Capital: Beirut
Area: 10 400 km²
Population: 3 630 000
Currency: 1 US$ = 1500 LL
GDP: 82 / 5 900$
HDI : 69 / 0.749 
CPI   :  na / na

2001 data

Lebanon was the site of some of the oldest human settlements in the world, the Phoenician ports of Tyre, Sidon and Byblos were important centres of trade and culture in the 3rd millennium BC. Phoenicians were Semites who migrated from the deserts of Arabia to become successful navigators and traders. They established an extensive network of trading settlements all over the Mediterranean, one of which, Carthage, developed its own maritime empire in western Mediterranean. Phoenicians were overrun by Amorites in 2000 BC and by Egyptians in 1800 before enjoying independence from 1100 to 867 BC. when the Assyrians invaded them. Then came the Babylonians in 590 BC. the Persians in 539 and Alexander in 333.

Finally, the Phoenician ports became part of the Roman Empire in 64 BC when Pompey the Great conquered the territory that comprises modern Lebanon and governed it as part of the province of Syria. An impressive Jupiter temple was built at Baalbek as a demonstration of Roman power. Aramaic replaced Phoenician as the main language and by the 4th century Christianity was firmly established.

When the Arabs invaded in 634, the Christian precursors of the Maronite church settled in the northern Lebanese mountains to avoid conversion to Islam. They were joined by Shiite refugees in the 9th century and by the Druzes in the 11th. The crusaders were active on the coast from the 11th century to the 13th when they were overcome by the Mamluks. The great Crac des Chevaliers was built during this period.

In 1516 the Ottoman Turks conquered the entire eastern Mediterranean coast. They granted local leaders relative autonomy; playing the Druzes against the Maronites both of which developed ties with competing France, Russia and Britain. In 1860, at the end of a bloody civil war that culminated in a massacre of the Maronites by the Druzes, Britain and France intervened and pressured the Turks into establishing a new Christian-dominated administration which lasted until World War I. After the war Lebanon became a French mandate combining the largely Muslim inhabited coastal plain with the Christian dominated mountains to create the Republic of Lebanon in 1943.

Independent Lebanon joined the Arab League reflecting the overwhelming arab component of its ethnic origins. Lebanese Arabs are however divided between three Muslim religions, the Sunni, the Shia and the Druze and three Christian religions, the Maronites, the Greek Catholics and the Greek Orthodox. At the time of independence, the Christians were a majority and the Maronites held the upper hand in a delicate political equilibrium.

The forceful establishment of Israel and the influx of Palestinian refugees upset this delicate balance and divided the country. In 1958, a Muslim rebellion of Druze and Shiite forces allied with Palestinian refugees against the Maronites was crushed by American marines but civil war flared up again in 1975 between the Muslim coalition and Christian militias until Syria intervened to force a cease fire in 1976. The country was devastated and more than 50 000 people were killed. Fighting resumed in 1977 and Israel invaded southern Lebanon to destroy Palestinian bases there in 1978.

Israel invaded Lebanon again in 1982. They bombed the Muslim part of Beirut for seven weeks by air, sea and land and forced the PLO and 7000 Palestinians to leave the country. A multinational force was deployed in Beirut to protect Muslim civilians but Israeli forces under Ariel Sharon allowed extremists of the Christian Phalange to enter the Sabra and Shatila refugee Palestinian camps to massacre more than 1000 unarmed civilians. The following year, 50 people died in a terrorist attack on the US embassy and 260 US marines along with 60 French soldiers were killed by a truck bomb. The western forces pulled out and fighting continued with Israel backing the Christians and some Arab countries supporting the Muslim coalition.

Finally intense international pressure led to an accord of national reconciliation in 1989 with the Bekaa valley under the influence of Syria and southern Lebanon under that of Israel. Since then all efforts seek to heal the wounds of civil war, to rebuild and improve what was destroyed and to re-establish the position of eminence as a financial centre that Beirut enjoyed previously.