Lebanon: A History, 600-2011For most Americans, the civil war in Beirut is their sole point of connection with Lebanon. But Lebanon, a crossroads of major religious communities, has held a central place in the geopolitical significance of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East for many centuries. In this book, William Harris synthesizes the history of Mount Lebanon and the surrounding areas within the modern Lebanese state—from the Islamic conquest of the Levant to modern times. Harris relates the communities that characterize Mount Lebanon and its vicinity, while interpreting the evolution of modern Lebanon in its multi-communal context. He traces the consolidation of Lebanon's Christian, Muslim, and Islamic derived sects from their origins between the sixth and eleventh centuries. The identities of Maronite Christians, Twelver Shia Muslims, and Druze, the mountain communities, developed alongside assertions of local chiefs under external powers from the Umayyads to the Ottomans. The chiefs began interacting in a common arena when the Druze lord Fakhr al-Din Ma'n achieved domination of the mountain under the Ottomans in the early seventeenth century. The book offers a fresh perspective on subsequent trends, knitting together the interplay of the elite under the Sunni Muslim Shihab relatives of the Ma'ns after 1700 with demographic instability as Maronites overtook Shia as the largest community and expanded into Druze districts. By the 1840s many Maronites conceived the common arena as their patrimony. Maronite/Druze conflict ensued. Modern Lebanon arose out of European and Ottoman intervention in the 1860s to entrench sectarian peace in a special province. In 1920, after the Ottoman collapse, France and the Maronites enlarged the province into the modern country, with a pluralism of communal minorities headed by Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims. The book considers the flowering of this pluralism in the mid-twentieth century, and the strains of new demographic shifts and of social resentment in an open economy. External intrusions after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war rendered Lebanon's contradictions unmanageable and the country fell apart. The book contends that Lebanon has not found a new equilibrium and has not transcended its sects. There is an uneasy duality: Shia have largely recovered the weight they possessed in the sixteenth century, but Christians, Sunnis, and Druze are two-thirds of the country. |
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Abbasid Ahmad al-Ayan al-Azmina al-jazzar al-Khazen al-Khuri al-Sulh Al—Shidyaq Alawites Amal Aoun Arab army Asad Baalbek Bashir Bashir II Beirut Biqa Bsharri Buhturids Byzantine Caliph century Chamoun chiefs Christian clan communal conflict Damascus Deir al-Qamar Druze Druze country Druze lords Duwayhi early East Beirut elite Emir Fakhr al-Din Faranjiya Fatimid figure first fled France Frankish French Gemayel Greater Lebanon Greek Catholic Hamades Hariri Haydar Hezbollah Ibid influence Iran Islamic Isma’ili Israel Israeli jabal Amil jubayl junblat Karami Kata’ib Khazens Kisrawan Kitab late leaders Leba Lebanese Levant Lubnan Lubnanfi Ahd al-Umara Ma’n Makarim Mamluk Maronite church military Mount Lebanon mountain Muhammad muqata’jis officials ofLebanon ofthe Orthodox Ottoman Palestinian Pasha Patriarch percent political population president prime minister province reflected regime religious Salibi Sayfa sectarian sheikhs Shihab Shuf Sidon Sultan Sunni Islam Sunni Muslim Syrian Tanukh Tarikh Tarilch tax farms Tripoli Twelver Shia Tyre Wadi al-Taym Yusuf