1.
Lebanon
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Lebanon, officially known as the Lebanese Republic, is a sovereign state in Western Asia. It is bordered by Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, Lebanons location at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian hinterland facilitated its rich history and shaped a cultural identity of religious and ethnic diversity. At just 10,452 km2, it is the smallest recognized country on the entire mainland Asian continent, the earliest evidence of civilization in Lebanon dates back more than seven thousand years, predating recorded history. Lebanon was the home of the Canaanites/Phoenicians and their kingdoms, a culture that flourished for over a thousand years. In 64 BC, the region came under the rule of the Roman Empire, in the Mount Lebanon range a monastic tradition known as the Maronite Church was established. As the Arab Muslims conquered the region, the Maronites held onto their religion, however, a new religious group, the Druze, established themselves in Mount Lebanon as well, generating a religious divide that has lasted for centuries. During the Crusades, the Maronites re-established contact with the Roman Catholic Church, the ties they established with the Latins have influenced the region into the modern era. The region eventually was ruled by the Ottoman Empire from 1516 to 1918, following the collapse of the empire after World War I, the five provinces that constitute modern Lebanon came under the French Mandate of Lebanon. The French expanded the borders of the Mount Lebanon Governorate, which was populated by Maronites and Druze. Lebanon gained independence in 1943, establishing confessionalism, a unique, foreign troops withdrew completely from Lebanon on 31 December 1946. Lebanon has been a member of the Organisation internationale de la francophonie since 1973, despite its small size, the country has developed a well-known culture and has been highly influential in the Arab world. Before the Lebanese Civil War, the experienced a period of relative calm and renowned prosperity, driven by tourism, agriculture, commerce. At the end of the war, there were efforts to revive the economy. In spite of troubles, Lebanon has the highest Human Development Index and GDP per capita in the Arab world. The name of Mount Lebanon originates from the Phoenician root lbn meaning white, occurrences of the name have been found in different Middle Bronze Age texts from the library of Ebla, and three of the twelve tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh. The name is recorded in Ancient Egyptian as Rmnn, where R stood for Canaanite L, the name occurs nearly 70 times in the Hebrew Bible, as לְבָנוֹן. The borders of contemporary Lebanon are a product of the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920 and its territory was the core of the Bronze Age Phoenician city-states. After the 7th-century Muslim conquest of the Levant, it was part of the Rashidun, Umyayad, Abbasid Seljuk, with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Greater Lebanon fell under French mandate in 1920, and gained independence under president Bechara El Khoury in 1943
2.
Christianity in Lebanon
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Christianity in Lebanon has a long and continuous history. Biblical Scriptures purport that Peter and Paul evangelized to the Phoenicians, the spread of Christianity in Mount Lebanon was very slow where paganism persisted in mountaintop strongholds. A2015 study estimates some 2,500 Lebanese Christians have Muslim ancestry, before the Christian faith reached the territory of Lebanon, Jesus had traveled to its southern parts near Tyre where the scripture tells us that he cured a possessed Canaanite child. Christianity in Lebanon is almost as old as gentile Christian faith itself, early reports relate the possibility that Saint Peter himself was the one who evangelized the Phoenicians whom he affiliated to the ancient patriarchate of Antioch. Paul also preached in Lebanon, having lingered with the early Christians in Tyre, even though Christianity was introduced to Lebanon after the first century AD, its spread was very slow, particularly in the mountainous areas where paganism was still unyielding. By faith, liturgy, rite, religious books and heritage, nevertheless, the influence of the Maronite establishment spread throughout the Lebanese mountains and became a considerable feudal force. The existence of the Maronites was largely ignored by the world until the Crusades. In the 16th century, the Maronite Church adopted the catechism of the Catholic Church, moreover, Rome dispatched Franciscan, Dominican and later Jesuit missionaries to Lebanon to secure the conversion of the Maronites to Catholicism. Due to their turbulent history, the Maronites formed a secluded identity in the mountains and valleys of Lebanon and they identify themselves as a unique community whose religion and culture is distinct from the predominantly Muslim Arab world. The Maronites played a part in the definition of and the creation of the state of Lebanon. With the creation of the state of Lebanon, Arabism was overcome by Lebanism, according to the pact, the President of the Lebanese republic shall always be a Maronite. Furthermore, the pact also states that Lebanon is a state with an Arab face, the number of Christians in Lebanon has been disputed for many years. There has been no census in Lebanon since 1932. Christians were still half the country by mid-century, but by 1985, many argue over the percentage and population of Christians in Lebanon. One estimate of the Christian share of Lebanons population as of 2012 is 40. 5%, therefore, the country has the largest percentage of Christians of all the Middle Eastern nations. The Maronite Church, a church in communion with the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest and politically most active, the Eastern Orthodox Church forms the second largest proportion of Lebanese Christians. The Armenian Apostolic Church also forms a portion of the Christian population in Lebanon. Other branches of Christianity, including the Melkite Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic Church loyal to the Pope, are common in Lebanon
3.
Kafarakab
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Kafarakab is the francophone spelling of the name of a scenic village in the mountains of Lebanon. In Arabic, it means the home of the hawk and it was founded c.1560 AD when three families of the Maalouf clan, living at the time across the valley in the village of Mhaydse, received permission from the ruling emir to establish the village. The Maalouf family history is traced back to the beginnings of Christianity in the Middle East beginning with the Ghassanid tribe. The family name is now widespread worldwide, family lineages are detailed and well preserved, and conferences and a sense of family pride still preserve traditions, reunions, and culture. The preservation effort has the intent of documenting every known person bearing the Maalouf name, all Maalouf families originate from Kafarakab. The village is of no great size, consisting of only a few dozen old homes built on terraced mountainsides lined with grape vineyards, the population swells during the summer as people leave the heat of the Lebanese coastline for the freshness of the mountains. Its weather is moderate, with temperatures ranging near 70 F in the summer, snowfall is common in the winter, with snow accumulations reaching 3 to 4 feet. The population follows the Christian faith, divided between Antiochian Orthodox and Melkite, the local St. Mary church is separated into two halves, one for each faith. The village sits at an elevation about 3,600 ft. just below the village of Baskinta and its distance to Beirut is approximately 40 km, or approximately 1 hour of driving. The migration continued in the late 1800s and 1900s to Brazil, the United States of America and Canada where the family prospered and has become known in many spheres of influence
4.
Brummana
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Brummana is a town in the Matn District of the Mount Lebanon Governorate in Lebanon. It is located east of Beirut, overlooking the capital and the Mediterranean, as most of the villages, Brummana has an Aramaic name which most probably means house of Rammana, the God of Air, Storm and Thunder. Summer is usually dry in Brummana, it begins in early May, summer temperature rarely exceeds 30 deg C, with a lower limit of around 20°C. Its relative humidity in summer runs at 68%, winter is wet and mild with temperatures ranging between 5 and 18 deg C, with the occasional snowfall. Brummana is home to religious groups, although Christians, mostly Greek Orthodox make up 49%. The town is also the home of Arab tourists from the Persian Gulf area, mostly from Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates. There is a very old Greek Orthodox church in Brummana, the Church of the Prophet Chaya and it was originally a fort of Byzantine origin around 1,500 years old, but was turned into a church in the 7th century. Eighty years ago, when Maronites fled from the north and settled in Brummana and it is now half Greek Orthodox and half Catholic. The most renowned educational institute in Brummana is Brummana High School, the school influenced the inhabitants of Brummana and gave the town some English traditions, such as five o’clock tea. Theophilus Waldmeier was born in 1832 in Basle, Switzerland and he attended the missionary college of St Crischona, near Basle, and went to Abyssinia as a missionary in 1858. He re-embarked on a career of good works. Among the fruits of that career are two of Lebanons most vigorous institutions - Brummana High School, and Asfuriya Mental Hospital, founded in 1894. Waldmeier moved his wife and his eight children by horseback up the steep mountain path from Beirut to Brummana where he started the Friends Syrian Mission in 1873. In 1874, he traveled to Europe to seek backing from the Society of Friends. After listening to his plea for aid, some British and American Quakers formed a committee which. In the summer of 1915, as the First World War gathered pace, the Young Turk government introduced military rule across its Arab territories and began stockpiling food for their armies. This coincided with a locust infestation across food producing areas, in the resulting famine, which lasted two years, it is estimated that 100,000 of Mount Lebanons 450,000 inhabitants died. The Turkish military governor, Jemal Pasha, was a frequent resident of Brummana, another resident was Arthur Dray who was one of the founders of the School of Dentistry at the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut
5.
Beirut
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Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. No recent population census has been done but in 2007 estimates ranged from more than 1 million to slightly less than 2 million as part of Greater Beirut. Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanons Mediterranean coast, Beirut is the countrys largest and it is one of the oldest cities in the world, inhabited more than 5,000 years ago. The first historical mention of Beirut is found in the ancient Egyptian Tell el Amarna letters dating from the 15th century BC, the Beirut River runs south to north on the eastern edge of the city. Beirut is Lebanons seat of government and plays a role in the Lebanese economy, with most banks and corporations based in its Central District, Badaro, Rue Verdun, Hamra. Following the destructive Lebanese Civil War, Beiruts cultural landscape underwent major reconstruction, identified and graded for accountancy, advertising, banking/finance and law, Beirut is ranked as a Beta World City by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. In May 2015, Beirut was officially recognized as one of the New7Wonders Cities together with Vigan, Doha, Durban, Havana, Kuala Lumpur, and La Paz. Beirut I, or Minet el Hosn, was listed as Beyrouth ville by Louis Burkhalter and said to be on the beach near the Orent, the site was discovered by Lortet in 1894 and discussed by Godefroy Zumoffen in 1900. The flint industry from the site was described as Mousterian and is held by the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, Beirut II, or Umm el Khatib, was suggested by Burkhalter to have been south of Tarik el Jedideh, where P. E. Gigues discovered a Copper Age flint industry at around 100 metres above sea level, the site had been built on and destroyed by 1948. Beirut III, Furn esh Shebbak or Plateau Tabet, was suggested to have located on the left bank of the Beirut River. Burkhalter suggested that it was west of the Damascus road, although this determination has been criticized by Lorraine Copeland, P. E. Gigues discovered a series of Neolithic flint tools on the surface along with the remains of a structure suggested to be a hut circle. Auguste Bergy discussed polished axes that were found at this site. The area was covered in red sand that represented Quaternary river terraces, the site was found by Jesuit Father Dillenseger and published by fellow Jesuits Godefroy Zumoffen, Raoul Describes and Auguste Bergy. Collections from the site were made by Bergy, Describes and another Jesuit, a large number of Middle Paleolithic flint tools were found on the surface and in side gullies that drain into the river. They included around 50 varied bifaces accredited to the Acheulean period, some with a lustrous sheen, Henri Fleisch also found an Emireh point amongst material from the site, which has now disappeared beneath buildings. Levallois flints and bones and similar material were found amongst brecciated deposits. The area has now built on
6.
Population
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A population is the number of all the organisms of the same group or species, which live in a particular geographical area, and have the capability of interbreeding. In sociology, population refers to a collection of humans, Demography is a social science which entails the statistical study of human populations. This article refers mainly to human population, in population genetics a sexual population is a set of organisms in which any pair of members can breed together. This means that they can regularly exchange gametes to produce normally-fertile offspring and this also implies that all members belong to the same species. If the gamodeme is very large, and all gene alleles are uniformly distributed by the gametes within it, however, there may be low frequencies of exchange with these neighbours. This may be viewed as the breaking up of a sexual population into smaller overlapping sexual populations. The overall rise in homozygosity is quantified by the inbreeding coefficient, note that all homozygotes are increased in frequency – both the deleterious and the desirable. The mean phenotype of the collection is lower than that of the panmictic original – which is known as inbreeding depression. It is most important to note, however, that some lines will be superior to the panmictic original, while some will be about the same. The probabilities of each can be estimated from those binomial equations, in plant and animal breeding, procedures have been developed which deliberately utilise the effects of dispersion. It can be shown that dispersion-assisted selection leads to the greatest genetic advance and this is so for both allogamous and autogamous gamodemes. In ecology, the population of a species in a certain area can be estimated using the Lincoln Index. As of todays date, the population is estimated by the United States Census Bureau to be 7.496 billion. The US Census Bureau estimates the 7 billion number was surpassed on 12 March 2012, according to papers published by the United States Census Bureau, the world population hit 6.5 billion on 24 February 2006. The United Nations Population Fund designated 12 October 1999 as the day on which world population reached 6 billion. This was about 12 years after world population reached 5 billion in 1987, the population of countries such as Nigeria, is not even known to the nearest million, so there is a considerable margin of error in such estimates. Researcher Carl Haub calculated that a total of over 100 billion people have probably been born in the last 2000 years, Population growth increased significantly as the Industrial Revolution gathered pace from 1700 onwards. In 2007 the United Nations Population Division projected that the population will likely surpass 10 billion in 2055
7.
Bteghrine
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Bteghrine is a municipality in the Matn District of the Mount Lebanon Governorate of Lebanon. Bteghrine is located at 33. 93°N35. 745°E /33.93,35.745 and it is bordered by Mount Sannine to the east, Wadi el-Jamajem to the north, Jiwar to the west, and Khonchara to the south. The municipality is composed of seven neighborhoods and four outlying areas, the four primary springs are Zaarour, Manboukh, Mir, and Sparta. Bteghrine is situated on a hillside, but supports a thriving. Most of the land within the city and the hills, including the Meisree. The most common fruits and vegetables grown in Bteghrine are, figs, grapes, mulberry, plums, apples, peaches, persimmon, pomegranate, cherries, tomatoes, cucumber, parsley, mint, wheat, and beans. Small shops in the process much of the local produce into arak, molasses, wine. The Saliba Nail and Screw factory is the largest single plant in Bteghrine, additionally, the town has a large number of small shops for blacksmithing, woodworking, car repair and bodywork, leather tailoring, and aluminum manufacturing. Bteghrine also hosts the central station for the upper Metn region. There is one school in the town named Bteghrine Public School. The inhabitants of Bteghrine are almost all Christians, 75% Greek Orthodox, antonious Saliba - Orthodox Priest in the 19th century who has had miracles attributed to them. Responsible for the construction of LAX, SFO, The Olympic Stadium in Los Angeles, george Elie Nassar El Murr -One of the first Lebanese assented in America. George A. Saliba - CTO of multi-billion dollar Quantum Corp, currently has over 100 patents and is internationally recognized as an industry pioneer and inventor in data storage
8.
Antelias
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Antelias is a town in Lebanon. It is located around 5 km to the north of Beirut, the name is originally Greek, ἀντήλιος – from ἀντί contra and ἥλιος sun – meaning facing the sun. The municipality of Antelias - Naqqach is located in the Kaza of Matn, Antelias - Naqqach is 8 kilometers from Beyrouth, the capital of Lebanon. Its elevation is 10 meters above sea level, Antelias - Naqqach surface stretches for 193 hectares. Antelias is home to the site of Ksar Akil where the regions oldest remains of a human being have been found, the skull of the body found was sent the Beirut National Museum and the remains were shipped to the United States for conservation and study. Those caves are also coveted by known speleologists who have explored their passage ways. Antelias cave was also located 2.5 kilometres east of the town until it was destroyed by dynamite in 1964. Discoveries from Antelias are housed at the Museum of Lebanese Prehistory, Antelias is also the site of the St-Elie Church, built in 1895. St-Elie Church holds celebrations on the week of 19 July, a variety of activities are offered to the public such as plays, concerts, a fair and food, sweet stands and fireworks. The Christian and Druze communities were the parties in that treaty. The treaty did not however prevent a war between the two parties in 1860 which led to tens of thousands of victims. Antelias is the seat of the Catholicos of Cilicia of the Armenian Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia and its Cathedral of St. Elias is the episcopal see of the Maronite Catholic Archeparchy of Antelias. Other important religious buildings include the St-Elie Maronite convent with its two churches and the St. Mikhael Greek Orthodox church, Antelias is composed of a coastal fertile plain and a hilly region more to the east. There is also a plain on the sides of the Antelias river. Antelias river is highly eutrophied due to the urbanization and the harmful effect of the untreated used waters. Until the early nineties of the last century, the plain of Antelias mostly consisted of open areas planted with orange. Very few houses could be seen in the coastal plain, the strips along the Antelias river also used to be planted with orange trees. Very few if any such green areas still exist, Antelias is considered the gate to the upper Matn regions
9.
Mansourieh
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Mansourieh, is a village in the Matn District of the Mount Lebanon Governorate, Lebanon. About 10 km east of Beirut, on a hilltop overseeing the capital, the name originates from the Arabic, منصور meaning victorious, presumably dating back to a battle between the Crusaders and the Arabs in which the latter emerged victorious. Mansourieh consists of the village, seated on top of a ridge, bordered to the south and southwest by a river, upwards to the east Mansourieh merges with Ain Saadeh and Monte Verde, and slopes downhill westwards to Mkalles and Sin el-Fil. Across the river to the southwest lies the Hazmieh town, part of the Baabda district, Daychounieh covers the southeastern side, facing Baabda and Louaize. Mansourieh is 16 km to the Capital,16 km to the Province Administrative Center and 12 km to the Caza Administrative Center, Mansourieh slopes upwards from an elevation of approx. 200m to reach its highest at around 350m, until the early nineties of the last century, Mansourieh was mostly a rural area. Plains along the banks of the Beirut River were cultivated with citrus orchards, olive groves were traditionally grown in more arid areas. Pine forests covered the southeastern slopes, vineyards and fig trees, along with other Mediterranean cultivars, completed the landscape. Due to intensive urbanization since the second half of the last century, few green areas remain, mainly along the river bank. Mansourieh lies on the road running from Beirut through Sin el-Fil and Mkalles, winding up the mountain to reach Baabdat, Bikfaya. The Ras el-Matn road connects Northern Matn to Southern Matn villages, Beirut River flows east to west from Lebanon’s mountains passing south of Mansourieh to the Mediterranean Sea. The River is crossed by a dam locally called Jisr es-Sid built during the French mandate, with the dam, part of the river water is diverted to irrigate the Hadath and Kfarshima coastal planes. A bridge on top of the dam links Mansourieh to Hazmiehs Mar Takla, Mansourieh municipality administers the industrialized Mkalles zone and the Daychounieh village. As of 2009, Mansourieh houses a population of approx,17,000 of whom 1,445 are voters and 2,254 native residents. During the Roman period, with the urbanization of Beirut. The solution was to get water from one of the springs located along the Beirut River, the nearest spring was the Daychounieh source, situated 20 km southeast of Beirut. The Roman architects built a channel to convey this water across the Beirut River. It was built over an arched, bridge-like structure known today as Qanater es-Sett Zubaida, the aqueduct consisted of a series of arches of which only a small number remains on the sides of the river
Lebanon
