From the middle center of our Lebanese map, Aarbanieh is situated, and is part on Baabda casa. The name is in the Syriac language (Language of the Maronites), AURBANAYE which means “A crowd of people who came together”. Before and after the fall of the crusader states in 1291 AD, 2 main Mamluk campaigns targeted the Kesserwan Area which in those times included the Metn and some of the Baabda regio
n. The first Mamluk campaign (1282 AD) failed in front of the Maronite-Druze coalition of defenders, but the second one (1307 AD) was a total disaster for the inhabitants of Mount Lebanon. The Maronites were almost exterminated, for only 12,000 out of 60,000 survived the onslaught. As for the region of Kisserwan, which inlcuded Arbaniyeh, everything was razed to the ground. The houses were destroyed, their stones taken, the trees cut! And in order to keep anyone from ever coming back, the Mamluks installed a family of Turks called the Assafs, who had the mission of killing anyone who ventured in this area, and thus to ban the Maronites from contacting the Druze. The Principality of Mount Lebanon
Following the battle of Marj Dabek in 1516 AD, where the Turks defeated the Mamluks,
The Turks who were in a hurry to finish off their enemies who retreated to Egypt, had no time to conquer other nations, thus they gave the Rugged mountains of Lebanon to their ally the Druze prince Fakher el Din the first, where he established a principality. Fakher el Din started contacting his ancient friends the Maronites and asked them to come back to their former lands. Thus many Maronites families started going back to their ancestral lands. Arbaniyeh was among the first places to be re-inhabited by Maronites. The first church in Arbaniyeh was built in 1636AD. According to Al Duaihi, it was completed on the 6th of July, under the supervision of Youssef Ibn Hlib al Akouri, bishop of Saida, Cheikh Aoun ibn el Makari, Abou Atallah el Koborsi, and Hajj Mikhael Noaimi. This church was the oldest in the region, to the extent that Maronites from the Bekaa used to be buried next to the church. Diggings in the 1950s in the village’s square, revealed tombs of Saghbin (West Bekaa) and Deir el Kamar. The Families of Arbaniyeh
The Region of the two Matens were under the feudal rule of the Abi Lamaa, the famous Druze family which was allied to prince Fakher el Din the second, and which in 1754 AD converted into Christianity. Thus in the early 1600s Maronite families fleeing the tyranny of the Hamadi Shiites in North Lebanon, found refuge in Arbaniyeh. The first family to arrive there was the Kassouf, which came from Douma, and left Arbaniyeh permanently in the1920s. From Akoura came the Rizkallah’s. Who according to Historian Ahmad Abou Saad are descendant of an Arab prince Malik bin Abi el Ghaith who came from Yemen and converted into Christianity and became the Moukaddam (Maronite Prince) of Akoura in 1523 AD. In the mid 1600’s came the Aoun family from Hbalin, a small village in Jbeil. It is said that Aoun, Akiki and Rahmeh families are the names of 3 brothers who split and each formed a family after his first name. From Hbalin also came the Asmar family in the 1600s. It is said that Asmar, Hobeich and Eddeh are originally one family. The families Koayess (Koyess), Saab, Abou Nakad, Arbaniyeh, Aad (Dlaybeh), and Asmar (Dlaybeh), were all one family known as el NAY, which originally inhabited the part of Arbaniyeh which was later known as Dlaybeh. This family has a very mysterious past, since not one historian could tell their origins. Not one book, reference or even the file at the Bishopric of Antelias show any evidence of their origins. However after so many researches, I ended up with 2 hypotheses for their origins. The first is that they could be part of the Rizzi family which lived in Bkoufa in Bcharreh and gave 3 Patriarchs to the Maronites from 1567 until 1608 (Sarkis, Michel and Youssef). They are descendant of the De Rezé (or Rossi according to the historian Maalouf), a crusader family which after the fall of the crusader states relocated into North Lebanon. This family converted in the early 1700s into Jacobism, an oriental rite of Christianity which resulted in their banishment from the Bcharreh region. The family moved to Ain el Hawra, and probably one of them moved to Arbaniyeh which could explain the secret identity of the family. The other option is that they are from the Aad family, which came from Beit Meri, and is a descendant of the Raad family from Akoura (descendant of prince Hanach bin Abi el Ghaith brother of Malek, grandfather of the Rizkallahs). It is important to note that the Dlaybeh village was always a part of Arbaniyeh and was not included in the census done in the mid 1800’s, although it had its own small church and priest since 1806. It was not until the 1870’s that Dlaybeh was referred to by its own name, and later on in the 20th century it became a village of its own though its municipality is part of Arbaniyeh’s municipality. Arbaniyeh in the 19th and Early 20th centuries
Arbaniyeh was involved in both 1840 and 1860 conflicts with the Druze. In 1840 the people of Arbaniyeh were victorious and managed to burn many Druze villages nearby (Kornayil and Abadiyeh). In 1860, the village was totally burnt including the church, the church that currently exists was rebuilt in 1886. Arbaniyeh had the biggest Silk factory of the Middle East which was built in 1846. The village flourished from the French Morcdalk factory which is located in the part of the village known as Ain Hamada, until WWI when the factory closed down and hunger and disease stroke Lebanon. Two third of the village died out of hunger and disease, a small minority left to the American continent and to Houran in Syria, and an even smaller number managed to survive in the village. The villagers in Dlaybeh all died, except a minority which fled to Houran, and came back later on and revived the village.
