Author: Eliane Gebara (translated in English)

Eliane Gebara: The El Khazen family represents among the great Lebanese families a rather unique fact: as far back as time goes back in time, they are Maronites and have never changed their religious affiliation to the price of political ambitions. Instead, they took advantage of their confession to obtain several advantages, the least being that of consuls of France since Louis XIV.

Their origins are rather vague: they are said to be nomads of the Ghassanid tribe who, from the year 1100, moved between Damascus, Nablus, Houran and Yammoune and finally settled in Jaj, a small village above Jbeil. It is to the family’s aieul, the sub-deacon Sarkis el-Khazen, that we owe the first obvious trace of the family: indeed, he translated the Gospel into karchouni

DEATH BY FUMIGATION:

It is 1584, Emir Korkomaz, son of Fakhreddine I, takes refuge in a cave of Jezzine and died there by fumigation because, unable to reach it, the orders of the wali Ibrahim Pasha were to light harmful herbs at the front of his refuge. Sensing his certain death, he asked his wife Nassab to leave him and secure his two children Fakhreddine and Younes. She flees, takes refuge in Deir el-Kamar at Sheikh Kiwan’s house, managing her husband’s business, and asks him to hide her children in Kesrouan with people she trusts. At night and in secret, Sitt Nassab and the two little princes are taken to Balloune and entrusted to Ibrahim ibn Chidiac Sarkis el-Khazen, known as Abu-Sakr.

In French Traditions in Lebanon, published in 1918 in Paris, the French consul Rene Ristelhueber wrote: “Not only the Khazen carefully hid the princely children, long ignorant of their illustrious birth, but they contributed to a large part to their education. Together with their tutor Cheiban, also Maronite, they cultivated the lively and precise intelligence of the young Fakhreddine