Beirut

/bay rooht", bay"rooht/, n.

a seaport in and the capital of Lebanon. 702,000.

Also, Beyrouth.

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City (pop., 1998 est.: metro. area, 1,500,000), capital of Lebanon.

The country's chief port and largest city, it lies at the foot of the Lebanon Mountains. Initially settled by the Phoenicians, it gained prominence under Roman rule in the 1st century BC. It was captured by the Arabs in AD 635. Christian Crusaders held Beirut (1110–1291), after which it was dominated by the Mamlūk dynasty. In 1517 it fell under the control of the Ottoman Empire. Under a French mandate, it became the capital of the new state of Lebanon in 1920 and capital of an independent Lebanon in 1943. It went on to flourish as the chief banking hub and a major cultural centre of the Middle East. It was severely damaged during the Lebanese Civil War (1975–91) and during fighting between Israeli forces and those of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1982. The city slowly began to rebuild after the end of the civil war.

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▪ Lebanon

Introduction

Arabic  Bayrūt , French  Beyrouth 

 capital, chief port, and largest city of Lebanon. It is located on the Mediterranean coast at the foot of the Lebanon Mountains.

      Beirut is a city of baffling contradictions whose character blends the sophisticated and cosmopolitan with the provincial and parochial. Before 1975 Beirut was widely considered the most thoroughly Westernized city in the Arab Middle East; after that, however, 15 years of civil war ravaged most parts of the city and eroded much of the lustre that had formerly concealed the Arab—as distinct from the Levantine—side of its character. Despite the sectarian and ideological passions unleashed by the civil war, Beirut retains its basically liberal and tolerant way of life, albeit in changed circumstances. In the 1990s Beirut began extensive rebuilding efforts to restore its economic base and cultural landmarks. Area governorate, 7 square miles (18 square km); city, 26 square miles (67 square km). Pop. (2003 est.) city, 1,171,00; (2005 est.) urban agglom., 1,777,000.

Physical and human geography

The landscape

The city site

      The city sits atop two hills, Al-Ashrafīyah (East Beirut) and Al-Muṣayṭibah (West Beirut), that protrude into the sea as a roughly triangular peninsula. In the immediate hinterland lies a narrow coastal plain (Al-Sāḥil) that extends from the mouth of the Nahr Al-Kalb (Dog River) in the north to that of the Nahr Al-Dāmūr (Damur River) in the south.

Climate

      Beirut has a subtropical climate that is cool and temperate in winter and hot and humid in summer. In January, the coolest month, the average afternoon maximum temperature is 62 °F (17 °C), and the nighttime low is 51 °F (11 °C). Comparable maximum and minimum temperatures in July are 87 and 73 °F (31 and 23 °C). The rainy season extends from mid-autumn to early spring, and the average annual rainfall is 36 inches (914 mm).

The city plan

      Under the Ottoman vilâyet administration and the French mandate, the growth of Beirut was planned, but after independence in 1943 it was as haphazard as it was rapid. It is estimated that the population of the city increased 10-fold between the early 1930s and early 1970s, and the city's area grew to three times the size it had been in 1900. By the 1950s few traces of the old city were left, and most of those were destroyed in the 1975–90 civil war.

      Street plans and block arrangements in the city and its suburbs are not consistent or uniform. In most quarters, modern high-rise buildings, walk-up apartments, slum tenements, modern villas, and traditional two-story houses with red-tiled roofs—all in varying states of repair—stand side by side. After 1975 countless houses and apartments, particularly in West Beirut, were forcibly occupied by refugees and squatters from rural areas, especially from the Shīʿite areas of southern Lebanon.

      The downtown area of central Beirut (the old city) was destroyed during the civil war, becoming a belt of squatter-occupied ruins between East and West Beirut. Because of the sporadic fighting that occurred between rival factions, central Beirut could not be reconstructed during the war, and all business moved out of the area to establish new premises in the Christian and Muslim sides of the city. When the war ended in 1990, strong divisions arose between official and popular opinion over plans for reconstructing the old city. Standing property rights, which were largely in the hands of Sunnite Muslim and Christian landowners, clashed with the then de facto situation that most of the resident squatters in the area were Shīʿite Muslims. Progress in the direction of reconstruction has thus been slow.

The people

 According to the government, the resident population of Beirut is more or less evenly divided between Muslims and Christians. In the absence of reliable statistics, however, this official supposition has never been possible to verify. The influx of large numbers of Shīʿites into West and central Beirut during the civil war probably tipped the population balance in favour of the Muslims. The overwhelming majority in both religious groups—Christians and Muslims—is ethnically Arab and includes Palestinian refugees, Syrian residents, and others. The most important ethnic minority is the Christian Armenians; there is also a Kurdish ethnic minority among the Muslims. East Beirut is almost solidly Christian, West Beirut is predominantly Muslim, and a number of mixed neighbourhoods (notably in the district of Raʾs Bayrūt) are cosmopolitan in character. The small Jewish (Jew) community, once concentrated in the downtown neighbourhood of Wādī Abū Jamīl, was reduced further by emigration during the war. Most of those who remained have shifted their residence to East Beirut and adjacent Christian suburbs. The larger Christian communities are the Maronites and the Greek Orthodox; the Christian minorities, apart from the Armenians, include Greek Catholics, Protestants, Roman Catholics, and others. Originally, the Sunnites (Sunnite) were the dominant Muslim community, but Shīʿite Muslims began moving into the city in increasing numbers in the 1960s.

Economic and political conditions

      Between 1952 and 1975 Beirut was the hub of economic, social, intellectual, and cultural life in the Arab Middle East. In an area dominated by authoritarian or militarist regimes, the Lebanese capital was generally regarded as a haven of liberalism, though a precarious one. With its seaport and airport—coupled with Lebanon's free economic and foreign exchange system, solid gold-backed currency, banking-secrecy law, and favourable interest rates—Beirut became an established banking centre for Arab wealth, much of which was invested in construction, commercial enterprise, and industry (mostly the manufacture of textiles and shoes, food processing, and printing). Foreign banking and business firms found in Beirut an ideal base for their operations in the Arab Middle East. The “free zone” of Beirut port was a leading entrepôt for the region. A skilled professional class provided varied sophisticated services for a pan-Arab clientele. Beirut was also a centre for tourism. The large number of daily and weekly newspapers, journals, and other periodicals, which were normally uncensored, kept the Arab world informed about regional and world developments and provided a full array of editorial opinion. Beirut's schools, colleges, and universities—the American University of Beirut, St. Joseph University, Lebanese University, and Beirut Arab University—attracted students from many Arab countries. An underlying lack of consistency and organization, however, and an undercurrent of social and political unrest and intersectarian conflict never escaped notice.

      Beirut became a prominent centre for Palestinian resistance organizations after the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 and became the headquarters of the movement after the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Jordan was crushed in 1970. Arab nationalist and leftist political parties established armed militias for themselves, often in association with the Palestinian resistance movement. When the PLO was trapped by Israeli troops in West Beirut in 1982, it was removed from Lebanon by multinational forces. Sectarian violence continued after the Israeli withdrawal, destroying the established order of the city.

      Whether or not Beirut can regain its former position as the hub of the Arab Middle East remains uncertain. This it certainly ceased to be after 1975. The incessant fighting that began with the civil war, the Israeli bombing of West Beirut, and the chronic shelling that continued after the Israeli withdrawal all ate away at the city's infrastructure. The Green Line established from the 1970s until 1990 to separate the Christian and Muslim factions in East and West Beirut, respectively, became a dangerous barricade dividing the city. Businesses and residents alike left the city as hopes for a cease-fire waned, and even basic services such as water and electricity came to be only sporadically available. Even in those bad years, however, economic activity in Beirut never ceased entirely. Industry, reverting in many cases from the factories to home production, continued to supply domestic and Arab markets, where Lebanese goods remained in high demand. With press censorship still the rule in many Arab countries, Lebanese printing, catering to the Arab world at large, actually expanded during the war years to become one of the country's major industries.

History

The early period

      The antiquity of Beirut is indicated by its name, derived from the Canaanite name of Beʾerōt (Wells), referring to the underground water table that is still tapped by the local inhabitants for general use. Although the city is mentioned in Egyptian records of the 2nd millennium BC, it did not gain prominence until it was granted the status of a Roman colony, the Colonia Julia Augusta Felix Berytus, in 14 BC. The original town was located in the valley between the hills of Al-Ashrafīyah and Al-Muṣayṭibah. Its suburbs were also fashionable residential areas under the Romans. Between the 3rd and 6th centuries AD, Beirut was famous for its school of law. The Roman city was destroyed by a succession of earthquakes, culminating in the quake and tidal wave of AD 551. When the Muslim conquerors occupied Beirut in 635, it was still mostly in ruins.

Arab and Christian rule

      Beirut was reconstructed by the Muslims and reemerged as a small, walled garrison town administered from Baalbek as part of the jund (Muslim province) of Damascus. Until the 9th or 10th century, it remained commercially insignificant and was notable mainly for the careers of two local jurists, al-Awzāʿī (d. 774) and al-Makḥūl (d. 933). A return of maritime commerce to the Mediterranean in the 10th century revived the importance of the town, particularly after Syria passed under the rule of the Fāṭimid (Fāṭimid Dynasty) caliphs of Egypt in 977. In 1110 Beirut was conquered by the military forces of the First Crusade and was organized, along with its coastal suburbs, as a fief of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem.

      As a crusader outpost, Beirut conducted a flourishing trade with Genoa and other Italian cities; strategically, however, its position was precarious because it was subject to raids by the Druze tribesmen of the mountain hinterland. Saladin reconquered Beirut from the crusaders in 1187, but his successors lost it to them again 10 years later. The Mamlūks (Mamlūk) finally drove the crusaders out in 1291. Under Mamlūk rule, Beirut became the chief port of call in Syria for the spice merchants from Venice.

Ottoman (Ottoman Empire) rule

      Beirut, along with the rest of Syria, passed under Ottoman rule in 1516, shortly after the Portuguese had rounded the African continent (1498) to divert the spice trade of the East away from Syria and Egypt. The commercial importance of Beirut declined as a consequence. By the 17th century, however, the city had reemerged as an exporter of Lebanese silk to Europe, mainly to Italy and France. Beirut at the time was technically part of the Ottoman province (eyalet) of Damascus, and after 1660 of Sidon. Between 1598 and 1633, however, and again between 1749 and 1774, it fell under the control of the Maʿn and Shihāb emirs (feudal suzerains and fiscal agents) of the Druze and Maronite (Maronite church) mountain hinterland. From the mid-17th to the late 18th century, Maronite notables from the mountains served as French consuls in Beirut, wielding considerable local influence. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74, the town suffered heavy bombardment by the Russians. Subsequently it was wrested from the Shihāb emirs by the Ottomans, and it soon shrank into a village of about 6,000.

      The growth of modern Beirut was a result of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. Factory-produced goods of the Western world began to invade the markets of Ottoman Syria, and Beirut, starting virtually from nought, stood only to profit from the modern industrial world. The occupation of Syria by the Egyptians (1832–40) under Muḥammad ʿAlī Pasha provided the needed stimulus for the town to enter on its new period of commercial growth. A brief setback came with the end of the Egyptian occupation; by 1848, however, the town had begun to outgrow its walls, and its population had increased to about 15,000. Civil wars in the mountains, culminating in a massacre of Christians (Christianity) by Druzes in 1860, further swelled Beirut's population, as Christian refugees arrived in large numbers. Meanwhile, the pacification of the mountains under an autonomous government guaranteed by the Great Powers (1861–1914) stabilized the relationship between the town and its hinterland. In 1888 Beirut was made the capital of a separate province (vilâyet) comprising the whole of coastal Syria, including Palestine. By the turn of the century, it was a city of about 120,000.

      Meanwhile, Protestant (Protestantism) missionaries from Great Britain, the United States, and Germany and Roman Catholic missionaries mainly from France became active in Beirut, particularly in education. In 1866 American Protestant missionaries established the Syrian Protestant College, which later became the American University of Beirut. In 1881 French Jesuit missionaries established St. Joseph University. Printing presses, introduced earlier by Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries, stimulated the growth of the city's publishing industry, mainly in Arabic but also in French and English. By 1900 Beirut was in the vanguard of Arabic journalism. A class of intellectuals sought to revive the Arabic cultural heritage and eventually became the first spokesmen of a new Arab nationalism.

Modern Beirut

      Beirut was occupied by the Allies at the end of World War I, and the city was established by the French mandatory authorities in 1920 as the capital of the State of Greater Lebanon, which in 1926 became the Lebanese Republic. The Muslims of Beirut resented the inclusion of the city in a Christian-dominated Lebanon and declared loyalty to a broader Pan-Arabism than most Christians would support. The resultant conflict became endemic. The accelerated economic growth of Beirut under the French mandate (1920–43) and after produced rapid growth of the city's population and the rise of social tensions. These tensions were increased by the influx of thousands of Palestinian refugees (refugee) after 1948. The political and social tensions in Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon, coupled with Christian-Muslim tensions, flared into open hostilities in 1958 and even more violently in 1975–90. In the violence that marked those years, Beirut became a divided city, depleted of the large, varied, and long-established community of foreigners that had once enriched its social and cultural life and given it the distinctive cosmopolitan character for which it was famed.

      West Beirut was largely destroyed by heavy fighting between Israeli forces and members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1982, when Israel launched a full-scale attack on PLO bases operating in the city. Israeli troops surrounded West Beirut, where most PLO guerrilla bases were located, and a series of negotiations brought about the evacuation of PLO troops and leaders from Lebanon to other Arab countries.

      Divisive sectarian loyalties only increased after the Israeli withdrawal. Neither the continued Syrian military presence nor the formation of coalition governments could defuse the violence. The shelling persisted, and much of the population fled.

      In early 1984, following a failed attempt by the Christian-led Lebanese army to consolidate its control in West Beirut by force, the division between the two sides of the city became complete. In East Beirut, order continued to be maintained until 1990 by the army, working in cooperation with the unified Christian militia of the Lebanese Forces (LF). In West Beirut, however, the situation drifted to near total anarchy, as the different Muslim militias repeatedly clashed with one another in the streets to settle sectarian or partisan scores. Security collapsed under these circumstances, and many Lebanese and resident foreigners were taken hostage by different political groups, to remain their prisoners for months or years. Some of the hostages were even killed by groups determined to make a political point. In 1986, leaders in West Beirut pleaded with the Syrians to reenter the city in force and bring the situation under control. Three years later, in 1989, the Lebanese Army in East Beirut subjected West Beirut to months of heavy shelling, ostensibly to liberate the Muslim parts of the capital from Syrian occupation. In the last stage of the civil war, large parts of East Beirut and its Christian suburbs were destroyed or heavily damaged when the Lebanese army clashed with the LF. The issues leading to the estrangement of these former allies and their eventual confrontation involved the question of whether or not the Ṭāʾif Accord, arrived at in 1989 to restore peace to Lebanon, was acceptable to the Christian side. Unlike the LF and other Christian Lebanese leaders, General Michel Aoun, the Lebanese army commander, maintained that the accord was totally unacceptable in principle. The clashes between the troops under his command and the LF were finally stopped by Syrian military intervention, followed by the forced departure of General Aoun to France.

Kamal Suleiman Salibi

      In the years after the end of the civil war, a major effort was begun to reconstruct Beirut's devastated infrastructure. The city developed a plan to modernize its transport facilities, restore many of its historic buildings, and revive its economic sectors. After surviving more than a decade of civil war, Beirut hosted the Pan-Arab Games in 1997 and entered the 21st century with a sense of renewed optimism.

Ed.

Additional Reading

Saïd Chehabe ed-Dine, Géographie humaine de Beyrouth (1960), though outdated, remains the only study that surveys the human geography of Beirut and accounts for its growth patterns. Charles W. Churchill et al., The City of Beirut (1954), is a descriptive socioeconomic survey that provides detailed information on household composition, education, mobility, occupations, housing, income saving, and expenditure, today of historical value. Comprehensive Plan Studies for the City of Beirut (1968), a preliminary but comprehensive survey report, provides detailed information on the city's physical features, land use patterns, utilities, population, and economic characteristics. Fuad I. Khuri, From Village to Suburb (1975), is a detailed account of the social life and organization of two peripheral villages already engulfed by the Beirut metropolis in the years before the civil war, which have since become the principal Shīʿite Muslim suburbs of West Beirut. Samir Khalaf and Per Kongstad, Hamra of Beirut: A Case of Rapid Urbanization (1973), is an empirical study that explores the ecological transformation of the social structure of one of Beirut's urban communities. Leila Tarazi Fawaz, Merchants and Migrants in Nineteenth-Century Beirut (1983), is the standard history of the social and economic growth of Beirut during the last century of the Ottoman period. Michael Johnson, Class & Client in Beirut: The Sunni Muslim Community and the Lebanese State, 1840–1985 (1986), is a historical and sociopolitical study of the Sunnite politics of the city. Harvey Porter, The History of Beirut (1912), is a brief but instructive historical sketch of the city from the earliest times to the beginning of the 20th century. Beirut—Crossroads of Cultures (1970), is a collection of articles on the historical importance of the city down through the ages.Kamal Suleiman Salibi

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