History of Our Family

The earliest recorded members of our family were members of the tribe of Ghassan (Arabic: الغساسنة‎) (al-Ghasāsinah, also Banū Ghassān). The Banu Ghassan were a South Arabian tribe which tradition has living in Ma’rib, the capital city of the Sabaean kingdom (in the west of present day Yemen) prior to the 3rd center AD.

Ma’rib was home to a great dam, built by the Sabaeans to capture water from the seasonal monsoon rains, which could then be used to irrigate their crops.  However, at some point in the 3^rd century AD, Ma’rib fell victim to inordinately heavy monsoon rains, occasioning
“…the memorable event immortalized in Islamic literature as ‘the bursting of the great dam’ of Ma’rib.”[1]

With the bursting of the dam, the tribe of Ghassan fled the flooding city of Ma’rib.  The group headed north, eventually settling in the Hawrān region, in what is now the southwest corner of Syria extending into the northwestern corner of modern day Jordan .  Hauran, also Hawran or Houran, (Arabic: حوران‎, Ḥaurān) is a volcanic plateau. The volcanic soils of Hauran made it one of the most fertile regions in Syria.

It was there that the Ghassan’s began an era of their own.[2] Hawrān had been divided between the Nabataeans and Romans until 106 AD, after which it was united under Roman rule and, not long after, its peoples introduced to the Christian religion. (cite Britannica). Tradition tells us that in Hawran, the Ghassanids intermarried with the early Christian Hellenized Romans and Greeks who were living in this region. It is assumed that the Ghassan tribe adopted the religion of Christianity after they reached their new home in the Hawran around the 3^rd Century AD. The tribe became very influential in the region.

[1] Philip K. Hitti, History of the Arabs, revised 10th ed. (1937; repr., New York: Palgrave MacMillian, 2002), 64.
[2] Ibid, 65.

[2] Yasmine Zahran, Ghassan Resurrected (London: Stacey International, 2006), ix.

In 1453, the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet (Mehmet the Conqueror), conquered İstanbul and the Byzantine Empire fell. This was the end of the Middle Ages. The Ottomans soon formed an empire that would continue to exist on three continents until the 19th century. During the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent (1520-1566), the Ottomans had a developed a well functioning state organization, powerful army and was in excellent financial condition. The borders of the Empire extended from the Crimea in the north to Yemen and Sudan in the south, and from Iran and the Caspian Sea in the east to Vienna in the northwest and Spain in the southwest.

Many of the Christians were persecuted in this time of Ottoman expansion. Records show that during the early 1500’s many families of the Ghassan tribe moved to Lebanon others went to Ramallah in Palestine, as well as other places in Jordan and Syria. These families include among many others: Azar, Abdullah, Abboud, Antoon, Boutros, Farah, Habeeb, Maloof, Saddic. Our direct ancestors went to the village of Kousba, in the Koura district of Lebanon.  The first recorded history of our families arriving in Kousba was in 1540.

Koura means “The Place ” in Syriac and Greek. The town of Kousba, in the Koura region had been a place of hiding from Christian persecution for many years. Kousba itself means “hidden” in Syriac.

This area was know to those early Greek Orthodox families because of The Hammatoura Monastery. The monastery had been built around caves carved high in the side of a steep cliff  by monks in the 13^th century.  Access to the monastery is still only by foot up a steep winding path. At the base of the cliff is the Kadisha River. Kadisha means “Holy” in Aramaic.