Lebanon's geography: four strips of land between the sea and Syria

How four strips run parallel to the sea

Every account of Lebanon's land starts with the same division. Britannica names four physiographic regions running north to south: the coastal plain, the Lebanon Mountains, the Bekaa valley and the Anti-Lebanon and Hermon ranges. Wikipedia's geography of Lebanon describes the alternation of lowland and highland as the major feature of the country's topography and gives its width as 88 kilometres at the widest point, 32 at the narrowest and about 56 on average, with a length almost three times the width.

The strips are part of larger systems. The Bekaa is a section of the rift that runs from Syria through the Jordan valley to the Red Sea, and Britannica counts it within the East African Rift System. The Anti-Lebanon begins south of Homs in Syria, and the Lebanon Mountains are separated from the Al-Ansariyah mountains of Syria to the north by the Nahr al-Kabir. The eastern range is the less settled of the two. Wikipedia's geography article describes it as more arid than Mount Lebanon, especially in the north, where few villages stand on its western slopes, while the southern section around Mount Hermon has many. The Barada gorge divides it, and a spring in the range feeds the Barada, the river that waters Damascus. South of Hermon the range falls quickly to the Hawran plateau.

Lengths differ between sources: Britannica and Wikipedia's country article give the Bekaa as about 180 kilometres, Wikipedia's geography article as 177 and its article on the valley as 120, depending on where the valley is taken to end.

Where the narrow coast gives way to the Akkar

The coastal strip, the sahil, is narrow and broken. Britannica describes it as discontinuous and almost disappearing in places, built of river alluvium and marine sediment, with rocky beaches alternating suddenly with sandy bays. It is widest in the far north, where it opens into the Akkar plain near the Syrian border, and Wikipedia's geography article gives its greatest width near Tripoli as only 6.5 kilometres. At the southern end it runs out at Ras al-Naqoura on the border with Israel. Fertile red soils with a high clay content hold moisture here and in the northern mountains, Britannica notes, though they erode easily, while the shallow limestone soils of the higher mountains make poor topsoil.

The plain is the most productive farmland for fruit and vegetables, and it carries the cities. Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon and Tyre all stand on it, and the suburbs that grew around them took in migrants from the mountains and people displaced by the wars.

What the Lebanon Mountains hold

The western range is the strip that gave the country its name. Before 1920 "Lebanon" meant the mountain, and the autonomous province of 1861 was drawn around it. It rises so steeply that at Juniyah a coastal plain about 1.5 kilometres wide gives way to foothills reaching 750 metres within 6.5 kilometres of the sea.

The summit, Qurnat as Sawda', stands in the north, and the range falls away southward before rising again to Mount Sannine at 2,695 metres north-east of Beirut. Further south it branches westward into the Shouf mountains and then drops to the lower hills of Galilee. Snow on the higher peaks stays until early summer.

Cedar once covered much of this range and was exported for building and shipbuilding in antiquity, Britannica records, but grazing, burning and cutting have left little that regenerates. The UNESCO listing of 1998 for the Qadisha valley includes the Forest of the Cedars of God east of Bsharri, between 1,900 and 2,050 metres on Mount Makmel, which UNESCO describes as the last vestige of the ancient forests. Further south, the Shouf Biosphere Reserve, listed by UNESCO in 2005, covers 49,600 hectares along the crest from Dahr el-Baidar to Jezzine, about 5% of the country, and its listing records 520 plant species, 48 of them endemic to Lebanon.

Forest covered 13.6% of the land in 2016, according to the figures in Wikipedia's article on Lebanon, and other wooded land a further 11%. The same article dates a national plan to raise forest cover to 2010.

Where the rivers rise and where they go

Most Lebanese rivers are winter torrents running off the western slopes of the Lebanon Mountains, steep and fast enough to erode rather than deposit. Wikipedia's country article counts 16 rivers, none navigable, of which 13 rise in Mount Lebanon and run through gorges to the sea.

The other three rise in the Bekaa, and two of them start in the same watershed near Baalbek and flow in opposite directions. The Orontes runs north into Syria, which is why its Arabic name, Nahr al-Asi, means the rebel river. The Litani runs 145 kilometres south down the valley, then turns abruptly west through the southern hills and reaches the sea near Tyre; its lower course is called the Qasimiyah. Lake Qaraoun on the Litani, about ten kilometres east of Jezzine, is the only permanent lake.

The Litani matters beyond hydrology. Its hydroelectric project, in Britannica's account, generates electricity and has extended the irrigated area, and Fuad Chehab's government created a Litani River Authority to develop the south. It is also a line in the security arrangements: Security Council Resolution 1701 of 2006 asks for the area between the Blue Line and the Litani to be free of armed personnel and weapons other than those of the Lebanese state and UNIFIL.

How the mountains divide the rain

Lebanon has a Mediterranean climate with a long dry summer, and nearly all its rain falls in winter, when storms formed over the Atlantic move east through the Mediterranean. The Lebanon Mountains stand across their path.

Britannica gives annual precipitation of 750 to 1,000 millimetres on the coast, more than 1,270 millimetres at higher altitudes and 380 to 640 millimetres in the Bekaa. Wikipedia's geography article gives a much higher coastal figure, about 2,000 millimetres, and puts the Bekaa at a tenth of it. Both describe the same pattern: the eastern valley sits in the rain shadow of the western range.

Temperatures follow height and distance from the sea. Britannica gives mean daily maximums in the low 30s Celsius in July, and in January about 15 °C on the coast and the low 10s in the Bekaa, where January minimums fall to about 2 °C. At about 1,500 metres, the height of the highest villages, temperatures run about 8 °C lower. A hot wind from the Egyptian desert, the khamsin, blows mostly in spring and does not reach the Bekaa, and inhabitants of the Bekaa describe the winter north wind as strong enough to "break nails". Wikipedia's geography article reports the Ministry of Environment's estimate that rainfall has fallen by between 5% and 20% over the last 45 years.

Where the land is farmed and settled

Arable land is scarce, and the shares in Wikipedia's geography article for 2011 are 10.72% arable and 12.06% under permanent crops. Water from springs makes up for it. Britannica describes a sequence by altitude: market vegetables, bananas and citrus on the irrigated coast; olives, grapes, tobacco, figs and almonds in the foothills; peaches, apricots, plums and cherries at about 460 metres; apples and pears at about 900 metres. The Bekaa grows sugar beet, cereals and vegetables, and served as a granary of Roman Syria.

The middle slopes are terraced. Britannica calls the terraced hills the work of past cultivators, and in the Qadisha valley UNESCO records grain terraces built by monks, hermits and peasants, several still worked.

Settlement runs the same way. Most people live on the coastal plain, fewer further inland, and most cities stand on the coast. Rural villages are sited by water and land. Britannica describes the northern villages as relatively prosperous and the southern ones as poorer, on less fertile land and repeatedly displaced or destroyed between 1975 and 2006 because of their closeness to Israel. The war also changed who lived where: Britannica records that from 1975 thousands of Christians moved north of Beirut along the coast and thousands of Muslims south or east of the city, emptying many districts that had been mixed.

What strains the land and the water

Water is the pressure Wikipedia's geography article returns to most. Rain comes in four winter months, often in a few heavy cloudbursts, and varies widely from year to year. In 2004 about 21% of households had constant access to water in the summer months, most of them in or near Beirut, and the Ministry of Environment expects higher temperatures, less rain and longer droughts.

The Litani carries waste from farms and towns, and the water drawn from it for irrigation carries that pollution onto crops. Wikipedia's geography article estimates that about 93% of Beirut's population is exposed to high levels of air pollution, mostly from traffic. A national air monitoring network of 25 stations, funded with more than 10 million euros from Greece and the European Union between 2013 and 2017, was launched in October 2017 and stopped operating by mid-2019 for lack of budget.

Fire is the other hazard of the long dry summer. Britannica records that when wildfires burned forests in October 2019 the government could not respond because it had not paid to maintain its firefighting equipment, and Wikipedia's history of Lebanon counts about 100 major fires in those days, in the Chouf, Khroub and elsewhere. Parliament banned open dumping and burning of waste in September 2018.

Where the borders run and which are disputed

The coast is 225 kilometres long and the land borders total 454 kilometres: 375 with Syria to the north and east and 79 with Israel to the south, in the figures of Wikipedia's geography article. The shore is regular, rocky and without a deep natural harbour.

The southern line is not a settled border. The working line is the Blue Line, which Britannica describes as the UN demarcation between Lebanese and Israeli forces and which UNIFIL monitors under Resolution 1701. Lebanon disputes a small area at the junction with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, the Shebaa Farms, and Britannica records that Hezbollah asserted Lebanon's claim to it in 2023. At sea, Lebanon and Israel reached a deal in late 2022 over a maritime area both had claimed, which Britannica describes as allowing Lebanon to extract gas there.

The wars of 2024 and 2026 drew new lines in the south. Israeli evacuation orders in 2026 covered more than 1,470 square kilometres, about 14% of the country, according to Wikipedia's account of the war, and Britannica records an Israeli plan announced on 24 March 2026 to occupy the south up to the Litani River. This catalogue records the lines and the claims and takes no position on them.