page_title: Kfarsghab
section_title: The modern Kfarsghab foundation
hierarchical_section_title: Kfarsghab / History / Under the Ottomans / The modern Kfarsghab foundation
caption_attribution_description: Entrance inscription of Mar Awtel Church, Kfarsghab, 1782
context_page_description: Kfarsghab is a village located in the Zgharta District in the North Governorate of Lebanon. It is situated in the Valley of Qadisha, which is considered a holy and spiritual place in Eastern Christianity The main religion of its residents is Maronite Catholicism.
  Kfarsghab is composed of two geographically separated settlements: Kfarsghab, a high mountain village, and Morh Kfarsghab, a plain village, respectively inhabited in summers and in winters. It is a typical organization of pastoral and agricultural Mediterranean communities where seasonal fixed transhumance is still practised.
  The Lebanese hailing from Kfarsghab number 20,000 worldwide. 95% of them live outside Lebanon, mainly in Australia and the United States.
context_section_description: By the middle of the 18th century, the newly settled families started challenging the Hamadeh's rule and succeeded, along with other families in the region, around 1760 in ousting them out of the region. The family of Abou Youssef Elias was appointed Sheikhs of Kfarsghab and of three other villages by the Ottoman authorities, a charge that the members of this family assumed for the next 100 years. 
  Under the energetic rule of this family, Kfarsghab witnessed an important prosperity and demographic development driven by silkworm rearing and land acquisition. It was in the middle of the 18th century that the people of Kfarsghab acquired and developed the lower land that will become their winter dwellings, Morh Kfarsghab. In 1849, the number of male adults totaled 374, a thirty-time increase compared to the 17th century figures.
caption: The inscription on the main entrance of Mar Awtel church commemorating the extension of 1776
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