Zahlé the capital and the largest city of Beqaa Governorate, Lebanon. It is the third largest city in Lebanon after Beirut and Tripoli, and the fourth largest taking the whole urban area.
Zahlé is located 55 km (34 mi) east of the capital Beirut, close to the Beirut-Damascus road, and lies at the junction of the Lebanon mountains and the Beqaa plateau, at a mean elevation of 1,000 m. 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 Greek Catholic and are known as Zahlawis.
There has been human activity in the area for at least 5000 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 quit the Baalbek region in the 18th century for 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 (where Mustafa Harfush took refuge some years later) 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 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 (1831-1841), 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 Kurdistan and Arabia and produced leather, woven and dyed goods, trading with Aleppo, Damascus and Beirut. By the 1860s and 1870s the local merchants were prosperous but were still dependent on banks in Beirut for credit for their transactions.
The current population is not accurately known, since no census has been conducted in Lebanon since 1932, but a sensible estimate gives 60,000 people in the town proper,[citation needed] making it the country's fourth largest (the locals tend to give figures of 200,000 or 300,000 inhabitants, which however are misleading and completely unrealistic) 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 anarchic 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
with a total population close to 200,000.
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-Fairuz
-Wadih el Safi
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