Of Sephardic origins, the Farḥī family produced a number of financiers, scholars, and intellectuals during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Originally from either Aleppo or Tyre, the family moved to Damascus over the course of the eighteenth century, and some of its members  in time dominated the provincial financial administration. In the nineteenth century, they extended their reach to the province of Sidon. Ḥayyim ben Saul Farḥī (d. 1820) was quite powerful; due to his connections in Istanbul and his ties to Sulaymān Pasha, the governor of Damascus from 1805 to 182…