privileges and abuse. Even the Maronite Church, which strove to unify the ranks of the community, found itself paralyzed by internal divisions, as the Patriarch and various bishops and priests bickered over policies and priorities.47 Eventually tensions boiled over in 1958, when the peasants of Kisrawan revolted against their Khazin lords. The peasants expelled all the Khazin shaykhs, along with their families, from the district and established for several months a peasant commune, precipitating a intense contest within the community that underscored once again the inability of the Church to act as an effective leader of its community, or even as an arbitrator and mediator between the conflicting parties.48
The Peasant Revolt of Kisrawan ended in a final conflagration in the Mountain in 1860. The massacre of thousands of Christians in the clashes, as well as the slaying of more in Damascus, prompted a firm Western reaction and a French military intervention. These developments revived the “dream” of some French and Maronite circles to establish a semi-independent Christian entity in Mount Lebanon. But before moving to this new episode in the development of the Lebanist ideal, two texts of significant importance to this study need to be examined.
MURAD'S NOTICE
In the year of 1844, a brief pamphlet entitled Notice Historique sur l'Origine de la Nation Maronite et sur ses Rapports avec la France, sur la Nation Druze et sur les diverses population's du Mont Liban,49 by Mgr Nicolas Murad, Archbishop of Laodicea and representative of his nation to the Vatican, was published in Paris. Its author was none other than the special envoy of the Patriarch sent to Istanbul in 1842, who had since then moved to Paris in an attempt to obtain French help for the restoration of the Shihabs.50 His treatise is of special importance to our subject. It is a pure product of the post-1840 period, and it illustrates and epitomizes many of the events, ideas, and processes already observed. Murad's treatise embodied the Church's stance at this crucial stage and endorsed its political project aiming at the establishment of a Christian Emirate in the whole of Mount Lebanon under the leadership of the Shihabis. At the same time, this pamphlet, written and published in French,51 was meant to reach and influence French public opinion. It was therefore is a perfect example of the “mirror game” between some French and Maronite circles, which it typically reflected. More so, it summed up some of the views and ideas that arose from this interaction between both sides in 1844; at the same time, it served as a future reference and starting point in the ongoing operation of the process.52
Murad's book also constituted the first piece of literature by a Maronite defending fledging national ideas and aspirations. His attempt to legitimize and defend, on historical grounds, the idea of a Christian Emirate constituted a foundation and a source of significant value for future Lebanist nationalist thought. It was the first attempt to conceptualize ideas along the lines according to which Lebanism later developed, and, in this sense, represented a milestone in the evolution of this nascent ideal. It thus became a model for future Lebanese nationalist thought. Not that all the authors who embraced and upheld Lebanism adopted altogether the views and opinions expressed by Murad, but most of them later reproduced some basic legitimizing historical concepts of this pamphlet for the establishment of a semi-independent or independent Lebanese entity.
The pamphlet itself is quite short. It consists of a brief introductory letter to the French king, Louis Philippe I,53 to whom the whole book is dedicated, reminding him that “since the days of King Louis [IX], of sainted memory, all the very-Christian kings had honored the Maronites with their powerful protection.” Therefore, Murad goes on, he allowed himself to present to the French monarch “this work destined to make known and appreciated this devoted [Maronite] nation in France,” and most important, in the hope that “His Majesty, will not only do for us what his august predecessors did; we would like to expect even more from his high ability and personal influence.”54 Then the essay proper, which consists of only thirty-seven pages, is followed by two brief annexes, one on the “Genealogy of the Princes of Lebanon” and the other containing a statistical survey of the populations inhabiting the Mountain.
The essay begins with an historical note on the formation of the Maronite community, reproducing what had become a leitmotif of the Maronite Church, namely the definite assertion of its perpetual orthodoxy.55 Only this time, over and above the usual specifically particularistic intent and significance of this profession,56 a new dimension was added. It was meant to emphasize the shared community of faith between the French and the Maronites, which in itself represented, in Murad's view and in the opinion of many contemporary Frenchmen, a pertinent enough basis of solidarity between these two “nations.” The traditional self-image of the Maronites thus acquired a political meaning and purport. A shared religion and a shared cause linked the Maronites and the French, according to Murad, in the general contest with the Muslim Ottoman Empire. This position did not represent the official Western stance at the time, but it did seem to constitute for Murad and for some French Catholic circles, with which he had then become acquainted, a potent and significant cause to uphold. Murad thus treated this question at length and devoted one-third of his book to it. An association and confusion between a religious and a national basis of identity and appeal can thus be discerned from the beginning of Murad's treatise. The Catholic faith of the Maronites was, for Murad, the basic characteristic of their distinct nationality, and his appeal to the Catholic French monarch and nation was based on religious grounds that, in his mind, denoted political and “national” implications.
Murad then shifts to a description of the condition of the Maronites in his days and gives some details about the size of the Maronite population, the territory of Mount Lebanon, and the situation and organization of the Maronite Church. In this context he asserted that the Maronite nation, which used to count more than a million souls, then only numbered 525,000, of whom 482,000 lived in Mount Lebanon.57
As can be seen from a comparison of the figures given by Murad with those from other contemporary sources of the time, the Maronite Archbishop had very generously inflated numbers, with the obvious purpose of overstating the importance of his community. The Maronites had, definitely, never reached anything near the million mark, nor even the 482,000 they had allegedly shrunk to. Murad did not give any detail as to the source of the precise figures he so meticulously reproduced. It is not clear whether these were already in circulation or whether he was responsible for them, purposely or unintentionally. At any rate, inaccurate and often exaggerated estimates about the size of the Maronite community were commonly reproduced in those days, when reliable statistics on the region were so scarce that French opinion could easily accept them at face value.58
The treatise then touches on the question of the frontiers of Mount Lebanon, an issue carefully avoided by the Maronite Patriarch in his petitions to the Porte. Mount Lebanon, Murad wrote, “stretches from the region of Sayda, in the West, until that of Damascus, to the East.”59 It consisted then of the two mountain ranges—Mount Lebanon proper and the Anti-Lebanon—plus the rich plain of the Bekaa, to which Emir Bashir II had already pointed as being essential for the survival of a Christian entity. Hence, for the first time, the region claimed by the Maronite clergy was delimited geographically, albeit vaguely. An organic relation between the Maronites and the territory of Mount Lebanon proper, in which they were established since the end of the seventh century, and which in his own view allowed them to resist steadfastly throughout the centuries all foreign encroachments and to preserve their special identity, can be discerned in the historical account of Murad. However, no justification was given for the inclusion of the Bekaa Valley and Anti-Lebanon in this entity, where the Maronites had had no significant historical presence. Nor were the boundaries thus presented precisely demarcated and justified. This brief and timid mention of the boundaries of the entity claimed by the Maronite clergy therefore emphasized once more the immaturity of the project of the Church. Its central and exclusive preoccupation at that time was to restore Bashir II personally. Issues of frontiers, which had varied constantly throughout the centuries, were of secondary importance and could always be settled through the usual bargaining procedure with the Ottomans.60
The Maronite Archbishop then tackles
