Beirut River

The Beirut River (Arabic: نهر بيروت, Nahr Bayrūt) is a river in Lebanon separating the city of Beirut from its eastern suburbs, primarily Bourj Hammoud and Sin el Fil. The river flows mostly east to west from snow drains and springs on the western slopes of Mount Kneisseh and the southern end of Mount Sannine near the towns of Hammana and Falougha, before curving north and emptying at Beirut's northern Mediterranean coast, east of the Port of Beirut. According to popular legend, St. George slew the dragon in a spot near the mouth of the river.

During the Stone Age, the land on which Beirut is now built was two islands in the delta of the Beirut River, but over the centuries the river silted up and the two islands were connected into one land mass. The right bank of the Beirut River, southwest of the mountain resort town of Beit Mery at an altitude of approximately 125 metres (410 ft) above sea level, is an archaeological site, "Beit Mery I", discovered by Jesuit Father Dillenseger who determined it to be an Acheulean site; the archaeological finds from the site were donated to the French Faculty of Medicine at Saint Joseph University.

In antiquity, the river was known as Magoras and was the site of the worship of the god of Heliopolis. The Romans built an aqueduct, which had a 240-meter bridge crossing the river, to supply Beirut (Berytus) with water. In the 1880s the aqueduct at Mansourieh was named after Queen Zenobia.

It is believed that Fakhreddine, Lebanon's Renaissance prince, built or repaired a bridge of seven arches on the river that was a streamlet in summer but swelled into a raging torrent in winter.

In the Industrial Age, the banks of the river, which had been marshy lands that flooded each winter season, especially in Bourj Hammoud, became home to warehouses and shipping services due to the close proximity of the river to the port. By the mid-1800s, Beirut had expanded to within 10 kilometers of the river, which continued to supply the city with water via the Roman aqueduct.

According to environmentalists, the 20-kilometer valley of the Beirut River, especially the upper valley, is one of the most important areas for bird migration in Lebanon, including birds of 33 different species, such as the European honey buzzard, common buzzard (Buteo buteo), Levant sparrowhawk (Accipiter brevipes), white stork, white pelican, European nightjar (Caprimulgus europaeus), European bee-eater (Merops apiaster), barn swallow (Hirundo rustica) and the lesser spotted eagle.

The river valley stretches across several municipalities that do not formally protect it from hunting, fire, urban development, deforestation, water pollution and overgrazing. Once the river reaches the city limits of the Greater Beirut metropolitan area, it becomes heavily polluted, with the major source of pollution being industrial waste from various factories along the bank as well as sewage and refuse from the slaughterhouse in Karantina. In 2004, Cedar Environmental built a composter, aiming to prevent the slaughterhouse from directly dumping waste into the Beirut River.

The river was transformed from a riparian river to a concrete canal within the Beirut conurbation in 1968. In 1970, extensive work was done along the river bank to protect the eastern suburb of Bourj Hammoud from floods. In 1974, ETEC Consulting Engineers were hired to design a flood control system that included a channel 32 meters wide with a capacity of 800 m³/s.