This article is about the demographic features of the population of Lebanon, including population density, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
The Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch, or Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East, is an Oriental Orthodox Church with autocephalous patriarchate established by Severus of Antioch in Antioch in 518, tracing its founding to Antioch by Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the 1st century as described in the Acts of the Apostles, and according to its tradition. It was then restructured by Severus of Antioch in Antioch in 518. The Church uses the Divine Liturgy of Saint James, associated with St. James, the "brother" of Jesus and patriarch among the Jewish Christians at Jerusalem. Syriac is the official and liturgical language of the Church based on Syriac Christianity. The primate of the church is the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch currently H.H. Ignatius Aphrem II since 2014, seated in Cathedral of Saint George, Bab Tuma, Damascus, Syria.
Arab Christians are Arabs of the Christian faith. Many are descended from ancient Arab Christian clans that did not convert to Islam, such as the Kahlani Qahtanite tribes of Yemen who settled in Transjordan and Syria, as well as Arabized Christians, such as Melkites and Antiochian Greek Christians. Arab Christians, forming Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic communities, are estimated to be 520,000–703,000 in Syria, 221,000 in Jordan, 134,130 in Israel and around 50,000 in Palestine. There is also a sizable Arab Christian Orthodox community in Lebanon and marginal communities in Iraq, Turkey and Egypt. Emigrants from Arab Christian communities make up a significant proportion of the Middle Eastern diaspora, with sizable population concentrations across the Americas, most notably in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, and the US.
Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, or simply Chaldean, is a Northeastern Neo-Aramaic language spoken throughout a large region stretching from the plain of Urmia, in northwestern Iran, to the Nineveh plains, in northern Iraq, together with parts of southeastern Turkey.
The Lebanese people are the people inhabiting or originating from Lebanon. The term may also include those who had inhabited Mount Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountains prior to the creation of the modern Lebanese state. The religious groups among the Lebanese people are Shias (27%), Sunnis (27%), Maronites (21%), Greek Orthodox (8%), Melkites (5%), Druze (5.6%), Protestants (1%). There is a large diaspora in North America, South America, Europe, Australia and Africa.
The Iraqi people are the citizens of the modern country of Iraq.
Christians in Syria make up about 10% of the population. The country's largest Christian denomination is the Eastern Orthodox Church of Antioch, closely followed by the Melkite Catholic Church, one of the Eastern Catholic Churches, which has a common root with the Eastern Orthodox Church of Antioch, and then by an Oriental Orthodoxy churches like Syriac Orthodox Church and Armenian Apostolic Church. There are also a minority of Protestants and members of the Assyrian Church of the East and Chaldean Catholic Church. The city of Aleppo is believed to have the largest number of Christians in Syria. In the late Ottoman rule, a large percentage of Syrian Christians emigrated from Syria, especially after the bloody chain of events that targeted Christians in particular in 1840, the 1860 massacre, and the Assyrian genocide. According to historian Philip Hitti, approximately 900,000 Syrians arrived in the United States between 1899 and 1919. The Syrians referred include historical Syria or the Levant encompassing Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine.
Syrians, also known as the Syrian people, are the majority inhabitants of Syria, who share a common Levantine Semitic ancestry. The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Syrian people is a blend of both indigenous elements and the foreign cultures that have come to rule the land and its people over the course of thousands of years.
Syria is a multi-ethnic country, made up of several ethnic groups.
Saint Mary Church of the Holy Belt is a historical Syriac Orthodox Church in Homs, Syria. The church is built over an underground church dating back to 50 AD. It is the seat of the Syriac Orthodox archbishopric. The church contains a venerated Holy Girdle that is supposed to be a section of the belt of Mary, mother of Jesus. The church was damaged during confrontations between the armed opposition and the security forces in the 2011–2012 Syrian unrest.
Syriac Christians are an ethnoreligious grouping of various ethnic communities of indigenous pre-Arab Semitic and often Neo-Aramaic-speaking Christian people of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. Syriac Christians advocate different terms for ethnic self-designation. Syriac Christians from the Middle East are theologically and culturally closely related to, but should not be confused with the Saint Thomas Christians from India, whose ties to Syriac Christians were a result of trade links and migration by Assyrian Christians from Mesopotamia and the Middle East mostly around the 9th century.
The Arab League is a social, cultural and economic grouping of 22 Arab states in the Arabic speaking world. As of 2016, the combined population of all the Arab states was around 407-420 million people.
Christianity, which originated in the Middle East in the 1st century AD, is a significant minority religion of the region. Christianity in the Middle East is characterized by the diversity of its beliefs and traditions, compared to other parts of the Old World. Christians now make up approximately 5% of the Middle Eastern population, down from 20–30% in the early 20th century. Cyprus is the only Christian majority country in the Middle East, with Christians forming between 76% and 78% of the population, most of them adhering to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Lebanon has the second highest proportion of Christians in the Middle East, ranging between 39% and 41% and predominantly consisting of Maronite Christians. Egypt has the next largest proportion of Christians, at 10–15% of its population.
Eastern Aramaic languages have developed from the varieties of Aramaic that developed in and around Mesopotamia, as opposed to western varieties of the Levant. Most speakers are ethnic Assyrians, although there are a minority of Jews and Mandeans who also speak varieties of Eastern Aramaic.
Religion in Syria refers to the range of religions practiced by the citizens of Syria. Historically, the region has been a mosaic of diverse faiths with a range of different sects within each of these religious communities. The majority of Syrians are Muslims, of which the Sunnis are the most numerous, followed by the Shia groups, and Druzes. In addition, there is several Christian minorities. There is also a small Jewish community.
Semaan is a Christian surname mainly found in the Levant area of the Middle East. It is derived from the Semitic root word/verb sema or shema, which means “to hear”; thus, the meaning of Semaan becomes “the one who hears or listens” in both Syriac Aramaic and Arabic. Its equivalent in Hebrew is שִׁמְעוֹן, which also has the same meaning. The Greek transliteration is Σιμων (Simon) or Συμεών (Symeon), and, when Latinized, it becomes Simon or Simeon.
Arameans in Israel are persons residing in Israel who identify as Arameans, a Northwest Semitic people who originated in what is now western, southern and central Syria region during the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age.
Syriac Orthodox Christians, known simply as Syriacs (Suryoye), are an Assyrian ethno-religious subgroup who follow the West Syrian Rite Syriac Orthodox Church in the Middle East and the diaspora, numbering between 150,000 and 200,000 people in their indigenous area of habitation in Syria, Iraq, and Turkey according to estimations.
