Lebanon

Independent 1943; confessional power-sharing state.

☾ The Coming of Islam

Islam arrives with the conquest of Bilād al-Shām

Islam reached the Lebanese coast and mountains with the Arab-Muslim conquest of Syria in the 630s, after the decisive battle of the Yarmūk (636); the region became part of the wider province of Bilād al-Shām under the Rāshidūn and Umayyad caliphates.

☾ Religious Composition

One of the most religiously plural states in the region

Lebanon is exceptionally plural: alongside large Christian communities (Maronite and others), it has major Sunni and Twelver Shiʿi Muslim populations and a significant Druze community, with the Shiʿa concentrated in the south and the Biqāʿ. Political office is shared among the recognised confessions by a long-standing power-sharing arrangement.

Demographic shares are approximate and politically sensitive; no official census has been held since 1932.

At a glance