The Sursock family (also spelled Sursuq) is a Greek Orthodox Christian family from Lebanon, and was once an important family of Beirut. Having originated in Constantinople during the Byzantine Empire, the family has lived in Beirut since 1712, when their forefather Jabbour Aoun (who later adopted the family name Sursock) left the village of Berbara. After the beginning of the 19th century, they began to establish positions of power within the Ottoman Empire. The family, through lucrative business ventures, political maneuvering, and strategic marriages, embarked on what Leila Fawaz called "the most spectacular social climb of the nineteenth century", and, at their peak, had a network of relations to the families of Egyptian, French, Irish, Russian, Italian and German aristocracies, alongside a manufacturing and distribution empire across the Mediterranean.Trombetta (2009), p. 224
Overview
The Sursocks were one of Beirut's aristocratic Christian families that moved in Ottoman, Egyptian and European high societies. The Sursocks were part of an international bourgeoisie centered in Alexandria, Beirut, Cairo, Constantinople, Paris and Rome, and one of the "Seven Families" in Beirut's aristocratic nobility. Their wealth and sophistication are also reflected in their residences, equal in elegance to any Italian palazzo, which remained largely unscathed despite fifteen years of mortar fire and violence during the Lebanese Civil War.
In the 17th century, members of the Sursock family served as tax collectors and held other key positions on behalf of the Ottoman Empire. As a result, they benefitted greatly from the 1858 Ottoman land reforms, during which they acquired large tracts of fertile land in Palestine and Syria, in addition to extensive holdings from Egypt to Beirut. The means by which they came into possession of such real estate were multiple. As a long line of land owners and tax collectors, the Sursocks were able to leverage their finances and capital using their connections to American, Russian, German and French consuls over the decades to establish extensive economic and political connections. The family developed wide social ties and was close to key Ottoman and European figures, frequently playing host to a wide range of royals and diplomats, including King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia, German Emperor William I, Turkish Sultan Abdul Hamid II and Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, amongst other monarchs. Search for "Sursuq".
The Sursocks built their fortune through their manufacturing and transportation empire, which extended from Turkey to Egypt and the United Kingdom.
Dimitri Sursock was the founder of Sursock and Brothers, a prominent firm in nineteenth-century Beirut which acted as an agent for Lascaridi and Company in the 1850s and 1860s and shipped grain to London, Cyprus and throughout Europe. The firm and its assets were taken over by his sons after his death: Nicolas, Moussa, Loutfallah, Khalil, Ibrahim and Joseph.
In addition to their manufacturing and export activities, the family increased its fortune as landowners in the Ottoman Levant, amassing profits from both rent and tax collection, as well as from the sale of property. Based in Beirut, the family owned many properties in the Mediterranean region, including in Mersin, Turkey, where an area with many of their shops and properties became known as the Sursock Quarter of the city. Their financial activities were wide-ranging, and included shipping and the production of silk and other goods built for transport to London and throughout the region.
The Sursocks also became heavily involved in banking in Egypt and Lebanon, where they helped finance major projects including the Suez Canal, the Beirut-Damascus highway, and the Beirut Harbour Company. They were also direct creditors to Ismail Pasha and other members of Egyptian royalty, who soon found themselves heavily involved with and indebted to the family. As a result of these financial activities, the family was branded "the Rothschilds of the East", and indeed engaged the Rothschild banking family during their sale of the Jezreel Valley to the Jewish National Fund in 1906. The Sursocks are recorded as having been involved in Freemasonry at the time, under the Grand Orient of France, with many speculating on the reasons behind the family's rise. George Dimitri Sursock, Worshipful Master of the Grand Orient lodge, recorded his extensive dealings with, and on behalf of, the Freemasons.
Members of the family also gained notoriety for taking advantage of the famine in Lebanon during the First World War by selling overpriced basic food supplies, and for selling large swaths of Arab land in Palestine to Jewish settlers, who often demanded forceful eviction of the residents. Beirut how you've changed ... or have you?MidEastWeb The Report of Sir John Hope Simpson, 1930
In the wake of the Lebanese Civil War many members of the family relocated to various European and Asian capitals, but Yvonne, Lady Cochrane remained in Beirut. Despite the vast damage to Beirut during the conflict, the main Sursock residence lies untouched alongside buildings whose outer walls bear scars caused by years of violence.
History For many decades, the Sursocks were Lebanon's leading business family. As business partners of the Otis Elevator Company, they were successful industrialists and played a key role in the development and manufacturing of elevators.Saudi Aramco World : Made In: Lebanon
The Sursocks have shaped Lebanon's history from the late Ottoman period to present; indeed, the selection of Beirut, which would come to be known as the 'Pearl of the Orient,' as the provincial capital was in no small part the result of their entreaties to the Porte.
According to Lady Cochrane, daughter of Alfred Sursock, the name is a corruption of Κυριε Ισαακ ("Kyrie Isaac", meaning Lord Isaac).Lady Cochrane Sursock: Information and Much More from Answers.com and settled near Byblos. Other sources list the name as having been derived from the Arabic phrases for "secrets" and "market". Near the close of the 18th century the Sursock family moved to Beirut, where they became successful traders, exporting grain from the eastern Mediterranean to the United Kingdom, whilst also importing textiles from Europe to be sold in the Middle East. Nicolas Sursock founded the Banque Sursock et Frères in 1858 and purchased extensive property in different parts of the Ottoman Empire.
The Sursocks soon became protégés and dragomen to numerous European and American consuls-general and were afforded political privileges and protection by the various countries with whom they had ties, including Russia, Germany, Greece, Ireland and the United States of America. Moussa Sursock, his brothers and his father Alfred are reported to have travelled on Greek and Russian passports as well as to have gained protégé status with other European consulates in Beirut as a result of their wide-ranging activities. Furthermore, the Sursocks' heavy involvement in Egyptian affairs allowed the family to form close relations with members of the monarchy including Khedive Sa'id of Egypt, who reigned from 1854 to 1863, and his nephew Isma'il Pasha (1863–1879), affording them preferential deals on large infrastructural projects and extravagant public works.
The Sursocks' success was measured by their admission to the highest circles of both the Ottoman and European elite political spheres. They formed close connections with officials in Constantinople, while aristocrats often approached them to intercede on their behalf with the Ottoman government. One sign of their intimacy with the sources of Ottoman power was the appointment of Alfred Sursock to the post of secretary at the Ottoman embassy in Paris in 1905, who then joined Moussa, Michel and Yusuf Sursock in taking seats within the Ottoman power structure. In addition to connections with Paris, a French report written the following year listed Moussa Sursock as dragoman of the German Consul, and a year later, Mathilde Sursock married Alberto Theodoli, the Italian president of the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission, in Paris, thereby extending the family's reach around the Mediterranean. Further evidence of the Sursocks' influence can be found in the court accounts recorded under Russian Grand Duke Nicolai Nikolaevich, identifying Nicolas Sursock, who had long maintained a strong relationship with the court, as an "Honorary Dragoman" of Russia.
Alfred, meanwhile, moved throughout the titled circles of Europe and married Maria Teresa Serra di Cassano, daughter of Francesco Serra, 7th Duke of Cassano, who came from an old Italian princely family from Naples. Their daughter Yvonne was known as Lady Cochrane after marrying Desmond Cochrane, with whom she had four children.
Michel Sursock, a deputy to the Ottoman parliament, became infamous during the great famine in the First World War for hoarding grain and speculating on the supply. He would not sell the grain, which cost 40 piastres in peacetime, for less than 250 piastres.
Land sales to early Zionist settlement
The family owned more than 90,000 acres, or 400,000 dunams, (364 km2) in the Jezreel Valley in Palestine, having purchased it from Ottoman authorities in their dealings with the empire.Dr. Seth J. Frantzman, Ruth Kark Bedouin Settlement in Late Ottoman and British Mandatory Palestine: Influence on the Cultural and Environmental Landscape, 1870-1948, p.8. 2011 Evidence of the remarkable concentration of wealth accumulated by the Sursocks, who already owned tens of thousands of acres of the finest land in the region, can be found in records detailing their sustained purchases of numerous new villages every year.
In 1872, the Ottoman Government sold Marj ibn Amir (Esdraelon Valley) to the Sursock family of Beirut. The Zionists began to show interest in buying the Jezreel Valley in 1891, but the Palestine Land Development Company (PLDC), a Zionist land purchasing agency, made its first purchases in 1910. In 1897, Theodor Herzl writes about the Sursock family in his diary, noting the onset of negotiations with the Jewish Colonisation Organization for the purchase of 97 villages in Palestine.The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, ed. Raphael Patai, Herzl Press and Thomas Yoseloff, New York-London, vol.2, p.519.
In ancient times Esdraelon was the granary, and regarded as the most fertile tract of Palestine. The Sursocks were absentee landlords in the vast Marj Ibn `Amer (Jezreel Valley) in Northern Palestine. The Jewish National Fund was founded in 1901 by funding from the Baron to buy and develop land in Ottoman Palestine for Jewish settlement. The PLDC acquired land for the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Official purchasing organizations such as the Palestine Land Development Company focused on consummating the transfer of some 65,000 dunams of land in the Jezreel Valley owned by the Sursocks. On 18 December 1918, the PDLC concluded an agreement with Nagib and Albert Sursock for the purchase of 71,356 dunams in the Jezreel Valley, including Tel Adashim. The Ottomans tried to limit mass land acquisition and immigration, but had their hands tied by European pressure and also corruption and greed of officials and large landowners. The sale of land in Marj ibn Amer is a noted case. Hankin of the KKL transacted the final settlement of purchase in 1921. Hankin originally worked for the PLDC and then became the main land speculator for both agencies. Beirut how you've changed ... or have you?