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.

The Lebanese coast was mainly inhabited by Phoenician Canaanites throughout the Bronze and Iron ages, who built the cities of Tyre, Sidon, Byblos and Tripoli, which was founded as a center of a confederation between Aradians, Sidonians, and Tyrians.

These Itureans inhabited the hills above Tyre in Southern Lebanon, historically known as Jabal Amel, since at least the times of Alexander the Great, who fought them after they blocked his army's access to wood supply.

[13] On the other hand, Jabal Amel was inhabited by Banu Amilah, its namesake, who have particular importance for the Lebanese Shia for adopting and nurturing Shi'ism in the southern population.

By the time of the Islamic conquest, Jabal Amel was an ethno-linguistic hybrid which included the tribes of Amilah and Judham as well as Hamdan émigrés,[16][17] and non-Arab communities.

[18] According to Irfan Shahîd, the pre-Islamic tribes of Amilah and Judham were part of the Nabataean foederati of the Romans, whose presence in the region dates back to Biblical times.

[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.

[18] Tripoli was ruled by Banu Ammar from 1079, who invested large sums in turning the city into a famous center for learning, founding a "House of Knowledge" that attracted scholars as well as a notable library of 100,000 volumes.

During this period, a stream of scholars shifted to Jabal Amel from Aleppo due to Mamluk takeover as the area provided refuge from Sunni rigor.

[35] 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.

[35] 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.

[51][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.

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

[54] 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.

[56] 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,[57] and is responsible for many architectural feats in the city of Isfahan.

[61][44] 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.

[60] 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.

[44] 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.

[61] 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.

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.

[76] 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,[77][78][79] and are mainly represented by the Arab Democratic Party.

[81] 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.

[83] 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.