Chehoûr, Shuhur, or Shhur (

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

: شحور), is a small town on the

Litani River The Litani River ( ar, نهر الليطاني, Nahr al-Līṭānī), the classical Leontes ( grc-gre, Λέοντες, Léontes, lions), is an important water resource in southern Lebanon. The river rises in the fertile Beqaa Valley, west of B ...

in the

Tyre District The Tyre District is a district in the South Governorate of Lebanon. History Ancient history Founded at the start of the third millennium BC, Tyre originally consisted of a mainland settlement and a modest island city that lay a short distance o ...

Southern Lebanon Southern Lebanon () is the area of Lebanon comprising the South Governorate and the Nabatiye Governorate. The two entities were divided from the same province in the early 1990s. The Rashaya and Western Beqaa Districts, the southernmost distri ...

South Governorate South Governorate ( ar, الجنوب; transliterated: al-Janub) is one of the governorates of Lebanon. South Lebanon has a population of 500,000 inhabitants and an area of 929.6 km2. The capital is Sidon. The lowest elevation is sea-level ...

, some 95 kilometres to the south-west of

Beirut Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...

, the capital city of

Lebanon Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to Lebanon–Syria border, the north and east and Israel to Blue ...

Name

E. H. Palmer wrote that the name Shuhûr meant "mud walls", or "conspicuous part".

History

Ottoman rule (1516-1918)

In 1596, it was named as a village, ''Ishur'', in the Ottoman ''

nahiya A nāḥiyah ( ar, , plural ''nawāḥī'' ), also 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 division w ...

'' (subdistrict) of

Tibnin Tebnine ( ar, تبنين ''Tibnīn'', also Romanized ''Tibnine'') is a Lebanese town 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), i ...

under the ''

liwa' Sanjaks (liwāʾ) (plural form: alwiyāʾ) * Armenian: նահանգ (''nahang''; meaning "province") * Bulgarian: окръг (''okrǔg''; meaning "county", "province", or "region") * el, Διοίκησις (''dioikēsis'', meaning "province" ...

'' (district) of

Safad Safed (known in Hebrew as Tzfat; Sephardic Hebrew & Modern Hebrew: צְפַת ''Tsfat'', Ashkenazi Hebrew: ''Tzfas'', Biblical Hebrew: ''Ṣǝp̄aṯ''; ar, صفد, ''Ṣafad''), is a city in the Northern District of Israel. Located at an eleva ...

, with a population of 48 households, all Muslim. The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 25% on agricultural products, such as

wheat Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeologi ...

barley Barley (''Hordeum vulgare''), a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains, particularly in Eurasia as early as 10,000 years ago. Globally 70% of barley p ...

, olive trees, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues and a press for olive oil or grape syrup, and a water mill; a total of 3,067 akçe.Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 180 In 1710,

Sayed ''Sayyid'' (, ; ar, سيد ; ; meaning 'sir', 'Lord', 'Master'; Arabic plural: ; feminine: ; ) is a surname of people descending from the Islamic prophet Muhammad through his grandsons, Hasan ibn Ali and Husayn ibn Ali, sons of Muhammad' ...

Salih ibn Muhammad ibn Sharaf al-Din was born in Chehour. He went on to found a dynasty of

Shiite Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, most ...

scholars, who would play a key-role in the development of

Jabal Amel Jabal Amil ( ar, جبل عامل, Jabal ʿĀmil), also spelled Jabal Amel and historically known as Jabal Amila, is a cultural and geographic region in Southern Lebanon largely associated with its long-established, predominantly Twelver Shia Musl ...

(modern-day Southern Lebanon) up to today. However, Sayed Salih was persecuted during the campaigns of the Ottoman governor of Sidon,

Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar ( ar, أحمد باشا الجزّار; ota, جزّار أحمد پاشا; ca. 1720–30s7 May 1804) was the Acre-based Ottoman governor of Sidon Eyalet from 1776 until his death in 1804 and the simultaneous governor of D ...

, who had the Shiite population decimated in brutal purges. One of Sayed Salih's sons was murdered and he himself imprisoned for nine years. In the first half of the 19th century the Shiite notable Mahmoud Mazyad built a mill on the bank of the Litani River: In 1881, the PEF's ''Survey of Western Palestine'' (SWP) described it as: "A large village with some good houses, containing about 600

Metawileh Lebanese Shia Muslims ( ar, المسلمون الشيعة اللبنانيين), historically known as ''matāwila'' ( ar, متاولة, plural of ''mutawālin'' ebanese pronounced as ''metouali'' refers to Lebanese people who are adherents ...

; it is situated on a hill, and has a well and cisterns in it. There are figs and olives around."

French Mandate colonial rule (1920–1943)

Soon after the French colonial rulers proclaimed the new State of

Greater Lebanon The State of Greater Lebanon ( ar, دولة لبنان الكبير, Dawlat Lubnān al-Kabīr; french: État du Grand Liban), informally known as French Lebanon, was a state declared on 1 September 1920, which became the Lebanese Republic ( ar, ...

under the guardianship of the

League of Nations The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ...

represented by France on the first of September 1920, French soldiers razed the village residence of Tyre's Imam

Abd al-Husayn Sharaf al-Din al-Musawi Abd al-Husayn Sharaf al-Din al-Musawi, also commonly spelled Abdel Hussein Charafeddine, Sharafeddine, or Sharafeddin ( ar, عبدالحسين شرف الدين الموسوي), was a Shi'a Twelver Islamic scholar who has widely been considered ...

in Chehour by setting fire to it.

Educational establishment

The table below provides a comparison of public and private schools locally and nationally. It can be used to assess the distribution of students between public and private institutions both locally and nationally. All data provided on education concerning the 2005–2006 school year. Since the publication of more recent figures we will strive to published online.

References

People from Chehour

* al-Sayyid Yusuf Sharaf al-Din, father of Abd al-Husayn Sharaf al-Din al-Musawi

Bibliography

* * * *

External links

*Survey of Western Palestine, Map 2:
IAAWikimedia commons

Chehour
Localliban: Centre de resource sur le developpement local *https://web.archive.org/web/20100619010329/http://shohour.org/ {{Tyre District Populated places in Tyre District Shia Muslim communities in Lebanon