摘要: Description　　Anfeh is on the coast of Northern Lebanon and is located 15 km south of Tripoli and 71 km north of Beirut. The town is extended to the west by a 400 meter promontory called Ras al-Qalaat,

Description

　　Anfeh is on the coast of Northern Lebanon and is located 15 km south of Tripoli and 71 km north of Beirut. The town is extended to the west by a 400 meter promontory called Ras al-Qalaat, oriented on an east–west axis, to the North by Ras Al Natour promontory in Hraishi which is home to salt and olive fields and to the South by Ras el-Mlelih promontory home to the most ancient salt marshes which are natural cavities enlarged by humans throughout the centuries. The ponds also provide a productive resting and feeding ground for many species of water birds, which include endangered species.

　　Anfeh’s geological information is quite unique for the Quaternary and Holocene times; it records the marine pulses over a segment of the growing mountainous land at the meeting point between land and sea. Moreover, Anfeh’s coastline preserves caves, vermetid platforms and sea grass. Twenty seven marine habitats have been identified on the littoral fringe, granting it ecological diversity. Indeed, the site is home to 650 species of sea and littoral plants and 950 species of marine animals ranging from fish, marine mammals, crustaceans, reptiles to name but a few.

　　Throughout the centuries, the main socio-economic practices of the maritime communities of Anfeh were intertwined with angling and commercial fishing and salt extraction, along with agrarian practices such as wine production since the Byzantine era (5th. A.D.) which were replaced by olive oil production under the Ottoman rule. One of the waning maritime social practices is salt production. Indeed, salt was traditionally considered as the “white gold” of Anfeh and used to be a major source of financial income for the local community. Today, however, the coastline of Lebanon is exceedingly devoured by mass tourism and its unsustainable encroachment on the maritime domain.Touristic resorts are privatizing the access to the sea and increasing the environmental destruction and the cultural impoverishment of the coast.

　　Hence, it is crucial to safeguard one of the few remaining sites which combines both natural and cultural heritage (tangible and intangible) in one site: Anfeh and its natural extension, Hraishi. Therefore, following the relentless efforts and eagerness to promote, value and develop sustainability, on September 22, 2017, the municipal council of Anfeh signed the HIMA accord with the SPNL (Association for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon). "Hima" in Arabic means "protected place" according to a traditional indigenous system of management and conservation of biodiversity and natural and cultural resources.  This accord will help the implementation of mitigation schemes for the conservation of both Nature and Culture and their integration into ecotourism projects for a positive impact on a low-income area with a rich and diverse heritage. Hence, recognizing the fundamental role of cultural heritage and landscape for sustainable local development and highlighting the opportunity of adapting Heritage to the present needs of society and symbolizing the triumph of the human spirit and of democracy over oppression and enslavement to the unsustainable consumerism model.

　　Site 1: "Ras al Mleliḥ" promontory is a 10,000m2 coastal area located at the southern extremity of the town of Anfeh; it stands for “Cape of Salinas” and carries the most ancient salt ponds of Anfeh. They consisted originally of natural rock cavities used as salt pans possibly since the Phoenician period. Since the 14th century, the locals used to expand those cavities by digging, here and there, carving small channels, which are still visible in the rock, to bring sea water to the salt pans. Sometimes, a small canal was dug between two salt pans, thus creating communicating saltmarshes. The task of filling these channels using wooden buckets was carried out by women and children. During the Ottoman rule, authorities had banned the local production of the salt, but that didn’t stop villagers from filling out their jars with sea waters after making sure no one had seen them, and then walking home along the river, as if they were carrying fresh water.  In the 1940s, pumping sea water is facilitated through the introduction of wind mills made out of a rudimentary four-part wooden wheel, run manually and positioned according to prevailing winds. Fast enough though, they were replaced by mills made out of six or eight metal shutters. It is an inexpensive, simple and ecological production technique which has become, to this day, an integral part of the organically evolving salt-landscape of Anfeh.

　　Site 2: Ras al-Qalaat promontory is 400 meters long and 120 meters wide (33 000 m2), oriented on an east-west axis and Standing about 14 m above sea level, the site has visible Greco-Roman and Medieval remains everywhere. Basins, vaults, presses, tanks, and quarry pipes all hewn into the bedrock as well as remains of mosaic pavements. The still visible vestiges attest to continuous human activity at Anfeh and are protected by salt marshes, now abandoned, which used to be highly productive during the XXth. century. 

　　Archaeological investigations have identified four major occupation levels underneath the salt pans dating back to the Chalcolithic Period which is evidenced by two funerary jars uncovered in situ at the western end of the promontory. This predates the conventional Late Bronze Age occupation phase of Anfeh which was previously known from the 14th century BC Tell El Amarna letters. In these letters, Anfeh is traditionally identified with Ampi and is mentioned six times. In his correspondence with the Pharaoh, the king of Byblos Rib-Addi, who was a faithful subject of the Amarna court, mentions the fleet of Ampi, telling the Egyptian monarch that the enemy ships of Arwad have reached the city and are “stationed” in its waters. 

　　The third occupation level of the site goes back to the Late Byzantine period where a strong religious presence is represented by a cluster of religious spaces in the town of Anfeh and on the promontory of Ras al-Qalaat, where new evidence of wine presses dating back to the Byzantine era have been unveiled.

　　The fourth chronological evidence dates back to the Crusaders’ period, when Anfeh was known under the name of Nephin and later during the Mameluke period as Anafah. It was a well-fortified village famous for its wines also traditionally known as “the Citadel”. That was confirmed by recent excavations conducted on Ras al-Qalaat. These have uncovered parts of the medieval fortress’ pavement, among other structures. The peninsular fortress was cut off from the rest of the village by two moats. The German traveler Burchard of Mount Sion described the citadel after his visit to the region in 1283 AD as: “equipped with twelve towers with its feet in the water”.  Several ramps which are still intact today provide access to the water directly, facilitating transportation of wine jars maybe to a nearby harbor or anchorage.

　　Ras al-Qalaat  illustrates evidently how the exceptional natural feature of a narrow promontory was transformed across millennia, dug out, carved out, sculpted in order to host a variety of evolving functions: for habitation, burials, trade, wine and olive oil production, religious purpose or military defense.

　　Site 3: Deir al-Natour promontory is an area of 1,000,000m2 of the largest salt marshes, which are producing a high quality of “fleur de sel”. An ethnographic campaign conducted around the traditional practices of salt production has identified 11 salt producers who are still active today. Nevertheless, all of the inhabitants reported hoping to jumpstart their salt production, if a market was secured.

　　The remaining abandoned salt marches present a desolate scene, but luckily, they have preserved the archaeological layers underneath and they have turned into a safe haven for migrating birds. All these saltmarshes, which constitute the largest concentration of salt pads in the country and possibly in the Middle-East, cluster around a historical monastery called the Deir al-Natour Monastery, which literally means “the Monastery of the Watchman”, built by the Crusaders on Byzantine ruins, before being enlarged and renovated in the Ottoman era. It is surrounded by a unique natural landscape composed of limestone terraces and eroded boulders colonized by vivid halophyte plants, bushes, weeds and mosses, including fields of myrtle (Myrtus Ugni), a nearly extinct plant on the Lebanese coast. The monastery is a major pilgrimage site that confers to the site a strong spiritual dimension, which is in turn dependent on the pristine, natural and productive environment that fosters it.

　　Thus, the cohabitation of the historical building and the cultural landscape/seascape and coastscape form a unique and remarkable environment which needs to be classified along with the intangible ancestral know-how of salt harvest. This collusion of natural, cultural, religious and intangible heritage was recognized by several official urban planning documents and ministerial assessments which all identify the Ras el-Natour Peninsula as a place to preserve and a potential natural reserve, including: the Masterplan for the Development of Lebanese Territory, the Masterplan of North Lebanon’s Coastline and the Lebanon Marine Protected Area Strategy Report.