Finding your way around

What this is

A record of one family from Feeki, in the northern Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, and everywhere the family went afterwards. It holds the family tree, photographs, stories people have written, and a directory of where everyone lives now.

The old part is public — ancestors, the village, the migration. Anything about people who are still living is for family only.

Where you are signed in

Your details, Where you are signed in. Every device you have signed in on is listed, with the one you are using now marked.

Signing in somewhere new does not sign you out anywhere else — you stay signed in on all of them for a year. End one, or end all of them at once, which is what to do if you have lost a phone or used somebody else's computer.

There is also a Sign out link in the menu at the top.

Signing in without a password

There is no password to invent or forget. Put your email address in and we send you a link and a six-digit code; either one signs you in.

Mail from this site is unreliable at the moment, so check your spam folder. If nothing arrives at all, ask whoever runs the site to send you a code directly — they can generate one and send it by WhatsApp. Once you are in you stay in on that device for a year.

Telling us who you are

There are two ways. Wander the tree until you find yourself and press This is me on your own page — or go to Find yourself in the tree and search.

Search on your own name or on your father's or mother's, whichever you think was written down. Spelling does not have to match: this family writes its names four ways, and Georges became Jorge in Brazil while Youssef became José. Those are not spellings of each other, which is why searching by a parent's name often works when your own does not.

If none of it finds you — very likely if you were born in the last thirty years, or if you come down through a daughter — there is a form at the bottom that takes your name and a parent's, and a curator will place you. There is no dead end here.

This matters more than it sounds. Until your account is linked, the site knows somebody is signed in but not who — so it cannot tell you how you are related to anyone, cannot put you in the directory, and cannot let you edit your own details. There is a green strip at the top of every page until you do it.

Correcting things

Almost everything here is a guess. Dates are estimates, names are spelled four ways, and half the faces in the old photographs have no name.

Every page has a Tell us button. You do not need an account to use it. If you are signed in, Suggest a correction goes to whoever looks after that branch, and shows them how you are related to the person you are correcting.

Two ways through the tree

The tree page shows one person at a time, with the line back to Elias above them and their children below. It works on any phone, it works without JavaScript, and you can send anyone a link to a particular person.

Explore is the other one: the whole family on a single canvas. Scroll in to zoom and branches open under the cursor; drag to move; click a name to open or close it; double-click for the full record.

The two are joined up. Any person page has See this in the explorer, which drops you on the canvas with the line down to them already open. Going the other way, Open the full record takes you back.

Not losing your place on the canvas

The canvas is built so you can wander without getting lost.

Nothing you open ever closes itself. Zooming out will not collapse the branch you just went to look at — only you close things, by clicking a name again or using Close this branch.

The older generations are drawn much larger than the younger ones. Elias is set nearly five times the size of a ninth-generation name, so when you pull back the ancestors stay readable while their descendants shrink to dots. That is how you see where you are without collapsing anything.

Open everything below, in the panel on the right, opens a whole line at once and keeps it open. Me jumps to your own record, once your account is linked to the tree.

Who is who on the canvas

Under a name you will often see a second, fainter line — "m. Karina". That is who they married, and it is usually the fastest way to tell two people apart, because the same first names repeat all through this family.

Where somebody has a picture, a small round portrait appears beside their name once you have zoomed in far enough to see a face. Very few people have one yet. If you would like yours there, Your details → Your picture.