political and socioeconomic problems of the Mountain. The main drive of this secular elite throughout this period remained reformist, and its claims focused on political and economic reforms to improve a dismal situation in the Mountain. Its activity and mode of thinking were deeply influenced by the reformist movement that had emerged by the mid-nineteenth century in the region and should be seen within the framework of this reformist activity.
The projects devised by the Lebanese activists during this second phase remained mainly articulated around a large autonomy for Mount Lebanon within the framework of the Ottoman Empire. They evolved into more explicit claims for the independence of an enlarged Lebanon only in the aftermath of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Chapter 8 covers this troubled period and the circumstances that led to the establishment of a Lebanese state.
| CHAPTER ONE | · | The Emergence of Lebanism |
| The Lebanese Setting |
Periods of crisis are often associated with turmoil and disarray; at the same time, they represent fertile ground for reformation and innovation. It was during such a troubled period, stretching from 1840 to 1860 and marked by social, political, and communal strife in Mount Lebanon, that projects advocating the establishment in Mount Lebanon of a semi-independent entity, ruled by a indigenous Maronite governor, made their first appearance.
These projects, which marked the earliest signs of the emergence of Lebanism, came about as the result of a specific and intricate conjuncture when internal factors intersected with foreign influence and interference. Locally, they corresponded with deep social and political changes and dislocations that prompted the Maronite Church to engage in a bid to assert the dominance of its community in Mount Lebanon and to secure for it a certain political autonomy within its boundaries. At the same time, the aspirations of the Maronite clergy converged with the romantic fantasies of some French Catholic and liberal circles who envisioned the establishment of an independent Christian entity in the Levant under the aegis of France, with a view to regenerating the declining Orient, emancipating the Christians of the east from Muslim domination, and upholding French interests in Syria. The political aspirations of the Maronite clergy and those of these French circles became closely intertwined as both sides drew support and inspiration from each other.
This chapter and the next one reconstruct the intricate circumstances that spawned the first appearance of elementary nationalist ideas and schemes among some clerical Maronite circles. The present chapter focuses on the local setting, examining the various factors that underlay the emergence of the idea of establishing a Christian entity, the clerical forces that upheld it, and the confused reaction of the local population to this new ideal. Chapter 2 deals with the convergence and interaction of these local ideas with those of some official and unofficial French circles and the impact these foreign inferences had on the views of local groups and personalities.
SOCIETY AND POLITICS IN MOUNT LEBANON AT THE BEGINNING OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
The social and political structure of Mount Lebanon in the nineteenth century has been depicted in detail and thoroughly analyzed by many historians.1 While not all of its characteristics are relevant to this study, some need to be mentioned.
The geographical entity known as Mount Lebanon, that is, the western range of mountains running parallel to the Mediterranean coast between the towns of Tripoli and Sayda, has not historically constituted a separate political entity with a lasting formal political system evolving within unchanging boundaries. Since the Ottoman conquest of Syria in 1516, Mount Lebanon enjoyed a limited de facto autonomy under the rule of local notables, a system referred to by Lebanese historians as the “Lebanese Emirate.”2 The Emirate originated in the southern districts of Mount Lebanon—roughly to the south of the Beirut-Damascus road—known as Jabal al-Shuf or Jabal al-Duruz, where local Druze chiefs, who acted as tax farmers for the Ottoman government, first established a de facto autonomous social and political organization headed by a local leader, known as “Emir.”3 By the end of the seventeenth century, the central districts of the Mountain, extending north of Jabal al-Shuf up to the Ma'maltayn River, near Juniya, and known as Jabal Kisrawan, were included in the region farmed by the Druze Emirs. The governorship of the uppermost northern districts, called Jabal Lubnan or Bilad Jbayl, was secured on a lasting basis by the governors of Lebanon around the middle of the eighteenth century. Only then was the whole Lebanese mountain range brought under the rule of one governor and began to be called in its entirety Jabal Lubnan, or Mount Lebanon.
The unification of Mount Lebanon under the rule of one Emir did not entail any change in the administrative status of the Lebanese province within the framework of the Ottoman Empire. Throughout this period, Mount Lebanon remained formally part of the Empire, and its administration conformed with that of some surrounding provinces, where the responsibility of tax collection was often attributed to local leaders who had managed to acquire some authority. Mount Lebanon was part of the administrative districts of the walis of Sayda and Tripoli, who allocated the tax farming, or iltizam, of this region to the local Emir on an annual basis. The farming of the southern and central districts, that is, Jabal al-Shuf and Jabal Kisrawan, had to be obtained from the wali of Sayda, whereas that of the northern districts was leased from the wali of Tripoli.4
The Emir was thus assigned the task of collecting a lump sum, known as miri, and was granted some administrative and judicial rights. In turn, the Emir reallocated some of his prerogatives to local chiefs, known as muqata'jis—rulers of a fiscal district or muqata'a. Traditionally, the governors of the Mountain were selected from one family, the Ma'ans until 1697 and the Shihabs from 1697 to 1841. The formal investiture of the Emir by the Ottoman walis had to be renewed on an annual basis, and his tenure was never secure. He had to contend with the continual schemes of rival emirs and shifting coalitions of muqata'jis who sought to curb his authority. If skilful, he could circumscribe the powers and ambitions of rival emirs and muqata'jis by playing off one coalition against another or by himself leading one of the major coalitions.
The Emir was hence not an absolute leader in his domains. He had to secure the collaboration of the muqata'jis who were the effective rulers of land and people. It was they who directly controlled the people in their district and who generally held most of the land.5 They were responsible for levying the taxes on their muqata ‘as and generally took advantage of this prerogative to skim off part of the levy and to exempt themselves from their share of the land tax, which consequently had to be borne by the peasant. They leased their domains to tenants on a share-cropping basis, often leaving their tenants with barely enough to sustain themselves and their families. They also enjoyed some judicial prerogatives over their subjects, as well as customary privileges, including traditional gifts offered by the peasant to his lord on feast days and other special occasions. Each muqata ‘a was held conjointly and generally on a hereditary basis by one family, which then subdivided the various areas of its district, or ’uhdas, among its members.6
The Lebanese political system broadly sketched here thus combined specific local social customs and an internal political organization with the broader practices and regulations of the Ottoman Empire. Within the general framework of iltizam, which mainly entailed tax-collecting duties, the Lebanese chiefs developed a locally organized and recognized authority. However, contrary to the idealized picture of the Emirate presented retrospectively by local historians by the mid-nineteenth century, the local system developed by the notables in the Mountain did not evolve into an orderly and stable formal dynastic principality. Furthermore, the semi-autonomous local organization of Mount Lebanon was not specific to the Mountain, since other regions of the Ottoman Empire equally developed peculiar social and political structures with parallels to the Lebanese system.7
The local political system in Mount Lebanon was closely interwoven with a social structure organized according to kinship ties that supported it. Its basic element was a cluster of families grouped together into one family lineage, or jubb, claiming descent from “a more-or-less legendary ancestor . . . thus allowing its members to feel a ‘familial’ solidarity with each other.”8
