Beirut Through Time: Downtown, Zuqāq al-Balāṭ, and Ras Beirut, 19th–20th Centuries
Before 1840, Beirut remained largely confined within its fortifications, with dense construction inside the walls and scattered buildings beyond. The surrounding lands were primarily agricultural each area devoted to specific forms of cultivation. Over the two centuries, land use in the outer zones had begun to shift. The cultivation of mulberry trees for silk production, expanded significantly during the first half of the nineteenth. Small structures appeared increasingly serving as depots, workshops, watchmen’s houses, and summer residences. These marked the beginnings of the area that would evolve into the “district of Zuqāq al-Balāṭ”.
The early development of Zuqāq al-Balāṭ area is closely tied to the history of the street known as Zuqāq al-Balāṭ, meaning “the cobbled lane.” the first road to be paved outside Beirut’s walls—a result of the infrastructure projects carried out during the Egyptian occupation (1831–1840). At that time, roads beyond the city walls were notoriously poor—muddy torrent beds in winter and dusty tracks in summer—so the paving of this lane, originally an access road to the city’s gardens, was a remarkable improvement.
By the 1820s, some houses outside Beirut’s walls were already being used as permanent residences for retreat after work and as summer houses—much like country homes. Around the same period, property owners began renting their houses to foreigners, including Protestant missionaries, who went on to build their own residences there by 1832.
Ras Beirut was then a remote, windswept area of rocky land, scarcely inhabited and bordered by cactus fences. Houses were few and scattered among orange groves and vineyards. The area was home to scorpions, snakes, and jackals, and dotted with berry trees. By day, the sun scorched its treeless landscape; by night, the howls of jackals echoed through the hills.
The residents of Ras Beirut—Druze, Christians, and Muslims—lived together in harmony, sharing land, labor, and daily life. There were interfaith marriages and milk kinship ties between them starting late nineteenth. Most residents were farmers, tending fields of radishes, potatoes, lentils, and mulberries, whose fruits fed families, leaves nourished cattle, and branches supported silkworms. Beyond their farms, they traded silk and other goods, traveling along narrow mule paths.
No fresh water was available in homes; locals dug pits to collect rainwater for crops and relied on natural springs for drinking water. (A tradition that echoed the supposed etymology of Beirut in Semitic BRT: The city of wells). Houses were lit by kerosene lamps, while the few streets were illuminated by gaslight. Electricity reached Ras Beirut only in 1902, followed soon after by an electric tramway—an innovation that initially frightened some residents, prompting a few to move away from the newly developed Bliss Street. At that time, Beirut itself was still a small walled city of fewer than 100,000 inhabitants, its narrow bazaars leading to the seashore and lacking proper carriage roads. Yet, the city had begun to expand beyond its medieval boundaries, marking the dawn of modern urban growth.