Afqa

Ottoman tax records, which did not differentiate different Muslim groups from each other, indicate Afqa, or "Ifqi", had 20 Muslim households and six bachelors in 1523, 38 Muslim households and five bachelors in 1530, and 25 Muslim households and 15 bachelors in 1543. The Afaq archaeological sites were amongst 34 cultural heritage properties given enhanced protection by UNESCO to safeguard them during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2024. ==Physical description==

The waterfall at Afqa is the source for the River Adonis and is located on a bluff that forms an immense natural amphitheater. A great and ancient temple is located here, where the goddess Aphrodite was worshipped. Eusebius, the biographer of emperor Constantine I, wrote that the emperor ordered to demolish the Temple. Frazer attributes its construction to the legendary forebear of King Cinyras, who was said to have founded a sanctuary for Aphrodite (i.e. Astarte). it was partially rebuilt by the later fourth-century emperor, Julian the Apostate. Frazer describes the village at Afqa in his 1922 book, The Golden Bough as: "...the miserable village which still bears the name of Afqa at the head of the wild, romantic, wooded gorge of the Adonis. The hamlet stands among groves of noble walnut trees on the brink of the lyn. A little way off the river rushes from a cavern at the foot of a mighty amphitheater of towering cliffs to plunge in a series of cascades into the awful depths of the glen. The deeper it descends, the ranker and denser grows the vegetation, which, sprouting from the crannies and fissures of the rocks, spreads a green veil over the roaring or murmuring stream in the tremendous chasm below. There is something delicious, almost intoxicating, in the freshness of these tumbling waters, in the sweetness and purity of the mountain air, in the vivid green of the vegetation. ==Possible early sanctuary of El==

Marvin H. Pope identified the home of El in the Ugaritic texts of ca. 1200 BCE, described as "at the source[s] of the [two] rivers, amid the fountains of the [two] deeps", with this famous source of the river Adonis and Yammoune, an intermittent lake on the other side of the mountain, which Pope asserted was closely associated with it in legend. ==Mythology==

In classical Greek mythology, Afqa is associated with the cult of Aphrodite and Adonis. Lucian also describes practices by the Byblians of worship which some told him centered not on Adonis, but Osiris. W. F. Albright noted this survival of this "female saint" as the most remarkable among "very few direct reflections of paganism in the names and legends of modern welis." ==2006 Lebanon War==

During the 2006 Lebanon War, the Afqa bridge that connects Mount Lebanon with the Beqaa Valley was one of five bridges destroyed by Israeli jets. ==References==