The house of Yūsuf ʾAfandī ʿAnbar was being constructed during the stay of Lady Isabel Burton, wife of the British consul, in Damascus from 1870 to 1871. This is what she had to say in this regard in her book "The Inner Life of Syria, Palestine, and the Holy Land," Volume I, page 172:
"Khawaja Ambar, another Jew, is also building a palace, but it is in more modem style, and therefore less pleasing to me. The fashionable luxury is rich, but too rich; Lisbona's (*) is tasteful as well as old. However, no one can find fault with Khawaja Ambar's idea of comfort. He has attached to his house a private synagogue and Turkish bath, and he is buying up all the old tenements around him to spread his establishment over as much ground as he can; unhappily he is also burning their carved wood and ancient ornaments, in which he sees no grace and beauty, and laughs at me for my heartache."
Yūsuf ʾAfandī ʿAnbar was born around 1820 as an Ottoman subject. He lived for a long time in India and started, after his return, building the largest Damascene residence of the 19th century at the location of the late 17th-century house of ʿUmar as-Safarǧalānī. The construction was initiated in 1867, but with the beginning of the 1870s, ʿAnbar became so heavily indebted that he had to abandon his ambitious project and leave Damascus for London. The Ottoman State took over the building to found the first secondary school in Damascus in 1887-1888.
(*) Lisbōnā was a wealthy Damascene Jew and the owner of a magnificent house that, according to Lady Burton, was "the most beautiful house of Damascus,” second only to al-ʿAẓm Palace.
Stefan Weber. Ottoman Modernity and Urban Transformation 1808-1918. Proc
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