Lebanon (country)

VI

History

The mountain range that has given Lebanon its name—sometimes referred to as Mount Lebanon, or the Mountain—has 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.

A

Phoenicia

Archaeological remains indicate habitation along the Lebanese Mediterranean coast in the Palaeolithic period, and by around 4000 bc the region had developed both metallurgy and ceramics. In around 2500 bc the coast was colonized by the Phoenicians, a seafaring people related to the Canaanites. Their city-states, controlling most of the territory of modern Lebanon, traded with ancient Egypt and became thriving mercantile centres under the cultural influence of Babylonia, worshipping the god Baal. Around 2000 bc Phoenicia was invaded by the Amorites, then in 1800 bc by the Egyptians and soon after by the Hyksos, who joined it to their Egyptian dominions. Reconquered by the resurgent Egyptians, Phoenicia remained a vassal province until around 1400 bc, when Hittite raids weakened Egyptian authority, and by 1100 bc it was independent again.

Tyre became the leading state of newly independent Phoenicia, and pioneered long-distance ocean trading. The marriage of Ahab, King of Israel, to Jezebel, a princess of Tyre, shows the strength of the political ties between Phoenicia and early Israel. Phoenician exploration spread colonies through the Mediterranean, from Utica and Carthage in North Africa to Corsica and southern Spain on the north, disseminating the Semitic alphabet later adopted by the Greeks; Phoenicians circumnavigated Africa, and traders from Carthage may even have reached the British Isles. Yet in 867 bc Ashurnasirpal II, King of Assyria, forced Phoenicia to pay homage, and from then on its city-states were dominated by Assyrian forces. They rebelled several times, and after the destruction of Assyrian power in 612 bc, they held out successfully against Egyptian efforts to reconquer the area.

B

Phoenicia Conquered

Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylonia subjugated all Phoenicia except Tyre, with the result that the Phoenicians welcomed Persia as a liberator when it conquered Babylonia in 539 bc. Phoenicia became one of the richest and most important provinces of the Persian empire.

Alexander the Great conquered Phoenicia along with the rest of Asia Minor: Tyre finally fell in 332 bc after a long siege. War depredations and the rise of Alexander’s new maritime foundation Alexandria handicapped Phoenician commerce, and the cities were seized after Alexander’s death by the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt and then in the 2nd century bc by the Seleucids. Phoenician identity was overwhelmed by Hellenistic influences. As the Seleucid empire disintegrated, the growing power of the Roman republic became more and more important in the region.

C

Roman-Byzantine Rule

In 64 bc Pompey the Great conquered Phoenicia, stripping it of its name and independence, annexed it to Rome and administered it as part of the province of Syria. Beirut became an important new centre under Herod the Great and other Roman vassals, while Baalbek became a temple city of great splendour; both were made official colonies by Augustus. The Aramaic language, dominant in the Middle East, began to replace Phoenician, marking the cultural integration of the territory with its neighbours.

From the 4th century ad on, the Christianization of the Roman Empire and the subsequent emergence of strict orthodoxy in the Eastern or Byzantine Empire caused religious tension in Syria as a whole. By the 7th century, the Maronites, a sect espousing the heresy of Monothelitism (that Christ had both human and divine natures but only one will), had sought refuge from persecution in the northern districts of Mount Lebanon. In 608 the Persian king, Khosrau II, overran Lebanon and Syria. Emperor Heraclius, himself a Monothelitist, liberated Lebanon in the 620s, but his triumph was to be short-lived.

D

Early Muslim Rule

In the 630s Arabs, inspired by the new religion of Islam, had conquered most of Syria and incorporated it into their caliphate, 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 of the Umayyads and Abbasids, 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 sect, established themselves in southern Mount Lebanon, becoming sometimes partners and sometimes rivals of the formerly dominant Maronites. In 1099 the Crusades brought Christian rulers to the country who remained until the 13th century; Lebanon was partitioned between the Crusader country of Tripolis and the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. 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 co-religionists in the West.

Egypt led a Muslim reconquest of Lebanon which began with the capture of Beirut in 1187. Once the last Crusaders had been evicted, Lebanon was ruled by the Mamelukes from the 1280s.