population                       Caza - Zgharta

                                                                         Zgharta - Zawie Online Magazine

Demographic Study

There is no data available about the number of inhabitants in districts, towns or villages in Lebanon but we can give the number of people officially registered as Lebanese citizens originated from that town or this village. These figures include residents in Lebanon and those who are abroad as emigrants. So the number of registered persons is in no way a reference to the number of today residents. For exemple a village can count 900 registered citizens but 200 are residents today because of rural migration or emigration, the opposite also can happen in some areas (mainly in towns) where residents today outnumber the originary registered ones.

The number of registered persons,according to official records, in the district of Zgharta-Zawieh was 25418 in 1921, 65473 in 1964, 80841 in 1988 and became 89594 persons in 1998.

Here is a table showing demographic variations in one decade (years 1988 and 1998)

Emigration

Lebanese emigration began officially by the middle of the nineteenth century. It was said that between 1910 and 1914 one quarter of Mount Lebanon population had left Lebanon to work and live mostly in the Americas. The magazine “Orient Letters” reported that the estimated number of the Lebanese emigrants in 1914 was 250000 people.

The first official cencus was done in 1921 and revealed the following numbers along with the 1925 cencus:

The number of Lebanese emigrants was much greater than the one reported in 1921, because many persons and even many families have fled their homeland long before that.

Statistics say that between the years 1920 and 1930, 50% of the emigrants headed toward South America, 15% toward Africa, 10% went to Egypt, 10% to North America and 15% to different countries mainly Australia and Europe.

The Caza of Zgharta Zawieh has known through the last 125 years a large emigration movement. The early emigrants went to the Americas (1880 and on) then came the migration to western and southern Africa, Australia and finally the Arab Countries.

Of the 89594 people registered as originary of the Caza of Zgharta Zawieh, nearly 32000 of them live or work abroad (outside Lebanon).

Of the 32000 people registered in the official Lebanese citizens records and living abroad, some 9548 persons did not report any newborn or marriage since they left Lebanon, their names are still present as Lebanese citizens although many of them have passed away many years ago. THEY ARE THE EARLY EMIGRANTS. We have lists of these early emigrants according to their village origins available in this site. The lists are in Arabic and soon we will make them available in other languages due to the difficulty of writing the family names as they are known now by their families abroad.

Here we are mainly concerned by those people, originated from Zgharta – Zawieh, who thought that their lives had to be built away from their homeland. They are part of the first waves of emigration (1880 – 1931). Their names are still on the official records but we haven’t heard from them since they went away. May be they forgot Lebanon, they forgot the Caza of Zgharta-Zawieh, they forgot their villages and mountains. May be they thought it is better to cut off with whatever past they have. But we, we still remember them and we hope to make contact with their families and descendants.

There are lists of those early emigrants, born after 1898, you can review. Once you open a page related to a town or a village in the district of Zgharta Zawieh you can have access to the list of early emigrants of that town or village. For the town of Zgharta, access to those lists is available through the page named "emigration"