Baalbek ( ; , ; ; ) is a city located east of the Litani River in Lebanon's Beqaa Valley, about northeast of Beirut. It is the capital of Baalbek-Hermel Governorate. In 1998, the city had a population of 82,608. Most of the population consists of Shia Muslims, followed by Sunni Muslims and Christians; in 2017, there was also a large presence of Syrian refugees.
Baalbek's history dates back at least 11,000 years. After Alexander the Great conquered the city in 334 BCE, he renamed it Heliopolis (; ). The city flourished under Roman rule. However, it underwent transformations during the Christianization period and the subsequent rise of Islam following the Arab conquest in the 7th century. In later periods, the city was sacked by the Mongols and faced a series of earthquakes, resulting in a decline in importance during the Ottoman and modern periods.
In the modern era, Baalbek is a tourist destination. It is known for the ruins of the Roman temple complex, which includes the Temple of Bacchus and the Temple of Jupiter, and was inscribed in 1984 as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Other tourist attractions are the Great Umayyad Mosque, the Baalbek International Festival, the mausoleum of Sit Khawla, and a Roman quarry site named Hajar al-Hibla. Baalbek's tourism sector has encountered challenges due to conflicts in Lebanon, particularly the 1975–1990 civil war, spillover from the Syrian civil war between 2011 and 2017, and the Israel–Hezbollah conflict since 2023.
Baalbek is considered to be part of Hezbollah's heartland and is known to be their political stronghold. During the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon (1982–2000), the group managed to overpower the Lebanese army in Baalbek and gain control of the city. The settlement was subsequently used as a base to recruit and train men for attacks against Israeli forces. Hezbollah continues to hold significant political influence and popular support in Baalbek. In the 2022 Lebanese general election the Amal-Hezbollah list won 9 out of 10 seats in the Baalbek-Hermel Governorate.
Israel has conducted numerous airstrikes and raids against military and civilian targets in the Baalbek area in the past decades. For instance, in 2006 during the Operation Sharp and Smooth, Israeli commandos raided a hospital and bombed multiple houses, killing two Hezbollah fighters and at least eleven civilians. In 2024, during the Israel–Hezbollah conflict, Israel sent forced displacement calls for the entire city. Shortly after, Israeli airstrikes killed 19 people, including 8 women.
Etymology A few kilometres from the swamp from which the Litani (the classical Leontes) and the Asi (the upper Orontes) flow, Baalbek may be the same as the manbaa al-nahrayn ("Source of the Two Rivers"), the abode of El in the Ugaritic Baal CycleKTU 1.4 IV 21. discovered in the 1920s and a separate serpent incantation.KTU 1.100.3.
Baalbek was called Heliopolis during the Roman Empire, a latinisation of the Greek Hēlioúpolis () used during the Hellenistic period, meaning "Sun City" in reference to the solar cult there. The name is attested under the Seleucids and Ptolemies. However, Ammianus Marcellinus notes that earlier Assyrian names of Levantine towns continued to be used alongside the official Greek ones imposed by the Diadochi, who were successors of Alexander the Great.Amm. Marc., Hist., Bk XIV, Ch. 8, §6 . In Greek religion, Helios was both the sun in the sky and its personification as a god. The local Semitic god Baʿal Haddu was more often equated with Zeus or Jupiter or simply called the "Great God of Heliopolis", but the name may refer to the Egyptians' association of Baʿal with their great god Ra. It was sometimes described as or Coelesyria ( or ) to distinguish it from its namesake in Egypt. In Catholicism, its titular see is distinguished as , from its former Roman province Phoenice. The importance of the solar cult is also attested in the name Biḳāʿ al-ʿAzīz borne by the plateau surrounding Baalbek, as it references an earlier solar deity named Aziz. In Greek and Roman antiquity, it was known as Heliopolis. Some of the best-preserved Roman ruins in Lebanon are located here, including one of the largest temples of the Roman empire. The gods worshipped there (Jupiter, Venus, and Bacchus) were equivalents of the Canaanite deities Hadad, Atargatis. Local influences are seen in the planning and layout of the temples, which differ from classic Roman design.
The name appears in the Mishnah, a second-century rabbinic text, as a kind of garlic, shum ba'albeki (שום בעלבכי).Mishnah, Maaserot 5:8 It appears in two early 5th-century Syriac manuscripts, a translation of Eusebius's TheophaniaBrit. Mus. Add. 12150.Eusebius, Theophania, 2.14. and a life of Rabbula, bishop of Edessa. It was pronounced as Baʿlabakk () in Classical Arabic. In Modern Standard Arabic, its vowels are marked as Baʿlabak () or Baʿlabekk. It is Bʿalbik (, is ) in Lebanese Arabic.
The etymology of Baalbek has been debated since the 18th century. Cook took it to mean "Baʿal (Lord) of the Beka" and Donne as "City of the Sun". Lendering asserts that it is probably a contraction of Baʿal Nebeq ("Lord of the Source" of the Litani River). Steiner proposes a Semitic adaption of "Lord Bacchus", from the classical temple complex.
Nineteenth-century Biblical archaeologists proposed the association of Baalbek with the town of Baalgad in the Book of Joshua; the town of Baalath, one of Solomon's cities in the First Book of Kings; Baal-hamon, where Solomon had a vineyard; and the "Plain of Aven" in Book of Amos.
History Prehistory The hilltop of Tell Baalbek, part of a valley to the east of the northern Beqaa Valley (), shows signs of almost continual habitation over the last 8–9000 years. It was well-watered both from a stream running from the Rās al-ʿAyn spring southwest of the citadel and, during the spring, from numerous rills formed by meltwater from the Anti-Lebanons. Macrobius later credited the site's foundation to a colony of Egyptian or Assyrian priests. The settlement's religious, commercial, and strategic importance was minor enough, however, that it is never mentioned in any known Assyrian or Egyptian record,Hélène Sader. unless under another name. Its enviable position in a fertile valley, major watershed, and along the route from Tyre to Palmyra should have made it a wealthy and splendid site from an early age. During the Canaanite period, the local temples were primarily devoted to the Heliopolitan Triad: a male god (Baʿal), his consort (Astarte), and their son (Adon). The site of the present Temple of Jupiter was probably the focus of earlier worship, as its altar was located at the hill's precise summit and the rest of the sanctuary raised to its level.
In Islamic mythology, the temple complex was said to have been a palace of Solomon's which was put together by jinn and given as a wedding gift to the Queen of Sheba; its actual Roman origin remained obscured by the citadel's medieval fortifications as late as the 16th-century visit of the Polish prince Radziwiłł.
Antiquity
After Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia in the 330s BC, Baalbek (under its Hellenic name Heliopolis) formed part of the Diadochi kingdoms of Egypt & Syria. It was annexed by the Romans during their eastern wars. The settlers of the Roman colony Colonia Julia Augusta Felix Heliopolitana may have arrived as early as the time of Caesar but were more probably the veterans of the 5th and 8th Legions under Augustus, during which time it hosted a Roman garrison. From 15 BC to AD 193, it formed part of the territory of Berytus. It is mentioned in Josephus,Josephus, Ant., XIV.3–4. Pliny,Pliny, Nat. Hist., V.22. Strabo,Strabo, Geogr., Bk. 14, Ch. 2, §10. and PtolemyPtolemy, Geogr., Bk. V, Ch. 15, §22 . and on coins of nearly every emperor from Nerva to Gallienus. The 1st-century Pliny did not number it among the Decapolis, the "Ten Cities" of Coelesyria, while the 2nd-century Ptolemy did. The population likely varied seasonally with market fairs and the schedules of the Indian monsoon and caravans to the coast and interior.
During Classical Antiquity, the city's temple to Baʿal Haddu was conflated first with the worship of the Greek sun god Helios and then with the Greek and Roman sky god under the name "Heliopolitan Zeus" or "Jupiter". The present Temple of Jupiter presumably replaced an earlier one using the same foundation; it was constructed during the mid-1st century and probably completed around AD 60. His idol was a beardless golden god in the pose of a charioteer, with a whip raised in his right hand and a thunderbolt and stalks of grain in his left; its image appeared on local coinage and it was borne through the streets during several festivals throughout the year. Macrobius compared the rituals to those for Diva Fortuna at Antium and says the bearers were the principal citizens of the town, who prepared for their role with abstinence, chastity, and shaved heads. In bronze statuary attested from Byblos in Phoenicia and Tortosa in Spain, he was encased in a pillarlike term and surrounded (like the Greco-Persian Mithras) by busts representing the sun, moon, and five known planets. In these statues, the bust of Mercury is made particularly prominent; a marble stela at Massilia in Transalpine Gaul shows a similar arrangement but enlarges Mercury into a full figure. Local cults also revered the Baetylia, black conical stones considered sacred to Baʿal. One of these was taken to Rome by the emperor Elagabalus, a former priest "of the sun" at nearby Emesa, who erected a temple for it on the Palatine Hill. Heliopolis was a noted oracle and pilgrimage site, whence the cult spread far afield, with inscriptions to the Heliopolitan god discovered in Athens, Rome, Pannonia, Venetia, Gaul, and near the Wall in Britain. The Roman temple complex grew up from the early part of the reign of Augustus in the late 1st century BC until the rise of Christianity in the 4th century. (The 6th-century chronicles of John Malalas of Antioch, which claimed Baalbek as a "wonder of the world", credited most of the complex to the 2nd-century Antoninus Pius, but it is uncertain how reliable his account is on the point.) By that time, the complex housed three temples on Tell Baalbek: one to Jupiter Heliopolitanus (Baʿal), one to Venus Heliopolitana (Ashtart), and a third to Bacchus. On a nearby hill, a fourth temple was dedicated to the third figure of the Heliopolitan Triad, Mercury (Adon or Seimios). Ultimately, the site vied with Praeneste in Italy as the two largest sanctuaries in the Western world.
The emperor Trajan consulted the site's oracle twice. The first time, he requested a written reply to his sealed and unopened question; he was favorably impressed by the god's blank reply as his own paper had been empty. He then inquired whether he would return alive from his wars against Parthia and received in reply a centurion's vine staff, broken to pieces. In AD 193, Septimius Severus granted the city ius Italicum rights.Ulpian, De Censibus, Bk. I. His wife Julia Domna and son Caracalla toured Egypt and Syria in AD 215; inscriptions in their honour at the site may date from that occasion; Julia was a Syrian native whose father had been an Emesan priest "of the sun" like Elagabalus.