MAPS OF HISTORY · HISTORY OF · Lebanon

ONE LAND · 7 ATLASES

Lebanon, on the map of history

What was Lebanon before it was Lebanon? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History collection — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.

Phoenicia (mod. Lebanon) · The Rise and Fall of Rome, 264 BC – AD 476

Phoenicia — the mother country of Carthage. Tyre and Sidon invented the alphabet Rome wrote with and the trade diaspora Rome fought in the west. Under the empire, a prosperous strip of ports and purple-dye works; Berytus (Beirut) housed the law schools where the classical jurists taught — one root of the Corpus Iuris that is Rome’s largest living legacy.

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The Lebanese coast — Tripoli & Tyre · The Crusades, 1095–1291

The Lebanese coast held two crusader capitals: the County of Tripoli, which lasted until Qalawun stormed and levelled it in 1289, and Tyre, the one great city that never fell to Saladin after Hattin and from which the kingdom was rebuilt. Its Maronite Christians often allied with the Franks, and its ports made Italian merchants rich.

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The Levant coast (mod. Lebanon) · The Mongol Empire, 1206–1294

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Lebanon · The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848

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Lebanon (Ottoman Empire) · The Great War, 1914–1918

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Lebanon · The War Room — WW2, 1936–1945

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Lebanon · The Cold War, 1945–1991

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