Hasbaya

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hasbeya or Hasbeiya (Arabic: حاصبيا‎) is a town in Lebanon, situated at 33.435 North, 35.790 East, about 36 miles to the west of Damascus, at the foot of Mount Hermon, overlooking a deep amphitheatre from which a brook flows to the Hasbani.

In 1911, the population was about 5000 (of which 4000 were Christians).Now Hasbaya is mainly inhabited by Christians and Druze while in the past a small Jewish minority also inhabited the town. Both sides of the valley were planted in terraces with olives, vines and other fruit trees. The grapes were either dried or made into a kind of syrup.

In 1846, an American Protestant mission was established in the town. This little community suffered much persecution at first from the Greek Church, and afterwards from the Druses, by whom in 1860 nearly 1000 Christians were massacred, during the Druzes civil war with the Maronites, while others escaped to Tyre or Sidon. The castle in Hasbeya was held by the crusaders under Count Oran but in 1171 the emirs of the great Shihab (also written Chehab) family recaptured it. In 1205 this family was confirmed in the lordship of the town and district. The Hasbeya Castle (Chehabi Citadel) is the only national momument in Lebanon still privately owned (by the Chehab family). Today actual ownership is shared by some fifty branches of the family, some of whom live there permanently. Stone lions, a heraldic emblem and crest of the Chehab family, stand on each side of the arched portal entrance of the Citadel.

Near Hasbeya were bitumen pits let by the government; and to the north, at the source of the Hasbani, the ground is volcanic. Some travellers have attempted to identify Hasbeya with the biblical Baal-Gad or Baal-Hermon.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.