Biqa' |
This again led to mass-defections of Palestinians from the movement (Harris quotes the Syrian-aligned Amal Movement as complaining that the Syrian-backed Palestinian forces sent to attack the PLO were "Abu Musa in the Biqa'" but "become Abu nothing in the Shuf and Abu Ammar on arrival in Beirut"), and reportedly its ranks were filled with non-Palestinian Syrian army recruits.
The Biqa Valley is watered by two rivers that rise in the watershed near Baalbek: the Orontes flowing north (in Arabic it is called Nahr al Asi, "the Rebel River", because this direction is unusual), and the Litani flowing south into the hill region of the southern Biqa Valley, where it makes an abrupt turn to the west in southern Lebanon and is thereafter called the Al Qasmiyah River.
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Geologically, the Biqa is the medial part of a depression that extends north to the western bend of the Orontes River in Syria and south to Jordan through Al Arabah to Al Aqabah, the eastern arm of the Red Sea.
In 1623, Mustafa Pasha, the new governor of Damascus, engaged him in battle, and was decisively defeated at Anjar in the Biqa Valley.