Jaj ( ar, جاج, also spelled ''Jaje'') is a mountainous village 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 ...

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 B ...

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 ...

. It is 68 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 ...

. Jaj has an average elevation of 1,220 meters above sea level and a total land area of 1,174

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 ...

s. Its inhabitants are predominantly

Maronite Catholic The Maronite Church is an Eastern Catholic '' sui iuris'' particular church in full communion with the pope and the worldwide Catholic Church, with self-governance under the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches. The current head of the ...

s. Jaj is known for its

cedar Cedar may refer to: Trees and plants *''Cedrus'', common English name cedar, an Old-World genus of coniferous trees in the plant family Pinaceae *Cedar (plant), a list of trees and plants known as cedar Places United States * Cedar, Arizona * ...

trees high in the mountains. The village is home to many families many of whom come up primarily on weekends.

History

Human habitation in Jaj can be traced back to

Phoenicia Phoenicia () was an ancient thalassocratic civilization originating in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily located in modern Lebanon. The territory of the Phoenician city-states extended and shrank throughout their histor ...

n times. They made good use of its

forest and built their ships from its woods. In the middle ages, the village is said to have been settled by

crusaders The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were in ...

and had a famous tower the villagers called "Tower of Crusaders" that was originally built by the

Romans Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

. In Ottoman times, the village was religiously diverse from early on. The Ottoman tax book of 1519 reveals that it housed 28 Christian males and 21 Shia Muslim males. In Maronite literature, Jaj was the headquarters of the Sunni Muslim sheikhs of the

Byblos Byblos ( ; gr, Βύβλος), also known as Jbeil or Jubayl ( ar, جُبَيْل, Jubayl, locally ; phn, 𐤂𐤁𐤋, , probably ), is a city in the Keserwan-Jbeil Governorate of Lebanon. It is believed to have been first occupied between 8 ...

region during the early Ottoman era, and that the

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 ...

Hamade sheikhs Ali Dib, Ahmad Abu Za'zua and Sirhan succeeded them in 1600 by killing them on behalf of the Sayfa clan of Tripoli. According to Lebanese historian Issa Alexander Maalouf, the Geagea family of

Bsharri Bsharri ( ar, بشرّي ''Bšarrī''; syr, ܒܫܪܝ; also Romanized ''Becharre'', ''Bcharre'', ''Bsharre'', (''Bcharre El Arez بشرّي الارز'') is a town at an altitude of about to . It is located in the Bsharri District of the Nort ...

, to which politician Samir Geagea belongs, originated from the village of Jaj. The family was originally called Ma'eit and became known as "Geagea", which means "to control the donkeys" in

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 ...

because a forefather of the family used to care for the donkeys of the local Maronite patriarch Youhanna al-Jaji (1404–1455) of Jaj. On 1 September 2020, French President Emmanuel Macron visited Jaj and planted a cedar tree to mark the centennial 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, ...

References

Populated places in Byblos District Maronite Christian communities in Lebanon {{Lebanon-geo-stub