Origins
Genealogy in the Middle East, especially of Christian families in Syria, Lebanon and the Holy Land, is very complicated and depends on oral traditions much more than written ones.
In the Middle Ages when Tripoli was governed by the Crusaders, a mixed people lived in the area, a strange result of the intermarriages between the Christians from Europe and the local Christians (Maronites, Melkites, etc.). It was not unusual for a Tripolitan to be of French origin (but of local Christian culture), married to a local Christian, with a Greek son-in-law and an Armenian or Syriac daughter-in-law.
To this day you can find many people of Crusader origin in Lebanon, the Holy Land, Jordan and Syria. The El Douaihy clan are descendants of the French who came from the northern French city of Douai, the capital of the ancient Frankish Duchy of Ostrevant (the arms of the Douai family are still used as a blason of Ostrevant). In the First Crusade, Count Anselme II De Ribemont d’Ostrevant was the “right hand” of Godfroi de Bouillon in the East, so one would assume that his progenitors were related to the De Ribemont d’Ostrevant family.
If Jeremiah Al-Amshiti had been one of the Douai clan, as Patriarch Estephan El Douaihy claimed, the family progenitors would have been “easternized” just after the First Crusade 1096 -1099.
Read more about this topic: Douaihy
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