also spelled Botme · elevation ~930 m
Botmeh is in the Chouf District of Mount Lebanon, about 52 km from Beirut, about a 55-minute drive. Its closest Chouf neighbours are Moukhtara (~0.7 km), Ain Wzein (~0.8 km) and Ain Qani (~1.4 km).
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Botmeh is a Chouf-area settlement in Mount Lebanon.
In Syriac the word means the terebinth tree (a prehistoric relative of the pistachio), so the name may be Arabic or Syriac. Arabic Wikipedia ties the name to the many terebinth trees in the village. The town has an ancient carved entrance with natural fossils of animals and plants, and an aged oak known as the 'Umm Sharatit oak' on which visitors have hung cloth strips after fulfilling vows — a direct, unbroken survival of pre-monotheistic Canaanite nature worship.
Botmeh’s Greek Catholic parish church of Saints Peter and Paul, long established and of some antiquity, was damaged along with the rest of the village houses during the conflict of the last quarter of the twentieth century, and was formally reconsecrated after rebuilding.
3 Sheikhs al-Aql
In the 17th and 18th centuries the village gave the Druze community three Sheikhs al-Aql, the community's spiritual heads: Sheikh Abu Safi al-Din Mahmoud, Sheikh Sharaf al-Din Ali al-Hariri and Sheikh Sharaf al-Din Hassan al-Odaimi (Azimi).
Source: An-Nahar
575 pages
Khaled Zein Eddine's “Batmeh fi Ouyouni” (Botmeh in My Eyes), published by Dar al-Taqaddumiya, gives the village 17 chapters and 34 documents, from its geography and history to its faith, economy, schools and politics. He drew on historians, travellers' accounts, his own memory, and papers from the Ottoman, Russian and French archives. Zein Eddine studied history at the Lebanese University, taught and ran schools, spent a quarter of a century in journalism and headed Botmeh's municipality for six years.
Source: An-Nahar
4 waves of settlement
Like the rest of the Upper Chouf, Botmeh saw waves of newcomers in Byzantine, Roman, Crusader and Arab times. Every Botmeh family, whether it still lives in the village or has moved away, traces its roots to the Arab migration.
Source: An-Nahar
Schooling in Botmeh began under an oak tree, then moved into rented rooms in neighbouring houses. When Khaled Zein Eddine was asked to reopen the school in the 1980s, he had to gather its teaching equipment from neighbouring schools.
Source: An-Nahar
9 trades gone
Botmeh once had its muleteer, bonesetter, tooth puller, cobbler and farrier, a tinsmith who coated copper pots, a pack-saddle maker, a mattress and quilt maker, and a chair-caner. The Arabic word for farrier, bitar, is also the name of one of the village's families.
Source: An-Nahar
10 village crafts
Households made bulgur, kishk and grape molasses (dibs), worked straw and silk, sewed and embroidered, burned charcoal, and made brooms and shoes. Most of these village crafts are gone or on their way out.
Source: An-Nahar
5 kinds of folk poetry
The village's folk poetry includes the nadb (a lament), the hida (a travelling chant), the hawrabeh (a rallying chant), the zalghouta (verses sung with ululation) and zajal.
Source: An-Nahar
2005 named by UNESCO
Botmeh is on the reserve's own list of its villages. UNESCO declared the Shouf Biosphere Reserve in July 2005. It covers about 50,000 hectares, around 5% of Lebanon, and takes in the Al-Shouf Cedar Nature Reserve, the Ammiq wetland in the Beqaa, and 25 villages on both sides of the Barouk and Niha mountains. Botmeh is not one of the nine villages whose communal lands formed the cedar reserve in 1996.
Sources: Shouf Biosphere Reserve: villages · Shouf Biosphere Reserve: status
16 km about five hours on foot
The Sustainable Forest Management Trail starts in Batloun, passes through Barouk-Freidis and Maaser El Chouf, and ends in Botmeh. It is about 16 km long, with slopes of up to 30%, and takes around five hours. Along the way are Haret El Tahta Bridge, a lime kiln, the Dalboun forest, a charcoal kiln, El-Mat-haneh Bridge, the El-Waqf water mill, Malqa El-Sawaqi Bridge, the Hyena Grotto and the Fornaya oak.
Unconfirmed A hiker's route from Maaser El Chouf through Batloun, Botmeh, Moukhtara, Ain Qani and Amatour to Mazraat El Chouf is said to follow an old aqueduct near Botmeh, and the Batloun–Botmeh loop is described as rich in springs and water channels. The route pages could not be opened to check this. Wikiloc route · Wikiloc trails near Botmeh
Source: Lebanon Traveler
12 towns in the union
Botmeh has its own municipality, on the Interior Ministry's list, and belongs to the Federation of Chouf El Aala (Upper Chouf) Municipalities. The federation was founded on 7 August 2002 by decree 8323 and is based in Moukhtara. Its other members:
Sources: MedCities · Italian Wikipedia
Botmeh sits at the foot of Mount Barouk, beside Moukhtara, the seat of the Jumblatt family. Through its modern history the village has had the Jumblatt leadership's backing, as a neighbour and out of loyalty, especially under Kamal Jumblatt and Walid Jumblatt. Zein Eddine describes its people as generous, well-meaning, honest and good at living together; Druze, Greek Catholic and Maronite families share the village.
Source: An-Nahar
Destination Shouf, the Shouf's tourism board, lists Botmeh for its old stone houses, its old church and an old grape press, its pine woods, geological caves, fossils of animals and plants, old springs, and the old Umm Sharatit oak.
Unconfirmed Guides name the old oak Umm Sharatit or the Fornaya oak, and one reading of them takes these for two different trees. Local tradition holds they are the same tree.
Source: Destination Shouf
Ethos is a cottage resort in Botmeh that calls itself “a place where time stands still”, with pools, barbecue and bonfire areas, hiking trails and a venue for events such as weddings. Forêt Naya is an eco-friendly campsite about 53 km from Beirut, with 15 bungalows licensed by the Ministry of Tourism. It describes itself as set among cedar trees and offers night walks to hear owls, frogs and other night creatures under the stars.
Unconfirmed The name Forêt Naya sounds like Fornaya, the oak forest site in Botmeh. No source says the campsite is named after it or sits there.
Sources: Lebanon Tourism Guide: Ethos · Lebanon Tourism Guide: Forêt Naya · Destination Shouf: Forêt Naya
930–1,200 m published heights
Published figures differ. Elevation data at the village's map point gives about 930 m, Arabic Wikipedia 950 m, Zein Eddine's book about 1,000 m and Destination Shouf about 1,200 m; the village spreads over a hill between two valleys. Distances from Beirut run from 50 km (Arabic Wikipedia) and 52 km (by road on OpenStreetMap) to 55 km (Zein Eddine and Destination Shouf). Mufarrij's encyclopedia gives the area as 550 hectares; Arabic Wikipedia, which cites no source, gives 200.
Sources: Arabic Wikipedia · An-Nahar · Destination Shouf · Mufarrij's encyclopedia
registered population ~1,001 · area ~550 ha
أبو غانم، بو غانم، غانم، أبو نصر الدين، نصر الدين، البيطار، الحريري، الحلبي، زين الدين، عضيمي، عظيمي، عطالله، وهبة، أبو الهنا، الحداد، ربعمد، عطيّة، رزق، عازار
Fornaya is a scenic, forested nature site in Botmeh built around a massive ancient oak — the same tree locally venerated as 'Oum Al-Charatit' (Umm Sharatit). After a fulfilled vow or answered prayer, visitors tie strips of colored cloth (charatit) to its branches, a practice that is a direct, unbroken linguistic and cultural survival of pre-monotheistic Canaanite nature worship; while neighboring towns converted their sacred groves into formal churches or shrines, Botmeh's oak remained an organic, open-air temple that bypasses conventional religious labels. The site sits within surrounding pine forest and historical ruins, and the oak itself is a familiar shaded resting stop on the Batloun–Maasser El-Chouf hiking trails of the Chouf Biosphere Reserve. Pottery recovered from the surrounding ancient-village ruins has been dated to the Roman period and the Middle Ages. The site serves as a community gathering place for Botmeh residents — including evening bonfires — and has been developed to host a local guest house for ecotourists visiting the area. Local legend also holds that Fornaya was once an old buried town, with stories that a great deal of gold was found in the area.
Sitting at a transitional altitude of roughly 1,200 meters on a limestone–bedrock interface, Botmeh is one of the few Chouf micro-regions where heavy-canopy mountain pine forest and warmer, lower-altitude orchards coexist within walking distance. The interaction of limestone, deep slopes, and mineral-rich spring water gives the terraced groves a distinctive yield prized by local farmers — pristine stone fruits, dense olives, and jarank (green sour plums that snap cleanly because of the high mineral content of the local water and bedrock).
On Botmeh's outskirts, gray limestone outcrops and old dry-stone walls hold crisp natural fossils of prehistoric marine animals and plants — remnants of when the entire Mount Lebanon range lay beneath the sea. The town's name itself derives from the Syriac word for the terebinth tree (a prehistoric relative of the pistachio), and hand-carved stone entrances around the village still bear visible marine impressions in their building blocks.
Tucked along Botmeh's old agricultural pathways are manual grape and olive presses carved directly into the living bedrock, long overtaken by wild vines. The surrounding jagged geography also conceals small, unsurveyed caves and sinkholes that served as natural cold-storage rooms for local families and as tactical hideouts during the feudal conflicts of the 17th-century Mount Lebanon Emirate.
Botmeh sits on a single hill that drops away into two separate valleys on opposite sides, opening long views in both directions. The valley on the Maasser El-Chouf side is known locally as Wadi el-Mal — the 'Valley of Money.'
Botmeh is something of a quiet, little-known summer escape for people seeking rest in nature. Its slopes carry pine, olive and grapevine, with wild thyme and aromatic herbs growing across the ground.
In bird-hunting season Botmeh is a sought-after spot. Hunters arrive very early, ahead of others, because the good positions fill up fast and latecomers often find no place left.
Botmeh sits on a through-road rather than at a dead end — one of the roads passing through the village continues toward Bekfaya. The village has a fuel station and three minimarkets serving both residents and passing traffic.
~52 km from Beirut · ~55 min drive
The town of Botmeh is in the Chouf district of Mount Lebanon, Lebanon, at around 930 m elevation.
Botmeh is about 52 km from Beirut, roughly a 55-minute drive.
In Syriac the word means the terebinth tree (a prehistoric relative of the pistachio), so the name may be Arabic or Syriac. Arabic Wikipedia ties the name to the many terebinth trees in the village. The town has an ancient carved entrance with natural fossils of animals and plants, and an aged oak known as the 'Umm Sharatit oak' on which visitors have hung cloth strips after fulfilling vows — a direct, unbroken survival of pre-monotheistic Canaanite nature worship.
Families associated with Botmeh include: أبو غانم, بو غانم, غانم, أبو نصر الدين, نصر الدين, البيطار, الحريري, الحلبي, زين الدين, عضيمي, عظيمي, عطالله, وهبة, أبو الهنا, الحداد, ربعمد, عطيّة, رزق, عازار.
Notable people connected to Botmeh include Father Naqoula Abou El-Hana, Said Al-Bitar, Sheikh Sharaf El-Din Azimi, Sheikh Abu Safi al-Din Mahmoud, Sheikh Sharaf al-Din Ali al-Hariri, Khaled Zein Eddine, Hsein Bitar.
Landmarks in Botmeh include Fornaya, Spring-fed micro-climate terraces, Fossil-bearing limestone outcrops, Rock-cut presses and refuge caves, Hilltop between two valleys (Wadi el-Mal), Pine-and-olive summer retreat, Bird-hunting season spot, Through-road, fuel station and minimarkets.
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