Chehour

Chehoûr, Shuhur, or Shhur (Arabic: شحور), is a small town on the Litani River in the Tyre District of Southern Lebanon's South Governorate, some 95 kilometres to the south-west of Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon.^[1]

Chehour شحور
Town
Nickname:  Dar El Ezz (Arabic:دار العز)
Chehour
Coordinates: 33°18′N 35°22′E
Grid position	115/151 L
Country	Lebanon
Governorate	South Governorate
District	Tyre
Area
• Total	7.8 km2 (3.0 sq mi)
Elevation	320 m (1,050 ft)
Population  (7000)
• Total	1,375
• Density	180/km2 (460/sq mi)
Time zone	+2
• Summer (DST)	+3
Website	shohour.org (in Arabic)

Name

E. H. Palmer wrote that the name Shuhûr meant "mud walls", or "conspicuous part".^[2]

History

Ottoman rule (1516-1918)

In 1596, it was named as a village, Ishur, in the Ottoman nahiya (subdistrict) of Tibnin under the liwa' (district) of Safad, with a population of 48 households, all Muslim. The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 25% on agricultural products, such as wheat, barley, olive trees, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues and a press for olive oil or grape syrup, and a water mill; a total of 3,067 akçe.^[3][4]

In 1710, Sayed Salih ibn Muhammad ibn Sharaf al-Din was born in Chehour. He went on to found a dynasty of Shiite scholars, who would play a key-role in the development of Jabal Amel (modern-day Southern Lebanon) up to today. However, Sayed Salih was persecuted during the campaigns of the Ottoman governor of Sidon, Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar, who had the Shiite population decimated in brutal purges. One of Sayed Salih's sons was murdered and he himself imprisoned for nine years.^[5]

In the first half of the 19th century the Shiite notable Mahmoud Mazyad built a mill on the bank of the Litani River:

In 1881, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described it as: "A large village with some good houses, containing about 600 Metawileh; it is situated on a hill, and has a well and cisterns in it. There are figs and olives around."^[6]

French Mandate colonial rule (1920–1943)

Soon after the French colonial rulers proclaimed the new State of Greater Lebanon under the guardianship of the League of Nations represented by France on the first of September 1920, French soldiers razed the village residence of Tyre's Imam Abd al-Husayn Sharaf al-Din al-Musawi in Chehour^[5] by setting fire to it.^[7]

Educational establishment

The table below provides a comparison of public and private schools locally and nationally. It can be used to assess the distribution of students between public and private institutions both locally and nationally. All data provided on education concerning the 2005–2006 school year. Since the publication of more recent figures we will strive to published online.

Educational establishments	Chehour (2005–2006)	Lebanon (2005–2006)
Number of Schools	2	2788
Public School	2	1763
Private School	Not available	1025
Students schooled in the public schools	Not available	439905
Students schooled in the private schools	Not available	471409

References

1. "Chehour". Localiban. 23 October 2015. Archived from the original on 2019-11-05. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
2. Palmer, 1881, p. 32
3. Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 180
4. Note that Rhode, 1979, p. 6 Archived 2019-04-20 at the Wayback Machine writes that the register that Hütteroth and Abdulfattah studied was not from 1595/6, but from 1548/9
5. Halawi, Majed (1992). A Lebanon Defied - Musa Al-sadr And The Shi'a Community. Boulder - San Francisco - Oxford: Westview Press. pp. 122–125. ISBN 978-0813383187.
6. Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP I, p. 94
7. Ajami, Fouad (1986). The Vanished Imam: Musa al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon. London: I.B.Tauris. pp. 42–45, 85–86. ISBN 9781850430254.

People from Chehour

• al-Sayyid Yusuf Sharaf al-Din, father of Abd al-Husayn Sharaf al-Din al-Musawi

Bibliography

• Conder, C.R.; Kitchener, H.H. (1881). The Survey of Western Palestine: Memoirs of the Topography, Orography, Hydrography, and Archaeology. Vol. 1. London: Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund.
• Hütteroth, W.-D.; Abdulfattah, K. (1977). Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century. Erlanger Geographische Arbeiten, Sonderband 5. Erlangen, Germany: Vorstand der Fränkischen Geographischen Gesellschaft. ISBN 3-920405-41-2.
• Palmer, E.H. (1881). The Survey of Western Palestine: Arabic and English Name Lists Collected During the Survey by Lieutenants Conder and Kitchener, R. E. Transliterated and Explained by E.H. Palmer. Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund.
• Rhode, H. (1979). Administration and Population of the Sancak of Safed in the Sixteenth Century. Columbia University. Archived from the original on 2019-04-20. Retrieved 2017-12-04.

External links

• Survey of Western Palestine, Map 2: IAA, Wikimedia commons
• Chehour Archived 2014-10-31 at the Wayback Machine Localliban: Centre de resource sur le developpement local
• https://web.archive.org/web/20100619010329/http://shohour.org/ (in Arabic)