The origin of the name is the object of a controversy between the historians. Certain the facts to date back to Zohal: the star worshipped by the Roman ones as the God of fertility. To assert that, they base on the discovery of ruins, of Roman changes and underground galleries in the city and its surroundings.

Of others the facts to date back to Zahal: an Aramean term that means to flow itself, to collapse, slip of his location. This explanation coincides with the geological structure of the city, in particular place Tall Chiha next to the former sérail, where produce themselves, each year, slidings of a certain extent.

The Aramean one reigned on the region (of 800 years before J.C. to 650 years after J.C.) and this was the language of the Lord Jesus. It is probable that the city took his name at the time of the expansion of the Christianity to Lebanon, to the fourth century of the Christian era, to the era where blossom the syriaque.
Of other historians put back the name of Zahlan: Arabic king eponym having probably lived in Zahle, at the time of the occupation of the Békaa by the Arabs to the seventh century of the Christian era.

Some support this opinion while asserting that Tallat Chiha is the place where the Emir Rizk, one of the princes of Bani Hilal, burned his girl Chiha believing that she had betrayed it. The knoll always preserves the name and shelters the hospital of Zahlé, the one of the more important ones of Lebanon.

It springs of all these hypotheses that Zahle a very old city, to the passed glorious, although she lived in the shadow to certain eras.

Zahle Climate

The approaches of the city are composed usually of an earth limestone white, propice to the fruit trees, in particular the olive tree, the pommier and the cherry.
She has the inconvenience to be not very productive because of his steep slope.

As for the boulders, they are not very numerous, sedimentary and prompt to crumble, doubtless, the reason the old houses of Zahle were built to the assistance of an earth torchis dried, and kept this aspect until the end last century, to the era where the emigration Zahliote began towards the west. The capitals of the emigrants then flowed, and the buildings in rock began pushing, alongside the houses in torchis, with their roofs of tiles. Zahle knew then an architectural essort of which Lebanon offers only rare examples.

The climate of Zahle is dry, his air is pure and his sky limpid. His summer is hot but the abundance of waters tempers the heat and increases the charm of his climate and the splendor of his valley, transformed by the Zahliotes in small paradise. One finds on the two shores of Berdawni of coffees, places of leisure's and hotels frequented by the health amateurs and of rests of the different Arabic countries.

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