Zibqin is a municipality in South
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 ...
, from the capital,
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 ...
, 4 km from the border with
Israel
Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
and above sea level.
It was heavily damaged in the
2006 Lebanon-Israel war and underwent a heavy process of rebuilding.
Etymology
According to
E. H. Palmer, the name probably comes from the Arabic word for "to bind", or "confine".
History
In 1596, it was named as a village, ''Zibqin,'' in the
Ottoman ''
nahiya
A nāḥiyah ( , plural ''nawāḥī'' ), also nahiyeh, nahiya or nahia, is a regional or local type of administrative division that usually consists of a number of villages or sometimes smaller towns. In Tajikistan, it is a second-level divisi ...
'' (subdistrict) of
Tibnin
Tibnin ( ''Tibnīn'', also Romanized ''Tibnîn'', ''Tebnine'' etc.) is a municipality spread across several hills (ranging in altitude from 700m to 800m (2,275 ft to 2,600 ft) above sea level) located about east of Tyre, Lebanon, Tyre ...
under the ''
liwa'
A sanjak or sancak (, , "flag, banner") was an administrative division of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans also sometimes called the sanjak a liva (, ) from the name's calque in Arabic and Persian.
Banners were a common organization of nomad ...
'' (district) of
Safad
Safed (), also known as Tzfat (), is a city in the Northern District of Israel. Located at an elevation of up to , Safed is the highest city in the Galilee and in Israel.
Safed has been identified with (), a fortified town in the Upper Gal ...
, with a population of 12 households and 12 bachelor, all Muslim. The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 25% on agricultural products, such as
wheat
Wheat is a group of wild and crop domestication, domesticated Poaceae, grasses of the genus ''Triticum'' (). They are Agriculture, cultivated for their cereal grains, which are staple foods around the world. Well-known Taxonomy of wheat, whe ...
,
barley
Barley (), a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains; it was domesticated in the Fertile Crescent around 9000 BC, giving it nonshattering spikele ...
, olive trees, goats and beehives, in addition to "occasional revenues" and winter pastures; a total of 3,172
akçe
The ''akçe'' or ''akça'' (anglicized as ''akche'', ''akcheh'' or ''aqcha''; ; , , in Europe known as '' asper'') was a silver coin mainly known for being the chief monetary unit of the Ottoman Empire. It was also used in other states includi ...
.
[Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 182]
In 1875,
Victor Guérin
Victor Guérin (; 15 September 1821 – 21 September 1890) was a French people, French intellectual, explorer and amateur archaeologist. He published books describing the geography, archeology and history of the areas he explored, which included ...
found the village to contain eighty
Metawileh
Lebanese Shia Muslims (), communally and historically known as ''matāwila'' (, plural of ''mutawālin''; pronounced as ''metouéle'' in Lebanese Arabic), are Lebanese people who are adherents of Shia Islam in Lebanon, which plays a major role ...
. He further "observed a great pool, constructed with regularly cut stones, and several broken
column
A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member ...
s. On the chapter of one he saw a mosaic representing a cross ''fleuronnée'', which proves that it came from a
church
Church may refer to:
Religion
* Church (building), a place/building for Christian religious activities and praying
* Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination
* Church service, a formalized period of Christian comm ...
."
In 1881, the
PEF's
''Survey of Western Palestine'' (SWP) described it: "Small ruined village on a hill, surrounded by brushwood; contains about thirty Moslems
. and has olives and arable land to the south. The water is supplied by
cistern
A cistern (; , ; ) is a waterproof receptacle for holding liquids, usually water. Cisterns are often built to catch and store rainwater. To prevent leakage, the interior of the cistern is often lined with hydraulic plaster.
Cisterns are disti ...
s."
During the
2006 Lebanon-Israel war, on 13 July, 12 civilians were killed by
Israel
Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
i missiles, fired on the house of the late
Mukhtar
A mukhtar (; ) is a village chief in the Levant: "an old institution that goes back to the time of the Ottoman rule". According to Amir S. Cheshin, Bill Hutman and Avi Melamed, the mukhtar "for centuries were the central figures". They "were ...
. All the victims belonged to the Bzeih family, and they included 6 women and 5 children, aged between 11 and 78 years of age. There was no
Hezbollah
Hezbollah ( ; , , ) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament. I ...
activity in the vicinity at the time of the attack. The
IDF gave no explanations as to why the house had been attacked.
Demographics
In 2014
Muslims
Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...
made up 99.78% of registered voters in Zibqin. 99.21% of the voters were
Shiite Muslims.
[https://lub-anan.com/المحافظات/الجنوب/صور/زبقين/المذاهب/]
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
*Survey of Western Palestine, Map 3
IAAWikimedia commons Localiban
http://zebqine.com
{{Coord, 33, 10, N, 35, 16, E, display=title, region:LB_type:city_source:GNS-enwiki
Populated places in the Israeli security zone 1985–2000
Populated places in Tyre District
Shia Muslim communities in Lebanon