I spent three weeks last autumn in the Sursock Museum archives, turning over carte-de-visite photographs of men I would never meet. They sat in identical poses — back straight, tarboush squarely planted, tassel falling to the right — in studios along Rue Gemmayzeh and Rue Gouraud. Every portrait followed the same convention: the fez as crown, the frock coat as uniform, the gaze directed slightly left, as if looking toward a future that would not include them.
A Hat Without Borders
The tarboush was never simply Lebanese. It was the Ottoman Empire’s most successful piece of urban design — a single object that signified modernity from Salonica to Basra, regardless of mother tongue or confession.