49 Fun Facts About Lebanon

What is the capital and largest city of Lebanon?

Greater Beirut holds about 2.4 million people, nearly half the country, and has been inhabited for more than 5,000 years.

Which northern port is Lebanon's second-largest city?

Tripoli, in the north, is Lebanon's second-largest city, with a Mamluk-era old town and the Crusader Citadel of Raymond de Saint-Gilles above it.

The Phoenicians are credited with inventing what?

The oldest verified alphabet is the 22-letter consonantal script of around 1050 BC from the Levantine coast; the Greeks adapted it, adding vowels, and the Latin alphabet descends from theirs.

Which ancient Lebanese city gave Greek its word for papyrus?

Byblos, the Greek name for Gebal, was the port through which Egyptian papyrus reached Greece; 'byblos' came to mean papyrus, then 'biblion' a book, whence the Bible.

According to the Bible, which king of Tyre supplied cedar logs for Solomon's Temple?

Tyre is also the legendary birthplace of Europa, Cadmus and Carthage's founder Dido.

Alexander the Great absorbed the Phoenician city-states after besieging which city in 332 BC?

Tyre held out for seven months in 332 BC until Alexander built a causeway to the island city; its ruins were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1984.

Which Roman general annexed the region into the Roman Republic in 64 BC?

Pompey deposed the last Seleucid king in 64 BC and organised the Levant, including the Lebanese coast, as a Roman province; the separate province of Phoenice was carved out under Septimius Severus.

Baalbek is famous for the ruins of Roman temples dedicated to Bacchus and which chief god?

Jupiter's temple at Baalbek, with six surviving giant columns, crowned the Roman city of Heliopolis, 'Sun City'; UNESCO listed the site in 1984.

The Christian community that takes its name from a hermit named Maron traces him to when?

Late 4th–early 5th century is Maron's era: the ascetic hermit died around 410 AD near Apamea, and his followers later moved into Mount Lebanon and entered communion with Rome.

The Druze religion emerged in the 11th century from a branch of what?

Shia Islam, specifically its Ismaili branch, is the root of the Druze faith, which formed in Fatimid Cairo around 1017 under the caliph al-Hakim.

Which Druze emir, executed by the Ottomans in 1635, is remembered as a founder of the Lebanese entity?

Fakhr al-Din II extended Druze rule over much of modern Lebanon before Sultan Murad IV sent an army against him in 1633; captured, he was executed in Istanbul in 1635.

The Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate of 1861–1918 was created as an autonomous homeland for which community?

Maronite Christians, the majority in Mount Lebanon, gained a self-governing district under a Christian governor after the 1860 clashes in which thousands of Christians were killed by the Druze.

Roughly how many people in the capital and Mount Lebanon starved to death in the WWI famine?

100,000 is the low estimate; others put the dead at up to 200,000, about half of Mount Lebanon's people, after an Allied blockade, Ottoman requisitions and a 1915 locust plague cut off food.

Greater Lebanon was established under French mandate on 1 September of which year?

1920 was the year: on 1 September General Henri Gouraud proclaimed Greater Lebanon, adding the coastal cities and the Beqaa Valley to the old Mount Lebanon district.

On what date in 1943 did France release the imprisoned Lebanese government and accept independence?

Parliament had unilaterally ended the mandate on 8 November; France jailed the cabinet at Rashaya, then freed it on 22 November, the date celebrated as Independence Day.

Which Lebanese port city's Crusader Sea Castle was built on a small island in 1228?

Sidon's Sea Castle was built by Crusaders in 1228 on a small island linked to the harbour by a causeway; the city is also famed for its soap museum.

How many religious groups are officially recognised by the Lebanese state?

The 18 recognised sects are twelve Christian, four Muslim, one Druze and one Jewish, and each runs its own family law and religious courts.

Lebanon's parliament has how many seats, split equally between Christians and Muslims?

128 seats, 64 Christian and 64 Muslim, were fixed by the 1989 accord that ended the civil war, which enlarged the chamber from 99 and replaced the earlier 6:5 Christian-to-Muslim ratio.

Why has Lebanon not conducted a national census since 1932?

The relative size of religious sects is too sensitive because parliament and top offices are shared out by confession, so no government has risked a count since the French-run census of 1932.

Lebanon's civil war lasted from 1975 until which year?

1990 is the accepted end: the October 1990 ousting of the rebel army commander from Baabda palace closed fifteen years of fighting that had begun in April 1975.

Which country militarily occupied Lebanon from 1976 to 2005?

Syria kept troops in Lebanon from its 1976 intervention in the civil war until the mass protests of 2005 forced a withdrawal, completed that April; Israel held a southern zone until 2000.

Hezbollah emerged in the early 1980s with financial support and training from which country?

Iran's Revolutionary Guards helped found and train Hezbollah in the Beqaa Valley in 1982, after Israel's invasion, and Tehran became its chief financier and arms supplier.

Which former prime minister was assassinated by a car bomb on 14 February 2005?

Rafic Hariri, the billionaire who led post-war reconstruction as prime minister in 1992–98 and 2000–04, was killed with 21 others by a truck bomb on the seafront, sparking mass protests.

The 2006 Lebanon War between Israel and Hezbollah was ended by which UN Security Council resolution?

Resolution 1701, adopted on 11 August 2006, brought a ceasefire three days later after 34 days of fighting and expanded the UNIFIL peacekeeping force in the south.

The August 2020 explosion at Lebanon's main port was caused by how much stored ammonium nitrate?

2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, stored in a warehouse since 2014, exploded on 4 August 2020, killing more than 200 people; Prime Minister Hassan Diab's cabinet resigned six days later.

What is Lebanon's highest point, at 3,088 m?

Qurnat as Sawda', in the northern Mount Lebanon range, is the highest peak in the whole Levant; its Arabic name means 'the black corner'.

What tree is Lebanon's national emblem, shown in green on its flag?

Cedar of Lebanon, Cedrus libani, is the emblem; the Cedars of God grove near Bsharri is a UNESCO-listed remnant of the ancient forests felled since antiquity.

How big is the white central stripe on Lebanon's flag compared with each red stripe?

Twice the height: the central band is double each red band, a 1:2:1 ratio, with the green tree at the centre touching both red stripes.

The name of Mount Lebanon comes from a Phoenician root meaning what?

White is the sense of the Semitic root l-b-n, a reference to the range's snow-capped peaks, where snow can linger into early summer.

Lebanon's geography famously lets visitors do what in a single day?

Ski in the morning and swim in the sea in the afternoon: slopes such as Mzaar Kfardebian sit barely an hour's drive above Mediterranean beaches.

The Jeita Grotto north of the capital is a system of two caves running nearly how far?

9 km is the combined length of the upper gallery and the lower cave; the lower cave, rediscovered in 1836, is toured by boat along its underground river.

Into how many governorates is Lebanon divided?

Nine governorates: Akkar, Baalbek-Hermel, Beqaa, Keserwan-Jbeil, Mount Lebanon, Nabatieh, North, South and the capital itself, which forms a governorate on its own.

Which country hosts the largest Lebanese diaspora, at an estimated 5–7 million people?

Brazil's Lebanese community, built on waves of mostly Christian emigration that began in the 1880s, is estimated at 5–7 million, concentrated in São Paulo.

Roughly what share of Lebanese are considered francophone?

About 40% of Lebanese are counted as francophone and another 15% as partial francophones; 70% of secondary schools use French as a second language of instruction.

Lebanese-American author Kahlil Gibran, born in Bsharri, is best known for which 1923 book?

The Prophet, 26 prose-poetry fables published in 1923, has never gone out of print and made Gibran one of the best-selling poets of all time, after Shakespeare and Laozi.

Which Lebanese singer, born Nouhad Haddad, married the composer Assi Rahbani?

Fairuz, born Nouhad Haddad, married Assi Rahbani; he and his brother Mansour wrote her early songs at the national radio station and shaped her career for decades.

Kibbeh, one of Lebanon's national dishes, is a pie of finely minced lamb and what?

Burghul, the parboiled cracked wheat, is pounded with the lamb to form the kibbeh shell; tabbouleh, the other national dish, uses the same grain with parsley and tomatoes.

Lebanese restaurant meals traditionally open with a spread of small dishes called what?

Mezze, the opening spread of small dishes such as hummus, tabbouleh and kibbeh, precedes grilled meat or fish; meals end with Arabic coffee and fresh fruit.

Arak, the Levantine spirit, gets its licorice taste from which ingredient?

Aniseed is added at the second distillation of the grape spirit, giving arak its liquorice flavour and its milky louche when water is added; it is typically bottled at about 53% alcohol.

The ruins of Anjar, a UNESCO site in the Beqaa Valley, were built by which caliphate?

Umayyad caliph al-Walid I founded Anjar in the early 8th century as a trading town; the modern village beside the ruins was settled by Armenian refugees in 1939.

The Kadisha Valley, a UNESCO-listed gorge of ancient monasteries, has a name meaning what in Aramaic?

Holy is the meaning of Qadisha; the gorge sheltered Christian monasteries and hermitages for centuries and was listed by UNESCO in 1998.

Lebanon's central bank devalued the pound by what percentage on 1 February 2023?

90% was the cut: the official rate of 1,507.5 pounds per dollar, unchanged since 1997, was reset to a tenth of that value, though the street rate was already far weaker.

Roughly how many US Marines landed in Lebanon in 1958 at President Chamoun's request?

5,000 US Marines landed on the beaches south of the capital on 15 July 1958 under Operation Blue Bat, the day after a coup toppled the pro-Western monarchy in Iraq.

Lebanon's National Pact assigns the post of prime minister to which community?

Sunni Muslim is the prime minister's confession under the 1943 pact, an unwritten deal between President Bechara el-Khoury and Premier Riad al-Solh.

How many Syrian refugees were in Lebanon by late 2014, according to UNHCR?

1,000,000 registered refugees was the milestone UNHCR announced in April 2014, up from about 250,000 in early 2013; registration was suspended in May 2015 at the government's request.

Under the National Pact, the speaker of Lebanon's parliament must come from which community?

Shia Muslim is the speaker's confession under the pact, while the deputy speaker and deputy prime minister posts go to Greek Orthodox Christians.

Which river, Lebanon's longest, turns west to the sea through a gorge below Beaufort Castle?

The Litani rises near Baalbek, runs south down the Beqaa Valley and then swings west below Beaufort Castle to reach the Mediterranean; the Qaraoun dam on it feeds Lebanon's main hydro scheme.

The 1989 accord that ended Lebanon's civil war is named after which Saudi city?

Taif, in the Hejaz mountains, hosted Lebanon's surviving MPs in October 1989; the accord they signed reshaped the power-sharing formula and set a timetable for foreign troop withdrawal.

Which former army commander was elected Lebanon's president in January 2025 after a two-year vacancy?

Joseph Aoun, army chief since 2017, won on 9 January 2025 in a second round of voting, ending a presidential vacancy that had lasted since October 2022.