$BTC Although Lebanon, particularly its coastal region, has been the site of some of the oldest human settlements in the world - the Phoenician ports of Tyre (modern Ṣūr), Sidon (Ṣaydā), and Byblos (Jubayl) were dominant centers of trade and culture in the 3rd millennium BCE - it was not until 1920 that the contemporary state was born. That year, France, which administered Lebanon