As evening approaches in downtown Beirut, a deafening clangor sets in during the winter months as church bells chime over the Muslim call to prayer, a cacophony that silences the chatter at sidewalk cafes for several minutes. The source of the discord is a street corner that joins St. George Cathedral and the Grand Mosque, the largest houses of worship for Beirut’s Maronite Christian and Sunni Muslim sects.

 

The mosque blasts the call to prayer from its loudspeakers. The cathedral recently acquired a 6,000-pound bell to clang above the call and the urban din. “We bought the bell from France,” said Paul Youssef Matar, the archbishop of the Maronite church in Lebanon, a branch of Catholicism and Lebanon’s dominant Christian sect. “It is the biggest bell in the Middle East.” [Link]