Chamaa () is a village and municipality in the Tyre District of Lebanon's South Governorate, about 25 kilometres southeast of Tyre and some 99 kilometres south of Beirut.
It is especially known for its historical castle on a strategic hill overlooking the coastal plain of Tyre and Naqoura.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) Sector West headquarters, led by the contingent of the Italian army, are based on a neighbouring hill.
Name
According to E. H. Palmer, Kŭlảt Shemả, means the castle of Shemả; he suggested to link it with the Hebrew given name Shimeon.
While the transliteration of the Arabic word for castle of would more precisely be Qala'at, it has also been spelled Kalat.
Chamaa is also transliterated as Chama or Shama, and - more closely to the Arabic original pronunciation - Chama'a. It draws its name from a grave in a shrine on the main hill which is attributed by local tradition to Saint Peter, known in Arabic as Shamoun al-Safa (also transliterated Chamoun or Shimon al-Safa, from Simeon and Cephas (from the Aramaic Kepha, or rock/stone). According to this Shia belief, Saint Peter was also an ancestor to the 12th and last Shia Imam Mahdi. Hence, thousands of Shiite pilgrims visit the memorial every year.
History
Ancient Times
The preserved remains of a Roman-Byzantine village at the close by archaeological site of Ermet Tell seem to support the local tradition which states that the hill was used as a mausoleum in the first century CE. Evidently, the hill was inhabited during the Byzantine rule over the Levant (395–640), as is obvious from a mosaic which has been discovered on the top of the hill.
With regard to its strategic location near the Ladder of Tyre and vis-à-vis the often-besieged metropolis of Tyre it is quite conceivable though that the hill had already hosted settlements in Hellenistic, Achaemenid-Persian, Neo-Babylonian, Neo-Assyrian, Egyptian, Early Phoenician, or even Pre-Historic ages.
It is unclear what happened to the settlement in Chamaa after the area was conquered by the bearers of Islam in 640. During the half a millennium of early Muslim rule the area was first governed by the Rashidun ruler Muawiyah, followed by the Umayyad Caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Ismaili Shia Fatimid Caliphate, and the Seljuk Empire.
The exact date of the construction of the Shamoun al-Safa shrine is unknown, but its minaret was reportedly built in the late 11th century, shortly before the arrival of the crusaders.
Medieval Times
In 1116, during the aftermath of the First Crusade, a Frankish army constructed a fortress over the Byzantine site in order to block access to heavily fortified Tyre, which was the last city in the region held by Islamic rulers. It was eventually taken over by the Christian warriors in 1124, after a siege of almost six months had led to the negotiatied surrender of Tyre by the Seljuk military leader Toghtekin. The fortress of Chamaa, which was thus part of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, also became known as Scandelion Castle, named after the neighbouring coastal area of Iskandarounah which in turn was named after Alexander the Great.
It is unclear whether Chamaa Castle was - like many of Tyre's buildings - damaged in the 1202 Syria earthquake and whether it remained under the control of the Lordship of Tyre, when John of Montfort entered a treaty in 1270 with Mamluk Sultan Baibars and transferred souvereignity over some villages in the coastal plain to him. It is likewise unclear what happened to Chamaa Castle after the Crusaders surrendered Tyre in 1291 to the Mamluk Sultanate's army of Al-Ashraf Khalil, who had all fortifications of the city demolished to prevent the Franks from re-entrenching. Like Tyre, Chamaa was subsequently governed from Acre and thus became part of Palestine, but also "sank into obsurity."
Ottoman Times
Although the Ottoman Empire conquered the Levant in 1516, Jabal Amel (modern-day South Lebanon) remained mostly untouched until the end of the 16th century. In the 1596 tax-records it was named as a village, Sam'a, in the Ottoman nahiya (subdistrict) of Tibnin under Liwa of Safad, with a population of 21 households, all Muslim. The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 25% on agricultural products, such as wheat, barley, fruit trees, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 1,920 akçe.