Lebanon (country) (Arabic Lubnan), republic in southwestern Asia, bounded on the north and east by Syria, on the southeast and south by Israel, and on the west by the Mediterranean Sea. The area is 10,400 sq km (4015 sq mi). The capital and leading port is Beirut (Bayrut).

Land and Resources

Lebanon is about 217 km (about 135 mi) long and 40 to 80 km (25 to 50 mi) wide. A very narrow coastal plain extends along the Mediterranean Sea. Inland the terrain is dominated by two major mountain ranges, which are separated by the fertile Bekáa Valley (Al Biqa‘). The Lebanon range rises abruptly from the coastal plain; it is cut by numerous deep gorges and in the north contains the country's highest peak, Qurnat as Sawda’ (3083 m/10,115 ft). The other major range, the Anti-Lebanon, lies along the Syrian border in the east. Lebanon's major, and only navigable, river, the Lìtanì, is in Bekáa Valley. Many of the other rivers flow only during the rainy winter season.

Climate

The climate varies from a Mediterranean-type subtropical climate along the coast and in Bekáa Valley to a generally cool one in the upper mountains. Summers are hot and dry; winters are mild and humid. Frost is rare at lower elevations. The mean temperature in the lowlands is 26.7° C (80° F) in summer and 10° C (50° F) in winter. The mountainous region is somewhat cooler. Annual precipitation, occurring mainly in winter, is 889 mm (35 in) along the coast, 635 mm (25 in) or less in Bekáa Valley, and more than 1270 mm (more than 50 in) in the mountains.

Plants and Animals

Most of Lebanon has been deforested. Stands of oak, pine, cypress, and cedar of Lebanon are found in the higher mountains. A Mediterranean brush vegetation, with some trees, is found in most other areas. A few species of wild animals survive, including jackal and wolf, wild ass, and gazelle.

Soils

Much of Lebanon is of the reddish-brown soil called terra rossa. Richer alluvial soils occur along the coast and in Bekáa Valley and the northeast. Erosion is common, however, and the upper mountains are rocky and barren.

Natural Resources

With the exception of some fertile soils and the remaining forests, the natural resources of Lebanon are negligible. Iron ore exists, but is difficult to mine. Other minerals found in small quantities are coal, copper, asphalt, and phosphates.

Population

The Lebanese are descended from many ethnic strains, mainly Semitic, and may be traced to the ancient Phoenicians, Hebrews, Philistines, Assyrians, and Arabs. Among relative newcomers are an Armenian minority of about 6 percent and a large number of Palestinian Arabs, many of whom are confined to refugee camps.

Population Characteristics

According to a 1993 estimate, the population of Lebanon was 3,552,369; the overall density was about 341 people per sq km (about 884 per sq mi). About 81 percent of the people lived in urban areas. No census has been taken since 1932.

Principal Cities

The capital and leading port is Beirut, with a population of 1,500,000 (1988 estimate). Tripoli (Tarabulus), with 160,000 inhabitants, and Sidon (Sayda), with a population of 38,000, are both important ports and oil pipeline terminuses in Lebanon.

Religion

The principal denominations of Christians, who make up about 25 percent of the population, are the Maronite, Greek Orthodox, Armenian, and Protestant. Most of the remaining Lebanese are Muslims, with Shiites predominating; Druze make up about 7 percent.

Language

Arabic is the official language of Lebanon. French and English have wide official and commercial use, and Armenian is spoken by that minority group.

Education

Primary education is free but not compulsory in Lebanon. The literacy rate, higher than 75 percent, is among the highest in the Arab world. In 1991 about 345,700 pupils attended primary school and about 285,500 students were enrolled in secondary school. The government operates a number of trade, agricultural, and other specialized schools.

Beirut is the location of five Lebanese universities: the government-supported Lebanese University (1951), the American University of Beirut (1866), the Jesuit-affiliated Saint Joseph University (1881), Beirut Arab University (1960), and a university operated by the Lebanese Maronite Order. Their total annual enrollment in the late 1980s was about 63,600. The country also has a variety of specialized schools and several teacher-training colleges.

Culture

Blending traditional Arabic and recent Western influences, mainly French and U.S., Lebanon reached a high level of cultural achievement, exemplified in the works of the poet-painter Kahlil Gibran. In recent decades, however, that cosmopolitan spirit has broken down, and separate ethnic and religious groups have become violently competitive.

The National Library, in Beirut, is a depository for United Nations documents. The library of the Saint John monastery in Khinsharah dates from 1696 and has on display one of the first printing presses (with Arabic and Greek fonts) of the Middle East. The American University Museum and the National Museum, in Beirut, house regional antiquities and artifacts.

Economy

Lebanon has an economy dominated by banking and other commercial services. Before the civil war of the 1970s, Beirut was the leading financial capital of the Middle East. The combined legacies of the war, the Israeli invasion of 1982, and the factional fighting since that time have been rising unemployment, rampant inflation, the collapse of foreign investment and tourism, and the destruction of many factories and businesses. In the early 1990s annual budget estimates showed about $1.4 billion in revenues and about $3.2 billion in expenditures.

Labor

In 1989 Lebanon's wage earners totaled about 750,000, of whom about 79 percent worked in industry, commerce, or services and approximately 11 percent in agriculture. In the early 1990s the unemployment rate was about 35 percent.

Agriculture

About 29 percent of the Lebanese land area is arable. The intensively cultivated coastal plain, scarcely 6 km (4 mi) wide, produces tobacco and fruit, including oranges, bananas, grapes, figs, and melons. Cereals and vegetables are grown in Bekáa Valley, portions of which are irrigated. Apples, cherries, plums, potatoes, wheat, and barley are produced in cooler areas. Sheep, goats, and cattle are grazed in the uplands, contributing to soil erosion and the nearly total destruction of the forests, once renowned for their cedars.

Manufacturing

Oil refining, the only heavy industry in Lebanon, was crippled by the conflicts of the 1970s and 1980s. Oil refining had recovered somewhat by the early 1990s, and other important recovering industries included food products, textiles, cement, chemicals, jewlery, and fabricated metals.

Energy

In 1994 Lebanon generated 4.59 billion kilowatt-hours of electric energy. The Lìtanì River hydroelectric project in Bekáa Valley is the largest in the country.

Currency and Banking

The unit of currency in Lebanon is the Lebanese pound, divided into 100 piasters (1580 pounds equal U.S.$1; 1996). The Bank of Lebanon (1964) functions as central bank and sole bank of issue.

Commerce and Foreign Trade

Commerce is of major importance to the economy. Before the mid-1970s, many foreign firms had branches in Beirut. The climate, scenery, and historical remains attracted tourists, with consequent benefits to the economy. Both commerce and the tourist industry suffered from the civil warfare of the 1970s and 1980s. In the early 1990s, annual imports were valued at about $4.1 billion and exports at some $925 million. Lebanon's chief suppliers of imports are Italy, France, the United States, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia; the main destinations for exports are Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Jordan, Kuwait, and the United States. In January 1996 Bayrut's stock exchange reopened after closing in 1983 because of the war.

Transportation

Lebanon has some 7300 km (about 4500 mi) of roads. The country also has about 220 km (about 140 mi) of railroads, but both rail and air service have been crippled by civil war. Many foreign shipping lines formerly used port facilities at Beirut and Tripoli. Lebanon has about 64 merchant ships with a total deadweight tonnage of about 381,950.

Communications

Radios in the early 1990s numbered about 2.4 million, and television receivers about 920,000. More than 50 private television stations and about 150 radio stations were operating. The telegraph system is privately owned. Whereas before the civil war, the country had nearly 40 daily newspapers, all published in Beirut, in the early 1990s, 16 daily newspapers were published.

Government

Lebanon is a republic governed under a constitution promulgated in 1926, as amended. The constitution was substantially revised in 1990.

Executive

Under the 1990 constitution, the president of Lebanon, who must be a Maronite Christian, was to be elected by the legislature for six years and was not allowed to serve two successive terms. However, in October 1995 the Lebanese parliament amended the constitution to allow the president, then at the end of his single six-year term, to serve three more years without elections. Otherwise, the president's powers were weakened by the constitutional amendments. Whereas before 1990 the president could appoint and dismiss the prime minister and other ministers, he now may appoint the prime minister only after consultation with the National Assembly. Furthermore, following a May 1995 agreement brokered by Syria, the prime minister, rather than the president, appoints the cabinet ministers. The prime minister, whose powers were strengthened by the amendments, must be a Sunni Muslim. Nearly all executive decisions require the signature of both the president, who is head of state, and the prime minister, who heads the government.

Legislature

Under the revised constitution, the unicameral National Assembly has 128 members elected by universal suffrage. The speaker of the assembly is always a Shiite Muslim and serves a four-year term. Legislative seats are divided equally between Christians and Muslims. This system, strengthened by a tradition of rallying around strong leaders rather than platforms, has inhibited development of Western-style political parties. During August and September 1992, Lebanon held its first legislative elections in 20 years.

Judiciary

Lebanon has no single supreme court. Under the constitution of the country, a council of state hears administrative cases, and a five-member special court of justice deals with matters of state security. The judicial system also includes single-judge courts of first instance, three-judge courts of appeal, and courts of cassation. Religious courts have jurisdiction over personal matters such as marriages, deaths, and inheritances.

Local Government

In theory, Lebanon is divided into five governorates, each administered by a governor, who represents the central government. In practice, political and religious militias exercise most local government functions in the regions they control, and the central government has little influence. In many villages, local elders and clan members wield considerable influence.

Health and Welfare

During the late 1960s and early 1970s a comprehensive social security code was introduced, under which the bulk of the payments were to be made by employers and the government. It provided for sickness, accident, and disability insurance, maternity pay, extra allowances for large families, and severance pay. The weakening of central government authority during the 1970s and 1980s left to the militias and to private voluntary agencies the task of providing health and welfare services. In the mid-1980s Lebanon had some 3500 physicians and 160 hospitals and health centers.

Defense

In 1995 the Lebanese Armed Forces, comprising an army, navy, and air force; had about 44,000 personnel. Also present in Lebanon are 35,000 Syrian troops.

History

The mountains that have given Lebanon its name—sometimes referred to as Mount Lebanon, or the Mountain—have also shaped its history. The inaccessibility of its highlands has not only provided a refuge for dissident religious groups over the centuries, but has also hampered unity among the region's distinctive populations.

Roman-Byzantine Rule

In 64 BC Pompey the Great conquered Phoenicia, which comprised the territory of modern Lebanon; he annexed it to the Roman Empire and administered it as part of the province of Syria. Aramaic, the dominant language of the East, began to replace Phoenician, marking the cultural integration of the territory with its neighbors. From the 4th century AD on, the Christianization of the Roman Empire and the subsequent emergence of a doctrinally intolerant orthodoxy in the Eastern, or Byzantine, part caused religious tension in Syria as a whole. By the 7th century, Maronites, a sect espousing the belief that Christ had both human and divine natures but only one will, sought refuge from persecution in the northern districts of Mount Lebanon.

Early Muslim Rule

In the 630s Arabs, inspired by a new religion, Islam, had conquered most of Syria, and Mount Lebanon was integrated into the Arab military district of Damascus. The conquerors allowed the indigenous Christian and Jewish populations to retain their religion—subject, however, to discriminatory taxes and regulations. In 759 and 760 Christian peasants revolted, but the rebellion faltered, surviving only in local legend. Enduring through the entire Islamic period, however, were the rivalries between the different Arab tribal groupings—the Qays (North) and Kalb, or Yemen (South)—who had settled in the area after the conquest.

The decline of the united caliphate and the rise of local dynasties formed the unsettling background to the next stage in the region's history. Early in the 11th century the Druze, an extremist Shiite Muslim sect, established themselves in southern Mount Lebanon, becoming sometimes partners and sometimes rivals of the heretofore dominant Maronites. In 1099 Crusaders from Christian Europe occupied the country and remained until the 13th century. Up until then the Maronites had been carrying on an increasingly lonely resistance to the processes of Islamization and Arabization. The Crusaders helped to ensure their religious and cultural survival by giving them ties to their coreligionists in the West.

The Ottomans

In 1516 the Ottoman Turks conquered the entire eastern Mediterranean coast. Two local dynasties successively came to dominate the Mountain under Ottoman rule: the Maans (1516-1697) and the Shihabs (1697-1842). The most ambitious of these rulers was Fakhr al-Din II, who forged an alliance with the Italian duchy of Tuscany. Although of Druze origin, he ruled tolerantly, attracting Maronite peasants to his southern districts. With the end of the Maan line, local notables chose the Shihabs to be emirs (princes). After 1711, because of the defeat and expulsion of one Druze faction, the Maronites came to predominate. Reflecting this shift of power, members of the Shihab family converted to Christianity. In 1770 a Maronite Shihab became the emir. His successor, Bashir II, who reigned from 1788 to 1840, subdued the Druze and emerged as master of Lebanon and a power in the Levant. Gaining support from the Ottomans, the European powers, and discontented Maronite peasants, the Druze ended Shihab rule in 1842.

The Later Ottoman Period

The turmoil of these years finished the Maronite-Druze cooperation upon which Lebanon's autonomy rested. The Ottomans now played a more direct role, but their administrative reforms proved unworkable. In 1858 the political, religious, social, and economic tensions between Druze and Maronite, Muslim and Christian, and landlord and peasant burst into a civil war that ended in 1860 after considerable bloodshed and an apparent Druze triumph. The Ottomans and the European powers, however, sent forces to restore order and to punish those Muslims they considered at fault in the war. In 1861 they established a new administration for Lebanon that lasted until World War I (1914-1918). The new regulations provided that the country be governed by a non-Lebanese Ottoman Christian, counseled by local notables but directly responsible to Istanbul. The World War I years brought famine and devastation, increasing the flow of Christian immigrants to the Americas.

French Rule

Strictly speaking, the history of Lebanon within its current borders and with its distinctive mix of Muslim and Christian populations begins only in 1920, when the French, who had gained control through secret wartime agreements, combined the largely Muslim-inhabited coast and plain with the Christian-dominated Mountain to create the state of Greater Lebanon under their mandate. For practically all of the preceding two millennia this territory had been part of larger provinces within continent-spanning empires. Although Lebanon had rarely formed a distinct political entity, Maronites had developed a belief in Mount Lebanon as a country with a history and a character of its own. Because the French fostered this belief, their rule was supported by the Maronites, who gained economically and politically from it. In 1926 the French established the Lebanese Republic, but complete independence was not achieved for Lebanon until 1946, when the last French troops were evacuated.

Independence

French gerrymandering of Lebanon's frontiers created an economically viable state with politically explosive religious conflicts. In 1943 the predominant Maronites worked out a power-sharing arrangement, the National Pact (see "Government," above), with the Sunni Muslims and smaller groups. Real power, however, rested not with elected leaders but with an increasingly wealthy elite and a class of almost feudal warlords, defended by their own armies. The presidents have often been at the mercy of forces and groups beyond their control, although both Camille Chamoun and Fuad Chehab, or Shihab, presidents of the 1950s and early 1960s who pursued opposing policies, were strong, effective leaders. Financiers and property speculators flourished, government policies encouraged business, and the amenities and climate attracted vacationers and investors from abroad. Little of this prosperity, however, touched the mass of the population—increasingly Shiite—and their discontent exploded in demonstrations, riots, and, after 1975, civil war.

Foreign Relations

Lebanon has followed a delicately balanced policy with its neighbors and the major powers. Maronites prefer close relations with the West and distance from the Arab world; many Muslims, on the other hand, advocate neutrality and Arab unity. Lebanon was practically nonbelligerent in the Arab-Israeli conflicts, but Palestinian refugees from Israel, despite attempts to segregate them in society, acquired influence in the country and caused problems by raiding Israel from Lebanese bases. Movements for Syrian and Arab unity also disrupted the country. In 1949 and 1961 coups were launched to promote union with Syria. In 1958 pro-Nasser Arabs led an insurrection that was ended by U.S. intervention and President Chamoun's retreat from anti-Arabist policies. Subsequent governments paid at least lip service to Arab unity.

The Lebanese Civil War

In 1975 fighting broke out between Lebanese Muslims and the Maronite-dominated Phalange faction. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) joined the Muslim side in early 1976, and Syria intervened against the PLO. In June the Arab League imposed a truce, creating a Syrian-led Arab force to keep the peace. Violence continued nonetheless, and in 1978 Israel invaded southern Lebanon in an attempt to eliminate Palestinian bases. Israeli troops were replaced by a UN force, but Israel continued to aid the Maronites and to strike at PLO targets in Lebanon. In June 1982 Israel invaded again, overrunning the PLO. By mid-August, after U.S. mediation, the PLO fighters agreed to leave Beirut, and many were evacuated to other countries. Later that month, with Israeli troops surrounding Beirut, the Lebanese parliament elected the Christian militia leader Bashir Gemayel as president; after Bashir was assassinated in September, his brother Amin Gemayel was elected to replace him. Subsequently, the Israelis withdrew to southern Lebanon, and an international peacekeeping force was stationed in Beirut; after more than 300 U.S. and French troops were killed in terrorist bombings on October 23, 1983, the Western forces pulled out completely by February 1984. In the resultant power vacuum, factional strife persisted, and Westerners in Beirut became the targets of radical Shiite Muslim kidnappers, apparently loyal to Iran. The Israelis continued to raid PLO installations in the south, and deteriorating conditions in Beirut led Syrian troops to occupy its Muslim sector in 1987.

When Gemayel's presidential term expired in September 1988, he named the army commander General Michel Aoun, a Christian, to head an interim government. With Lebanese leaders unable to concur on a new president, rival Christian and Muslim factions then established their own administrations. In October 1989, Lebanese negotiators, meeting in Saudi Arabia, agreed on a new constitution providing increased power for the Muslims; the accord was rejected by Aoun. On November 5, legislators ratified the charter and elected René Moawad as president. He was assassinated 17 days later, and the Lebanese parliament chose another Maronite, Elias Hrawi, to succeed him. In October 1990, Syrian troops clamped down on East Beirut, defeating forces loyal to Aoun. Subsequently the Lebanese army, with Syrian backing, regained control over much of the country and ousted the PLO from strongholds in southern Lebanon. Nearly all the Western hostages in Lebanon were released in 1991. Voting for a new National Assembly in 1992 represented the nation's first legislative elections in 20 years. Rafik al-Hariri became prime minister and was elected to a second term in May 1995.

In October 1995, however, the Lebansese parliament amended the constitution to allow President Elias Hrawi, then at the end of his six-year term, to serve three more years without elections.

In July 1993 Israeli air attacks against Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas caused 200,000 people to leave southern Lebanon and move north for safety. The attacks were in retribution for Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel. Israel and Hezbollah continued to fight sporadically through April 1996, when Israel, responding to Hezbollah attacks, bombed a civilian refugee camp in Lebanon, killing more then 100. Israel was widely condemned for the bombing. Soon after the bombing, Israel and Lebanon negotiated a strained cease fire.