Asfuriyyeh

- Blurb -

? A? furiyyeh (formally, the Lebanon Hospital for the Insane) was founded by a Swiss Quaker missionary in 1896, one of the first modern psychiatric hospitals in the Middle East. It closed its doors in 1982, a victim of Lebanon' s brutal fifteen-year civil war. In this book, Joelle Abi-Rached uses the rise and fall of ? A? furiyyeh as a lens through which to examine the development of modern psychiatric theory and practice in the region as well as the sociopolitical history of modern Lebanon. Abi-Rached shows how ? A? furiyyeh' s role shifted from a missionary enterprise to a national institution with wide regional influence. She offers a gripping chronicle of patients' and staff members' experiences during the Lebanese Civil War and analyzes the hospital' s distinctive nonsectarian philosophy. When ? A? furiyyeh closed down, health in general and mental health in particular became more visibly "sectarianized"-monopolized by various religious and political actors. Once hailed for its progressive approach to mental illness and its cosmopolitanism, ? A? furiyyeh became a stigmatizing term, a byword for madness and deviance, ultimately epitomizing a failed project of modernity. Reflecting on the afterlife of this and other medical institutions, especially those affected by war, Abi-Rached calls for a new "ethics of memory," more attuned to our global yet increasingly fragmented, unstable, and violent present.