Yanouh

Yanouh is a town in Mount Lebanon, Lebanon. Located 1200m above sea level.

Yanouh stands on the slopes of Joubbat El Mnaitra, five miles east of Kartaba, on the right bank high up in the ravine carved out by the Adonis River, now known as Nahr Ibrahim. Yanouh, once a Phoenician center, is half-way between Byblos (Jbeil) and Heliopolis (Baalbek). Its Phoenician temple is a monument to the same religion as that of Aphaca, but was subsequently dedicated to Diana, Roman goddess of the hunt and daughter of the god Jupiter.

In 750 A.D., at the time of the fourth Maronite patriarch, John Maroun II, then installed in Yanouh, it was transformed into a church consecrated to Saint Georges "the Blue". Between 750 and 1277, twenty-three successors of St. John Maroun resided there, during which time they built the cathedral Sancta Maria of Anoch. The period named after Saint Maria of Anoch was that of the Crusades, by which time the number of its inhabitants had risen to 3,500, while the churches numbered more than thirty-five.