page_title: Mandaloun
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Mandaloun / History
caption_attribution_description: Palazzo medici riccardi, cornicione
context_page_description: The mandaloun is a term given to a type of mullioned window. The mandaloun is an element of the traditional architecture of Lebanon that first appeared in the 17th-century stately mansions and later in the vernacular houses of the mountains of Lebanon.
context_section_description: In 1608, prince Fakhr-al-Din II of Lebanon concluded a secret economic and military alliance with the Grand Duke of Tuscany against the Ottoman hegemony. Alarmed, the Ottomans dispatched the Muhafiz of Damascus to mount an attack on Lebanon in order to reduce Fakhr-al-Din's growing power. Fakhr-al-Din chose to seek exile in Italy from 1613 until 1618 where he was hosted by  Cosimo II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.  Fakhr-al-Din stayed in pope Leo X's apartment at the Palazzo Vecchio and later in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi; he was also received by Cosimo II in the Palazzo Pitti where he was exposed to Florentine architecture particularly the biforas, a type of mullioned windows that garnered the facades of the Florentine Renaissance palaces.
  Before returning from exile, Fakhr al-Din appealed for a long list of artisans at the court of the Medici but only four came to Lebanon. The artisans who arrived in 1631 counted Cioli, a sculptor and Fagni an engineer. These artisans who introduced elements of Italian architecture, including the bifora had to leave Lebanon precipitately in 1633 when Fakhr al-Din was deposed. One of the earliest known monuments to hold a variant of the bifore which would be known locally as mandaloun was Burj al-Kashaf, a watch tower built by Fakhr al-Din at the outskirts of the walled city of Beirut; the tower was destroyed in 1870.
caption: Mullioned windows, known as biforas at the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, where Fakhreddin spent the last year of his exile.
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