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# French Mandate of Greater Lebanon 1920-1943 (Lebanon)

## Grand-Liban

Last modified: 2026-05-09 by ian macdonald
Keywords: lebanon | greater lebanon | grand-liban | historical | cedar | tree |
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image by N.J. and Eugene Ipavec, 11 May 2007

- Description
- Variants
- Presidential sash

See also:

- History of Syrian flags up to 1932
- Lebanon

Other sites:

- The Lebanese Flag and its Evolution Throughout History at the Lebanese Parliamentary Elections 2000 website

## Description

The French organized Syria into five states under the Mandate. One of them was the French Mandate of Greater Lebanon 1920-1932 (May 1920). Its flag was the French flag with a cedar centered on the white stripe. In June 1922 France established a loose federation between the four Syrian puppet states and Lebanon was considered a separate entity thereafter. Sources and Credits.
Grand Larousse Encyclopedique du XXe Siecle (1929) shows the version with green cedar.
Ivan Sache, 15 Jan 1999

The Constitution of Lebanon promulgated on 23rd May 1926 said, "Article 5: The Lebanese flag is blue, white, red with a cedar in the white part".
Pascal Vagnat, 22 Apr 1999

According to [Nehmé 1995, "Lebanese flag during the French Mandate: It was similar to the Blue, White and Red French Flag with a green Cedar in the middle, and was designed by the president of the Lebanese Nahda (renaissance) Movement, the late Naoum Mukarzel."
Santiago Dotor, 26 Sep 2000

## Variants

image by N.J. and Eugene Ipavec, 11 May 2007 | image by N.J. and Eugene Ipavec, 11 May 2007 |  |

A fully black cedar was used on the French tricolour.
Željko Heimer, 12 Aug 1996

This variant appears in a flag chart in a 1941-odd edition of Embarque garçons – Livret scout-marin, Les scouts de France, Editions La Hutte, Paris, 1937.
Joan-Francés Blanc

[Flaggenbuch 1939 shows a new variant, with green "foliage" and brown "trunk" (as often but erroneously shown for the current Lebanese flag).
Ivan Sache, 15 Jan 1999

According to a photo taken in the Mandate era, all three variations are incorrect. The tree had another look and was mainly black.
Jaume Ollé, 17 Jan 1999

The design of the green cedar at the hoist of this Kataeb Party flag might be what Jaume refers to.
António Martins-Tuválkin, 11 May 1999

## Presidential sash

image located by William Garrison, 19 April 2026

An image at https://orenkessler.substack.com/p/israel-and-lebanon-once-almost-allies shows that the flag of the French Mandate of Lebanon between 1920-1943 mimicked the colors in the national flag of France: blue-white-red (from left-to-right). In January 1936 Emile Eddé was elected Lebanon's president. Although there is a black and white photograph of Eddé from that era that shows him wearing a tri-color sash, as the color on the left of the sash appears to be lighter than the color on the right, I'm guessing that his sash mimics (but in reverse order) the colors in Lebanon's national flag at that time: red-white-blue, with a green ceder tree on the middle white stripe.
William Garrison, 19 April 2026

I completely agree with Bill's information and to add to the discussion, I submit another image [of a flag] that may (or may not, it depends on the viewer's choice) back his claim that the sash has reversed colors and that the original colors for the sash should indeed be France's, plus the cedar tree, although I'm not sure if the cedar in this case is black or green, as also two variants have already been reported.
In the image, the colors are indeed reversed as well. However I am more inclined to believe that it is perhaps due to copyright issues since these image portals cannot fully comply with certain rules and try to still have some images available for purchase or commercial use. For instance, the image I used as a reference is copied from what is supposed to be a Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%C3%89mile_Edd%C3%A9_%26_Emir_Khaled_Chehab.jpg) file (picture caption reads: "Lebanese president Émile Eddé, and prime minster Emir Khaled Chehab, during and official celebration at the martyrs square, Beirut."). Additionally the metadata gives us the following: "Created: 21 March 1938 – 1 November 1938 (during Eddé s presidency)". Hence the picture is originally dated 1938.
The issue here is that the colors do not fully mimic France's colors (blue-white-red, in that order) which it should, since it was a territory under French rule.

Esteban Rivera. 22 April 2026