The Chouf district of Mount Lebanon is one of the country's most religiously mixed regions — a mountain and coastal district shared by Druze, Christian, and Sunni Muslim communities across more than ninety towns and villages. This guide describes who lives where, without leaning on population counts that go stale the moment they are published.
Lebanon has not published an official, up-to-date national census in decades, and no reliable current count exists for most Chouf towns individually. The honest way to describe the district's population is the way it has held true for generations: by community and by where each one concentrates, not by a number that would be outdated before this page's next update. Three communities anchor the Chouf — Druze, Christian, and Sunni Muslim — spread across a mountain interior and a coastal strip, with several towns home to more than one community living side by side.
The Chouf is widely regarded as the historic heartland of Lebanon's Druze community, anchored in the villages of Jabal el-Chouf. Moukhtara is the seat of the Jumblatt family and is regarded as the district's de facto political capital, while Baaqline, the first capital of the Maan emirate, is one of the largest and most prominent Druze towns in the district. Villages such as Baadaran, Kfarhim, Kfarnabrakh, Ain Wzein, Ain Qani, Jbaa, Batloun, and Semqaniyeh carry the same Druze character, and the pattern continues higher into the upper Chouf toward Ain Zhalta and Maaser el-Chouf, near the Barouk cedar forest. In many of these towns, Druze families share the town with long-settled Christian families rather than the community standing alone.
The Chouf's Christian population is mostly Maronite, with smaller Greek Catholic and Greek Orthodox communities concentrated in specific towns. Deir el-Qamar, once the capital of the Emirate of Mount Lebanon, is remembered as a Christian enclave inside a mainly Druze area, and its old town still holds a historic mosque next to Maronite, Greek Catholic, and Greek Orthodox churches — one of the clearest single-town records of Lebanon's religious mix. On the coast, Damour is a Maronite-majority town that was displaced and largely destroyed during the civil war and rebuilt after the Taif Agreement. Greek Catholic communities cluster further north around Deir el-Mokhalles and Bireh, and Maronite villages run through much of the mountain and the edges of Iqlim el-Kharroub, in towns such as Btal, Bkifa, Naameh, and Kfarniss.
South of Jabal el-Chouf and along its coastal edge lies Iqlim el-Kharroub, the sub-region where the Chouf's Sunni Muslim community concentrates. Barja and Chhim are counted among the sub-region's larger towns, joined by Baasir, Daraya, Dalhoun, Sibline, and Aanout further inland and Ketermaya close to the coastal road. On the coast itself, Jiyeh carries a mixed Maronite and Sunni Muslim population, and several nearby villages follow the same mixed pattern rather than belonging to a single community.
Beyond the three main communities, a handful of Chouf towns carry smaller minority pockets instead of one dominant sect. Joun, on the district's southern edge, is home to both a Christian and a Shia Muslim community — a reminder that the Chouf's religious map does not stop cleanly at Druze–Christian–Sunni lines. Many small hamlets across the district likewise mix two communities in a single small population, which is why a town-by-town view, not a district-wide average, is the only accurate way to describe who lives where.
Settlement in the Chouf follows its terrain in three loose bands. Along the coastal highway, at close to sea level, sit the district's gateway towns — Jiyeh, Damour, Rmaileh, and Naameh — the first Chouf towns a traveller reaches heading south from Beirut, several carrying Phoenician and Roman-era remains. A couple of hundred metres higher, the hill towns of Iqlim el-Kharroub — Chhim, Barja, Ketermaya, and Sibline among them — sit mostly within the district's Sunni-concentrated sub-region. Higher still, in Jabal el-Chouf proper, the mountain towns climb from around 800 m at Deir el-Qamar and Beiteddine toward 1,000 m and beyond at Baaqline and Barouk, near the cedar reserve — this upper band is where the Druze community is most concentrated, with Christian towns and mixed villages woven through it.
No official, up-to-date population count is published for the Chouf as a whole or for most of its towns individually, so any specific figure in circulation should be treated with caution. What can be described reliably is composition and concentration: the district is shared by Druze, Christian, and Sunni Muslim communities, distributed across a mountain interior and a coastal strip.
No. The Chouf is widely known as a historic heartland of Lebanon’s Druze community, but it is religiously mixed. Christian communities — mainly Maronite, with Greek Catholic and Greek Orthodox pockets — and a Sunni Muslim community concentrated in Iqlim el-Kharroub live in the district alongside the Druze towns of Jabal el-Chouf, and several towns are shared by more than one community.
Mainly in the mountain interior known as Jabal el-Chouf, anchored around Moukhtara and Baaqline and extending through villages such as Baadaran, Kfarhim, Jbaa, Batloun, Ain Wzein, and Ain Qani, up toward Ain Zhalta and Maaser el-Chouf near the Barouk cedar forest.
Christian communities are spread across both the mountain and the coast. Deir el-Qamar and several nearby mountain towns hold long-established Christian populations alongside Druze neighbours, while Maronite-majority towns such as Damour and Naameh anchor the coastal strip, and Greek Catholic communities concentrate further north around Deir el-Mokhalles and Bireh.
Mostly in Iqlim el-Kharroub, the coastal sub-region south of Jabal el-Chouf, in towns such as Barja, Chhim, Baasir, Daraya, Sibline, and Ketermaya, with mixed Maronite–Sunni towns like Jiyeh along the coast itself.
The coastal strip sits at low elevation along the highway south of Beirut and includes gateway towns like Jiyeh and Damour with Phoenician and Roman-era history. Moving inland and uphill, the Iqlim el-Kharroub hill towns give way to the higher mountain villages of Jabal el-Chouf, where the district’s Druze towns are most concentrated and elevation climbs toward the Barouk cedar reserve.
Baaqline is regularly counted among the district’s largest and most prominent towns, alongside Moukhtara, its de facto political capital. In Iqlim el-Kharroub, Barja and Chhim are counted among the sub-region’s larger towns. Precise rankings shift with each new count, so this guide sticks to what holds steady over time rather than a number likely to be outdated by the time you read it.