Description - وصف
Qasr al-Dabbaneh is located in al-Shakriya Street, which is a heritage street like other streets in old Sidon. Next to it is the Bishopric of Sidon and Deir Al-Qamar for Catholics, and opposite it from the sea side is Al-Barani Mosque. The interior design of Qasr al-Dabbaneh is a mixture of Ottoman-Arabic architecture with a traditional character in the Levant. The palace was built by Ali Agha Hammoud in 1721 AD and he lived there with his family in 1722 AD. He lived there for a hundred years and died in 1800 AD. In the same year, Joseph Debbana's family bought and resided in the palace. Because of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), the family was forced to leave the palace in 1978. Qasr al-Dabbaneh is one of the most important Ottoman monuments that was built in Sidon during three centuries. It is a hundred years older than Beiteddine Palace, but it is smaller in size. In the palace there is an unroofed inner courtyard, and in the middle of the square there is a pool of water that reflects the art of Ottoman architecture and its social functions. The pond has two purposes. The first is to cool the hot weather in the summer, and the second is to block the conversations and secrets of visitors that were circulating among them thanks to the trickling water in it that overshadowed the voices of the speakers. There is also a central foyer, or as it is known as a main courtyard, allowing access to other rooms that branch from it. Among these rooms are the rooms of the iwan and the divan, which contain decorations of colored mosaics and a panel of poetry engraved on the main wall of the diwan in which there is a special praise for Ali Agha Hammoud with the date of the construction of the palace, which includes: “You will not reach the enemies what they want from you… No, and they will not reach you by their cunning.” The beautiful thing is that to this day the palace still contains furnishings belonging to the Debbana family, dating back to the 19th century. In addition to antiques, guns, and ancient art paintings, it is considered a heritage. Inside the palace, there is a marble statue of the Sultan’s seal and many musical instruments such as the rabab, the gingerbread, the bouzouq and the lute, which date back to the Ottoman era, and some of them date back to Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. And Arabs for free or a nominal amount.