cheikh, Lina Choueiri and Bilal Orfali. In this chapter, Dr. Lindner explores the history of the AUB and AAC. Below are excepts from this chapter.
Christine B. Lindner, "From Foreign soil to the ʾArḍ of Beirut: A history of the American University of Beirut and the Anglo-American Cemetery"," in: Nadia Marie El Cheikh, Lina Choueiri and Bilal Orfail, (eds.), One Hundred and Fifty (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 2016), 189-200. The book is available for purchase at the AUB Press.
***
At
the turn of the 20th century, the Syrian Protestant College (SPC), as the American
University of Beirut (AUB) was then called, faced an unexpected problem. The
success of the college, as an institute of higher learning in the Eastern
Mediterranean region, attracted an increasing number of American and British
national for its faculty and staff. Drawn to Beirut, these new immigrants
sought to reconstruct their lives in this emerging center of cultural,
political and economic activity. While creating a new, transnational community
in the suburb of Raʾs Beirut, the new migrants were only loosely connected to
the American Protestant mission from which the SPC had sprung during the mid-19th
century. The classrooms where the new SPC “staffites” taught, the medical
offices where they served, and the houses where they resided, were concentrated
along the new streets of Raʾs Beirut, rather than within the Mission Compound
just south of the old city walls. This short distance, of a mile and a half,
nevertheless reflected SPC’s emerging position as a new nexus of Anglo-American
activity in the city....
It
is unclear from the archives why land on Raʾs Beirut was not chosen for the location
of the new Anglo-American Cemetery. As the cemetery catered primarily to those
working at the SPC, locating the cemetery on Raʾs Beirut would have been an
obvious choice that reinforced SPC’s position on the ‘head’ of the city.[1]
Virgin land was available as the quarter remained sparsely developed even until
the mid-20th century.[2]
However, it could have been the undeveloped nature of this area, on the edge of
red sand hills with its ever present threat of sand-storms, which deterred its
selection for the location of the new cemetery.[3] Contemporary
Anglo-American views on death resulted in garden-like cemeteries on the edges
of cities, where graves would remain undisturbed for relatives to visit.[4]
The instability of the Raʾs Beirut’s landscape would have been unsettling for
those deciding a location to inter their loved ones.[5]
As a result, a plot of land was
purchased in Furn al-Shubbak, a south-eastern suburb of the city. Like Raʾs
Beirut, this area was still developing during the early 20th century, but its
terrain was much more stable amongst the pine trees near the Beirut River.[6] Although
three and a half miles from SPC, the new cemetery was situated just off the
busy Beirut-Damascus Road and was one mile south of the Protestant cemeteries in
Raʾs al-Nabaʾa. Moreover, Furn al-Shubbak was a terminal stop for the Beirut
Trams.[7] This
made the trip from SPC’s Main Gate to the AAC a simple ride along this new
medium of modern transportation. By transversing the city, either by car or
tram, in order to attend the burial of an associate or annually commemorate a
relative’s death, members of the SPC community turned these transportation routes
into extended branches of SPC. Noticeably two other cemeteries were eventually
built around the AAC,[8]
creating an enclave of sacred space that paralleled Raʾs Beirut ‘s enclave of
exceptionalisim. Thus, SPC’s influence extended beyond its immediate
neighborhood and reached across the city even into a distant suburb.
The connection between the AAC and
AUB (as the SPC had been renamed in 1920) was strengthened in 1960 when the
Mission Cemetery in Zuqaq al-Blat was closed. Two years prior, the American
Mission was notified that an urban planning project was to be enacted,[9]
for which a new road would cut through the Mission Compound and disrupt the
cemetery.[10]
Accordingly, the missionaries arranged for the graves to be exhumed and reburied
at the AAC.[11]
The result was the unification of graves for the Anglo-American AUB staffites.
Although miles from the buzz of College Hall, the AAC, by 1960, was the resting
place for three generations of the SPC/AUB Anglo-American community, and it’s
second permanent mark on Beirut’s cityscape.
***
The chapter continues with a discussion on the use of individual gravestones as sources for international history (and the silences that they can hide). It concludes with an exploration of the relationship between the Crawford-West family and AUB as revealed through their graves at the AAC.
[1] In Arabic, Raʾs Beirut
means the 'head of Beirut'.
[2] Khalaf and Kongstad, Hamra
of Beirut: 31-33; Abunnasr, ‘The Making of Ras Beirut’: 256.
[3] Controlling the sand was a
major feat tackled by the erection of the Sanayah on the other side of the sand
dunes. See Khalaf, Heart of Beirut: Reclaiming the Bourj, (London: Saqi,
2006): 73
[4] Carlton Basmajian and
Christopher Coutts, ‘Planning for the Disposal of the Dead’, Journal of the
American Planning Association, 76:3 (2010): 306.
[5] Another fear could have been
the jackals that ran wild in the suburbs. Edward
W. Hooker, Memoir of Mrs. Sarah Lanman
Smith, Late of the Mission in Syria, [First
Edition], (London: The Religious Tract Society,
1839): 183.
Folklore of Raʾs Beirut recalls that the sand dunes were the location to bury
criminals, which could be another reason why the AAC was not located there.
[6] Henry W. Glockler, ‘Grave
Removals and other data on the cemetery’, ([Beirut]: [May] 1960): RG 115-3-17,
PHS.
[7] Jens
Hanssen, Fin de Siècle Beirut: The Making
of an Ottoman Provencal Capital, (Oxford:
Clarendom Press, 2005): 101-103. Noticeably, it was from Furn al-Shubbak that
the 1922 boycott of the trams emerged, which disrupted access to the AAC by
tram and car as the protests also occupied the streets. Carla Eddé, Beyrouth:
Naissance D’une Capitale, (1918-1924), (Beirut: Sindbad, 2009): 302-315
[8] In 1924, the Armenian
community purchase part of the AAC land for a cemetery catering to its own
community. James H. Nicol to Henry W. Glockler, (Beirut: 15 April 1924): RG
115-3-15, PHS; James H. Nicol to Members of the Cemetery Committee, (Beirut:
n.d.): RG 115-3-15, PHS. A Maronite
Cemetery was also built to the east of the AAC.
[9] There is evidence suggesting
that the project dates to the Mandate Period, although the earliest concrete
evidence comes from the American missionaries who inquired about relocating the
graves of the Mission Cemetery to the AAC in 1948. n.s., ‘[Regulations]
governing the removal of a cemetery’, ([Beirut]: 26 August 1948): RG 115-3-17,
PHS.
[10] An undated and non-titled
map held by NEST Special Collections shows the road proposal plans, which would
only partially disrupt the cemetery, but would cut it off from the rest of the
Mission Compound.
[11] Glockler, ‘Grave Removals
and other data on the cemetery’.
