Great Famine of Mount Lebanon

Great Famine of Mount Lebanon مجاعة جبل لبنان
Starving man and children in Mount Lebanon
Country	Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, Ottoman Empire, modern day Lebanon
Location	Mount Lebanon
Period	1915–1918
Total deaths	Est. 200,000
Impact on demographics	population of 400,000 declined by 50%

The Great Famine of Mount Lebanon (1915–1918) was a period of mass starvation during World War I. The famine was caused by a convergence of political and environmental factors that lead to the death of half of the population of Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, a semi-autonomous subdivision of the Ottoman Empire and the precursor of modern day Lebanon.

The Mutasarrifate of Mount Lebanon was created in 1861 as a semi-autonomous subdivision of the Ottoman Empire following the 1860 Lebanon conflict that affronted the Maronite Christians and the Druze of the mountain. Mount Lebanon's economy relied heavily on sericulture; raw silk was processed in looms and finished goods were destined for the European market.

Ottoman alignment with the Central Powers during World War I caused the Entente Powers to block international trade routes in an effort to stop the supplies to the Ottomans. The blockade damaged Mount Lebanon's silk trade, a backbone of the economy. Growing crops was already a challenge in the mountainous range and the inhabitants heavily relied on food imports from the adjacent Bekaa Valley and Syria. To counter the Allied blockade, the Ottomans adopted a severe policy of acquisition by which all foodstuffs were prioritized for the Ottoman soldiers engaged in the war. The Allies' blockade was made worse by another introduced by Jamal Pasha, the commander of the Fourth Army of the Ottoman Empire in Syria region, where crops were barred from entering from the neighboring Syrian hinterland to Mount Lebanon, and by the arrival of a swarm of locusts to the region in 1915 that, for three continuous months, devoured the remaining crops. The crisis further exacerbated a black market run by well-connected usurers.