[1] As most of the villages, Broummana has an Aramaic name which most probably means "house of Rammana, the God of Air, Storm and Thunder".

The school influenced the inhabitants of Broummana and gave the town some English traditions, such as five o’clock tea.

After being among a motley assortment of Europeans held prisoner by the mad Ethiopian King Theodore and rescued in the nick of time by General Napier and his British troops at the siege of Magdala, he left in 1868 and went to Syria, settling at Beirut in connection with the British Syrian Mission founded in 1860.

Among the fruits of that career are two of Lebanon's most vigorous institutions - Broummana High School, and Asfuriya Mental Hospital, founded in 1894.

Waldmeier moved his half-Ethiopian wife and his four children by horseback up the steep mountain path from Beirut to Broummana where he started the Friends' Syrian Mission in 1873.

After listening to his impassioned plea for aid, some British and American Quakers formed a committee which, from that time until today, has provided support for the Broummana School.

In the summer of 1915, as the First World War gathered pace, the British imposed an economic blockage against the Ottoman territories along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean sea.

[5] The Young Turk government introduced military rule across its Arab territories and began stockpiling food for their armies.

In the resulting famine, which lasted two years, it is estimated that 100,000 of Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate's 450,000 inhabitants died.

[citation needed] Sitting on top of a pine-forested hill, the town has views over Beirut, the Mediterranean coast, and the surrounding mountainous area.

[citation needed] The population of Broummana rises to about 60,000 during the summer months, from a low of about 15,000 in winter, when the weather is cold and sometimes snowy.