The demarcation of borders in the Middle East undermined the position of the Shia community in Lebanon. The French and the British agreement on the border between Lebanon and mandatory Palestine in the early 1920s reduced the size of mountainous region of Jabal ʿAmil. Among the Shia, the Jabal ʿAmil was historically known as the area extending from the Awali River in the north down to Acre, Tarshiha, and Safad in the south, and from the Mediterranean in the west to the Hula Lake and up to the Taym, south of the Biqaʾ Valley in the east. In 1924, an area of about 250,000 dunums (an Ottoman unit of land measurement), including several villages and the Hula Lake, was detached from the Jabal ʿAmil and added to mandatory Palestine. This act severely disrupted the socioeconomic life of the region, particularly around Marjaʾyun. Shia anger over the loss of land was reinforced by the fact that in modern Lebanon the Jabal ʿAmil became known simply as “the South,” which the Shia took as an insult to their historical heritage.