Hjoula ( ar, حجولا) is a municipality in the
Byblos District
Byblos District ( ar, قضاء جبيل; transliteration: ''Qadaa' Jbeil''), also called the Jbeil District (''Jbeil'' is Lebanese Arabic for "Byblos"; standard Arabic ''Jubail''), is a district ('' qadaa'') of the Keserwan-Jbeil Governorate of L ...
of
Keserwan-Jbeil Governorate
Keserwan-Jbeil ( ar, كسروان - جبيل) is the most recently created governorate of Lebanon. It consists of the districts of Jbeil and Keserwan. Keserwan-Jbeil covers an area of and is bounded by the North Governorate to the north, the ...
,
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 the north and east and Israel to the south, while Cyprus li ...
. It is 70 kilometers north 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 ...
. Hjoula has an elevation of between 920 and 1,100 meters above sea level. Hjoula has a total land area of 528
hectare
The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is a ...
s.
The village of Hjoula is known for its fertile soil and its woods, as well as
Early Cretaceous
The Early Cretaceous ( geochronological name) or the Lower Cretaceous (chronostratigraphic name), is the earlier or lower of the two major divisions of the Cretaceous. It is usually considered to stretch from 145 Ma to 100.5 Ma.
Geology
Pro ...
fossils.
Etymology
The word is an
Aramaic
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
one, however the meaning is uncertain. Most historians and linguists suggest it means "Oval" due to its oval shape, while some others speculate it comes from the Syriac root "G-l-a" and subsequently to the word "Guola" which supposedly means "The place of the wandering salesman".
History
Many old relics and monuments were found in Hjoula. There was found a Phoenician inscription in "Jarabta". A Roman statue that represented a shepherd and his sheep was also found beside the lake, and was dated to the era of emperor
Tiberius
Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus (; 16 November 42 BC – 16 March AD 37) was the second Roman emperor. He reigned from AD 14 until 37, succeeding his stepfather, the first Roman emperor Augustus. Tiberius was born in Rome in 42 BC. His father ...
c. 20 CE; along small sets of coins that were written in
Kufic
Kufic script () is a style of Arabic script that gained prominence early on as a preferred script for Quran transcription and architectural decoration, and it has since become a reference and an archetype for a number of other Arabic scripts. It ...
with the inscription of Tripoli, resembling the ones used in the Emirate of Tripoli (1079-1109).
After few centuries of the Islamic conquests, the population of mount Lebanon, especially Keserwan, and to a lesser extent, Byblos, was overwhelmingly Shiite in population and a strong dominion of Shiites was present in Keserwan and the fringes of Byblos for five centuries since the start of the 9th century and the rise of the
Hamdanids
The Hamdanid dynasty ( ar, الحمدانيون, al-Ḥamdāniyyūn) was a Twelver Shia Arab dynasty of Northern Mesopotamia and Syria (890–1004). They descended from the ancient Banu Taghlib Christian tribe of Mesopotamia and Eastern A ...
, but it was bound to vanish during 1305 and the Shias were forced leave or adopt the practice of taqiyyah. Hjoula was essentially a Maronite village, inhabited by Abi Khalil family. Of the famous inhabitants was Jibra'el Hjoula, the 104th Maronite patriarch who was killed by the Mamlouks c. 1367 CE in Tripoli.
According to tradition and family legends, the earliest Shiites first inhabited the close town of Annaya before later moving to the interior to Hjoula in the start of the 16th century. Historically, Shiite presence was attested in Hjoula in the 1519 consensus.
Hjoula paid a sizable portion of its income tax towards Aqbay ibn 'Abdallah family vakif; its share rose from 200 g. upon the conquest, to 300 g. during Selim II's reign (1566-1574), to 1,600 g. by the mid-seventeenth century.
Population
The village has a population of around 1900 inhabitants. The village has a population of around 1900 inhabitants. Here's an alphabetical listing of some of the families of Hjoula: Abi Nassif, Abi Raad, Alaa Ad-Din (Shibli), Assaf, Diab, Esber, Hjoula, Hmade, Ibrahim, Issa, Mahdi, Mrad, Nassif, and Qabalan.
Geology
Rock quarries near the village working
Cretaceous
The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of th ...
age marine
strata
In geology and related fields, a stratum ( : strata) is a layer of rock or sediment characterized by certain lithologic properties or attributes that distinguish it from adjacent layers from which it is separated by visible surfaces known as ei ...
have produced a number of new fish and crustacean species along with rare
cephalopods
A cephalopod is any member of the molluscan class Cephalopoda (Greek plural , ; "head-feet") such as a squid, octopus, cuttlefish, or nautilus. These exclusively marine animals are characterized by bilateral body symmetry, a prominent head, an ...
.
References
Populated places in Byblos District
Shia Muslim communities in Lebanon
{{Lebanon-geo-stub