Welcome to Athar!

Athar is a cultural heritage preservation center aiming to collect, preserve, digitize and make accessible documents related to the local history of Tyre (Sour) and South Lebanon.

The Athar archive represents a major witness to the history of Tyre between 1920 and 1982. Our collection sheds light on public life in the city during that era and provides particularly rich insights into the community around Jaafaria College. The general scarcity of visual and written documentation about Southern Shiite communities during the mid-twentieth century, an era of modernization violently interrupted by the Lebanese civil war (1975–90) and its repercussions, gives our work its relevance.

Athar is affiliated with the Jaafaria College and the Jaafaria Welfare Association, the owners of the photos and documents which constitute the core of this archive. Our collection keeps developing and expanding, as we are receiving loan collections and donations from a growing network of supporters. We invite you to browse through our online database, travel across time to Tyre’s past, and discover this under-represented chapter of South Lebanon’s history.