{leb'-uh-nuhn} The Republic of Lebanon, a tiny country some 55 km (35 mi) wide and 215 km (135 mil) long, is located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It is bordered on the north and east by Syria and on the south by Israel. From earliest times (see \TPhoenicia\t), Lebanon has been at the center of the tumultuous history of the Middle East. It was a French mandate from the end of World War I until 1943, when it gained full independence, and it gradually became the commercial and cultural hub of the Arab Middle East. Lebanon has long been known for its religious and cultural diversity. Its inhabitants generally coexisted peacefully until 1975, when rapid economic, social, and demographic changes, rising intersectarian rivalries, and regional and international tensions contributed to the outbreak of a devastating civil war. From that time until 1990, when a peace accord finally appeared to take hold, the country's very existence was threatened. LAND AND RESOURCES Lebanon is made up of four contrasting physiographic regions running north to south parallel to the Mediterranean. The narrow, fertile coastal plain is dominated by the foothills and peaks of the rugged Lebanon Mountains, which rise to 3,088 m (10,131 ft) at Qurnat al-Sawda, the highest point in the country. Behind the Lebanon Mountains lie successively the narrow, fertile al-Biqa (Bekaa) Valley (the northern extension of the \TGreat Rift Valley\t, some 915 m/3,000 ft above sea level) and the Anti-Lebanon Range. The latter forms Lebanon's eastern frontier with Syria and is often considered to include Mount \THermon\t. Numerous swift small rivers flow down from the Lebanon Mountains to the sea. Lebanon's two major rivers, the Litani and the Orontes, rise in the al-Biqa Valley. The Litani flows south, then west, and has been dammed at several points for the purposes of irrigation and electrical power generation. The Orontes flows north into Syria, then west to the Mediterranean. Climate Lebanon's climate varies sharply from place to place. The narrow coastal plain receives an average of 900 mm (about 35 in) of rainfall annually. There, winters are mild and rainy, summers are warm, humid, and rainless. The foothills and mountains receive substantially more precipitation in the form of both rain and snow during the wet season (October to April). Drier weather prevails in the al-Biqa Valley, where annual rainfall and snow average about half that of the coastal plain. Soils, Vegetation, and Animal Life Geologically, Lebanon is formed of three successive layers: limestone at the surface, sandstone, then limestone. Because of the varied terrain and climate, a large number of crops are grown. Areas not cultivated--mostly above 1,200 m (4,000 ft)--are generally bare of vegetation due to overcutting and overgrazing by goats, and the great forests of cedar celebrated in the Bible have largely disappeared. The lower-lying hills, where not cultivated, are covered with thornbushes and seasonal wildflowers. Indiscriminate hunting has greatly reduced a once rich and varied bird and animal population, and pollution in the Mediterranean threatens coastal fishing. Resources In ancient times Lebanon was famous for its wood, iron, and copper. All of these resources are now essentially exhausted. Abundant limestone deposits are used by the construction industry and in making cement for export. PEOPLE Lebanon is an Arab country, and Arabic is the official language. French and English are widely spoken and taught in the schools, however. The people are ethnically diverse because of the area's long history of conquest and assimilation. Indeed, one of the fundamental principles of the social and political order is confessionalism--the proportionate sharing of power among the nation's various ethnic-religious communities. More than 15 such communities are officially recognized by law. Among them, the principal Christian sects (several of which are \TEastern Rite churches\t) are the Maronites, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholics, Protestant Evangelicals, Roman Catholics, Armenian Orthodox, Armenian Catholics, and Armenian Protestants. \TSunnites\t, \TShiites\t, and \TDruzes\t (an offshoot of Shiite Islam) comprise the principal Muslim communities. Jews, mainly oriental, numbered perhaps 5,000 before 1975. As more than a decade of civil strife strengthened sectarian loyalties at the expense of national unity, Lebanon became less a nation than a collection of feudal-like baronies organized along religious lines. Demography No official census has been taken since 1932, when Christians slightly outnumbered Muslims. That enumeration included emigrant Lebanese (primarily Christian). The two most populous and prosperous sects, the Maronites and the Sunnites, used the 1932 census as the basis for the formula allocating political power along religious lines at independence; this unwritten agreement guaranteed the Maronites control of Lebanon. Since that time the Muslims, particularly the poorer Shiites, have had a substantially higher birthrate than the Christians. Recent estimates indicate that Muslims may constitute as much as 60% of the population--25% Sunnite, 25% Shiite, and 10% Druze--whereas Maronites comprise only an estimated 30% of the current total. The arrival of as many as 400,000 predominantly Muslim Palestinian refugees after 1948 further threatened Lebanon's delicate balance. Between 1975 and 1990, when it was estimated that 35% of the population had become refugees, civil strife drove thousands of Lebanese from their homes. Many foreign investors and wealthy Lebanese also left the country during that period. About one-half of the population lives in the greater \TBeirut\t area, and widespread urbanization has added to everyday tensions and increased demands for services that the government lacks the resources to provide. Education and Health Lebanon long had one of the best systems of private education in the Middle East, with private elementary and secondary schools serving about half the student population. Public education, expanded during the 1960s, remains insufficient to meet demand or provide consistent quality. Lebanon has five institutions of higher education (see \TMiddle Eastern universities\t). The most notable is the \TAmerican University of Beirut\t (1866), in which about half of the student body was once non-Lebanese. The Lebanese population's familiarity with foreign languages, high literacy rate, and relatively advanced educational level support a flourishing publishing industry and contribute to a still-vibrant cultural life. Before 1975, Lebanon's health-care system was one of the best in the region, although it concentrated services in urban areas, particularly Beirut. ECONOMIC ACTIVITY In modern times the Lebanese economy has been fundamentally transformed. Where once the majority of the population was engaged in agriculture, today the country has a diversified economy dominated by the service sector. The sharpest phase of economic transformation occurred after 1960 and benefited chiefly Christians and a few Sunni Muslims. By 1975 approximately 4% of the population controlled one-third of the nation's wealth, a fact that contributed greatly to the current conflict. Agriculture As recently as 1960 nearly half the population was rural, although only one-quarter of the land was cultivated and agriculture generated less than one-fifth of the \TGNP\t. Most farmers in the mountains are small freeholders; those in the al-Biqa Valley, southern Lebanon, and the extreme north are mostly tenant farmers or sharecroppers for absentee landlords. The coastal areas yield citrus fruits, bananas, and olives, and the lower slopes of the Lebanon Mountains are terraced for the production of apples, grapes, pears, and peaches. These products were long valuable as exports to Arab countries, where demand for them was high. Grains, potatoes, melons, and vegetables flourish in the al-Biqa Valley. Manufacturing and Services Lebanon's manufacturing sector, though small, is nonetheless significant. By 1974 it employed some 120,000 workers and generated 16% of the \TGNP\t. The principal manufactures are textiles, cement, ironwork, wood products, plastics, ceramics, pharmaceuticals, and processed foods; refineries at \TTripoli\t and near \TSidon\t process oil piped from Saudi Arabia and (until 1991) Iraq to meet domestic requirements. Most industrial concerns are small-scale family firms. Manufacturing, concentrated in the Beirut area before the civil war, has since become decentralized. Independent Lebanon prospered by attracting foreign investment. Its banking secrecy laws and uncontrolled foreign exchange market encouraged a strong banking sector. Some 80 major banks once served the Middle East from Beirut, which became the financial and commercial center of the region. Tourism, banking, finance, commerce, and other services accounted for nearly 70% of the \TGNP\t by 1973. Although reconstruction began in 1991, the restoration of the once-flourishing economy was expected to take many years. Power During the early 1970s a long-standing power shortage was eliminated with the construction of additional oil-fired generators and the completion of the Litani dam project. Since 1975, however, the country has been unable to meet its power needs. Transportation Lebanon's transportation system was one of its principal assets in regional and international trade. Beirut, Tripoli, and Sidon are the country's major ports. In 1991 the government shut down several illegal ports that had been used by occupying armies to smuggle weapons and contraband for the flourishing black market. There is an international airport at Beirut, and a government-owned railway connects Beirut with Tripoli and Damascus. A good road system is now much in need of repair. Trucks carry passengers and goods to and through Syria, which controls Lebanon's overland transportation links to other countries. Trade Lebanon's links to the outside world are critical to its economic viability. For decades Lebanon's trade deficit was offset by the reexport trade and by remittances from Lebanese working abroad either permanently or temporarily. A sharp decline in these remittances since 1983--particularly after the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait--has contributed to balance-of-payments deficits and the virtual collapse of the Lebanese pound on foreign exchange markets. GOVERNMENT The Lebanese republic, independent since 1943, was established under French mandate by the Constitution of 1926 (since amended). The constitution provided for an executive branch (president, prime minister, and cabinet) balanced by an independent judiciary and a unicameral legislature elected by universal adult suffrage. Until 1990 an unwritten agreement known as the National Pact was as important as the constitution. It specified that the president was to be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of the legislature a Shiite Muslim. Legislative seats were apportioned among the various sects in accordance with a six-to-five ratio of Christians to Muslims, as were posts in the cabinet, bureaucracy, judiciary, and military. Under constitutional reforms set forth in a 1989 Arab-brokered peace accord and signed into law in September 1990, many of the powers of the Christian president were shifted to the half-Christian, half-Muslim cabinet, and the Muslim prime minister was to countersign presidential decrees. The legislature (for which elections had not been held since 1972) was to be evenly divided between Christians and Muslims. HISTORY Lebanon has been in the mainstream of history since history began. Its strategic location has made it a transporter and transmitter of civilization, culture, and religion. The earliest inhabitants of coastal Lebanon were a Semitic people related to the Canaanites who came to coastal Lebanon from the Arabian Peninsula about 3500 BC. The Greeks named these seafaring people Phoenicians, and they established city-states (including \TByblos\t, \TTyre\t, Sidon, Beirut, and \TBaalbek\t) and spread their 22-letter alphabet throughout the Mediterranean region. After being successively ruled by the Egyptians, Assyrians, Neo-Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks, Lebanon came under Roman rule in 64 BC. Christianity was firmly established there before AD 395, when Lebanon became part of the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire. Particularly during the early Christian era, when theological controversies bred numerous sects, Lebanon became a refuge for persecuted minorities fleeing the authority of the universal empires. In the 660s one of these sects, which later became the Maronite Church, settled in the rugged Lebanon Mountains to avoid forcible conversion to Islam by the Arabs, who had completed their conquest of the region by 640. The attractiveness of Lebanon as a refuge persisted into Islamic times. Shiites found a haven there during the 9th century, Druzes in the 11th century. The coastal plain and Lebanon Mountains fell temporarily to the Crusaders (see \TCrusades\t) early in the 12th century. Many Lebanese Christians fought alongside the Crusaders, and thousands of them were slaughtered by Muslims once the Crusaders had been driven out in the late 13th century by the \TMamelukes\t of Egypt. Generally, however, the mosaic of religions that Lebanon had become offered semiautonomy or independence for its various groups, each of which concentrated in specific areas until modern times. The Maronites lived in Mount Lebanon (the heart of present-day Lebanon, excluding the coastal cities), the Druzes in the mountains of southern Mount Lebanon, the Shiites to the south and east, and the Sunnites and various Christian minorities along the coast. From 1516 to 1918, when Lebanon was formally part of the \TOttoman Empire\t, local leaders were granted relative autonomy as long as they paid taxes to their Ottoman rulers. One powerful Druze chieftain, Fakhr al-Din, gained control of Mount Lebanon and parts of Syria and Palestine. After his execution by the Turks in 1635, Druze power waned, paving the way for the rising influence of the Maronite Christians, who established close ties with other Lebanese Christian sects. Under Ottoman rule, Lebanon developed commercial, educational, and religious ties with Europe. Open to the West, it became a center for political rivalries between various foreign powers, including France, Britain, and Russia. These powers assumed the protection of certain ethnic-religious groups, with France as the chief protector of the Maronite community. Following a sputtering 20-year civil war that culminated in a bloody 1860 Druze massacre of Maronites, France and Britain intervened and pressured the Turks into establishing (1864) a semiautonomous Christian-dominated province in Mount Lebanon. After World War I, Lebanon became a French mandate, as promised by the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. In 1920 the French created Lebanon's current boundaries by adding the al-Biqa Valley, the coastal cities, and areas to the north and south. The annexation added a large Sunnite and Shiite population to predominantly Christian Mount Lebanon. The Republic of Lebanon, established by the Constitution of 1926, remained under French mandate until 1943, when it gained independence. For a time, independent Lebanon was a model ecumenical society. Two grave weaknesses, however, eventually undid the Lebanese system. The first was the rigidity of the 1943 National Pact, which did not take into account changes in the demography and political consciousness of the various communities. The second was Lebanon's gradual involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Lebanon did not participate militarily in the \TArab-Israeli Wars\t, but the influx of large numbers of predominantly Muslim Palestinian refugees after the 1948 war helped to change the country's internal balance of power. In addition, Lebanese Muslims who identified with the Pan-Arab nationalism of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel \TNasser\t were alienated when President Camille Chamoun was the only Arab head of state who refused to break diplomatic relations with France and Britain in solidarity with Egypt during the 1956 Suez Crisis. Civil war broke out in 1958, ending only when U.S. Marines landed in Beirut. Continuing economic and social inequalities, growing Muslim demands for more political power, and the strains imposed by the activities of \TPalestine Liberation Organization\t (\TPLO\t) commandos (who operated virtually a state within a state and launched guerrilla raids against Israel from Lebanese soil) continued, however. These laid the groundwork for the 1975-76 civil war. The civil war pitted the Nationalist Movement (a mostly Muslim mixture of socialists, Communists, and Nasserite groups) against the Lebanese Front (a group dominated by the Maronite Phalange party but including right-wing Muslims). The \TPLO\t joined the fighting on the side of the Nationalist Movement. In June 1976, with the Nationalist Movement on the verge of victory, Syria (which at various times has supported different groups in the Lebanese conflict) intervened on behalf of the Lebanese Front. The Syrian military action was ratified in October by the Arab League, which helped to arrange a cease-fire. Despite the Syrian presence, sporadic communal strife and the cycle of Israeli-Palestinian violence on Lebanese soil continued. Israeli forces briefly invaded southern Lebanon in 1978 but withdrew after a United Nations peacekeeping force (UNIFIL) was sent into the area. In 1982, Israeli forces again invaded, occupying Beirut and forcing the \TPLO\t to evacuate its headquarters there. Phalangist leader Amin \TGemayel\t took office as president in September; at his request, a multinational peace force came in to try to restore order. In May 1983, Gemayel concluded a security agreement with Israel allowing a continuing Israeli role in southern Lebanon. Syria, which had refused to withdraw its troops when its Arab League mandate expired, rejected the accord. Meanwhile, the Lebanese army was unable to halt fighting between Lebanon's armed militias (including rival Palestinian groups), and terrorist bomb attacks on the multinational force, including U.S. Marines headquartered at Beirut airport, resulted in hundreds of casualties. The multinational force was withdrawn in 1984. Gemayel then repudiated the unpopular Lebanese-Israeli security agreement and installed a new, pro-Syrian cabinet of national unity. The cabinet seldom met after Gemayel rejected a Syrian-brokered peace accord in January 1986, contributing to political and economic deterioration exacerbated by the activities of terrorist groups such as the Iranian-backed \THezbollah\t and by the 1987 assassination of Prime Minister Rashid Karami. Although most Israeli troops were withdrawn from Lebanon by June 1985, conflicting Israeli and Syrian interest continued to compound Lebanon's formidable internal problems. In 1988 a crisis over presidential succession led to the formation of rival Christian and Muslim governments. In November 1989 the Lebanese parliament accepted an Arab-brokered peace accord and elected Maronite Rene Moawad president. Maowad was assassinated after 17 days in office, and members of the parliament elected Elias Hrawi president. Christian prime minister Gen. Michel Aoun launched a war against the Syrian forces in Lebanon in 1989. His surrender in October 1990, coupled with the granting of political parity to Muslims, the later disarming of the Lebanon militias, and the release of several Western hostages held by radical Shiite groups in Lebanon, raised new hopes for peace. Syrian troops helped to restore state rule. On May 22, 1991, Lebanon and Syria signed a cooperation pact, increasing Israeli and Maronite fears of Syrian dominance. Karl K. Barbir and Leila S. Al-Imad Bibliography: American University, Lebanon: A Country Study, 3d ed. (1989); Cobban, H., The Making of Modern Lebanon (1985); Fawaz, L., Merchants and Migrants in 19th Century Beirut (1983); Fisk, R., Pity the Nation (1990); Friedman, T. L., From Beirut to Jerusalem (1989); Gordon, D. C., The Republic of Lebanon (1983); Hitti, P. K., Lebanon in History, 3d ed. (1967); Khaladi, W., Conflict and Violence in Lebanon (1979); Khalaf, S., Persistence and Change in 19th Century Lebanon (1979), and Lebanon's Predicament (1987); Khuri, F., From Village to Suburb (1975); Mackey, Sandra, Lebanon: The Death of a Nation (1989; repr. 1991); Makdisi, J. S., Beirut Fragments (1990); Norton, A. R., Amal and the Shia (1987); Rabinovich, I., The War for Lebanon, rev. ed. (1985); Salibi, K. S., Crossroads to Civil War: Lebanon, 1958-1976 (1976) and The Modern History of Lebanon (1965; repr. 1976).