The Beirut quarantine, a key element in the organisation of the pilgrimage to Mecca during the French Mandate (1920-1944)
La station quarantenaire de Beyrouth, pièce maîtresse de l'organisation du pèlerinage à La Mecque à l'époque du mandat français (1920-1944)
Résumé
From 1926 onwards, the administration of the French mandate in Syria and Lebanon decided, for both political and health reasons, to take control of the organisation of travel to Mecca. In fact, after the cholera epidemic that swept through Iraq in 1927, an international conference was held in Beirut in January 1929, bringing together representatives from Egypt and the Levant States under the mandate, in order to regulate the movement of pilgrims from the Near East to the Holy Cities of the Hedjaz. The centrepiece of this system, the new forty-year-old Beirut station, was destined to become the showcase for French medicine in the Levant. In reality, under the pretext of health control, the French authorities were seeking to redirect the region's pilgrimage routes towards the port of Beirut, to the detriment of Damascus, the traditional pilgrimage crossroads, and to switch land caravans to the sea. Equipped with modern, comfortable sanitary and reception facilities, the forty-year-old station in Beirut was also intended to be an important stopover on the return journey of other French Muslim pilgrims, thus fulfilling a propaganda function throughout the empire. It is on the reality and the limits of these ambitions that we will examine.
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