Al-Ahbash was founded in the suburb of Bourj Abu Haidar, in West Beirut, as a small philanthropic and spiritualist movement among the Sunni lower classes. From there they spread throughout Lebanon to Tripoli, Akkar and Iqlim Al-Kharrub in the Chouf, where they founded educational and religious institutions. Beginning in the 1990s, Ahbash propelled from a minority group to the largest Sunni religious organization in Lebanon, mainly due to Syrian government backing—having close links to Syrian intelligence. The Syrians supported and promoted the Ahbash in order to limit the influence of radical and fundamentalist Sunni movements in Lebanon. Their growth was also aided by the forcible seizure and control of many prominent mosques in West Beirut in the early 1980s, despite the protests of Dar al-Fatwa (the official body for Lebanon's Sunni Muslims). At the end of the 1990s there were close to 250,000 Ahbash members worldwide, according to a high-ranking Ahbash activist.