history of Lebanon
Who were the ancient settlers of Lebanon?
How did the religious diversity in Lebanon develop?
What was the impact of the Lebanese Civil War?
What led to the 2020 Beirut explosion?
history of Lebanon, a survey of notable events and people in the history of Lebanon, beginning with its settlement by the ancient Phoenicians to the modern state. Lebanon’s history has been defined especially by its prolific ports along the Mediterranean trade routes, the refuge its mountainous terrain has offered to groups fleeing persecution, and, since the Middle Ages, its religious diversity.
Phoenicia
Origins and relations with Egypt
The evidence of tools found in caves along the coast of what is now Lebanon shows that the area was inhabited from the Paleolithic Period (Old Stone Age) through the Neolithic Period (New Stone Age). Village life followed the domestication of plants and animals (the Neolithic Revolution, after about 10,000 bce), with Byblos (modern Jubayl) apparently taking the lead. At this site also appear the first traces in Lebanon of pottery and metallurgy (first copper and then bronze, an alloy of tin and copper) by the 4th millennium bce.
Urban settlements in Lebanon date to the early Bronze Age. The inhabitants, called Phoenicians by the Greeks, were indistinguishable from the Canaanites of Palestine. Herodotus and other Classical writers preserve a tradition that they came from the coast of the Erythraean Sea (i.e., the Persian Gulf), but so far there is little evidence to indicate that the Phoenicians migrated from elsewhere.
At Byblos the first urban settlement is dated to about 3050–2850 bce. Commercial and religious connections with Egypt, probably by sea, are attested from the Egyptian 4th dynasty (c. 2543–c. 2436 bce). The earliest artistic representations of Phoenicians are found at Memphis, in a damaged relief of Pharaoh Sahure of the 5th dynasty (mid-25th to early 24th century bce). This shows the arrival of an Asian princess to be the pharaoh’s bride; her escort is a fleet of seagoing ships, probably of the type known to the Egyptians as “Byblos ships,” manned by crews of Asians, evidently Phoenicians.
Byblos was destroyed by fire about 2150 bce, probably by the invading Amorites. The Amorites rebuilt on the site, and a period of close contact with Egypt was begun. Costly gifts were given by the pharaohs to those Phoenician and Syrian princes, such as the rulers of Ugarit and Katna, who were loyal to Egypt. Whether this attests to Egypt’s political dominion over Phoenicia at this time or simply to strong diplomatic and commercial relations is not entirely clear.
In the 18th century bce new invaders, the Hyksos, destroyed Amorite rule in Byblos and, passing on to Egypt, brought the Middle Kingdom to an end (c. 1630 bce). Little is known about the Hyksos’ origin, but many of their kings had Semitic names, and the Phoenician deities El, Baal, and Anath figured in their pantheon. The rule of the Hyksos in Egypt was brief and their cultural achievement slight, but in this period the links with Phoenicia and Syria were strengthened by the presence of Hyksos aristocracies throughout the region. Pharaoh Ahmose I expelled the Hyksos about 1539 bce and instituted the New Kingdom policy of conquest in Palestine and Syria. In his annals, Ahmose records capturing oxen from the Fenkhu (fnḫw), a term here perhaps referring to the Phoenicians. In the annals of the great Egyptian conqueror Thutmose III (reigned 1479–1425 bce), the coastal plain of Lebanon, called Djahy, is described as rich with fruit, wine, and grain. Of particular importance to the New Kingdom pharaohs was the timber, notably cedar, of the Lebanese forests. A temple relief at Karnak depicts the chiefs of Lebanon felling cedars for the Egyptian officers of Seti I (c. 1300 bce).
Fuller information about the state of Phoenicia in the 14th century bce comes from the Amarna letters, diplomatic texts belonging to the Egyptian foreign office, written in cuneiform and found at Tell el-Amarna in Middle Egypt. These archives reveal that the land of Retenu (Syria-Palestine) was divided into three administrative districts, each under an Egyptian governor. The northernmost district (Amurru) included the coastal region from Ugarit to Byblos, the central district (Upi) included the southern Bekaa valley and Anti-Lebanon Mountains, and the third district (Canaan) included all of Palestine from the Egyptian border to Byblos. Also among the letters are many documents addressed by the subject princes of Phoenicia and their Egyptian governors to the pharaoh. It was a time of much political unrest. The Hittites from central Anatolia were invading Syria; nomads from the desert supported the invasion, and many of the local chiefs were ready to seize the opportunity to throw off the yoke of Egypt. The tablets that reveal this state of affairs are written in the Akkadian language and cuneiform script of Babylonia and thus show the extent to which Babylonian culture had penetrated Palestine and Phoenicia; at the same time, they illustrate the closeness of the relations between the Canaanite towns (i.e., those in Palestine) and the dominant power of Egypt.
After the reign of Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV; reigned c. 1353–1336 bce), that power collapsed altogether, but his successors attempted to recover it, and Ramses II (1279–1213 bce) reconquered Phoenicia as far as the Al-Kalb River. In the reign of Ramses III (c. 1187–1157 bce), many great changes began to occur as a result of the invasion of Syria by peoples from Asia Minor and Europe. The successors of Ramses III lost their hold over Canaan; the 21st dynasty no longer intervened in the affairs of Syria. In The Story of Wen-Amon, a tale of an Egyptian religious functionary sent to Byblos to secure cedar about 1100 bce, the episode of the functionary’s inhospitable reception shows the extent of the decline of Egypt’s authority in Phoenicia at this time. Sheshonk (Shishak) I, the founder of the 22nd dynasty, endeavored about 928 bce to assert the ancient supremacy of Egypt. His successes, however, were not lasting, and, as is indicated also by the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), the power of Egypt thereafter became ineffective.
Phoenicia as a colonial and commercial power
Kingship appears to have been the oldest form of Phoenician government, and each major city had its own king. The royal houses claimed divine descent, and the king could not be chosen outside their members. His power, however, was limited by that of the merchant families, who wielded great influence in public affairs. Associated with the king was a council of elders; such at least was the case at Byblos, Sidon, and perhaps Tyre. During Nebuchadrezzar II’s reign (c. 605–c. 561 bce), a republic took the place of the monarchy at Tyre, and the government was administered by a succession of suffetes (judges); they held office for short terms, and in one instance two ruled together for six years. Much later, in the 3rd century bce, an inscription from Tyre also mentions a suffete. Carthage was governed by two suffetes, and these officers are frequently named in connection with the Carthaginian colonies, but this does not justify any inference that Phoenicia itself had such magistrates. Under the Persians a federal bond was formed linking Sidon, Tyre, and Aradus. Federation on a larger scale was never possible in Phoenicia because no sense of political unity existed to bind the different states together.
Colonies
By the 2nd millennium bce the Phoenicians had already extended their influence along the coast of the Levant by a series of settlements, some well known, some virtually nothing but names. Well known throughout history are Joppa (Jaffa; later incorporated into Tel Aviv–Yafo, Israel) and Dor in the south. However, the earliest site known to possess important aspects of Phoenician culture outside the Phoenician homeland is Ugarit (Raʾs Shamrah), about 6 miles (10 km) north of Latakia. The site was already occupied before the 4th millennium bce, but the Phoenicians became prominent there only in the Egyptian 12th dynasty (c. 1939–c. 1760 bce).
Evidence remains of two temples dedicated to the Phoenician gods Baal and Dagon, although the ruling family appears to have been of different, non-Phoenician extraction. The 15th century bce shows strong cultural influences already established there from Cyprus and the world of Mycenaean Greece. A splendid archive of literary and administrative documents found at Ugarit from this period provides evidence of an early form of alphabetic script, arguably the most important Phoenician contribution to Western civilization. In the latter part of the 13th century bce, a flood of land and sea raiders (the Sea Peoples) descended on the Levant coast, destroying many of the Phoenician cities and rolling onward to the frontier of Egypt, from which they were beaten back by the pharaoh Ramses III. Ugarit was destroyed, together with Aradus and Byblos, though the latter were afterward rebuilt. Though Sidon was destroyed only in part, its inhabitants fled to Tyre, which from this time was regarded as the principal city of Phoenicia and began its period of prosperity and expansion.
Tyre’s first colony, Utica in North Africa, was founded perhaps as early as the 10th century bce. It is likely that the expansion of the Phoenicians at the beginning of the 1st millennium bce is to be connected with the alliance of Hiram of Tyre with Solomon of Israel in the second half of the 10th century bce. In the following century, Phoenician presence in the north is shown by inscriptions at Samal (Zincirli Höyük) in eastern Cilicia and in the 8th century bce at Karatepe in the Taurus Mountains, but there is no evidence of direct colonization. Both these cities acted as fortresses commanding the routes through the mountains to the mineral and other wealth of Anatolia.
Cyprus had Phoenician settlements by the 9th century bce. Citium (biblical Kittim), known to the Greeks as Kition, in the southeast corner of the island, became the principal colony of the Phoenicians in Cyprus. Elsewhere in the Mediterranean, several smaller settlements were planted as stepping-stones along the route to Spain and its mineral wealth in silver and copper: early remains at Malta go back to the 7th century bce and at Sulcis and Nora in Sardinia and Motya in Sicily perhaps a century earlier. According to Thucydides, the Phoenicians controlled a large part of the island but withdrew to the northwest corner under pressure from the Greeks. Modern scholars, however, disbelieve this and contend that the Phoenicians arrived only after the Greeks were established.
In North Africa the next site colonized after Utica was Carthage (near modern-day Tunis, Tunisia). Carthage in turn seems to have established (or in some cases reestablished) a number of settlements in Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, the Balearic Islands, and southern Spain, eventually making this city the acknowledged leader of the western Phoenicians.
There is little factual evidence to confirm the presence of any settlement in Spain earlier than the 7th century bce, or perhaps the 8th century, and many of these settlements should be viewed as Punic (Carthaginian) rather than Phoenician, though it is likely that the colonizing expeditions of the Carthaginians were supported by many emigrants from the Phoenician homeland. It is very probable that the tremendous colonial activity of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians was stimulated in the 8th–6th century bce by the military blows that were wrecking the trade of the Phoenician homeland. Also, competition with the synchronous Greek colonization of the western Mediterranean cannot be ignored as a contributing factor.
In the 3rd century bce Carthage, defeated by the Romans (in the First Punic War), embarked on a further imperialistic phase in Spain to recoup its losses. Rome responded, defeated Carthage a second time, and annexed Spain (Second Punic War). Finally, in 146 bce, after a third war with Rome, Carthage suffered total destruction (Third Punic War). It was rebuilt as a Roman colony in 44 bce. The ancient Phoenician language survived in use as a vernacular in some of the smaller cities of North Africa at least until the time of St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo (5th century ce).
Commerce
The mercantile role that tradition especially assigns to the Phoenicians was first developed on a considerable scale at the time of the Egyptian 18th dynasty. The position of Phoenicia, at a junction of both land and sea routes and under the protection of Egypt, favored this development, and the discovery of the alphabet and its use and adaptation for commercial purposes assisted the rise of a mercantile society. A fresco in an Egyptian tomb of the 18th dynasty depicts seven Phoenician merchant ships that had just put in at an Egyptian port to sell their goods, including the distinctive Canaanite wine jars in which wine, a drink foreign to the Egyptians, was imported. The Story of Wen-Amon recounts the tale of a Phoenician merchant, Werket-el of Tanis in the Nile delta, who was described as the owner of 50 ships that sailed between Tanis and Sidon. The Sidonians are also famous in the poems of Homer as craftspeople, traders, pirates, and human traffickers. The biblical Book of Ezekiel, in a famous denunciation of the city of Tyre (Ezekiel 27–28), describes the vast extent of its commerce, covering most of the world as known to the prophet Ezekiel.
The exports of Phoenicia as a whole included particularly cedar and pine woods from Lebanon, fine linen from Tyre, Byblos, and Berytos, cloth dyed with the famous Tyrian purple (made from the snail Murex), embroideries from Sidon, metalwork and glass, glazed faience, wine, salt, and dried fish. The Phoenicians received in return raw materials such as papyrus, ivory, ebony, silk, amber, ostrich eggs, spices, incense, horses, gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, jewels, and precious stones.
In addition to these exports and imports, according to Herodotus’s History, the Phoenicians conducted an important transit trade, especially in the manufactured goods of Egypt and Babylonia. From the lands of the Euphrates and Tigris, regular trade routes led to the Mediterranean. In Egypt the Phoenician merchants soon gained a foothold; they alone were able to maintain a profitable trade in the anarchic times of the 22nd and 23rd dynasties (c. 943–c. 730 bce). Herodotus also observed that, though there were never any regular colonies of Phoenicians in Egypt, the Tyrians had a quarter of their own in Memphis and the Arabian caravan trade in perfume, spices, and incense passed through Phoenician hands on its way to Greece and the West.
The Phoenicians were not mere passive peddlers in art or commerce. Their achievement in history was a positive contribution, even if it was only that of an intermediary. For example, the extent of the debt of Greece alone to Phoenicia may be fully measured by its adoption, probably in the 8th century bce, of the Phoenician alphabet with very little variation (along with Semitic loanwords), by characteristically Phoenician decorative motifs on pottery and by architectural paradigms, and by the universal use in Greece of the Phoenician standards of weights and measures.
Navigation and seafaring
Essential for the establishment of commercial supremacy was the Phoenician skill in navigation and seafaring. The Phoenicians are credited with the discovery and use of Polaris (the North Star). Fearless and patient navigators, they ventured into regions where no one else dared to go, and always, with an eye to their monopoly, they carefully guarded the secrets of their trade routes and discoveries and their knowledge of winds and currents. According to Herodotus, Pharaoh Necho II (reigned 610–595 bce) organized the Phoenician circumnavigation of Africa (History, Book IV, chapter 42). Hanno, a Carthaginian, led another in the mid-5th century. The Carthaginians seem to have reached the island of Corvo in the Azores, and they may even have reached Britain, for many Carthaginian coins have been found there.
Assyrian and Babylonian domination of Phoenicia
Between the withdrawal of Egyptian rule in Syria and the western advance of Assyria, there was an interval during which the city-states of Phoenicia owned no suzerain. Byblos had kings of its own, among them Ahiram, Abi-baal, and Ethbaal (Ittobaʿal) in the 10th century, as excavations have shown. The history of this time period is mainly a history of Tyre, which not only rose to a hegemony among the Phoenician states but also founded colonies beyond the seas. Unfortunately, the native historical records of the Phoenicians have not survived, but biblical accounts indicate that the Phoenicians lived on friendly terms with the Israelites. In the 10th century bce Hiram, king of Tyre, aided the construction of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem in return for rich gifts of oil, wine, and territory. In the following century Ethbaal of Tyre married his daughter Jezebel to Ahab, king of Israel, and Jezebel’s daughter in turn married the king of Judah.
In the 9th century, however, the independence of Phoenicia was increasingly threatened by the advance of Assyria. In 868 bce Ashurnasirpal II reached the Mediterranean and exacted tribute from the Phoenician cities. His son, Shalmaneser III, took tribute from the Tyrians and Sidonians and established a supremacy over Phoenicia (at any rate, in theory), which was acknowledged by occasional payments of tribute to him and his successors. In 734 bce Tiglath-pileser III in his western campaign established his authority over Byblos, Arados, and Tyre. A fresh invasion by Shalmaneser V took place in 725 when he was on his way to Samaria, and in 701 Sennacherib, facing a rebellion of Philistia, Judah, and Phoenicia, drove out and deposed Luli, identified as king of both Sidon and Tyre. In 678 Sidon rebelled against the Assyrians, who marched down and annihilated the city and rebuilt it on the mainland. Sieges of Tyre took place in 672 and 668, but the city resisted both, only submitting in the later years of Ashurbanipal.
During the period of Neo-Babylonian power, which followed the fall of Nineveh in 612 bce, the pharaohs made attempts to seize the Phoenician and Palestinian seaboard. Nebuchadrezzar II, king of Babylon, having sacked Jerusalem, marched against Phoenicia and besieged Tyre, but it held out successfully for 13 years, after which it capitulated, seemingly on favorable terms.
Persian period
Phoenicia passed from the suzerainty of the Babylonians to that of their conquerors, the Persian Achaemenian dynasty, in 538 bce. Not surprisingly, the Phoenicians turned as loyal supporters to the Persians, who had overthrown their oppressors and reopened to them the trade of the East. Lebanon, Syria-Palestine, and Cyprus were organized as the fifth satrapy (province) of the Persian empire. At the time of Xerxes I’s invasion of Greece (480 bce), Sidon was considered the principal city of Phoenicia; the ships of Sidon were considered the finest part of Xerxes’ fleet, and its king ranked next to Xerxes and before the king of Tyre. (Phoenician coins have been used to supplement historical sources on the period. From the reign of Darius I [522–486 bce], the Persian monarchs had allowed their satraps and vassal states to coin silver and copper money. Arados, Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre therefore issued coinage of their own.) In the 4th century Tyre and later Sidon revolted against the Persian king. The revolt was suppressed in 345 bce.
Greek and Roman periods
In 332 bce Tyre resisted Alexander the Great in a siege of eight months. Alexander finally captured the city by driving a mole into the sea from the mainland to the island. As a result, Tyre, the inhabitants of which were largely sold into slavery, lost all importance, soon being replaced in the leadership of the regional markets by Alexandria, the conqueror’s newly founded city in Egypt. In the Hellenistic Age (323–30 bce) the cities of Phoenicia became the prize for the competing Macedonian dynasties, controlled first by the Ptolemies of Egypt in the 3rd century bce and then by the Seleucid dynasty of Syria in the 2nd century and early decades of the 1st century bce. The Seleucids apparently permitted a good measure of autonomy to the Phoenician cities. Tigranes II (the Great) of Armenia brought an end to the Seleucid dynasty in 83 bce and extended his realm to Mount Lebanon. The Romans eventually intervened to restore Seleucid sovereignty, but, when anarchy prevailed, they imposed peace and assumed direct rule in 64 bce.
Phoenicia was incorporated into the Roman province of Syria, though Aradus, Sidon, and Tyre retained self-government. Berytus (Beirut), relatively obscure up to this point, rose to prominence by virtue of Augustus’s grant of Roman colonial status and by the lavish building program financed by Herod the Great (and in turn by his grandson and great-grandson). Under the Severan dynasty (193–235 ce) Sidon, Tyre, and probably Heliopolis (Baalbek) also received colonial status. Under this dynasty the province of Syria was partitioned into two parts: Syria Coele (“Hollow Syria”), comprising a large region loosely defined as north and east Syria, and Syria Phoenice in the southwestern region, which included not only coastal Phoenicia but also the territory beyond the mountains and into the Syrian Desert. Under the provincial reorganization of the Eastern Roman emperor Theodosius II in the early 5th century ce, Syria Phoenice was expanded into two provinces: Phoenice Prima (Maritima), basically ancient Phoenicia; and Phoenice Secunda (Libanesia), an area extending to Mount Lebanon on the west and deep into the Syrian Desert on the east. Phoenice Secunda included the cities of Emesa (its capital), Heliopolis, Damascus, and Palmyra.
During the period of the Roman Empire, the native Phoenician language died out in Lebanon and was replaced by Aramaic as the vernacular. Latin, the language of the soldiers and administrators, in turn fell before Greek, the language of letters of the eastern Mediterranean, by the 5th century ce. Lebanon produced a number of important writers in Greek, most notably Philo of Byblos (64–141) and, in the 3rd century, Porphyry of Tyre and Iamblichus of Chalcis in Syria Coele. Porphyry played a key role in disseminating the Neoplatonic philosophy of his master, Plotinus, which would influence both pagan and Christian thought in the later Roman Empire.
In many respects, the two most important cities of Lebanon during the time of the Roman Empire were Heliopolis and Berytus. At Heliopolis the Roman emperors, particularly the Severans, constructed a monumental temple complex, the most spectacular elements of which were the Temple of Jupiter Heliopolitanus and the Temple of Bacchus. Berytus, on the other hand, became the seat of the most famous provincial school of Roman law. The school, which probably was founded by Septimius Severus, lasted until the destruction of Berytus itself by a sequence of earthquakes, a tidal wave, and fire in the mid-6th century. Two of Rome’s most famous jurists, Papinian and Ulpian, both natives of Lebanon, taught as professors at the law school under the Severans. Their judicial opinions constitute well over one-third of the Pandects (Digest) contained in the great compilation of Roman law commissioned by the emperor Justinian I in the 6th century ce.
In 608–609 the Persian king Khosrow II pillaged Syria and Lebanon and reorganized the area into a new satrapy, excluding only Phoenicia Maritima. Between 622 and 629 the Byzantine emperor Heraclius mounted an offensive and restored Syria-Lebanon to his empire. This success was short-lived; in the 630s Muslim Arabs conquered Palestine and Lebanon, and the old Phoenician cities offered only token resistance to the invader.
Richard David Barnett William L. Ochsenwald Glenn Richard Bugh