Lebanon

Lebanon is a small country by the sea.

The sea is called the Mediterranean. Tall mountains rise up behind the beaches. In winter, snow covers the mountain tops. The capital city is Beirut.

Lebanon is a small country on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Syria lies to its north and east.

Lebanon is a land of sharp changes: within a short distance you can go from a sandy bay to snowcapped mountains. A narrow plain runs along the coast, then the Lebanon Mountains rise steeply behind it. Beyond them lies the long, fertile Bekaa valley, and then another mountain range. Most people live on the coastal plain, where Beirut, the capital, stands.

Lebanon is a narrow strip of territory on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, bounded by Syria to the north and east, with its capital at Beirut. Britannica divides it into four physiographic regions: a narrow, discontinuous coastal plain; the Lebanon Mountains (Jabal Lubnān); the Bekaa (Al-Biqāʿ) valley; and the Anti-Lebanon and Hermon ranges running parallel to the Lebanon Mountains. Landforms, climate, soils and vegetation change sharply over short distances.

The country's rugged terrain has long given refuge to communities marginalized elsewhere, and modern Lebanon has an unusually diverse religious landscape. The state of Greater Lebanon was established in 1920 under a French mandate; independence was proclaimed in 1943. The World Bank estimates the population at 5,849,421 (2025), but no official census has been taken since 1932, so all figures are estimates.

Beirut is the capital of Lebanon.

It is a big city by the sea. Byblos is a very old town on the coast. People have lived there for thousands of years. At Baalbek, giant stone columns still stand tall.

Beirut, the capital, is on the coast, like most of Lebanon's cities. About 40 kilometers north of it is Byblos, one of the oldest towns in the world. A community of fishermen settled there about 8,000 years ago, and people have kept building there ever since: Bronze Age temples, a Roman road, a castle from the time of the Crusades and an old town.

Inland, beside the Bekaa valley, Baalbek has colossal Roman temples. The main temple's columns were 20 meters tall, and one block in the stone platform under them weighs more than 800 tons. On the coast, Tyre was a great port city, and at Anjar the ruins of a city founded in the early 700s show a neat, regular plan.

Beirut is the capital; in 1920 it and other coastal towns were joined to Mount Lebanon to form Greater Lebanon, and most of Lebanon's cities lie on the coast. Byblos, on a sandstone cliff 40 km north of Beirut, was inscribed by UNESCO in 1984. It shows uninterrupted building from a fishing settlement about 8,000 years old, through Bronze Age monumental temples, Persian fortifications, a Roman road, Byzantine churches and a Crusader citadel, to the medieval and Ottoman town. The oldest known Phoenician inscription, on the sarcophagus of Ahiram, was found there.

Baalbek, at 1,150 m at the foot of the Anti-Lebanon bordering the Bekaa, is a temple complex built over more than two centuries that UNESCO calls one of the finest examples of Imperial Roman architecture at its height. Its terrace includes 24 monoliths, the largest over 800 tons, and its main temple was surrounded by 20 m columns. Tyre, another Phoenician port, founded colonies such as Cadiz and Carthage; its remains are mainly Roman. Anjar, founded under the Umayyad caliph Walid I at the start of the 8th century, has a very regular, planned layout.

Lebanon has many communities.

Most people speak Arabic. Many also speak French or English. For breakfast, many people eat a flatbread called man'ouché. It is topped with thyme, sesame and olive oil.

Lebanon is home to many communities with long histories, including Armenian and Kurdish communities. Arabic is the official language, and many people also speak French or English. Lebanon has many religious communities too, mostly Muslim and Christian, as well as the Druze.

Most people live on the coastal plain. In the foothills, farmers grow olives, grapes, figs and almonds, and higher up there are orchards of peaches, cherries and apples. Many people eat man'ouché for breakfast: a flatbread pressed with fingertips and topped with thyme, sumac, sesame seeds and olive oil. Folk arts include dabkah, the national dance, and zajal, poetry that is recited or sung at social and family celebrations.

Lebanon's society is made up of many ethnic, religious and kinship groups; Britannica notes Phoenician, Greek, Armenian and Arab elements, with Armenian and Kurdish minorities. Arabic is the official language, and French and English are also spoken. Its religious composition is especially varied and politically sensitive: there has been no official census since 1932, but the Shiʿi and Sunni Muslims each make up more than a fourth of the population, Maronite Christians more than a fifth, and there are Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic communities, an influential Druze minority and a very small Jewish minority. Under the power-sharing of the 1926 constitution, by convention the president was normally a Maronite, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker a Shiʿi Muslim.

Most people live on the coastal plain, and about one-fifth are under 15. The foothills grow olives, grapes, tobacco, figs and almonds, with apples and pears at about 900 m on the terraced mountain slopes. UNESCO inscribed al-Zajal, recited or sung folk poetry, in 2014, and al-Man'ouché, the flatbread that Lebanese families and small bakeries make for breakfast, in 2023.