a. The Arab Conquest
In 628, the Muslim troops invaded the region. From the Byzantine defeat up till the battle of "Yarmouk" in 636, the cities of the Lebanese coast fell into the hands of the Arabs. The mountain, that was not invaded by the Muslim army, had, in spite of the resistance of its inhabitants, to give in before the authority of the new masters of the region, especially when the project of a reconquest with the help of the Mardaits failed.

Henceforth, till the XVIIth century, the country does not constitute anymore a political entity for the same reason as the actual countries of the Middle East.

b. The Omeyyads and Abbassids
The Omeyyads regime was tolerant with the Christian inhabitants of the country, but when the Abbassids took hold of the Muslim power in 750, a Christian mutiny burst in the Mountain. It was suppressed with savagery, inhabitants were deported, and ownership seized, This repression incited the protestation of "Imam al Aouza'ï" known for the tolerance of his Sunni school.

After the Arab conquest, the country became rural, the flourishing coastal towns became simple villages. The geography of the population changed in the Lebanon: Arabs, Persians, Jews, and other non-identified populations. The religious minorities Maronites, Shiites, then Druzes (in the following century, XI century) made of the Lebanon a home and refuge for their community presence, opposite to the central authority and the religious Orthodoxy.


c. The Muslim States: Toulanids, Ikchidits, and Fatimids
The decline of the Abbassids' authority entailed the parceling of the Muslim authority. Thus, the Toulonids and the Ikchidits governed the Lebanon in the IXth and Xth centuries respectively; the Fatimids followed between 969 and 1171.

Under the Fatimids' reign Byzantine expeditions were undertaken against Northern Syria and the Lebanese coast. The Byzantine massacred the Maronites of the Oronte Plains and destroyed the famous monastery of St. Maron.

During the Fatimid era, the Druze sect was proclaimed. The Druze settled at the center of the Lebanese Mountain and near the Hermon.

d. The Crusaders and Mamelouks
At the end of the eleventh century, the Crusaders took hold of the East. In 1090, in 1109, and in 1110, Jerusalem, Tripoli, Beirut and Sidon fell into the hands of the Francs. The Francs ruled the Lebanon for two centuries. In 1289 Tripoli, and 1291, the other Lebanese cities and regions went under the Mamelouks authority,who governed the region for two centuries and a half (from the end of the XIII century to 1516).

The Lebanese, Christian and Shiite, became the object of several repressive military expeditions, in the end of the XIIIth century and the beginning of the XIVth century. The Mamelouks attacked the Mountain, especially the Kesrouan and Metn; they destroyed the villages and pulled down the Kesrouan.

After a century of military administration, the country gained back its commercial activities; Beirut's harbor flourished again and became the meeting point of several commercial nations of the Mediterranean.