1. General Remarks

Beirut has a population of 1,500,000 people. The country's oldest urban communities are the Sunnis and Greek-Orthodox. Successive waves of migration brought Maronites, Shiʿis, Druzes, Greek-Catholic, Syriacs, as well as Syrians, Palestinians, Kurds, Armenians, and others. Colloquial Arabic is the means of communication, par excellence. To varying degrees, the population is bilingual: French or English is taught at the primary school level. It is mostly among the upper…