The Tripoli Project at AKU-ISMC

Accommodating Modernity – local experiences of a global phenomenon during the 19th and early 20th centuries

Since the beginning of 2007 a major research project on the city of Tripoli initiated by Stefan Weber (AKU-ISMC) and funded by the German Research Society has begun. An application by Professor Gudrun Krämer (Freie Universität Berlin), colleagues and Stefan Weber received funds for three PhD positions working on the history of Tripoli. Weber covers the topic of “Societies and their daily Environment: Phenomenology and changing Realities of Urban Space”, while the PhD dissertations will focus on city and society in the 19th century (local modernity) by an historian, architectural historian and building archaeologist respectively. The main focus is not if modernity was experienced and shaped in local 'peripheral' contexts but how this is expressed in different fields of daily life in a diverse spectrum of an urban society.

The Project

As part of a co-operative project between the Orient Institute Beirut, the Freie Universität Berlin, the Technical University Berlin, the German Archaeological Institute, the Aga Khan University London and the Lebanese University, an interdisciplinary research group is looking at the area and history of Tripoli in the 19th and early 20th centuries under the combined aspects of material culture and social history. The project observes a micro-historical approach taking the actors into consideration; it aims at reconstructing and analysing complex transformation processes of the society of Tripoli in their living spaces throughout the “long” 19th century. This period was a time of change and rearrangement with profound consequences for the urban societies of the Middle East. Tripoli offers an especially fertile source including an almost complete corpus of Ottoman court records and an unusually intact Old Town with a great number of historical dwelling-houses and commercial buildings. On that basis, the changes in society and the associated processes of alteration in urban structure and architecture will be reconstructed and analysed. A combination of methods from social history, cultural history and architectural history will allow an investigation of examples of individual actors in their surroundings (dwelling, work, public sphere). A broad range of actors as the protagonists of the changes will result in representative statements about societal transformation and the constitution of public and private spheres in a Middle Eastern provincial town. The research project rests on the hypothesis that the changes in the 19th century followed their individual rhythms depending on the locality; in the Ottoman province they do therefore not agree with the usual periodisation of the reform era, which is geared to the development in the centre. The establishing of a local periodisation is a further goal of the project.

Permanent Research Group

• Christian Sassmannshausen (Freie Universität Berlin); Tripoli during the Ottoman Reform Period
• Juren Meister (DAI Berlin); Commercial Buildings in Tripoli
• Karla Börner (TU Berlin); Houses in Tripoli
• Stefan Weber (AKU-ISMC); Tripoli before the Ottoman Reform Period

Applicant Body

• Gudrun Krämer (Free University Berlin)
• Dorothée Sack (Technical University, Berlin)
• Ulrike Wulf-Rheidt (German Archaeological Institute Berlin)
• Stefan Weber (AKU-ISMC)

Lebanese Hosting Institution

• Orient Institut Beirut
• The Municipality of Tripoli supports the project and provides an office for field campaigns.