American University of Beirut in the context of "Doctor of Medicine"

The Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate (1861–1918, Arabic: مُتَصَرِّفِيَّة جَبَل لُبْنَان, romanized: Mutaṣarrifiyyat Jabal Lubnān; Ottoman Turkish: جَبَلِ لُبْنَان مُتَصَرِّفلِيغى, romanized: Cebel-i Lübnan Mutasarrıflığı) was one of the Ottoman Empire's subdivisions following the 19th-century Tanzimat reform. After 1861, there existed an autonomous Mount Lebanon with a Christian Mutasarrif (governor), which had been created as a homeland for the Maronites under European diplomatic pressure following the 1860 Druze–Maronite conflict. The Maronite Catholics and the Druze founded modern Lebanon in the early eighteenth century, through the ruling and social system known as the "Maronite-Druze dualism" in Mount Lebanon.

This system came during the era of Tanzimat reforms initiated by Sultan Abdulmejid I in an attempt to extricate the Ottoman State from its internal problems, and it was approved after the major sectarian strife of 1860 and the numerous massacres that occurred in Mount Lebanon, Damascus, the Beqaa Valley and Jabal Amil among Muslims and Christians in general, and the Druze and Maronites in particular; European powers utilized sectarian tensions to pressure the Sultan in a way that achieved their economic and ideological interests in the Arab East. The Mutasarrifate era is characterized by the spread of national consciousness, science and culture among the Lebanese, for many reasons, including: the spread of schools in numerous villages, towns and cities, and the opening of two large universities that are still among the oldest and most prestigious universities in the Middle East: the Syrian Evangelical College, which became the American University of Beirut, and Saint Joseph University.

Shoghí Effendi (/ˈʃoʊɡiː ɛˈfɛndi/; Persian: شوقی افندی; 1896 or 1897 – 4 November 1957) was Guardian of the Baháʼí Faith from 1922 until his death in 1957. As the grandson and successor of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, he was charged with guiding the development of the Baháʼí Faith, including the creation of its global administrative structure and the prosecution of a series of teaching plans that oversaw the expansion of the religion to a number of new countries. As the authorized interpreter of the Baháʼí Writings his translations of the primary written works of the Faith's central figures, provided unity of understanding about essential teachings of the Faith and safeguarded its followers from division. Upon his death in 1957, leadership passed to the Hands of the Cause, and in 1963 the Baháʼís of the world elected the Universal House of Justice, an institution which had been described and planned by Baháʼu’llah.

Shoghi Effendi, an Afnán, was born Shoghí Rabbání in ʻAkká (Acre) where he spent his early life, but later went on to study in Haifa and Beirut, gaining an arts degree from the Syrian Protestant College in 1918 and then serving as ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's secretary and translator. In 1920, he attended Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied political science and economics, but before completing his studies news reached him of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's death, requiring him to return to Haifa. Shortly after his return at the end of December 1921 he learned that in his Will and Testament ʻAbdu'l-Bahá' had named him as the Guardian of the Baháʼí Faith. Shoghi Effendi's clear vision for the Baháʼí Faith's progress was inherited from ʻAbdu'l-Bahá and based on the original writings of Baháʼu’llah, two particularly important aspects of his leadership focused on building its administration and spreading the faith worldwide.

George Habash (1 August 1926 – 26 January 2008) was a Palestinian politician and physician who was the founder and first general-secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) from 1967 to 2000.

Habash was born in Lydda, Mandatory Palestine, in 1926. In 1948, while he was a medical student at the American University of Beirut, he returned to his hometown of Lydda during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The city's Arab Palestinian population, including his family, was forcibly driven out in an event known as the Lydda Death March, which led to the death of his sister. In 1951, after graduating first in his class from medical school, Habash worked in Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan and ran a clinic in Amman. He later relocated to Syria and Lebanon.