Tabet, Antoine Georges

(also Antun Thabit). Born June 13,1907, in Bhamdun, Lebanon; died May 16, 1964, in Moscow. Lebanese architect, public figure, and publicist.

Tabet, the son of a village blacksmith, graduated from the Higher Engineering School in Beirut in 1927 and from the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he studied under A. Perret. In his buildings, which include the College of Wisdom in Beirut (1938) and a group of apartment buildings in the Hazmihe district in Beirut (I960), he employed the principles of modern European architecture, adapting them to Lebanon’s climate.

Tabet helped organize an antifascist congress, held in Beirut in 1939, at which the League of Struggle Against Fascism of Syria and Lebanon was founded. In 1941 he helped found the journal al-Tariq (The Path), which was awarded the Joliot-Curie Gold Peace Medal in 1950. From 1946 to 1948, Tabet was chairman of the Lebanese Society of Friends of the USSR. He became chairman of the Lebanese National Peace Council in 1949 and a member of the presidium of the World Peace Council in 1950. Tabet was awarded the International Lenin Prize for Strengthening Peace Among Nations in 1961.