Lassa ( ar, لاسا) 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 Leb ...

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 90 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 ...

. Lassa has an average elevation of 1,130 meters above sea level and a total land area of 739

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 contains one public school, which enrolled 15 students in 2008. Its inhabitants are predominantly

Shia Muslim 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 ...

s and a persecuted

maronite 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 ...

minority Lassa was the seat of the Shia Muslim houses of Moqdad & Hamadeh, which exercised control over large swaths of Mount Lebanon in the 17th and 18th centuries, including the districts of Jubbay al-Mnaytra, Bilad Jubayl (Byblos), Bilad al-Batrun and Jubbat Bsharray. Lassa was burnt by the Ottomans many times in reprisal for the Hamadeh lords' failure to remit tax incomes. In the late 18th century, the Hamadeh and their clans (al-'asha'ir al-hamadiyah) were driven out of Lassa and surrounding villages, to the eastern slopes of Mount Lebanon, the Hirmil region and the area of Ba'lbak. Some of the Shia Muslim families remained. The biggest family in Lassa is Al Moqdad. Al Eitawi family comes after it.

References

Populated places in Byblos District Shia Muslim communities in Lebanon {{Lebanon-geo-stub