French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon that local leaders had could easily be overruled by French officials. The French did everything in their power to prevent people in the Levant from developing self-sufficient governing bodies. In 1930, France extended their constitution on to Syria. On August 3, 1920, 299 of the "Haut-commissariat de la République française en Syrie et au Liban" linked the cazas of Hasbaya, Rachaya, Maallaka and Baalbeck to what was then known as the Autonomous Territory of Lebanon. Then on 31 August 1920, General Gouraud signed Arrêté 318 delimiting the State of Greater Lebanon, with explanatory notes stating that Lebanon would be treated
History of Lebanon of the population to migrate to Carthage, which remained a powerful nation until the Second Punic War. After two centuries of Persian rule, the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great, during his war against Persia, attacked and burned Tyre, the most prominent Phoenician city. He conquered what is now Lebanon and other nearby regions in 332 BCE. After Alexander's death the region was absorbed into the Seleucid Empire and became known as Coele-Syria. Christianity was introduced to the coastal plain of Lebanon from neighboring Galilee, already in the 1st century. The region, as with the rest of Syria and much of