Souk El Gharb
Rihbany was born in Shweir, Mount Lebanon, a part of Ottoman Syria that is now in modern-day Lebanon. At 9 years old he was apprenticed to a stone-cutter, but at the age of 17 he managed to attend the American Presbyterian School in Souk El Gharb, catching up on his secondary education in two years of study and briefly becoming a teacher himself. It was here that he became a Presbyterian, in spite of his family's long adherence to the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch.