Jabal Amel

Jabal Amel or Amil (Arabic: جبل عامل‎ jabal ʿāmil) is a mountainous region of Southern Lebanon.

The region is named after the Banu 'Amilah, a Yemenite tribe who, along with the kindred tribes of Hamadan, Lakhm, and Judham, settled in Syria, Palestine, parts of Jordan, and Lebanon. The area was known in ancient times as Jabal 'Amilah, and later as Jabal 'Amil (Jabal Amel). A legendary story has it that the tribe of Banu 'Amilah migrated from Yemen to the Levant in pre-Islamic times because of a flood caused by the destruction of the Ma'arib Dam.

Jabal 'Amel is synonymous with the northern part of Galilee (Arabic: al-Jalil) and historically has been used to denote the homeland of Shi'a Muslims in Southern Lebanon. It also includes the Shi'a Muslim communities between Sidon and Beirut such as Joun, Wardanieh, Rmaileh, Sibleen, Qmatieh, and Kaifun. Furthermore, places in the western Bekaa valley such as Yohmor, Sohmor, Maidoun, Zillaya, Libbaya, Mazraat Dallafeh, Ain al-Tineh, Qillaya, and Mashghara are also usually included under the designation "Jabal Amel." The reason for this overlap is the fact that the historic region of Jabal 'Amel does not exactly correspond to the current region of Southern Lebanon, in administrative terms.