All events · The World Wars

The Great Famine of Mount Lebanon and Ottoman Syria

1915–1918 · Middle East & North Africa

Displacement

Displaced

200,000

Roughly a third of the population of Mount Lebanon emigrated during and immediately after the famine, principally to Egypt, the Americas and West Africa, and many more moved from the mountain to Beirut and the coastal towns in search of food. The figures rest on Ottoman and French Mandate administrative estimates, missionary and consular reporting and church records; there was no census.

Share of the population affected

48%

of the population of the Mutasarrifate of Mount Lebanon on the eve of the First World War, 1914

Killed

150,000–500,000

excess mortality incl. disease and starvation

Open on the interactive map →

What happened

From 1915 the population of Mount Lebanon and the Syrian interior faced the combined effect of the Allied blockade of the eastern Mediterranean, the Ottoman army's requisitioning of grain, pack animals and transport for the Sinai and Palestine fronts, a land blockade of the largely Maronite mountain imposed by Cemal Pasha, and a locust plague that destroyed the 1915 crops across Syria and Palestine. Prices rose beyond reach, relief was obstructed, and mortality was extreme: contemporary and later estimates put deaths in Mount Lebanon at 150,000-200,000, roughly a third of its population, giving the district what is often described as the highest per capita wartime mortality of any bounded territory in the First World War, with a further large toll in the Syrian interior. Another third of the population emigrated. The famine is a central event in modern Lebanese memory and contributed to the case for a separate Lebanese entity under the French Mandate.

Parties

The Allied naval blockade of the eastern Mediterranean, Ottoman requisitioning and a land blockade imposed by the Fourth Army commander Cemal Pasha, and a locust invasion in 1915, together destroyed the food supply of Mount Lebanon and Syria

Disputed

Responsibility is disputed between accounts emphasising the Allied blockade, accounts emphasising Ottoman requisitioning and Cemal Pasha's deliberate isolation of the mountain, and accounts emphasising the locusts and the collapse of the silk economy; the death toll rests on estimates rather than registration.

The denominator

Ottoman administrative counts for the autonomous Mutasarrifate give roughly 400,000-415,000 inhabitants around 1913-14. Estimates of famine deaths in Mount Lebanon run from 100,000 to 200,000, that is a quarter to a half of the population, the highest proportional loss of any territory in the war; for Ottoman Syria as a whole, deaths are put at roughly 500,000.

The 200,000 is a death toll rather than a displacement count, and it is the upper end of a range running from 100,000; against the wider Syrian population the share is much lower.

Where the baseline comes from

Great Famine of Mount Lebanon — Wikipediaopen-edited
Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate — Wikipediaopen-edited

On the death toll

Estimates for Mount Lebanon itself are 150,000-200,000 dead, about a third of the population, a figure repeated in Lebanese and international accounts and drawn from contemporary missionary, consular and church reporting rather than from registration. Wider estimates for Ottoman Syria as a whole, including Damascus, Aleppo and the interior, run to 300,000-500,000. Deaths were from starvation and the diseases that accompany it.

Documented forms of violence

Starvation and Siege

The blockade, the requisitioning of food and transport and the isolation of Mount Lebanon are documented in Ottoman, French, British and American consular and missionary reporting summarised in the cited accounts.

Movements mapped

Mount Lebanon villages -> Beirut and emigration overseas

Countries touched, on present-day borders

Lebanon

Sources

This entry rests only on reference, press or open-edited sources. Treat its figures as indicative and follow the links before relying on them.