Maronite Church, opposed the political clout of Druze muqata'jis over them.45
The mixed districts thus represented the real battleground in the ongoing contest for supremacy in the Mountain. The Druze sector was the last stronghold of the Druzes, and they were adamantly determined to defend it. For the Maronite Church, it was the last region of the Mountain where Christian rule needed to be secured, the central and northern districts being already governed by a Maronite qaimaqam. Ensnared in the middle, the Christians of the mixed districts were the main victims of this battle for supremacy, since it exposed them to continual Druze reprisal without any effective support from the Maronites of the north.
The growing divide between the Druzes and the Christians in the mixed districts was furthermore fueled by a set of interlocking political and socioeconomic problems that affected the whole Mountain but took on a more specific communal hue in the mixed areas. The attempt by the muqata'jis to restore their former authority in the Mountain came up against the new realities that had emerged during the long reign of Bashir II, precipitating a deep crisis of authority and legitimacy. The relentless campaign of Bashir II against the muqata'jis had undermined the authority of the latter and favored a relative emancipation of their tenants and clientele. The weakening of the power of the muqata’jis had moreover been accentuated by the economic changes triggered by the intensification of trade with the West, which had in the main impoverished the traditional ruling class and promoted the rise of a new class of merchants, middlemen, and bankers as well as well-to-do peasants and villagers, who staunchly opposed the restoration of muqata'jis’ privileges. The problem was furthermore compounded by tax issues, as the muqata'jis insisted on their right to apportion and collect taxes, on which rested their authority and wealth, whereas tenants and villagers wanted to strip the muqata'jis of their prerogatives and privileges in order to check their exactions and to impose a more equitable distribution of taxes. In the mixed districts, these overlapping political and socioeconomic disputes pitted the Druze muqta'jis and their clientele against Christians peasants, villagers, and townsmen, accentuating communal differences and promoting communal realignments and mobilizations. In the Christian district, similar issues set the Maronite muqata'jis against their former tenants and clientele, accentuating divisions within the Maronite community and paralyzing the efforts of the Patriarch to unify his community. The whole explosive conjuncture was exacerbated by the lingering negotiations between the Ottoman government and the European powers over the finalization of the new regime for this province, which, in the meantime, left the Mountain with no effective constituted authority.
The negotiations in Istanbul for the finalization of the Dual Qaimaqamiyya regime lingered on until 1845, when they were prompted to their conclusion by a renewal of communal clashes in Lebanon. A new protocol, the Shakib Effendi Règlement, was adopted, addressing the pending issues that had plagued the implementation of the new regime. It provided mainly for the appointment of agents, or wakils, for the Christians of the mixed districts and allowed for the formation of administrative and judicial councils to advise and assist the Christian and Druze qaimaqams, in which the six main communities of the Mountain were to be represented each by a deputy and a judge. The councils, which were to assist the qaimaqams in the apportionment of taxes and in the adjudication of judicial cases, struck at the root of the fiscal and judicial powers of the muqata'jis without, however, altogether eliminating their local authority. Once more, this arrangement was adopted because it constituted an acceptable compromise to all the negotiating parties in Istanbul. In the Mountain, it did not really satisfy anybody. In spite of the relative calm that prevailed for nearly fifteen years, underlying tension persisted until the final conflagration of 1860, which eventually forced the abrogation of the Dual Qaimaqamiyya regime.
The Shakib Effendi Règlement further aggravated the crisis of authority in the Mountain. It provided for the division of political, judicial, and fiscal authority among several officials—Ottoman governors, qaimaqams, muqata'jis, judges, and wakils, notwithstanding domineering consuls—whose powers were not always neatly defined and who vied with each other to define to their own advantage, alter, or obstruct the implementation of the new regime. Hence, the new councils, which were meant to limit the fiscal and judicial authorities of the muqata'jis, were undermined by the latter, who took advantage of their remaining local authority to hinder the working of the councils by thwarting plans for a cadastral survey aiming to apportion taxes on a more equitable basis. For their part, the peasants and villagers strove to eliminate altogether the judicial and fiscal prerogatives of the muqata'jis and to put an end to their exactions. Finally, Ottoman walis, officials, and special envoys, trying to sort out all of the conflicting claims of local parties, adopted at times measures at odds with each other in an attempt to conciliate everyone; at the same time, their tentative attempts to reassert the control of the central government were frustrated by the local consuls who pulled in different directions to protect the interests of their protégés. Under the circumstances, the new regime tottered on the brink of paralysis, and in the absence of any effective authority to settle all of the conflicting claims and counterclaims, the Mountain slowly descended into near chaos and anarchy.
Festering political and socioeconomic disputes spurred realignments and mobilizations that fed into a developing process of communal crystallization and regrouping. The intertwined conflicts that pitted Christians against Druzes in the mixed districts, inconsistently backed by the Christians in the northern districts, as well as the underlying contest between both communities for overall dominance in the Mountain, hardened the boundaries between the Druze and Christian communities in the Mountain. Claims and counterclaims started to emerge in defense of the putative rights of the contesting communities, highlighting their divergent interests and enhancing the communal awareness of the members of each community.
The process of communal regrouping was furthermore buttressed by the Shakib Effendi Règlement, which formally introduced for the first time the communal factor at the political and institutional levels. The principle of allocating political and administrative charges on a communal basis, which henceforth became an enduring feature of the Lebanese political system, was adopted by the negotiating parties in Istanbul as a trade-off between the Ottoman attempt to centralize and rationalize local administrations and the concern of the European powers, characteristic of the reform period, to grant equal powers to the various religious communities. In the Mountain, the organization of the political and administrative system along communal lines activated the politicization of communal allegiances and solidarities and contributed to the gradual political identification of the people of the Mountain along communal lines.
However, the process of communal regrouping unfolded slowly, unevenly, and inconsistently. It was confounded by the many horizontal and vertical social and political divisions that drove, for instance, some Christian muqata'jis to side with their Druze counterparts against the pretensions of the peasants and villagers. At the same time, the process of communal regrouping was hindered by local and kinship ties and solidarities that highlighted the lingering and countervailing significance of such ties and complicated the process of communal mobilization and integration. Finally, the process of communal regrouping stirred up intracommunal contests in which various actors and groups vied with each other over the leadership of each community, the interpretation of communal identity, and the objectives of communal mobilization. These intracommunal divisions and contests were more pronounced within the Maronite community than the Druze, which by virtue of its geographic concentration, its smaller size, and close kinship and social ties succeeded in overcoming more easily internal tensions and rivalries and in unifying its ranks.46 For the Maronite community, attempts at unification exposed and exacerbated diverse overlapping vertical and horizontal divisions. Local and kinship ties and solidarities encumbered efforts to rally the community in defense of its putative interests, and in the 1841 and 1845 clashes, for instance, the Maronites mobilized along parochial lines in small quasi-independent and at times rival groups that defied attempts at coordinating their efforts. Moreover, the community remained racked by disputes between muqata'jis and increasingly assertive peasants, villagers, and townsmen,
