Zahlé
Zahlé is a city in eastern Lebanon, and the capital and largest city of Beqaa Governorate, Lebanon. With around 150,000 inhabitants, it is the third-largest city in Lebanon after Beirut and Tripoli and the fourth-largest taking the whole urban area.
Zahlé is located east of the capital Beirut, close to the Beirut-Damascus road, and lies at the junction of Mount Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley, at a mean elevation of 1,000 m. Established in the 18th century by Christians, Zahlé maintains its predominantly Greek Catholic character. The city has historically enjoyed convenient accessibility via road and rail, leveraging its strategic location as a trade hub.
Zahlé is known as the "Bride of the Beqaa" and "the Neighbor of the Gorge" for its geographical location and attractiveness, but also as "the City of Wine and Poetry". It is famous throughout Lebanon and the region for its pleasant climate, numerous riverside restaurants and quality arak. Its inhabitants are predominantly Melkite Greek Catholic and are known in Arabic as Zahlawi.
Etymology
The source of the city's name is unclear, some historian relate it to the ancient Roman god of fertility - Zohal. Evidence of Roman presence are the ruins found. Others claim the derives from the occasional landslides that take place on deforested hills around the town are probably at the origin of the name.History
There has been human activity in the area for at least five thousand years. In the 18th century, Zahlé was a small village of some 200 houses. Its relative geographic isolation from the local centres of power in Mount Lebanon and Syria caused the village not to have any significant allies in the region to fall back on in case of conflicts or attacks. Zahlé was burned in 1777 and 1791.Tradition holds that many Christians migrated from the Baalbek region in the 18th century to the newer, more secure town of Zahlé on account of the Harfush dynasty's oppression and rapacity, but more critical studies have questioned that interpretation by pointing out that the dynasty was closely allied to the Orthodox Ma'luf family of Zahlé and showing that depredations from various quarters as well as Zahlé's growing commercial attractiveness accounted for Baalbek's decline in the 18th century. What repression there was did not always target the Christian community per se. The Shiite 'Usayran family, for example, is also said to have left Baalbek then to avoid expropriation by the Harfushes and established itself as one of the premier commercial households of Sidon and later even served as consuls of Iran.
At the end of the 18th century, Zahlé had one thousand inhabitants and two hundred houses. By 1820, Zahlé's population had grown to 5,000. By 1850 it was 7,000 to 8,000 and the town had become the commercial centre for the Beka'a and main depot for the local grain harvest. Some of the factors for the expansion included the Egyptian Occupation, which lead to the opening of the country to European trade, the Crimean War which had caused grain shortages in Europe and the expansion of silk production in Mount Lebanon.
Besides controlling the grain trade, Zahlé became a centre for livestock from the region of Syria and produced leather, woven and dyed goods, trading with Aleppo, Damascus and Beirut. By the 1860's and 1870's the local merchants were prosperous but were still dependent on banks in Beirut for credit for their transactions.
On 7 September 1975, during the civil war, the Lebanese Forces militia, at that time led by Elie Hobeika agreed to 100 Syrian soldiers and 20 intelligence officers taking up strategic positions in the town.
The current population is not accurately known, since no census has been conducted in Lebanon since 1932, but estimates from 2017 are of a population of 386,362 people in the town proper, making it the country's fourth largest. The urban area includes the neighbouring towns of Saadnayel, Taalabaya, Chtaura and Jdita to the southwest, which have come to form a single urban entity since the late 1990s due to unplanned growth, and is home to about 100,000 people. The metropolitan area extends over much of the Zahlé District and additionally comprises:
- the town of Kab Elias to the southwest
- the town of Bar Elias to the south
- the villages of Furzol, Ablah and Niha to the northeast
- and the towns of Riyaq, Haoush Hala and Ali en Nahri to the east
Demographics
In 2014, Christians made up 82.58% and Muslims made up 16.81% of registered voters in Zahlé. 28.27% of the voters were Greek Catholics, 23.77% were Maronite Catholics, 12.62% were Greek Orthodox, 10.24% were Shiite Muslims, 7.55% were Syriac Orthodox and 6.55% were Sunni Muslims.Zahlé is one of the largest predominantly Christian towns in Lebanon and the Middle East and the one with the largest number of Catholics. While several Middle Eastern cities have larger Christian communities, these do not constitute a majority. In Lebanon, Beirut also has a larger Christian population than Zahlé, but most of this population belongs to the Greek Orthodox confession. Jounieh is also bigger than Zahlé, and was also overwhelmingly Christian before the French withdrawal.
Only two Muslim families remained inside Zahlé during the civil war: Hindi and Zrein. Zahlé's Muslim minority is concentrated in the neighborhoods of Karak Nuh and Haoush al-Umara, specifically, in an area named "Hay al-watani", on the northeastern and southwestern edge of town, respectively. Sixty-two percent of Muslims in the area are Shia, while the remaining 38% are Sunnis. In the past the town also had a Druze minority and even a small Jewish population, most of which, however, emigrated during the Lebanese Civil War.
Zahlé has been a land of emigration since the early 20th century, with most people emigrating to South America, mainly Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina. During the civil war in the 1970s and 1980s, a new flow of migrants left the town for the United States, Canada, Australia and Brazil. In recent years, emigration has continued, with Canada and the United Arab Emirates being the main destinations. Today, an estimated 250,000 people of local descent live abroad, most of them in Colombia and Brazil.
Economy
Being the main town of the Beqaa Valley, Lebanon's most important agricultural region, the economy of Zahlé has long been built on agriculture. Grapes are the area's chief product, with vineyards forming a prominent feature of the surrounding landscape. Vines are also individually grown on lattice, on many of the older houses' terraces. A sizable part of the local produce supplies the three wineries present in and around the town, and the numerous distilleries producing arak, the local liquor which Zahlé is famous for.Zahlé saw at a time a prosperous commercial activity due to its location midway between Beirut and Damascus. Paradoxically, it regained some of that activity during the civil war, when the growing instability in Beirut led to a decentralization of the economy. Furthermore, taxation was nonexistent due to the collapse of State authority, which Zahlé took advantage of to expand its industrial and commercial sectors.
A number of companies and state bodies have their headquarters for the Beqaa region in Zahlé, including the Central Bank of Lebanon and the Lebanese Chamber of Commerce.
Education
Zahlé is evolving into a regional center of higher education, after many universities have opened branches there in recent years. Institutes of higher education currently represented in the town include:- Lebanese University
- Saint Joseph University
- Holy Spirit University of Kaslik
- Antonine University
- American University of Science and Technology
- The National Technical Institute
Transportation
Zahlé is also connected to Baalbek by the trans-Beqaa road, which continues further north towards Homs, Syria.
Due to widespread car ownership, public transportation remains underdeveloped. There is a single bus line, which runs on the central avenue at rather irregular times. Interurban transportation is done by minivans, which stop on the Manara roundabout at the town's entrance. Zahlé's railway station was located in Muallaqa, but was abandoned after all rail transport in Lebanon stopped during the civil war.
There were plans to convert the nearby Rayak Air Base, into a civil airport serving the town and the whole valley. A regional airport could prove vital when the road to Beirut is closed because of heavy snowfall. However, the project froze in the early 2000s, after the runway extension had been initiated.