page_title: Tyre, Lebanon
section_title: French Mandate colonial rule (1920–1943)
hierarchical_section_title: Tyre, Lebanon / History / French Mandate colonial rule (1920–1943)
caption_attribution_description: English: The Abdul Hussein Mosque of Tyre/Sour, Southern Lebanon, constructed in 1928 and named after Sayed Abdul Hussein Sharafeddin (1872-1957), who as the Shiite Imam of the city was a social reformer.
context_page_description: Tyre is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, though in medieval times for some centuries by just a tiny population. It was one of the earliest Phoenician metropolises and the legendary birthplace of Europa, her brothers Cadmus and Phoenix, as well as Carthage's founder Dido. The city has many ancient sites, including the Tyre Hippodrome, and was added as a whole to UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1984.
  The historian Ernest Renan noted:
  One can call Tyre a city of ruins, built out of ruins.
  Today Tyre is the fifth largest city in Lebanon after Beirut, Tripoli, Aley and Sidon, It is the capital of the Tyre District in the South Governorate. There were approximately 200,000 inhabitants in the Tyre urban area in 2016, including many refugees.
context_section_description: On the first of September 1920, the French colonial rulers proclaimed the new State of Greater Lebanon under the guardianship of the League of Nations represented by France. The French High Commissioner in Syria and Lebanon became General Henri Gouraud. Tyre and the Jabal Amel were attached as the Southern part of the Mandate.
  Still in 1920, the first municipality of Tyre was founded, which was headed by Ismail Yehia Khalil from the Shia feudal dynasty of al-Khalil. The al-Khalil family had traditionally been allies of the al-Sulh clan, whereas Imam Sharafeddin supported the rival al-Asa'ad clan of the Ali al-Saghir dynasty since 1908 (see above). As the most prominent opponent of the French imperialist project Sharafeddin was forced to flee the city:
  "His home in Tyre was looted by French soldiers, his books and manuscripts were confiscated, another home in a neighboring village was burned. He fled to Damascus, but had to quit that city for Egypt and then for a brief stay several months in Palestine before he was allowed to return to his base in Tyre."
  Meanwhile, the common people in Tyre and all of Southern Lebanon suffered from high taxes and fines imposed on their economy to punish them for the failed rebellion. In addition, the French colonial regime forcibly diverted agricultural products from Southern Lebanon to Syria and thus massively reduced trade activity in the port of Tyre. Driven out by mass-poverty, emigration from Tyre via Marseille to Western Africa reached another peak. This trend was only curbed when the French colonial rulers in Africa imposed stricter controls on immigration at the end of the 1920s.
  In 1922, Kamil al-As'ad returned from exile and started an uprising against the French occupation, but was quickly suppressed and died in 1924. In contrast, Imam Sharafeddin reached "rapprochement" with the colonial regime and entertained friendly relations with the military governor of South Lebanon, Zinovi Pechkoff, whom he would regularly invite as guest of honour to religious events in Tyre.
  Sharafeddin thus resurged as the most defining character for the peaceful development of Tyre in the first half of the 20th century. While he succeeded his rival Khalil as head of the municipal council until 1926, he first and foremost changed the city and its hinterland by becoming a social reformer and "activist".
  In 1926, the colonial regime officially recognised the Shia Ja'fari jurisprudence and subsequently – like in other cities – a Ja'fari tribunal opened in Tyre. It was headed by Sheikh Mughniya throughout the Mandate period. Most visibly though, the first Shi'a mosque in Tyre was constructed in 1928, using local traditional architecture and centered around two Roman granite columns. It was named Abdel Hussein Mosque after Sharafeddine.
  Yet despite Sharafeddine's efforts, the colonial appointments policy led to the fact that "almost all"  of the particularly sensitive positions in the Tyre municipality and government were held by the Christian Salim family, which was headed by Yusuf Salim, a former deputy and the vice-director of "La Compagnie des Eaux de Beyrouth".
  According to the 1921 census, 83% of Tyre's population were Shiites, 4% Sunni, and some 13% Christians. The Mandatory regime did little though to correct this gross under-representation of the Shia majority, but instead gave Shiite feudal families like al-As'ad and Khalil "a free hand in enlarging their personal fortunes and reinforcing their clannish powers."
  In 1936, the colonial authorities set up a camp for Armenian refugees in Rashidieh on the coast, five kilometres south of Tyre city. One year later, another one was constructed in the El Bass area of Tyre. Survivors of the Armenian Genocide had started arriving in Tyre already in the early 1920s. A branch of the Armenian General Benevolent Union was founded there in 1928.
  
  1938 saw a historical turning point, when Imam Sharafeddine founded a school for girls and boys. He pledged his private house to build the school, against the opposition of the feudal al-Khalil family. It soon expanded
caption: Minaret and double dome of the Abdul Hussein mosque, 2019
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