Wadi al-Taym in the context of "Christianity and Druze"

The Hasbani (Arabic: الحاصباني / ALA-LC: al-Ḥāṣbānī; Hebrew: חצבני Ḥatzbaní) or Snir Stream (Hebrew: נחל שניר / Nahal Sənir), is the major tributary of the Jordan River that flows in Lebanon, the Golan Heights and Israel. In the mid-19th century, what the Westerners would call 'Upper Jordan River', the locals called Nahr Hasbani, Arabic for Hasbani River.

The Hasbani River derives most of its discharge from two springs in Lebanon, the Wazzani and the Haqzbieh, the latter being a group of springs on the uppermost Hasbani. The Hasbani runs for 25 mi (40 km) through the Wadi al-Taym in Lebanon before crossing the border at Ghajar and shortly after joining with the Banias and Dan Rivers at a point in northern Israel, to form the River Jordan. For about 4 km (2.5 mi) downstream of Ghajar, the Hasbani forms the border between Lebanon and the Golan Heights.

Jabal Amil (Arabic: جبل عامل, romanized: Jabal ʿĀmil; also spelled Jabal Amel and historically known as Jabal Amila) is a cultural and geographic region in Southern Lebanon largely associated with its long-established, predominantly Twelver Shia Muslim inhabitants. Its precise boundaries vary, but it is generally defined as the mostly highland region on either side of the Litani River, between the Mediterranean Sea in the west and the Wadi al-Taym, Beqaa and Hula valleys in the east.

The Shia community in Jabal Amil is thought to be one of the oldest in history. In the 10th century, several Yemeni tribes with Shi'ite inclinations, including the 'Amila tribe, had established themselves in the region. 'Amili oral tradition and later writings assert that a companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and an early supporter of Ali, Abu Dharr al-Ghifari (d. AD 651), introduced Shi'ism to the area. Although there is frequent occurrence of this account in many religious sources, it is largely dismissed in academia, and historical sources suggest Shia Islam largely developed in Jabal Amil between the mid-8th and 10th centuries (750–900). Twelver Shia tradition in southern Lebanon credits the Amila, as the progenitors of the community, by having sided with the faction of Ali in the mid-7th century.

The Shihab dynasty (alternatively spelled Chehab; Arabic: الشهابيون, ALA-LC: al-Shihābiyūn) is an Arab family whose members served as the paramount tax farmers and Emirs of Mount Lebanon from the early 18th to mid-19th century, during Ottoman rule (1517–1918). Before then, the family had been in control of the Wadi al-Taym region, purportedly as early as the 12th century. During early Ottoman rule, they maintained an alliance and marital ties with the Ma'n dynasty, the Chouf-based, paramount Druze emirs and tax farmers of Mount Lebanon. When the last Ma'nid emir died without male progeny in 1697, the chiefs of the Druze in Mount Lebanon appointed the Shihab emir, Bashir, whose mother belonged to the Ma'n, as his successor. Bashir was succeeded by another Shihab emir with a Ma'nid mother, Haydar, after his death.

Under Haydar, the Shihabs crushed their main rivals for paramountcy amongst the Druze at the Battle of Ain Dara in 1711, consolidating their dominance of Mount Lebanon through the mid-19th century. The family's most prominent emir, Bashir II, centralized control in the region, destroying the feudal power of the mostly Druze lords and cultivating the Maronite clergy as an alternative power base in their emirate. In 1831, he allied with Muhammad Ali of Egypt during his occupation of Syria, but was deposed in 1840 when the Egyptians were driven out by an Ottoman-European alliance, leading soon after to the dissolution of the Shihab emirate. Despite losing territorial control, the family remains influential in modern Lebanon, with some members having reached high political office.