Beirut of Tomorrow

​The Profile of a Neighborhood presents an overview of the findings of the Ras Beirut Well-Being Survey, conducted in 2009–2010 by members of AUB's Faculty of Health Sciences. It represents the efforts of a multidisciplinary team drawn from across the American University of Beirut, and provides the first systematic portrait of Ras Beirut in the last forty years. The survey's goal was to provide up-to-date sociological, demographic, and health information about neighborhood residents, a valuable snapshot of life in Ras Beirut shortly before the conflict in Syria brought an influx of Syrian citizens to the neighborhood. The book presents a wide variety of statistical details about the residents of Ras Beirut, including marital status, nationality, household structure, religiosity, income and household wealth, education, and quality of life. Its findings suggest that even in Ras Beirut, which is considered an affluent neighborhood of which AUB is a part, it is possible to find extremes existing side by side—wealth and poverty, social and economic inequality, and the corresponding effects on well-being.

In Islam, the concept that the Word was revealed to man in its highest and final form in the Qurʾan has made it the foundation of all Muslim artistic expression. The authors of this study present a collection of published transcriptions of Qurʾanic inscriptions on Islamic monuments from Jerusalem, Cairo, and Damascus in order to determine how the inscriptions were used and what patterns, if any, might contribute to an appreciation of the religious content of a work of art. The study is limited to the world of medieval Islam when religious foundations were at their greatest strength and vitality, and found their most integrated expression. Volume I presents the texts and photographs of the inscriptions, while Volume II gives three indexes of the verses: in order of the suras, used geographically, and according to their locations within buildings.