Broummana () is a town in the

Matn District Matn (, '), sometimes spelled Metn (or preceded by the article El, as in El Matn), is a district (''qadaa'') in the Mount Lebanon Governorate of Lebanon, east of the Lebanon's capital Beirut. The district capital is Jdeideh (followed to Jdeideh, ...

of the

Mount Lebanon Governorate Mount Lebanon Governorate () is one of the nine governorates of Lebanon, of which it is the most populous. Its capital is Baabda. Other notable towns and cities include Aley, Bikfaya, and Beit Mery. This governorate is named after the mount ...

Lebanon Lebanon, officially the Republic of Lebanon, is a country in the Levant region of West Asia. Situated at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian Peninsula, it is bordered by Syria to the north and east, Israel to the south ...

. It is located east of

Beirut Beirut ( ; ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, just under half of Lebanon's population, which makes it the List of largest cities in the Levant region by populatio ...

, overlooking the capital and the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern ...

. Broummana has long been a summer destination for visitors and locals. It is also the green lung of the region, with many

pine trees A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. ''World Flora Online'' accepts 134 species-rank taxa (119 species and 15 nothospecies) of pines as cu ...

lining its streets.

Overview

As most of the villages, Broummana has an Aramaic name which most probably means "house of Rammana, the God of Air, Storm and Thunder". In the location where Broummana was built it was thought that the god ''Rammanu'' lived there, which gave the name "House of Rammanu", and it is known that the letter B at the beginning of the name of villages refers to "beit" in Syriac, meaning "house". File:Lebanon January 2014 472.JPG File:Lebanon January 2014 477.JPG, Souk File:Lebanon January 2014 292.JPG, Aswad House File:Lebanon January 2014 642.JPG, Rizk House

Climate

Summer is usually dry in Broummana; it begins in early May and ends in mid-October. Summer temperature rarely exceeds 30 °C, with a lower limit of around 20 °C (68 °F). Its relative humidity in summer runs at 68%. Winter is wet and mild with temperatures ranging between 5 °C and 18 °C, with the occasional snowfall.

Demographics

The vast majority of the population in Broummana is Christian:

Greek Orthodox Greek Orthodox Church (, , ) is a term that can refer to any one of three classes of Christian Churches, each associated in some way with Greek Christianity, Levantine Arabic-speaking Christians or more broadly the rite used in the Eastern Rom ...

making up 40%,

Maronite Catholic The Maronite Church (; ) is an Eastern Catholic ''sui iuris'' particular church in full communion with the pope and the worldwide Catholic Church, with self-governance under the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches. The head of the Maronite ...

making up another 40% of the population, and

Greek Catholic Greek Catholic Church or Byzantine-Catholic Church may refer to: * The Catholic Church in Greece * The Eastern Catholic Churches The Eastern Catholic Churches or Oriental Catholic Churches, also known as the Eastern-Rite Catholic Churches, Ea ...

making up 10% of the population. The rest of the population (the last 10%) is mostly

Druze The Druze ( ; , ' or ', , '), who Endonym and exonym, call themselves al-Muwaḥḥidūn (), are an Arabs, Arab Eastern esotericism, esoteric Religious denomination, religious group from West Asia who adhere to the Druze faith, an Abrahamic ...

. The town is also the summer home of tourists from the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

Education

Brummana High School Brummana High School (BHS, ) is a private school in Lebanon. It is located in the village of Brummana, situated in Metn, Mount Lebanon, east of the capital city Beirut. This school was established in 1873, by the Quaker Theophilus Waldmeier ( ...

was founded by the Quaker

Theophilus Waldmeier Theophilus Waldmeier (1832 in Basel – 1915) was a Swiss Calvinist missionary who later became a Quaker. Waldmeier was born in the Canton of Aargau and was brought up by his mother and grandmother, strict Roman Catholics, who insisted on th ...

in 1873. The school influenced the inhabitants of Broummana and gave the town some English traditions, such as five o’clock tea.

was born in 1832 in Basle, Switzerland. He attended the missionary college of St Crischona, near Basle, and went to Abyssinia as a missionary in 1858. After being among a motley assortment of Europeans held prisoner by the mad Ethiopian King Theodore and rescued in the nick of time by General Napier and his British troops at the siege of Magdala, he left in 1868 and went to Syria, settling at Beirut in connection with the British Syrian Mission founded in 1860. He re-embarked on a second career of good works. Among the fruits of that career are two of Lebanon's most vigorous institutions - Broummana High School, and Asfuriya Mental Hospital, founded in 1894. Waldmeier moved his half-Ethiopian wife and his four children by horseback up the steep mountain path from Beirut to Broummana where he started the Friends' Syrian Mission in 1873. In 1874, he traveled to Europe to seek financial backing from the Society of Friends. After listening to his impassioned plea for aid, some British and American Quakers formed a committee which, from that time until today, has provided support for the Broummana School.

Broummana Soup Kitchen

In the summer of 1915, as the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

gathered pace, the British imposed an economic blockage against the Ottoman territories along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean sea. The

Young Turk The Young Turks (, also ''Genç Türkler'') formed as a constitutionalist broad opposition-movement in the late Ottoman Empire against the absolutist régime of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (). The most powerful organization of the movement, a ...

government introduced military rule across its Arab territories and began stockpiling food for their armies. This coincided with the

1915 Ottoman Syria locust infestation From March to October 1915, swarms of locusts stripped areas in and around Palestine, Mount Lebanon and Syria of almost all vegetation. This infestation seriously compromised the already-depleted food supply of the region and sharpened the miser ...

across food-producing areas. In the resulting famine, which lasted two years, it is estimated that 100,000 of

Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate The Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate (1861–1918, ; ) was one of the Ottoman Empire's subdivisions following the 19th-century Tanzimat reform. After 1861, there existed an autonomous Mount Lebanon with a Christian Mutasarrif (governor), which had be ...

's 450,000 inhabitants died. The Turkish military governor,

Djemal Pasha Ahmed Djemal (; ; 6 May 1872 – 21 July 1922), also known as Djemal Pasha or Cemâl Pasha, was an Ottoman military leader and one of the Three Pashas that ruled the Ottoman Empire during World War I. As an officer of the II Corps, he was ...

, was a frequent resident of Broummana. Another resident was Arthur Dray, who was one of the founders of the School of Dentistry at the

Syrian Protestant College The American University of Beirut (AUB; ) is a private, non-sectarian, and independent university chartered in New York with its main campus in Beirut, Lebanon. AUB is governed by a private, autonomous board of trustees and offers programs lead ...

in Beirut. The two men were on good terms following Dray's treatment of a bullet wound to Djemal's jaw and Dray received permission to open a small soup kitchen. The kitchen started in the summer of 1916. It employed one cook and fed 15 people. At the same time Mariam Cortas (née Asswad) and her two sisters Labibi (Mrs Amin Rizk) and Selma (Mrs Selim Rizk) were managing funds to help nursing mothers and were distributing milk and food. Mrs Cortas took over the running of the kitchen, increasing the number of daily meals to 50 in the first week and 100 in the second. The kitchen was then moved into an empty hotel that had been used by the Turkish army. By the end of 1916 the Broummana Soup Kitchen was feeding at least 1500 people a day. The project received military approval on the understanding that no males between the age of 12 and 60 were being fed. Funding came from the American Mission and a number of wealthy Syrians in Beirut. At its busiest the kitchen employed between 200 and 300 people. A visitor in October 1917 reported 1,200 people being fed, of whom 1080 were children. Despite the kitchen's success people were turned away, and the body of a woman and her child were found a few hundred yards away. Other then-major kitchens in the country were at

Souk El Gharb Souk El Gharb (), (also spelled Suk, Sug al, ul, Suq), is a town located in the Aley District, Mount Lebanon Governorate, in Lebanon and its name translates to "Western Market". Before the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), this mountain town sur ...

, 'Abay,

Sidon Sidon ( ) or better known as Saida ( ; ) is the third-largest city in Lebanon. It is located on the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean coast in the South Governorate, Lebanon, South Governorate, of which it is the capital. Tyre, Lebanon, Tyre, t ...

and

Tripoli Tripoli or Tripolis (from , meaning "three cities") may refer to: Places Greece *Tripolis (region of Arcadia), a district in ancient Arcadia, Greece * Tripolis (Larisaia), an ancient Greek city in the Pelasgiotis district, Thessaly, near Larissa ...

. After the war their work was taken over by the Syria and Palestine Relief Fund. As things returned to normal it was found that there were over 400 orphans being cared for in Broummana.

Etymology

The name of the town, Broummana, stems from the

Aramaic language Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient Syria (region), region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai Peninsula, Sinai, Southeastern Anatolia Regi ...

. The name most probably means "House of ''Rammanu''", which was an Akkadian name meaning "Thunder" used for the

weather god A weather god or goddess, also frequently known as a storm god or goddess, is a deity in mythology associated with weather phenomena such as thunder, snow, lightning, rain, wind, storms, tornadoes, and hurricanes. Should they only be in charge of ...

more commonly known as

Hadad Hadad (), Haddad, Adad ( Akkadian: 𒀭𒅎 '' DIM'', pronounced as ''Adād''), or Iškur ( Sumerian) was the storm- and rain-god in the Canaanite and ancient Mesopotamian religions. He was attested in Ebla as "Hadda" in c. 2500 BCE. From ...

ancient Canaanite religion Canaanite religion or Syro-Canaanite religions refers to the myths, cults and ritual practices of people in the Levant during roughly the first three millennia BC. Canaanite religions were polytheistic and in some cases monolatristic. They we ...

. (The Aramaic version of this name is ''Raˁmā'', ). During

classical antiquity Classical antiquity, also known as the classical era, classical period, classical age, or simply antiquity, is the period of cultural History of Europe, European history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD comprising the inter ...

, it was believed that Hadad lived in the area that is now Broummana, and thus the area became known as "the House of Rammanu", later corrupted to ''Broummana''.

Tourism

Broummana is one of Lebanon's main summer resorts due to its relatively cool climate. Sitting on top of a pine-forested hill, the town has views over Beirut, the

coast, and the surrounding mountainous area. It attracts Lebanese visitors for day and weekend trips. Broummana also attracts thousands of Arab tourists from the Persian Gulf every summer, eager to escape from the hot and arid climate of the Persian Gulf. The population of Broummana rises to about 60,000 during the summer months, from a low of about 15,000 in winter, when the weather is cold and sometimes snowy. In July 2018, Mayor Pierre Achkar, introduced a controversial plan to boost tourism by making local police women wear short shorts and red berets. File:Lebanon January 2014 209.JPG, Grand Hills Hotel File:Lebanon January 2014 483.JPG, Printania Hotel File:Lebanon January 2014 316.JPG, Montana Apartments File:Lebanon January 2014 669.JPG, Brumana Palace Apartments File:Lebanon January 2014 583.JPG, New Villa Apartments File:Lebanon January 2014 581.JPG, Tivoli File:Lebanon January 2014 197.JPG, Kanaan Apartments File:Lebanon January 2014 337.JPG, view of Brummana from

Beit Meri Beit Mery ( ; also Beit Mer, Beir Meri) is a Lebanese town overlooking the capital Beirut. The town has been a summer mountain resort since the times of the Phoenicians and later the Romans. The name derives from Aramaic and means "The house of ...

In Art and Literature

An engraving of

William Henry Bartlett William Henry Bartlett (26 March 1809 – 13 September 1854) was a British artist, best known for his numerous drawings rendered into steel engravings. Biography Bartlett was born in Kentish Town, London, England on 26 March 1809. He was appren ...

's painting of the ''Villages of Brumhanna, in Mount Lebanon'' is accompanied by a posthumous poetical illustration by

Letitia Elizabeth Landon Letitia Elizabeth Landon (14 August 1802 – 15 October 1838) was an English poet and novelist, better known by her initials L.E.L. Landon's writings are emblematic of the transition from Romanticism to Victorian literature. Her first major b ...

in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1840.

Places

Broummana has many hotels, including the Grand Hills Hotel, Broummana Hotel, Kanaan Hotel, Le Crillion, Printania Hotel, Jawhara Palace, and Garden Hotel. It also has a number of restaurants and cafés - as well as a number of pubs and roasteries. File:Lebanon January 2014 192.JPG, Mar Cha’aya Maronite Church File:Lebanon January 2014 196.JPG, Catholic Church File:Lebanon January 2014 210.JPG, Deir el Saleeb Maronite Church File:Lebanon January 2014 246.JPG, Azarieh Maronite Church File:Lebanon January 2014 251.JPG, Maronite Church File:Lebanon January 2014 285.JPG, Ancient Greek Orthodox Church with Catholic Mar Cha’aya adjoining File:Lebanon January 2014 596.JPG, Druze tomb

References

External links

Broummana
Localiban {{Authority control Populated places in Matn District Eastern Orthodox Christian communities in Lebanon Maronite Christian communities in Lebanon Coloniae (Roman)