1) I will start with my work on an unexpected periphery #Beirut. Early Islamic Beirut. Yes, Beirut conjures images of the sunny Mediterranean, of cosmopolitanism, and joie de vivre, and side by side images of war and human misery -rm

2)This Beirut the capital, the multifaceted, and the victim of many wars was born in the mid-19th century. The change started with the Egyptian occupation of Muhammad Ali (1831-1840) and culminated in the 1880s when its notables petitioned to make it into a provincial capital -rm

3) Let me just give you a taste of what Beirut was like on the eve of its transformation. Beirut intra muros until the mid- 19th century was a small town with narrow streets and windowless houses huddled behind its walls-rm

4) The seven gates of Beirut would close at dusk with only the southern gate open to arriving foreigners- rm

5) In fact, walled Beirut was 570 m from the north at the port to the south at the gate known as Bāb al-Darka and 370 m from Bāb Idrīs in the West to Bāb al-Sarāyā in the East. The map provides an idea of the size of old Beirut within Greater Beirut- rm

6) The wall as it appears in these maps is a product of long term reworking with its final shape dating to the period of Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar (1775-1825). The city wall and the gates, however, will disappear by the 1920s through successive urban renewal works-rm

7) These maps, including a map drawn by the Danish vice-consul Julius Loytved in 1876, documents from al-Maḥkama al-Shar’iyya, and travelers also show the beginning of residential occupation outside in dispersed houses and farms outside the city walls-rm

8) It is under this old Beirut, transformed under Ottoman and French urban renewal schemes and ravaged by the Civil War (1975-1990), that late antique and early Islamic Beirut lay. And it is to its story I will turn to this week-rm