The Maktabi family around the World.

For more than 20 years now I’ve been trying to map out my family around the world. With the increasing data found on the Internet the last many years I’ve found more and more information about the family. I’ve spoken to, emailed, chatted with many people from many parts of the world. I’ve interviewed many relatives and slowly been able to collect these many data in a private database.

I have found several families around the world, that are not related. There are two main groups:

  1. The Lebanese/Iranian Maktabies.
  2. The Syrian Maktabies

Though many “Syrian” and “Lebanese/Iranian” Maktabies believe that they are related somehow I’ve not been able to find the name of the person, that related these two families to each other. I’ve been told stories about a marriage in the early twentieth century, but I’ve never found the name of this person and have been able to related him to the two families.
Many Maktabies from the two families have been very helpful in my investigation. I’ve seen an old family trees of the Syrians, but we’ve never been able to find the “missing link”. My conclusion is therefore that the two families are not related.

I’m related to the Lebanese/Iranien Maktabi-family.

A brief summary of the Lebanese/Iranian origin: My grandfather Ali Akbar Maktabi travelled from Esfahan, Iran, to Baghdad in Iraq where he married my grandmother. Together they travelled to Damascus,in Syria, where they stayed for several years. Around 1930 my grandfather brought the family to Beirut, Lebanon.

Talking to Syrian-Maktabis it seems to me as if the Syrian-Maktabi family have its roots around 1920-1930. But even though we studied an old ancestors tree and interviewed many people from both families we never found the “missing link”.

The Ancestors tree of the Lebanese/Iranian Maktabies.

Many Maktabis have helped me. Thanks for your information.
But I see that there are still MANY people, that I haven’t in the database – yet. Please contact me with your data.

I’ve collected many stories and old pictures of our family. You will get access to those pictures as well.


The database and ancestor tree are already online, but protected by a password. All data are stored on my private computer and I will not use any cloud services, nor cloud based system (like MyHeritage) to share the informations that I’ve collected. The system generates a web version of the ancestors tree that I’ve uploaded to this domain.

If you have an Android smartphone I can send you information about an app that you should download, and then I’ll send you a GED-file with the data.

I urge the young generation to talk to your parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles. Get their stories, write it down, record it with your smartphone, send me a copy and I will post it in the database/tree.


To the Syrian Maktabis

I haven’t given up trying to find the missing link, so if you have any information that could share light on this, please do not hesitate to contact me.


More about the Maktabis (from Forebears.com – 2014)