As soon as the Lebanese state approved the reconstruction plan in November 2024, voices and recommendations arose regarding the regional and infrastructure priorities that this reconstruction should encompass. The destruction caused by the Israeli war on Lebanon affected many areas and claimed the lives of thousands of people. While the Lebanese are still living with the effects of loss, displacement, and forced migration, we raise one of the most important recommendations: the issue of social recovery, as an urgent necessity no less important than material reform.
The issue of community recovery from the effects of war is of paramount importance, as it puts its finger on the wound and suffering of the southerners. While material reform facilitates their return to their homes, towns, fields, and crops, community recovery remains an urgent necessity for the stability of their society and to propel it towards establishing cultural and institutional capital in various fields.
Because the culture of any people reflects its civilization and dynamism, it is appropriate in the aforementioned context for us to put forward recommendations to support and revitalize cultural life in Jabal Amel, due to its profound effectiveness in societal recovery from the effects of war.
It is no wonder that those interested in peace issues give high importance to the role of culture, and all that is connected to it in terms of visual, auditory and kinetic arts, as a safe means of addressing peoples after war.
The call to support and promote cultural life in Jabal Amel seems urgent, to resume what was once an active cultural life. This mountain has always been a stage for thinkers, writers, poets, and researchers well-versed in matters of science, and the private libraries in a number of Shiite religious houses were a haven for many, including the libraries of the Al-Amin, Daher, Taqi, Sadiq, Al-Sabbah, Al-Safa, and others.
In his book “Issues Concerning the Conditions of Southern Lebanon – Jabal Amel”, historian Munther Jaber argues that the intellectual movement in Jabal Amel during the period between (1920-1943) was characterized by “a remarkable abundance of production, and a vast proportion of this production remains hidden in the vaults of private homes and family libraries, or folded in public libraries in Iraq, Iran and India.”
Production was concentrated in the fields of Islamic jurisprudence, historical writing, and literary activity. Part of the cultural activity in Jabal Amel was also represented in periodicals and magazines, including “Al-Irfan,” which Jaber describes as being “a window for the people of Amel to various Arab cultural pens and trends.” It published topics in literature, novels, and thought, so that the pens of Taha Hussein, Abbas Mahmoud Al-Aqqad, Muhammad Hassan Al-Zayyat, Mahmoud Taymour, Ismail Mazhar, Mustafa Sadiq Al-Rafi’i, and Mustafa Lutfi Al-Manfaluti became “centers of local Amel culture,” which led to placing “Al-Irfan” on the “map of Arab culture” at that time.
Between the 1940s and 1960s, most private libraries were transformed into public libraries, and a number of them organized various cultural and intellectual seminars. What is remarkable is that most villages and towns during that period, despite suffering from a severe shortage of most vital facilities—electricity, water, roads, schools, and hospitals—were not devoid of cultural and artistic activities in particular, organized by clubs in the towns, especially in public schools, at the end of each academic year, where dabke groups competed against each other, while voices rose in poetry and song, and plays were performed, in celebrations attended by parents and students.
Southerners also loved zajal (a form of oral poetry), and they would attend the concerts of Zein Shuaib and Zaghloul al-Damour wherever they were held. Each of them would carry their recorder so as not to miss any of the verses. Thus, the arts were an integral part of the lives of southerners, easing their burdens from the droughts of the seasons, the toil of the fields, and the anticipation of the tobacco harvest.
In the 1960s, the intellectual climate in Jabal Amel was influenced by nationalist and Marxist currents, which offered transformative programs for the Lebanese political system and supported Palestinian organizations at the time. Following the 1967 defeat, a commitment to national causes grew, leading to shifts in societal culture. Calls for liberation from the vestiges of feudalism and the adoption of revolutionary thought, rebelling against all that was traditional, intensified. Amidst this transformation, southern Lebanon was subjected to daily Israeli bombardment.
The 1980s marked a turning point in the history of Jabal Amel, dividing two distinct cultural eras. The decline of leftist parties and the rise of religious and political ideologies represented a revolution in the cultural landscape, with activities now aligned with religious and political orientations, serving their ideas in schools, libraries, clubs, public facilities, and social institutions.
Religious culture profoundly influenced all aspects of life in Jabal Amel, manifesting itself in the public sphere through appearance, behavior, dress, and consumption. Conversely, any activity that deviated from religious ideology was subject to suppression and prohibition. Thus, artistic, musical, and theatrical activities in Jabal Amel dwindled for a considerable period, and most of what remained was homogenous in style and direction.
On the other hand, neither war nor displacement nor the weakness of cultural activity represented a destiny. What prevailed in most of the southern towns did not include all the Jabal Amel people. On the other side of the geography, the Jabal Amel elites spread in Beirut remained in their old state of diversity and multiplicity in ideas and activities. Writers, artists, theater people, musicians and thinkers whose origins are from Jabal Amel contributed to the Lebanese cultural and artistic movement in large proportions, and strongly in various fields of science, art and thought in Lebanon and the Arab world.
The reconstruction file opens a new horizon, which must be accompanied by a much-needed cultural renaissance in Jabal Amel, promising steps on the path to psychological and social recovery from the brutal effects left by the Israeli war.
The people of this mountain have never ceased to create beginnings, which we see today manifested in the diverse cultural, artistic and intellectual activities organized by cultural clubs, some old and some newly established through individual initiatives. These clubs attract young people who love learning, reading and the arts of all kinds, and they host writers, poets and novelists periodically and discuss their works. Among them, we mention, for example: “Diwan Al-Adab” and “The Cultural Council of South Lebanon” and “The Book Salon” and “The Cinema Club” in Nabatieh, “Ansar Readers Club” in the town of Ansar, in Tyre “Tyre Cultural Forum” and “Forum of Thought and Literature”, and the “Music Brings Us Together” club, which is concerned with musical activities, in addition to the “Center for Reading and Cultural Activation” in Tyre as well, which is one of the cultural facilities that welcomes visitors who wish to read and research. In addition to the “Tyro Arts” association, which is constantly establishing theaters in various Lebanese cities, the latest of which was the conversion of the Coliseum Cinema on Hamra Street in Beirut into a popular theater.
In the town of Kafr Rumman, which lives under the shadow of daily shelling, artist Hussein Shukrun carved out a space in his garden and realized his long-awaited project to be an “open-air theater,” which he dedicated to various people wishing to express their talents, in addition to many clubs, associations and libraries that are too numerous to mention here.
The establishment of clubs and libraries in southern towns, villages, and cities has had a positive impact on the mood of southerners emerging from a brutal war, and the creation of more seems to have become contagious. This reflects the important role that cultural activities play in the community’s recovery in these towns and villages.
Thus, the importance of supporting cultural life in Jabal Amel in the reconstruction process appears to be a necessity to proceed with establishing a collective cultural memory that may resume and establish a new cultural history for Jabal Amel, in which the state is present in the details of the lives of the southerners, after its people suffered what they suffered from the ravages of wars, and today they deserve to regain their old role in culture and arts, which they began to establish a long time ago.