| History of Lebanon | |
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This article is part of a series |
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| Ancient History | |
| Phoenicia | |
| Arab rule | |
| Ottoman rule | |
| French Rule | |
| Modern Lebanon | |
| 1958 Lebanon crisis | |
| Lebanese Civil War | |
| Cedar Revolution | |
| 2006 Lebanon War | |
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Lebanon Portal |
Since its early history, Lebanon has come under the domination of several foreign rulers, however, despite this fact, Lebanon's mountainous terrain has provided it with a certain protective isolation, enabling it to create its own and unique identity. Its proximity to the sea has ensured an important position as a trading centre which developed a tradition of commerce that began with the Phoenicians and continued throughout the centuries, remaining almost unaffected by foreign rule and the worst periods of internal strife.[1]
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Byblos, believed to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, has remnants of prehistoric huts with crushed limestone floors, primitive weapons, and burial jars as evidence of Neolithic fishing communities who lived on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea from approximately 5000 BC.
Metallurgy was introduced to the region in the late Chalcolithic age.
Amorites and Canaanites (later called Phoenicians) settle on Syrian coast, with centres at Tyre and Sidon. Innovations such as the wheel and writing were introduced.
Canaan became under Egyptian rule after the campaigns of Tuthmosis I and his grandson Tuthmosis III. The rise of the kingdom of Qatna on the Orontes.
The beginning of the early Aramean influences in the region with the establishment of kingdoms such as Aram Rehob in central Canaan.
1400s BC — The height of the Canaanite town of Ugarit.
1200s BC — Phoenicians invent the alphabet and the Tyrian Purple which was a major component in their trade.
1200s BC — A crisis led to the Bronze Age collapse. Cities all around the eastern Mediterranean were sacked within a span of a few decades by assorted raiders.
Some Phoenician ports in Canaan, that escaped the destructive raids, developed into great commercial powers.
The Sea Peoples and the related Philistines are associated with the introduction of iron technology into Asia.
842 BC — Shalmaneser III devastates the territory of Damascus; Israel and the Phoenician cities send tribute.
813 BC — Carthage is founded by Phoenicians.
774 BC — The reign of king Pygmalion of Tyre ends.
739 BC — Hiram II becomes king of Tyre.
730 BC — Mattan II succeeds Hiram II as king.
724 BC — The Assyrians under king Shalmaneser V start a four-year siege of Tyre that ends in 720 BC.
710s BC — Judah, Tyre and Sidon revolt against Assyria.
701 BC — The Assyrian siege of Tyre by king Sennacherib.
663 BC — The Assyrian siege of Tyre by king Ashurbanipal.
587 BC — The region is annexed to the Babylonian empire, while Jerusalem fell into their hands.
586-573 BC — The Babylonians under king Nebuchadnezzar II sieged Tyre for thirteen years without success. Later a compromise peace was made in which Tyre had to pay tribute to the Babylonians.
539 BC — Cyrus the Great conquered Phoenicia.
350–345 BC — A rebellion in Sidon led by Tennes was crushed by Artaxerxes III, and its destruction was dramatically described by Diodorus Siculus.
332 BC — Alexander the Great took Tyre following the city's siege. After Alexander's death Phoenicia witnessed a succession of Hellenistic rulers: Laomedon (323 BC), Ptolemy I (320 BC), Antigonus II (315 BC), Demetrius (301 BC), and Seleucus (296 BC).
315 BC — Alexander's former general Antigonus begins his own siege of Tyre, taking the city a year later.
286-197 BC — Phoenicia (except for Aradus) fell to the Ptolemies of Egypt, who installed the high priests of Astarte as vassal rulers in Sidon (Eshmunazar I, Tabnit, Eshmunazar II).
197 BC — Phoenicia along with Syria reverted to the Seleucids, and the region became increasingly Hellenized, although Tyre actually became autonomous in 126 BC, followed by Sidon in 111 BC.
140 BC — Beirut was taken and destroyed by Diodotus Tryphon in his contest with Antiochus VII Sidetes for the throne of the Seleucid monarchy. It was later named Laodicea in Phoenicia (Greek: Λαοδικεια ή του Φοινίκη).
82-69 BC — Syria, including Phoenicia, were seized by king Tigranes the Great who was later defeated by Lucullus.
65 BC — Pompey finally incorporated Phoenicia as part of the Roman province of Syria.
64 BC — Beirut was conquered by Agrippa and the city was renamed in honour of the emperor's daughter, Julia; its full name became Colonia Julia Augusta Felix Berytus.
27 BC-180 AD — the Pax Romana period, inhabitants of the principal Phoenician cities of Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre were granted Roman citizenship, while economic and intellectual activities flourished.
20s AD—Beirut's school of law was founded, it later became widely known in the surrounding region. Two of Rome's most famous jurists, Papinian and Ulpian (both natives of Phoenicia), were taught at the law school under the Severan emperors.
50s AD—Saint Paul of Tarsus begins his third mission and preaches in Tyre.
451 AD—The Maronites, a Christian community named after Saint John Maron sought refuge in the mountains of Lebanon.
551 AD—Beirut is destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami. About 30,000 were killed in the city alone and, along the Phoenician coast, total casualties were close to 250,000.
630s — The Marada, a group of autonomous Maronite communities, settled in Mount Lebanon and the surrounding highlands following the conquest of Syria by the Arab caliphate.
632–634—Calling for a jihad against non-Muslims, Muhammad's successor, Caliph Abu Bakr, brought Islam to the area surrounding Lebanon.
661—After the Battle of Yarmuk, Caliph Umar appointed the Arab Muawiyah I, founder of the Umayyad dynasty, as governor of Syria, an area that included present-day Lebanon.
667—Muawiyah negotiated an agreement with Constantine IV, the Byzantine emperor, whereby he agreed to pay Constantine an annual tribute in return for the cessation of Marada incursions.
670 — Callinicus of Heliopolis, a Byzantine chemist from Heliopolis, invents the Greek fire in Constantinople.
759—An abortive rebellion of Lebanese mountaineers against the Abbasid rule after the harsh treatment of people living in the Lebanese-Syrian region.
960s — Prince 'Allaqa of Tyre proclaimed his independence from the Abbasids and coined money in his own name.
970s — The Fatimides settled in Egypt and extended their authority to the costal region of Bilad al-Sham and Damascus.
986—Under the Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, a new religion was born and spread by a man called Ad-Darazi. This was the beginning of the Druze religion and its expansion in several Lebanese regions.
1109—The Crusaders capture Tripoli and transform the city and its surrounding regions into a county. It was originally held by Bertrand of Toulouse as a vassal of Baldwin I of Jerusalem.
1110 — Beirut and Sidon are captured.
1124—Tyre resisted the raids but finally capitulated after a long siege.
1192 — Richard the Lionheart signed a treaty with Saladin, restoring the Kingdom of Jerusalem to a coastal strip between Jaffa and Beirut.
1260—The county of Tripoli becomes a vassal state of the Mongol Empire.
1289—The county of Tripoli falls into the hands of the Mamluks after the attack of Egyptian Sultan Qalawun in March.
1179—The Battle of Marj Ayyun took place on 10 June, where an Ayyubid army commanded by Saladin defeated a Crusader army led by King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem.
1182—The Battle of Belvoir Castle in which a Crusader force led by King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem sparred inconclusively with an Ayyubid army from Egypt commanded by Saladin. The theatre of operations included Eilat, the Transjordan, Galilee and Beirut (which witnessed a siege by Saladin that ended in August of the same year).
1187—Saladin conquers virtually all of the Kingdom of Jerusalem with the exception of Tyre, which held out under Conrad of Montferrat.
1291—The Shia Muslims and Druze, in Lebanon, rebelled against the Mamluks who were busy fighting the European Crusaders and Mongols.
1308—The rebellion was crushed by the Mamluks.
1516—The Ottoman Sultan Selim I grants Emir Fakhr ad-Din I a semi-autonomous reign in Lebanon.
1570 -1635—The Maanid period reaches its peak with the reign of Fakhr ad-Din II.
1613—Fakhr ad-Din II is exiled to Tuscany after his inability to defeat the army of Ahmad al Hafiz, the governor of Damascus.
1618—Fakhr ad-Din II returns to Lebanon with the beginning of Muhammad Pasha's reign as the new governor of Damascus.
1622—The Battle of Anjar took place on 31 October, near Majdal Anjar between the army of Fakhr ad-Din II and an Ottoman army led by the governor of Damascus Mustafa Pasha.
1635—By the orders of Murad IV, Kutshuk, the governor of Damascus, defeats Fakhr ad-Din who was later executed in Constantinople.
1799 — Bashir II declines to assist the siege of Acre by Napoleon and Jezzar Pasha. Unable to conquer Acre, Napoleon returned to Egypt, and the death of Jezzar Pasha in 1804 removed Bashir's principal opponent in the area.
1831—Bashir II breaks away from the Ottoman Empire, allies with Muhammad Ali of Egypt and assists Muhammad Ali's son, Ibrahim Pasha, in another siege of Acre. This siege lasted seven months, the city falling on 27 May 1832. The Egyptian army, with assistance from Bashir's troops, also attacked and conquered Damascus on 14 June 1832.
1840—After Muhammad Ali's rejection of the requests of the London treaty signed on 15 June 1840, Ottoman and British troops landed on the Lebanese coast on 10 September 1840. Faced with this combined force, Muhammad Ali retreated, and on 14 October 1840, Bashir II surrendered to the British and went into exile.
1841—Conflicts between the Druze and the Maronite Christians exploded. A Maronite revolt against the Feudal class erupted, and lasted until 1858.
1860—A full scale war erupted between Maronites and Druze. Napoleon III sent 7,000 troops to Beirut and helped impose a partition: The Druze control of the territory was recognised as the fact on the ground, and the Maronites were forced into an enclave, arrangements ratified by the concert of Europe in 1861.
The remainder of the 19th century saw a relative period of stability, as Islamic, Druze and Maronite groups focused on economic and cultural development which saw a flourishing of literary and political activity associated with the attempts to liberalise the Ottoman Empire.
1914—After the abolishment of Lebanon's semiautonomous status, Jamal Pasha militarily occupies Lebanon.
1915—Jamal Pasha initiates a blockade of the entire eastern Mediterranean coast. Lebanon witnessed thousands of deaths from widespread famine and plagues.
1916 — Turkish authorities publicly executed 21 Syrians and Lebanese in Damascus and Beirut, respectively, for alleged anti-Turkish activities.[2]
1918 — British general Edmund Allenby and Faysal I, son of Sharif Hussein of Mecca, moved into Palestine with British and Arab forces, thus opening the way for the occupation of Lebanon.
1920—France takes control over Lebanese territory after the San Remo conference.
1943—On 22 November, Lebanon gains its independence after national and international pressure following the imprisonment of president Bechara El Khoury and other parliament members by the French.
1948—The state of Israel was declared. Palestinian refugees begin arriving in Lebanon.
1958—A civil war erupts but short lived after the intervention of 5,000 US Marines ordered by President Eisenhower upon the request of the Lebanese president Camille Chamoun.
1975–1990—The Lebanese Civil War.
1990–2005—A period of fifteen years of Syrian occupation starts when Syrian troops invade the Baabda residential Palace on 13 October 1990 and overthrow then Prime Minister General Michel Aoun, and ends with the peaceful revolution of more than one million protesters in Beirut central district, following the assassination of the Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri and the withdrawal of the Syrian troops.
2006—The July War takes place between Hezbollah and Israel, with Israel launching a major military attack, bombing the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Lebanese airport and parts of southern Lebanon, in response to the capture of 2 Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah on 12 July. The conflict ends with the complete retreat of the Israeli force back to the international borders.
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