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Quarter of Beirut From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Zuqaq al-Blat (Arabic: زقاق البلاط) is one of the twelve quarters of Beirut.[1]
Zuqaq al-Blat literally means "the cobbled alley", this was a colloquial name given to the street extending from the old city to the Qantari hill and which was covered with cobblestones in the 19th century.[2]
Zuqaq al-Blat is also commonly called "al-Batrakieh" (Arabic: البطركية, the Patriarchate) due to the presence of the seat of the Greek Catholic Patriarchate of Beirut within its borders.[3]
Once a medieval walled port town, Beirut experienced rapid growth during the second half of the 19th century; the overcrowded city developed beyond its walls and the affluent citizens started to build their villas on the slopes of the surrounding hills, namely Ashrafieh, Qnatari and Musaytbeh.[4][5]
In 1832 Beirut came under the occupation of Ibrahim Pasha's troops. The new Egyptian authorities undertook grand works of urban planning and sanitation. The appointed Egyptian-Circassian governor of Beirut, Mahmoud Na'ami Bey commissioned street cobbling works which stretched beyond the city's walls, the street extending from the south-western side of the city wall into the new extramural neighborhoods on the Qantari hill came to be known as Zuqaq al-Blat and gave its name to the quarter.[2]
Some of the notable people resided in Zuqaq al-Blat included:
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