Brummana

Brummana is a town in the Matn District of the Mount Lebanon Governorate in Lebanon. It is located east of Beirut, overlooking the capital and the Mediterranean.OverviewAs most of the villages, Brummana has an Aramaic name which most probably means "house of Rammana, the God of Air, Storm and Thunder". In the location where Brummana was built it was thought that the god "Raymond" in Aramaic, or "Ramano" in Assyrian, lived there, which gave the name "Beit Roumana" (or House of Roumana), and it is known that the letter B at the beginning of the name of villages refers to "beit" in Arabic, meaning "house" in English. ClimateSummer is usually dry in Brummana; it begins in early May and ends in mid-October. Summer temperature rarely exceeds 30 deg C, with a lower limit of around 20°C (68°F). Its relative humidity in summer runs at 68%. Winter is wet and mild with temperatures ranging between 5 and 18 deg C, with the occasional snowfall.DemographicsBrummana is home to various religious groups, although Christians, mostly Greek Orthodox make up 49%, and Maronite Catholic make up 41% of the population, with Druze making a substantial minority. The town is also the summer home of Arab tourists from the Persian Gulf area, mostly from Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. There is a very old Greek Orthodox church in Brummana, the Church of the Prophet Cha'ya (Isaiah). It was originally a fort of Byzantine origin around 1,500 years old, but was turned into a church in the 7th century. Eighty years ago, when Maronites fled from the north and settled in Brummana, the church had to be divided. It is now half Greek Orthodox and half Catholic.