1 History

Originally named Beroth, ("city of wells"), by the PhoenicianPhoenician can mean: The Phoenician ancient civilization The Phoenician alphabet The Phoenician languages.s, the first historical reference to Beirut dates from the 15th century BCE, when it is mentioned in a cuneiform tablet that is one of the " Amarna letters." The most ancient settlement was on an island in the river that progressively silted up. The city was known in antiquity as Berytus, the name taken in 1934 for the archaeological journal published by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the American University of Beirut.

In 140 BCE, the city was taken and destroyed by Diodotus Tryphon in his contest with Antiochus VII Sidetes for the throne of the Seleucid monarchy. Beirut was soon rebuilt on a more regularized Hellenistic plan, renamed Laodicea in Canaan, in honor of a Seleucid queen. The modern city overlies the ancient one and little archaeology had been accomplished until after the end of the civil war in 1991; now large sites in the devastated city center have been opened to archaeological exploration. A dig in 1994 established that one of Beirut's modern streets, Souk Tawile, still follows the lines of an ancient Hellenistic/Roman one.

Mid-1st century BCE coins of Berytus bear the head of Tyche, goddess of fortune; on the reverse, the city's symbol appears: a dolphin entwines an anchor. This symbol was taken up by the early printer Aldus Manutius in 15th century Venice.

Under the Romans it was enriched by the dynasty of Herod, then made a colonia in the late 1st century CE. Beirut's school of law was widely known. Two of Rome's most famous jurists, Papinian and Ulpian, both natives of Phoenicia, taught at the law school under the Severan emperors. When Justinian assembled his Pandects in the 6th century, a large body of the corpus of laws were derived from these two jurists, and Justinian recognized the school as one of the three official law schools of the empire (533 CE). Within a few years, as the result of a disastrous earthquake (551), the students were transferred to Sidon.

Beirut passed to the Arabs in 635. As a trading centre of the eastern Mediterranean Beirut was overshadowed by Acre during the Middle Ages. From 1110 to 1291 it was in the hands of Crusader lords. No matter who was its nominal overlord, whether Turk or Mamluk, Beirut was ruled locally by Druze emirs. One of these, Fakr ed-Din Maan II, fortified it early in the I7th century, but the Ottomans retook it in 1763 and thenceforth, with the help of Damascus, Beirut successfully broke Acre's monopoly on Syrian maritime trade and for a few years supplanted it as the main trading centre in the region. During the succeeding epoch of rebellion against Ottoman hegemony at Acre under Jezzar and Abdullah pashas, Beirut declined to a small town (population about 10,000), fought over among the Druses, the Turks and the pashas. After Ibrahim Pasha captured Acre in 1832, Beirut began its early modern revival. In 1888 Beirut was made capital of a vilayet in Syria, including the sanjaks Latakia, Tripoli, Beirut, Acre and Bekaa. Beirut became a very cosmopolitan city and had close links with Europe and the United States. Beirut became a centre of missionary activity, which was generally very unsuccessful in converting (a massacre of Christians in 1860 was the occasion for further European interventions) but did build an impressive education system. This include the Syrian Protestant College, which was established by American missionaries and eventually became the American University of Beirut (AUB). Beirut began the centre of Arab intellectual activity in the nineteenth century. Provided with water from a British company and gas from a French one, the city thrived on exporting silk grown on nearby Mount Lebanon. After French engineers established a modern harbor (1894) and a rail link across the Lebanon to Damascus, and then to Aleppo (1907), much of the trade was carried by French ships to Marseille, and soon French influence in the area exceeded that of any other European power. In 1911 the population mix was reported in the Encyclopaedia Britannica as Moslems, 36,000; Christians, 77,000; Jews, 2500; Druses, 400; foreigners, 4100.

After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following the First World War Beirut and all of Lebanon were thus given to the French. The French administration showed great preference for the Christian minority leading to religious strains in the city. Lebanon was given its independence following the Second World War and Beirut became its capital city. Beirut remained the intellectual capital of the Arab world and a major commercial and tourist centre until 1975 when a brutal civil war broke out in Lebanon. During most of the war, the city was divided between the largely Muslim west part and the Christian east. The central area of the city, previously the focus of much of the commercial and cultural activities, became a no man's land. Many of the city's best and brightest inhabitants fled to other countries. Since the end of the war, the people of Lebanon have been rebuilding Beirut, and the city has regained its status as a tourist, cultural and intellectual centre of the Middle East, as well as the center for commerce, fashion and media.

1 External links

• Ancient Beirut/Berytus
• "Phoenicia's Roman school of law

2 Reference

• Linda Jones Hall, Roman Berytus: Beirut in Late Antiquity, 2004

Lebanon Cities in Lebanon Coastal cities

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