Baabdat Family Trees - Baabdat - The geography of Baabdat

It is said that Cananeans and Arameans were the first to live in Baabdat because there are ruins of their temple or place of worship in the gallery of the Aaraar spring which is the main spring of the village.

The presence of an old tower with a view on the Jaamany river, proves the phoenicians were there but it was demolished and its stones were used to build a part of the Saint George church in 1660.

Researchers base the presence of romans in Baabdat on the fact that they pulled the water of the Aaraar spring through a special channel to their temple in the area known today as "Deir el-Kalaa" in the village of Beit Mery which is 9 kilometers away. The channel crossed Baabdati places such as Roueiseh, al-Qantara and al-Qasha. There are also features of roman engineering and architecture in the Qabwa, one of the branches of the Aaraar spring.

A group of druze lived in Baabdat (it's a religious group belonging to islam) who came to cooperate with some princes in preventing the invasion of the french crusaders from the coasts of Beirut and the capital of the south, Saida. They entered Baabdat, practiced tyranny on the population, burnt the land and invested it.

After the attacks of the Memluks at the end of the 13^th century, Baabdat was emptied from all the christians. It was invaded by the Shiites and then by the Kurds and Turkmen who came from the north. Their houses and properties were occupied until the Al-Khazen Sheikhs of Kesrouan displaced them.

Baabdat was revived after the ottomans won over the Memluks in 1516. Since 1545, christian families from Jbeil and Batroun provinces came to the Maten province. Families who became a part of Baabdat arrived starting from the 16^thcentury including: Corbani, Labaki, Safi, Zimmar, Melki, Abou Diwan, Obeid, Ghandour, Abou Heyla, Khater, Shaanine, Saleh, Hayek, Arid, Alam, Zoghbi and Sawaya.

Later, more precisely since 1920, other families that are not included in our research joined Baabdat such as: Asmar, Hajj Boutros, Shamoun, Romanos, Gemayel, Abou Jawde, Shakar, Daher, Saleh, Al-Ayya, Yammine, Hashem, Ghssoub, Ghanem, Nawfal, Nehme, Ajjour, Armenian families and others.

 

At the end of World War II, when the polish (from Poland) arrived to Baabdat and remained five years (1946-1950), construction improved and developed and it was modernized thus progressively transforming Baabdat into a tourism and estivation area. The selling of properties and the housing construction became active and new developed residential areas surfaced. The number of houses reached 2500 in 2008 while it didn't exceed 145 in 1939.

 

The number of the population in Baabdat in the seventies was estimated at 3069 persons according to the official records. In the new statistics of 2008 the number of the population was estimated at 8000 in the winter and 15000 in the summer.