Debel (also spelled Dibil,

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 ...

: دبل) is a Lebanese village located in the

caza Caza (), the pseudonym of Philippe Cazaumayou (; born 14 November 1941), is a French comics artist. Biography At 18, Cazaumayou started a career in advertising which lasted for ten years, but in 1970 he entered the field of bandes dessinées, ...

Bint Jbeil Bint Jbeil () is the second largest town in the Nabatiye Governorate in Southern Lebanon. The town has an estimated population of 30,000. Its exact population is unknown, because Lebanon has not conducted a population census since 1932. Hist ...

in the Nabatiye Governorate in

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 ...

Geography

Debel occupies several hills with elevation ranging from 560 to 650 meters above sea level. The main agricultural products of Debel are olives and

tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...

Demography

The people of Debel are Lebanese and are predominantly

Maronite Christians The Maronites ( ar, الموارنة; syr, ܡܖ̈ܘܢܝܐ) are a Christian ethnoreligious group native to the Eastern Mediterranean and Levant region of the Middle East, whose members traditionally belong to the Maronite Church, with the larges ...

History

In 1596, it was named as a village, ‘“Dibil” 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 12 households and 6 bachelors, all Muslims. 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 ...

, summer crops, fruit trees, goats and beehives, in addition to "occasional revenues”; a total of 1,530 akçe.Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 184 In 1852, Edward Robinson noted the village ("Dibl") on his travels in the region. Ernest Renan visited the area during his mission to

and described what he found in his book Mission de Phénicie (1865-1874). At Dibl he found Greek Inscriptions. In 1875,

Victor Guérin Victor Guérin (15 September 1821 – 21 Septembe 1890) was a French intellectual, explorer and amateur archaeologist. He published books describing the geography, archeology and history of the areas he explored, which included Greece, Asia Min ...

visited, and described it as a village with 400 Maronite inhabitants. He also found here several inscriptions in Greek. He further noted: "At this village there are some rock-cut tombs, in one of which there is an inscription. Many well-dressed stones are used, and turn up in digging. On one of these was a fragmentary inscription. Under some of the houses of the village there is a large piece of

tesselated A tessellation or tiling is the covering of a surface, often a plane, using one or more geometric shapes, called ''tiles'', with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellation can be generalized to higher dimensions and a variety of g ...

pavement of very good design. The colours are red, black, and white. There are some

sarcophagi A sarcophagus (plural sarcophagi or sarcophaguses) is a box-like funeral receptacle for a corpse, most commonly carved in stone, and usually displayed above ground, though it may also be buried. The word ''sarcophagus'' comes from the Greek ...

and some broken pillars. This was probably an early Christian site." In 1881, the PEF's ''Survey of Western Palestine'' (SWP) described ''Dibl'': "A village, built of stone, containing about 500 Christians ( Guerin says 400 Maronites) ; there is a Maronite chapel. It is situated on hill-side, with grapes, figs, olives, mulberries, and arable land. The water supply is from many good springs in the wady to the north-west of village, and cisterns and birket near the village."Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP I, p
201
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References

Bibliography

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External links

*Survey of Western Palestine, Map 4
IAAWikimedia commons
Localiban {{Bint Jbeil District Populated places in the Israeli security zone 1985–2000 Maronite Christian communities in Lebanon Populated places in Bint Jbeil District