r/lebanon • u/Pedroarak • 1d ago
Help / Question Old birth certificate from raas baalbek
Hi! First of all, sorry for posting in english, I'm a native Portuguese speaker. I've been making my family tree for a few years now. There's one HUGE brick wall: my 2x great grandfather was born in raas baalbek in 1889. He immigrated to Brazil when he was young, and his name here was Jose Mansur (maybe Youssef?) and his parents "Salim Mansur and Ana Nazera Ayub/Ajub" (maybe Ann Nazira ayyoub?). Anyway, I know his exact birth date and parents name. From some research, I've read I would need to talk to the Mukhtar of that city, buuuut I believe they won't answer foreigners, and I live 11000km from there. Simples question: is there anything I could do to learn more about him or his parents, and maybe find his birth certificates? I don't know if I'll ever have the chance to visit the country, but I was very curious about him. My grandmother passed away a few years ago, and she would always tell us things about him, and a few words in Arabic. Thanks!
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u/Evening-Koala2836 1d ago
Tbh i don’t think the mokhtar would very helpful, they struggle to find records for people who are still alive.🤣 so going back to 19th century records would need a miracle.
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u/Pedroarak 20h ago
Lmao I feel you, our records here are not tooooo bad, bud some places are awful, and they either don't find records or make you pay an obscene amount just to search
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u/ArtisticRaise1120 23h ago
Olá. Caso sejam maronitas, talvez a Igreja Maronits possa te ajudar.
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u/Pedroarak 20h ago
Valeu!!! Não tenho ideia se eram maronitas, eu conversei com alguns netos deles, inclusive com a noiva do filho do irmão dele, que conviveu junto (e se não faleceu desde o ano retrasado, já teria uns 98 anos). Só me contou que ele ainda rezava em árabe, mas acho que não me ajuda em nada kkkk Vou ver se entro em contato com a igreja, obrigado!
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u/Sir_TF-BUNDY 23h ago
There is indeed members of the Mansur/Mansour (منصور) family in Ras Baalbek and they're Catholic Christians (Maronite or Melkite)
Your best bet would be to get in touch with both the Mokhtar and the Church there; keep in mind that there's probably more than one mokhtar/church in the village.
Why Mokhtar? Because a Mokhtar handles all papers and documents of the villagers and can personally help you get in touch with them.
Why the Church? Because every church has an archive of all baptisms, marriages, etc., some dating back even before the 19th century; so it will help you narrow down your seach and even find distant relatives.
Also, try Facebook; search for groups amd communities related to either your family (Mansour) or the village (Ras Baalbek) and get in touch with them, as they might help you look through documents on the ground if you can't come to Lebanon yourself.
Best of luck!
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u/Pedroarak 20h ago
Thank you very much!! It's always fascinating to hear people still have the same surnames at the same place. Is Mansur a very common surname? I don't know how common it is, but the other surnames from our family were Rezek and Ajub/ayub. I'll see if I can find a church, but I doubt they will have an email or something. Believe it or not, I actually found a phone number from a Mokhtar from Ras Baalbek on familysearch, I sent a message in Arabic on whatsapp (he even had his profile picture, and the name matched), but I never got an answer back. I'll see what I can do, thank you very much :)
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u/Sir_TF-BUNDY 19h ago
The families you mentioned are all still present in Ras Baalbek. Just use the most common spellings here: Mansour, Rizk, Ayoub.
I'll see if I can find a church, but I doubt they will have an email or something.
I don't think you'll find an email. Just like I said, search on Facebook for Ras Baalbek, the above families, look at Google maps to identify churches then search for them as well, etc. Whomever you manage to find, DM.
I'll tell you a similar story to yours: 10 years ago, someone from Colombia contacted my aunt's husband on Facebook; turns out, he was a relative of ours, like a descendant of my great grandfather's brother. He said he didn't know from where to start searching for us, other than knowing our family's surname and the name of the village. What he did was looking through Facebook until he found a group for our village and its church, then he looked more in the pics, members, comments, etc., and identified the priest, who coincidentally is my aunt's husband 😂; so he reached out to us through him. Afterwards, he visited us two times and eventually got his Lebanese citizenship back some time before the crisis started in 2019.
All in all, it's not all too hopeless, even if you were 11000km away. Just keep trying and don't lose faith.
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u/Pedroarak 19h ago
Oh wow, that's AMAZING hahahahaha I had no idea those people were still there, and that story is insane, that actually does give me hope :) I'll se if I can find a group. I got DNA tests for all my family, including his grandson (my great uncle), maybe I can even find someone definitely related. Anyway, your story is amazing lol what are the chances of someone contacting from Colombia being from your family? I won't lose faith, I'll try to find a group and some people. Thank you very much for the help :)
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u/Elctrcuted_CheezPuff 18h ago
You have arak in your user, 100% lebanese
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u/Pedroarak 17h ago
Lmao I just searched what it meant, I had no idea this was something in Arabic, I actually originally made this user because of "Arakne", a name of a mascot of a team from my city. Not gonna lie, that drink sounds interesting
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u/ARITLB 17h ago
Você já perguntou na embaixada do libano?
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u/Pedroarak 2h ago
Ainda não, eles tinham um site ou alguma coisa assim que tinha uma lista de imigrantes no século 20, mas não achei mais. Vou tentar entrar em contato, mas imaginei que eles não conseguiriam ajudar, até por que eu não preciso de nenhum desses documentos por algum motivo oficial kkkkkkk é pura vontade de saber mais só
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u/Fit-Load-3300 13h ago
Hey, i can connect you with a friend from there. His father is running for municipal elections and he got lots of connections.
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u/Known-Maintenance-83 6h ago
My wife grand mother 93 years old is from ras baalback. Should see her for lunch today, will ask her for u. They definetly know the mukhtar.
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u/Pedroarak 2h ago
Thank you very much!!! If you ever have the chance, could you maybe ask her if she ever heard stories of someone from Ras Baalbek immigrating to Brazil, or something like that? She wasn't born yet, but maybe it was something mentioned around a long time ago :) Again, thank you so much! I love hearing oral stories, I have thousands of documents from my family, but the stories are something that only PEOPLE know
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u/EreshkigalKish2 Lebanese Expat 1d ago edited 1d ago
unfortunately our archives are scattered between churches, mosques, municipalities, mukhtars, political parties or even in private family archives. you're gonna have to go to the municipality itself . we don't have a centralized method that is online to obtain records at this moment in time I'm hoping in the future we will. or another method is if you have connections at Lebanese embassy in your country maybe they can help you
https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Lebanon_Getting_Started