More about the Shakoors

The reason I have info on my Mum's family is because my Great Great Uncle, Mansoor Shakoor, was a missionary and the woman who ran the mission school where he worked, in Cairo, wrote a little book about him - a memoir - after his death (from TB). This in true Victorian style of course!

On 5th February I wrote in my Anna's BIG Adventure blog that:

I'm planning a trip to Lebanon next Spring to see where my ancestors, the Shakoors, came from. This was inspired by finding a whole chapter of a book about my great, great aunt Luceya Shakoor (or Luciya Shakkur) on the internet - see Chapter IX of link. Thiss names the place that they lived in: Ain Zhalta in the Chouf mountains, south-east of Beirut. Since finding this I did a bit of research on the history of the area in the mid-nineteenth century. Amazingly, all of the Shakoors - who were Christians (originally Maronite, but converted to Protestantism) seem to have survived the 1860 massacres. According to newspaper reports of the time, 7,000-11,000 Christians were massacred by Druse between April and June 1860.

Luceya Shakoor was the sister of Mansoor. Both she and another sister, Sikkar, also worked in mission schools. In The Women of the Arabs, the American missionary Henry Harris Jessop D.D. (I'm not sure what 'D.D.' stands for, but it crops up below as well) writes that Luceya worked in a school (the American Mission School I think) in Deir el Komr, which was opened by a Mr and Mrs Bird in 1855:

Luciya taught in Deir el Komr until the school was overwhelmed in the fires and blood of the Massacre year, 1860.

In 1862 she taught in the Sidon School, and afterwards married the Rev. Sulleba Jerwan, the first native pastor in Hums. In that great city, and amid the growing interest of the young Protestant community, she found a wide and attractive field of labor. She was a young woman of great gentleness and delicacy of nature, and of strong religious feeling, and entered upon the work of laboring among the women and girls of Hums, with exemplary zeal and discretion. She became greatly beloved, and her Godly example and gentle spirit will never be forgotten.

But at length her labors were abruptly cut short. Consumption, a disease little known in Syria, but which afterwards cut down her brother and only sister Sikkar, fastened upon her, and she was obliged, in great suffering, to leave the raw and windy climate of Hums, for the milder air of Beirût. Her two brothers being in the employ of Miss Whately in Cairo, she went, on their invitation, to Egypt, where after a painful illness, she fell asleep in Jesus. Amid all her sufferings, she maintained that same gentle and lovely temper of mind, which made her so greatly beloved by all who knew her.

She has rested from her labors, and her works do follow her. Not long after her sister Sikkar, who had also been trained in Mrs. Bird's family, died in her native village Ain Zehalteh.

The text mentions two of Luceya's brothers being in the 'employ' of Mary Louisa Whately in Cairo. This would have been Mansoor (the eldest child of the family 'by nearly four years') and a younger brother Yousef. Mary Louisa Whately was the daughter of Richard Whately D.D., the Archbishop of Dublin. In 1862 she founded the British Mission School in Cairo. She wrote several books about her experiences as a missionary, as I discovered by Googling her. In 1873, after Mansoor's death, she published a memoir of him: A Memoir of Mansoor Shakoor of Lebanon, missionary in Syria and Egypt, published by Seeley, Jackson and Halliday, London MDCCCLXXIII. The memoir states that a memorial stone to Mansoor was erected in the hall of the school. This memoir refers also to Mansoor's brother, Youssif, and sister, Luceya. Youssif - according to the memoir - married a woman from Dublin.

The memoir also says that Mary Louisa’s adopted daughter (her name is not given) became the wife of Mansoor Shakoor some four years before his death:

‘[I was] endeavouring to educate my adopted daughter to be in her turn a labourer in the vineyard [i.e. a missionary] She was a distant relative of the Shakoor family, and it was understood that when the fit time had come, she should become the bride of the elder brother, who had early fixed his wishes on the plan.’ p. 62

It is interesting that both of Mansoor's brothers married Irish women and I have wondered if Mary Louisa was the connection with Ireland, or if there was some other connection. My Great Great Grandfather, Miltem, was the third brother. He had an army career and married Marian Chute from County Kerry, Ireland.

Some of the information I have on the Shakoors - including the memoir of Mansoor - comes from my Mum. The rest I have discovered in recent years through internet reserch - the stuff about Mary Louisa Whately for example and the chapter on Luciya from The Women of the Arabs.