Fathallah.com is a site that has changed faces a few times based on various ideas throughout the last decade. As a family website, the main idea was to enrich the family digital experience by providing a central location for members of the Fathallah family to privately/publicly communicate, share activity updates and photo albums. With the Internet transformed by the huge success of the Social Network, it became unlikely that this website could ever develop in such a manner.
One idea was to host a mail server, allowing anyone interested to have their own @fathallah.com email address. While this idea may be revisited, it does require an investment tied with the responsibility of securely and privately hosting mail accounts, and ensuring that should the website ever relocate people would not lose their precious messages. This website is currenlty hosted on a public server, so this is also doubtful to change anytime soon unless there is enough demand.
So, I decided to go back to the roots of what Fathallah.com could be, and that is a family oriented website. My late Grandfather, Zouheir Abd-elBaset Fathallah, was a scholar by heart, and dedicated his life to education. During his retirement, he enjoyed editing and translating books of various nature (politics, religion, history, poetry, etc). One long-term project that was dear to him was the investigation of the Fathallah family history. This was no easy task given the little information available, however he accomplished publishing a short book in Arabic documenting his findings.
Aspiring to continue his legacy, this site is now dedicated to his valuable research, and provides an English translation of his book, hoping it gives the public an insight into the history of one of Beirut's families, Fathallah. Jeddo, this is for you.