Zuqaq al-Blat

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, romanized: al-Baṭrakiyya, lit. '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, Qantari 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]

In 2014, Muslims made up 90.23% and Christians made up 8.96% of registered voters in Zuqaq al-Blat. 50.89% of the voters were Sunni Muslims and 39.32% were Shiite Muslims.^[6]

• Abd el-Qader Qabbani^[7]
• Butrus Bustani^[7]
• Fairuz
• Hussein Beyhum^[7]
• Khalil Sarkis^[7]
• Charles de Gaulle^[8]
• Omar Zaani