A house in Chorlton and a subject of the Ottoman Empire

Three women from Damascus in traditional dress, 1873

Now as stories go it is a short one and as yet has no ending but it says something of what Chorlton was like at the beginning of the 20th century. 

It began with a request to find out what I could about a house and very quickly became a fascinating piece of research which linked the township with Damascus.

The house was one of those big semi detached properties which was built sometime between 1893 and 1901.  It was surrounded by gardens on three sides and had ten rooms spread over three floors with cellars.

On the ground floor there were four large rooms and the kitchen, while on the first floor there were four large bedrooms, a dressing room and bathroom and three more double bedrooms on the second floor.

This was a tall solid property of the sort much sought after by the wealthy business and professional classes.

Chorlton was still on the edge of much open countryside and yet the train from the station could whisk commuters into the heart of the city in just over ten minutes and within a few years of our house being built the Corporation extended the tram service along Barlow Moor Road and by 1913 this had been joined by another route that ran down Wilbraham Road and onto Withington.

Chorlton-c-h 34, from the 1901 telephone directory

Like most of these houses it had its own name carved onto the stone gate post.  Such names are a common enough feature in the township but Damascus House was a little out of the ordinary and was interestingly different to warrant a bit of search which led me to Abdallah Kabbaz who was there with his wife and two siblings from 1901 to sometime around 1911.

Mr Kabbaz had been born in Damascus in Syria and on the census return added that he was “a subject of the Ottoman Empire.”

Woman from Damascus 1873

At one time the Ottoman Empire had been a major power controlling much of southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa.  It was a multinational, multilingual empire but one which by the 19th century was in decline.

During the 18th century it was challenged by Russia and through the following century by the emerging nationalism in various parts of its territories.

Mr Abbaz had been born in 1866, just over a decade after Britain and France had fought the Crimean War in an effort to halt Russian expansion into the Ottoman Empire.

Even before that war the Greeks had won their independence from the empire and during the 1860s and 70s parts of the Balkans moved towards semi independence.

So by the time he had arrived here the empire was struggling but it still controlled 28 million people, of whom 15.5 million were in modern-day Turkey, 4.5 million in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan, and 2.5 million in Iraq. Another 5.5 million people were under nominal Ottoman rule in the Arabian peninsula.*

Now I don’t know yet when he arrived but by the April of 1901 he was settled in Damascus House and had installed a telephone.  Now this was not as unusual as you might think and a quick glance down the telephone directory and on either side of Mr Kabbaz were several others listed with phones.

It may have been connected with his business which he described as “Agent, Shipping Goods employer” and he and his brother had offices at 21 Cooper Street in Manchester.
Cooper Street once stretched from Peter Street up to Booth Street, but the southern end disappeared under Central Ref and the Town Hall extension and number 21 which was on the northern stretch has long vanished.

A Kabbaz, shipping merchants, 1911

Nor were the Kabbaz family the only residents from the Empire just a little further away on High Lane was Mr Mouradian who had been born in Constantinople and was also in engaged in shipping, while just a few doors down from Damascus House lived Krikor Topalian also in shipping and also from Turkey.

Woman  1873

Now there is nothing particularly unusual about all of this but I wonder how much of this would have been revealed if the name of the house had not survived on the gate post.

But there is much more that has yet to be revealed.  The Kabbaz family had moved by 1911 and so far there is no trace.  The house was occupied by a Mark E. Houldsworth in 1911, but he has proved a little elusive and in the census of that year this fine ten roomed house has but two servants listed in the property.

So Damascus House has much yet to tell us.

Pictures; Kabbaz Brothers, 21 Cooper Street, from Manchester, Salford and Suburban Directory, 1911, Part two, page 487, The National Telephone Company, 1901, three women from Damascus, by Pascal Sebah, 1873





*Ottoman Empire, Wikipedia Common https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire#Dissolution_.281908.E2.80.931922.29

**Taken from a collection of photographs by the famous photographer Pascal Sebah on the occasion of the universal exposition in Vienna in 1873. The album represents the costumes of the different regions, and ethnic and religious groups of the Ottoman Empire.

On the right: a peasant from the Damascus region.

Center: a Druze of Damascus wearing the Tantur, a cone shaped silver base that is usually covered with a veil.

The Tantur was helpful in exaggerating a woman's height.

On the Left: a woman  from Damascus wearing the qabqab, a wooden sandal with mother of pearl engraving used around the house and in the Turkish bath.” Ottoman Empire, Wikipedia,