so it's really our pride." Maronite Christians are the dominant religious group in the area.
VOA: standard.2010.08.05
Al-Khiyam itself has a population of 15, 000 inhabitants, the large majority of them Shia Muslims, although there are also some Orthodox and MaroniteChristians.
Mr Hirst, the dean of foreign correspondents in Beirut after five decades in residence, begins his tale with Lebanon's creation in the wake of the first world war, as a French gift to the MaroniteChristians of the coastal Levant who had long seen Paris and the Vatican as their saviours.