Under the terms of an unwritten agreement known as the National Pact between the various political and religious leaders of Lebanon, Shiites are the only sect eligible for the post of Speaker of Parliament.

[18] The Galilee, which included part of Jabal Amel, was inhabited by Christian and Jewish communities in the Byzantine period, divided along west and east respectively.

[20] During the early Islamic period, Jabal Amel and the adjacent areas likely hosted several disgruntled groups or communities that were susceptible to Twelver Shia doctrine, and a positive and inviting dialectical relationship between the theological construct of Imamism and its social milieu gave precedence to the Shiite possibility.

[32][18] Ibn Asakir (1106–1175), during his ten-year residence in Tyre, noted strong opposition to his views from some of the rafida, a pejorative term denoting Shiites.

[21] In North Lebanon, Tripoli was governed on the Fatimids' behalf by the Banu Ammar up until the crusader conquest of 1109, a Twelver Shiite qadi dynasty who invested large sums in turning the city into a famous center for learning.

[33] Tripoli became a reputed centre of Twelver scholarship and commanded a large Shiite hinterland, where the district name 'Zanniya' still recalls the Alid esotericism of its medieval population.

[37] Between 1292 and 1305, the Mamluks carried out a series of punitive expeditions against the Shia population of Kisrawan region in Mount Lebanon east of Beirut, headed by Aqqush al-Afram.

[37] According to Mamluk chronicler Badr al-Din al-Ayni, in 1292, the Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil compelled Baydara to take three thousand cavalry up the coast from Egypt, entering Kisrawan from the south.

[52][6] In the late 18th century, traditional Shiite feudatories and mukataa-based familial system had largely become redundant and weak, and Shia influence diminished in favor of an increasingly powerful Maronite-Druze alliance which reached heights under the Sunni (and later Maronite) Shihab dynasty.

[54] During this time period, Shiites built particularly close ties with the Safavids of Iran, contributing significantly to the empire's conversion into Shia Islam.

[55] Tahmasp I (1524–1576) appointed Muhaqqiq al-Karaki from Karak Nuh as the deputy of the Hidden Imam, and granted him extensive power over the sadrs (Grand viziers) in a prolix edict in 1533.

[57] Another prominent cleric was Baha'uddin al-Amili, who authored mathematical and astronomical treatises, including the possibility of the Earth's movement prior to the spread of the Copernican theory,[58] and is responsible for many architectural feats in the city of Isfahan.

[62][45] Following the official declaration of the Arab Kingdom of Syria in March 1920, anti-French riots and clashed broke out in the predominantly Shia areas of Jabal Amel and the Beqaa Valley.

[61] The defeat dispersed thousands of peasants who feared harsh reprisals, and the high fines imposed on the villagers contributed to financial hardship in the region.

[45] The armed effort was paralleled by the nonviolent resistance movement led by Abdul Husayn Sharafeddine since 1919, who demanded US support for Syrian unity during the King–Crane Commission visit.

Shiites had become largely accepting of Greater Lebanon for sectarian and non-sectarian reasons, and the establishment of the Ja'fari court further strengthened communal ties and validated a sense of particularism otherwise denied under the Ottomans.

[62] According to historian Elizabeth Thompson, private schools were part of "constant negotiations" between citizen and the French authorities in Lebanon, specifically regarding the hierarchical distribution of social capital along religious communal lines.

For example, the middle-class of predominantly urban Sunni areas expressed their demands for educational reforms through petitions directed towards the French High Commissioner and the League of Nations.

[68] Sayyid Abdul-Husayn Sharafeddine believed that the only way to ward off foreign political influence was to establish modern schools while maintaining Islamic teachings.

[70] The recognition of Ja‘fari jurisprudence in legal affairs further reinforced Lebanon’s sectarian divisions at the political level, as it provided the Shiite community with a degree of autonomy within the Lebanese nation-state.

[73] On the other hand, the official recognition of legal and religious Shiite institutions by the French authorities strengthened a sectarian awareness within the Shia community.

Seven Shia (Mutawili) villages that were reassigned from French Greater Lebanon to the British Mandate of Palestine in a 1924 border-redrawing agreement were forcibly depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and repopulated by Jews.

[79] They are recognized as one of the 18 official Lebanese sects, and due to the efforts of an Alawite leader Ali Eid, the Taif Agreement of 1989 gave them two reserved seats in the Parliament.

Lebanese Alawites live mostly in the Jabal Mohsen neighbourhood of Tripoli, and in 10 villages in the Akkar region,[80][81][82] and are mainly represented by the Arab Democratic Party.

[84] The syncretic beliefs of the Qarmatians, typically classed as an Isma'ili splinter sect with Zoroastrian influences, spread into the area of the Beqaa valley and possibly also Jabal Shuf starting in the 9th century.

The group soon became widely vilified in the Islamic world for its armed campaigns across throughout the following decades, which included slaughtering Muslim pilgrims and sacking Mecca and Medina—and Salamiyah.

The Isma'ilis of Wadi al-Taym and Jabal Shuf were among those who converted before the movement was permanently closed off a few decades later to guard against outside prying by mainstream Sunni and Shia Muslims, who often viewed their doctrines as heresy.

[86] Isma'ilis were originally included as one of five officially-defined Muslim sects in a 1936 edict issued by the French Mandate governing religious affairs in the territory of Greater Lebanon, alongside Sunnis, Twelver Shiites, Alawites, and Druzes.

The factory was bought in the late 1960s by the Madhvani Group under the direction of Isma'ili entrepreneur Abdel-Hamid al-Fil after the Aga Khan personally brought the two into contact.

Al-Fil closed the plant down on 15 July just after the war broke out to safeguard against the deaths of workers in the event of such an attack, but the damage was estimated at a steep 55 million US dollars, with the reconstruction timeframe indefinite due to instability and government hesitation.