Lebanon

Lebanon, officially the republic, is the Levantine country of West Asia at the crossing of the Mediterranean and Arabia, bordered by Syria and Israel with Beirut as its capital and largest city, home to more than five million people on ten thousand square kilometres. Men have lived there since 5000 BC: Phoenicia held the coast from 3200 to 539 BC, Rome took it in 64 BC with Byzantium after, Arab caliphates followed from the seventh century, Crusader states rose in the eleventh and fell to Ayyubids and Mamluks, and the Ottomans ruled from the early sixteenth century. The Tanzimat created the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate as a Maronite home, and after the French mandate Greater Lebanon won independence in 1943 with confessional power-sharing among Maronites, Sunnis, Shia and Druze. The civil war of 1975 to 1990, the Syrian and Israeli occupations, and the post-2019 collapse tested it again, and its culture carries far beyond its size.