Lebanon

The Lebanese coast was the homeland of the Phoenicians, whose city-states — Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos, one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns in the world — spread an alphabet and trade across the Mediterranean. Rome later made the region prosper, raising the colossal temples of Baalbek. The mountains became a refuge for minority communities, above all the Maronite Christians and the Druze.

After the sectarian bloodshed of 1860, an autonomous Ottoman "Mount Lebanon" was created. France then carved out "Greater Lebanon" after the First World War, adding the Muslim-majority coast and the Bekaa to the Christian mountain heartland, and ruled it under a mandate until independence in 1943. A power-sharing "National Pact" fixed the top offices by sect — a Christian president, a Sunni prime minister, a Shia speaker — a system still in place and widely blamed for paralysis.

Beirut was a banking and cultural hub until the civil war of 1975–1990, a devastating multi-sided conflict marked by Israeli invasions and a long Syrian military occupation that ended only in 2005. The Shia party and militia Hezbollah, armed and backed by Iran, emerged as the country's most powerful force. Since 2019 Lebanon has suffered one of the worst economic collapses in modern history, compounded by the catastrophic 2020 Beirut port explosion, and by renewed war with Israel from 2023.

Lebanon is the most religiously diverse country in the Arab world, with eighteen officially recognised sects — Maronite and other Christians, Sunni and Shia Muslims, Druze, and others — living side by side, sometimes uneasily, in villages and city quarters that often retain a single-community character. Sect shapes politics, marriage, and much of social life.

There is a famous, self-aware Lebanese resilience and appetite for life — Beirut's restaurants and nightclubs, the mountain village and its summer festivals, the music of Fairuz and the Rahbani brothers, and a strong publishing and arts scene. The diaspora is central: there are far more people of Lebanese descent abroad — in Brazil, the United States, West Africa, the Gulf, and Australia — than in Lebanon itself, and their money and visits are woven into family life.

Hospitality is generous and food-centred, family ties are close, and identity is attached as much to the ancestral village as to the state. The collapse of the past few years has driven a new wave of emigration, especially of the young and skilled.

Greater Beirut holds a large share of the country's people, in a dense city of rebuilt-then-blast-scarred downtown, seaside corniche, and hillside neighbourhoods. Tripoli in the north, Sidon and Tyre in the south, and Zahlé in the Bekaa are the other main centres, and the Mount Lebanon range is a landscape of terraced villages, monasteries, and summer resorts.

The economic collapse dominates daily life: the currency's crash wiped out savings, banks froze deposits, poverty has soared, and the state can barely provide electricity — most homes and businesses run on private diesel generators on a schedule. A president was finally elected in early 2025 after a two-year vacancy, but institutions remain weak and clientelist.

Daily life continues with remarkable stubbornness — the café, the mountain drive, the long lunch, the family gathering — against a background of power cuts, price rises, and, in the south and the Bekaa, war.

Lebanese cuisine is one of the most celebrated in the world, and its heart is mezze: a long parade of small dishes — hummus, moutabbal, tabbouleh (herb-heavy, with only a little bulgur), fattoush, warak enab (stuffed vine leaves), kibbeh, makanek sausages, muhammara, and fresh bread — meant to be grazed over hours.

Grilled meats (shish taouk, kafta, lamb) and manakish — flatbread with za'atar, cheese, or spiced meat, eaten for breakfast — are everyday staples. Kibbeh nayeh (raw spiced lamb or beef with bulgur) is a Sunday treat, and knafeh, warm cheese pastry in syrup, tucked into a sesame bun, is the sweet.

Arak, the aniseed spirit that clouds when water is added, is the traditional drink with mezze, and the Bekaa Valley produces respected wines — Château Musar, Ksara, Kefraya — from vineyards worked through decades of instability.

Byblos (Jbeil), north of Beirut, has a compact old town, a Crusader castle, and layers of ruin going back to the Bronze Age, around a pretty fishing harbour. Beirut itself, in calmer times, offers the corniche and the Pigeon Rocks at Raouché, the National Museum, the Sursock Museum, and the nightlife of Gemmayzeh and Mar Mikhael. Jeita Grotto, in the hills nearby, is a spectacular two-level limestone cavern.

The Qadisha Valley, a deep gorge dotted with cliff-hanging monasteries, and the ancient cedar groves above it — the tree on the national flag — form a UNESCO World Heritage landscape. Baalbek, in the Bekaa, holds the immense Roman temples of Jupiter and Bacchus, though the Bekaa is currently a Hezbollah stronghold and a conflict zone.

In the south, Sidon and Tyre have Phoenician and Roman remains and sea castles, and Beiteddine and Deir el-Qamar in the Chouf have Ottoman-era palaces and a cedar reserve. Almost all of the south and the Bekaa are unsafe to visit at present, and even the coast and the mountains should be approached only with current advice and a driver who knows the situation.