Arab conquests began in 633 and engulfed the entire region, except for the mountains. While Arabic quickly spread, it did not displace the Aramaic dialect of Syriac in some areas until the 17th century; the dialect was still in use in Maronite liturgy in 2000. Beginning in the mid-7th century Mu’a¯wiyah, founder of the UMAYYAD dynasty and his successors paid a weekly subsidy to Christian bands in north Lebanon that eventually evolved into the Maronite community. These Christians provided the first Crusaders with guides and later furnished the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem with a contingent of archers. When Muslim rule returned in the 13th century, such acts would receive retribution, as Mameluke sultans ravaged the community and decimated its population. After the Crusades neighboring Syria and Palestine adopted a generally Muslim aspect. In 1584 Pope Gregory XIII established a special college in Rome for Maronite clergy.
The Druzes entered southern Lebanon in about 1020 as dissident Muslims and spread northward, where Fakhr-al-D¯ın II al-Ma’n¯ı and Bash¯ır II al-Shiha ¯bi ruled almost independently. The Maronite-Druze wars fought from 1842 to 1860 resulted in an autonomous Lebanon under a Christian Ottoman governor-general. World War I ended this privileged status, and World War II ended the French mandate. By the early 20th century a number of Eastern Patriarchs, including the Maronite, Syrian Catholic, Armenian Catholic and Armenian Orthodox, had their principal residences in Lebanon.
In 1943 the Lebanese Republic was born, and for three decades thereafter peace and prosperity characterized the region. Christians and Muslims shared equal political power and ecumenical dialogue between all faiths continued to take place. Universities and seminaries, long the center for Christian intellectual activity, trained many of the clergy, not only for Lebanon but for other countries in the Middle East as well. The University Of St. Joseph Of Beruit, administered by the Jesuits and the University of the Holy Spirit of Kalik, administered by the Order of Lebanese monks, both with pontifical faculties, continued to flourish. Publishing houses in Lebanon produced liturgical texts, catechetical resources and works of theology.
War in the Middle East
While Lebanon’s stable political situation and strategic location aided its economic growth and gained it influence within the Middle East, problems soon surfaced. Over time the government fell into the hands of conservative Christians, leaving the substantial Muslim population without political representation and influenced by the growing tide of Islamic fundamentalism. Balancing the interests of so many religious communities and cultures was bound to suffer serious strain under the tensions prevalent in the Middle East.
As the Arab-Israeli conflict escalated to the south, thousands of Palestinian Muslims crossed the border north into Lebanon, among them heavily armed militants who used Lebanon to stage attacks on Israel. In 1958 U.S. troops landed in Beirut to break up a Muslim rebellion. Finally, in April of 1975 civil war broke out between the Christian militia and Muslim groups supporting the Palestinian cause, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Christians and the loss of homes, churches, schools, con-vents and monasteries. In addition, several hundred thou-sand Christians were forced to flee from the region.
Despite an April of 1976 cease-fire declared by Lebanese president, Suleiman Franjieh, fighting continued and two years later Israel invaded southern Lebanon in an effort to destroy Palestinian bases. These forces re-turned in 1982 to force the evacuation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) headquarters in West Beruit. Two months of bombing ended when U.S. and European troops were deployed to protect Palestinian and Muslim civilians. Still the violence in West Beirut continued: president-elect Bashir Gemayel was assassinated, the Christian militia massacred Palestinian refugees, fighting erupted between Christian and Druze militias, hostages were taken and terrorist attacks on international peacekeeping forces and other Westerners resulted in the withdrawal of Western forces.
The Lebanese army finally gained control of Beirut and a peace was reached in 1991. By the close of the fighting, 140,000 had been killed, 300,000 wounded, 800,000 lost their homes and 950,00 left Lebanon, most of them Christians. 175 communities were destroyed. Hundreds of churches were gone, most of them Catholic, and almost a third of the region’s Catholic schools had been closed. A third of the population remaining in Lebanon were left without jobs.
In 1992 a new government was elected that attempted to restore the country economically and socially. Under the peace, the president, prime minister and speaker of parliament were required to be Maronite Christian, Sunni Muslim and Shi’a Muslim, respectively, as a way of preserving political balance. In 1998 Emile Lahoud became Lebanon’s new president. In 1995 Pope John Paul II convened a synod to aid bishops in their task of healing the many wounds caused by the violence of the war, although this meeting engendered new controversy when several bishops criticized the existence of an Israeli militarized ‘‘security zone’’ in South Lebanon. Four years later Beirut hosted a meeting of Middle East and North African Church leaders as they addressed the future of the Catholic Church in an increasingly fundamentalist Muslim world.
Into the 21st Century
Despite the devastation of the late 20th century, Lebanon remained the one country in the Middle East where Islam and Christianity were able to encounter each other as equals. Minor religious groups included Protestants, Syrians (Surya¯n, Orthodox and Catholic), Nusayri and Jews, all of which were encouraged by the government to participate in interfaith dialogue. Greek Melkite Catholics, an Orthodox group that split with Rome in the 18th century, was among the nine partriarchal sects active in Lebanon by 2000. In addition, followers of five Muslim sects and 11 Christian denominations made their home in the region.
By 2000 there were over 990 parishes serving various Catholic denominations in Lebanon, and 740 diocesan and 622 religious priests tended them. The Church operated over 300 trilingual (Arabic, French, and English) primary and secondary schools for the benefit of the Lebanese community, and their students accounted for 30 percent of the nation’s students. Almost 3,000 sisters worked among the religiously diverse Lebanese community, serving the educational and humanitarian needs of all people, no matter what their faith.
Important Note: This work is owed to ‘The New Catholic Encyclopedia 2nd edition, vol. 8’; published by the ‘Gale Group’. Please do not forget to acknowledge this information if you are to use this work for any of your writings. Thank You.
-A.W.