Beirut 1915: The Locust Plague That Starved a City

In the spring of 1915, swarms of locusts descended on Mount Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, devouring crops and triggering a famine that would kill nearly 200,000 people. This episode tells the story of that forgotten disaster—how Ottoman authorities under Djemal Pasha downplayed the crisis, how peasants fought the insects with sticks and fires, and how the American University of Beirut's Dr. John Van Dyke tried to organize a response. We trace the plague's connection to the larger wartime blockade by Allied navies, and the role of Lebanese diaspora fundraising in the United States. Through eyewitness accounts from villages like Bikfaya and Zahle, we reconstruct a season of desperation and resilience. The locusts returned for three consecutive years, compounding the horrors of world war, conscription, and systematic grain confiscation. This is a story of ecological catastrophe meeting human cruelty—and the quiet heroism of those who refused to let their communities starve alone.

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