The neighborhood gets its name from the French term, La Quarantaine, because it was the location where a lazaretto for travellers was built at the request of Ibrahim Pasha, the son of Muhammad Ali Pasha, the Governor of Egypt, who controlled Syria and Beirut in 1831.[1][2] The lazaretto was to be managed by a committee made up of the Austrian, Danish, French, Greek, and Spanish consuls.[2] In 1951, 1,300 Palestinian refugees were settled in the area.[3] By the mid-1970s, the neighborhood had become a favela of 27,000 people[4] In January 1976 the population was killed or expelled during the Karantina massacre by the right-wing Lebanese Forces, leaving around 1,500 people dead. [5]