4. The Faces of Reform

The old regime collapsed with the dawn of the modern age. The rebellious Ottoman vassal and so-called founder of modern Egypt, Mehmed Ali, launched an invasion of Syria and Mount Lebanon in 1831 led by his son Ibrahim Pasha. His rule, which lasted until 1840, precipitated a series of upheavals that culminated in a Druze and Maronite revolt against the Egyptian occupation in 1840. It also led directly to the Tanzimat, the wholesale modernization of the Ottoman army, administration, and society along European lines, as well as to the establishment of the European powers as permanent fixtures in the internal Ottoman political landscape. Taking advantage of the Lebanese revolt against the Egyptians, Britain and the Ottomans issued an ultimatum to Mehmed Ali to withdraw from Syria in 1840. He refused, and by mid-October a joint British-Ottoman-Austrian force had soundly defeated his army and restored Syria to Ottoman sovereignty. In the wake of the restoration, the Shihab dynasty collapsed, and sectarian clashes broke out in 1841 in Mount Lebanon between Druze notables, who were returning from an exile imposed by the Egyptians, and Maronite villagers of Dayr al-Qamar. The conflict was, at heart, one of opposing interpretations of the restoration and contradictory invocations of rights and responsibilities in the post-Tanzimat era. This violence of 1841 ushered in the age of sectarianism.

Historians have long stressed the break with the past represented by the Egyptian occupation and the Tanzimat. They have correctly understood the period between 1831 and 1840 as the advent of modernization in the Middle East in the sense that all the major participants in the Eastern Question—Mehmed Ali, the reforming Ottomans, and the Europeans—conceived of themselves as the embodiments of a new age. More often than not, however, historians have glossed over the implications of this modernization by depicting the changes during this era as the imposition (by the Egyptians, the reforming Ottomans, and the Europeans) of a fully formed and independently standing modernity on a passive and traditional local society. They have understood sectarianism as an upswelling of primordial religious solidarities provoked by the modernizing policies of the Egyptian occupation and by the Tanzimat.^[1] This perspective of reform and reaction fails to recognize that sectarianism was a new development that arose from the political and cultural turmoil of the period 1839–1840 and was not a traditional reaction to efforts at reform.^[2] Sectarianism was no conflagration waiting to happen; rather it was actively produced. The cumulative impact of the Egyptian invasion, the fall of the Shihabs, the introduction of the Tanzimat, and the interventions of European powers contributed to an environment that metaphorically and physically opened Mount Lebanon to the possibilities of a new political order based on religious differentiation.

This chapter explores the erosion of the prereform, nonsectarian politics of notability and the development of what I call restoration politics, in which rival local elites deployed the language of legitimacy and tradition in an effort to outmaneuver one another following the fall of Bashir Shihab and the reimposition of Ottoman rule in 1840. In the process and in the context of competing interpretations of the Tanzimat, the presence of European agents, and the political involvement of the Maronite Church, the open-ended struggle unleashed over the relationship between religion and politics inadvertently opened the domain of politics to nonelites.^[3]

“To Uplift the Name of Egypt”

Mehmed Ali’s conquest of Syria in 1831 and destruction of several Ottoman armies was undoubtedly an exhibition of the modern power that had “colonized” Egypt.^[4] In Syria as in the Sudan, the Egyptian efforts to conscript the population and to extract raw materials proceeded apace.^[5] At the outset of his occupation, Ibrahim Pasha made gestures toward the urban Christian population. He abolished certain distinctions that had vexed Christian pilgrims and also paid European consuls far more attention than they ever had received under Ottoman rule. He attempted to reduce financial corruption, pacified urban Syria, and, despite his own reservations, reaffirmed Bashir Shihab in his rule over Mount Lebanon.^[6] Indirect Ottoman rule was replaced by a far more coercive and centralized Egyptian regime. Some of the Lebanese elites, such as the Druze Janbulats and the Nakads, choose to remain loyal to the Ottomans and, in consequence, were banished following the Egyptian victories at Acre and Konya.^[7] Several of the Nakad shaykhs eventually returned and submitted to Bashir; however, Shaykh Hammud and Shaykh Nasif preferred exile.^[8] Bashir, for his part, quickly bowed down before the Egyptians and assured them that Mount Lebanon was loyal to the cause of Egypt. He urgently wrote to the notables of the region telling them to quickly fall in line lest Ibrahim Pasha carry out his threat to come in person to “extirpate you so that none of you shall remain after he destroys the circle of sedition.”^[9] By 1833, Mount Lebanon was pacified, and Bashir was a contented master of a gilded cage.

Ibrahim Pasha ruled Syria with a standing army and was committed to maintaining a strict social hierarchy that owed more to Ottoman order than has been admitted. As in the period of Ottoman rule, the absolute submission of Syria’s inhabitants was rewarded with paternalistic concern. But now, submission was not to a distant sultan but to a general in their midst.^[10] Commands were to be obeyed without question, without consultation, and without regard for the local population. “Woe to you,” warned Ibrahim, “who disobeys me or who delays in doing my bidding.”^[11] The reforms of Ibrahim in Syria were all ultimately aimed at redirecting the tribute of Syria from Istanbul to Cairo, albeit in a more ruthless and efficient manner. Ibrahim’s regime mercilessly conscripted Druzes, Muslims, and ultimately Christians; it despised the “children of Arabs” [evlad-ı Arab] and treated the Syrians as if they were “the fellahin of Egypt.”^[12] Often, the local notables actively cooperated with the military authorities in the selection and rounding up of the ahali; the result, in the words of one report by the authorities, was that the population was made to submit “sometimes through deception and sometimes though outright threats and intimidation.”^[13] While sanitation was improved, roads were secured, and various factions were disciplined by the presence of a standing army, the policies of taxation, conscription, disarmament, deforestation, and corvée labor in mines exposed Ibrahim Pasha to revolts in Palestine, Syria, and Mount Lebanon that began in 1834 and continued until the collapse of the Egyptian regime in 1840.

The business of suppressing conscription revolts was nothing new to Ibrahim’s veteran army. One of the most pervasive fears of the Egyptian authorities was not of the Ottoman armies, which Ibrahim was convinced he could crush, but of popular discontent and the possible unity of various groups who could make common cause against Egyptian occupation.^[14] To avoid this possibility, the occupation authorities carefully and deliberately weighed the consequences of arming and disarming certain groups—for example, using the Lebanese mountaineers to quell rebellions in Palestine and drafting Christians to fight Druzes. Ibrahim refused to interpret the rebellions against conscription as anything but rebellions against the state itself. One was either loyal and submitted unconditionally, or one was a rebel; there was no middle ground. The Druze of the Hawran balked at conscription and rebelled in the name of the Sultan in 1837 and 1838. Some Druze shaykhs were humiliated and others captured and tortured by the Egyptian authorities until they “confessed” to their part in promoting “sedition.”^[15] An overconfident Egyptian officer corps ordered troops to march on the insurgents. They miscalculated, however; an ill-fated encounter with the Druze rebels in the rocky Laja region in 1838 ended in the rout of several Egyptian divisions.

Ibrahim Pasha was furious at the losses incurred by his army. His reaction to the news of defeat and his grim determination to eradicate the rebels were no different from the reactions of any Ottoman governor who had ever faced a rural rebellion. Beneath all the pomp and circumstance of his modern army, his language, descriptions, and outlook were those of a military commander frustrated by his inability to use his superior technology to subdue what he took to be an uncivilized people. The Druzes had dared challenge the might of the region’s most powerful regime. Alone they were to face the consequences as Ibrahim devoted himself to planning the extirpation of what one of his subordinates described as “a race that cannot be trusted and have no [moral] foundations whatsoever.”^[16] To his father Ibrahim admitted that the army had underestimated its task. The officers had assumed they were dealing with the “commotion of fellahin.” Yet, “just as I ask God to [bless you], I pray that he may extend my life a little longer because I consider myself necessary to uplift the name of Egypt and to elevate its standing and to eradicate the example of these rebels, which ranks as one of the most difficult problems.”^[17] Mehmed Ali, however, was worried that if the Druzes were not quickly suppressed, the Ottomans might contemplate actively intervening in Syria. He urged Ibrahim to consider the possibility of using Maronite mountaineers against the Druzes.^[18]

After reinforcements arrived and with the collaboration of the Shihab emirs and Christian villagers, Ibrahim hunted down the Druze rebels, first in the Hasbayya region and then in the Laja. Ibrahim sent the following orders to his officers:

You must do all that is necessary, trust in God, and march on the rebels to make an example of them and to exterminate them. If the rebels take refuge in the villages, you must open fire with the artillery until you have no [ammunition] left; if you [see that] the task has not been accomplished, then march on them with the soldiers; do not slacken in your efforts to put down the rebellion and to punish the rebels; kill men and women; overlook whatever the soldiers do in this cause, and destroy [the rebels] as thoroughly as possible. In short, do what must be done.^[19]

A few days later word was received from the “victorious” army that the “orders to execute the traitorous rebels” had been carried out. Faceless and nameless, the “heretics” had been subdued in Hasbayya. Only the Laja problem remained, and that too was soon resolved. Ibrahim Pasha informed Bashir that “the sword is more trustworthy and prophetic than books.”^[20] The rebellion had finally been put down. The leaders of the rebels threw themselves before the mercy Ibrahim Pasha, begging for aman. With the “heretics” at his feet, Ibrahim decided to accept the total submission of the Druzes, while his loyal Shihab allies resolutely looked on.^[21]

To Abolish the Past

The Egyptian policy of arming Christian villagers and sending them to suppress the Druzes has been interpreted by most historians as a turning point in Druze-Maronite relationships.^[22] Certainly the policies of divide and rule determinedly pursued by Ibrahim Pasha were a factor in the later development of Druze-Maronite antagonism. But several qualifications are in order. Ibrahim Pasha did not seek to disrupt the social order, nor did the Christians fight the Druzes out of religious zeal. The significance of distributing weapons to the Christians lies elsewhere, for in their arming and disarming Ibrahim Pasha revealed his fundamental commitment to a traditional Ottoman social order.

The Druze insurrection against Ibrahim was justified primarily in terms of loyalty to the Sultan. According to French consular reports, the Druze rebels did not harm Christian villagers in any way, leaving them free to either join the rebellion or remain neutral.^[23] Nevertheless, because of the Hawran rebellion, Bashir Shihab fired the Druzes working as his servants and guards at Bayt al-Din.^[24] Bashir also threatened to destroy any Druze village in Mount Lebanon which joined or supported the rebellion.^[25] The dominant concern on both sides of the rebellion was loyalty and a safeguarding of the social order. Christian villagers sent to fight the Druze rebels were selected on the basis of their loyalty and reputation for bravery. In a letter to the Maronite Patriarch, Bashir Shihab’s son, Amin, underscored the necessity of “[edience” to Ibrahim Pasha and asked the Patriarch to help select three hundred young men from the Jubbat Bsharri, whose ahali “were famed for their bravery” and were “reputed” to be more “capable” than the other ahali of Jbayl.^[26]

The religious affiliation of the inhabitants was inscribed within a discourse of loyalty. Christians of certain districts were mobilized because they were not rebellious like the Druzes. Although Ibrahim used a Sunni discourse to classify the Druze as heretics, he did not describe the Christians as infidels. It was their loyalty that informed their Christianity just as it was the Druzes’ rebellion that brought about their heresy. Ibrahim used Christians as translators in his interrogations of Druze prisoners, and he supplied the Christians with weapons. They were given sixteen thousand rifles to fight “the traitorous infidel Druze sect which denies the existence of God and his prophets. God willing, they and their property will become plunder for you, and you are to keep the weapons for eternity.”^[27] More than at any previous time, the Druze elites found themselves isolated. Already weakened by a sustained policy of Bashir (that predated the Egyptian invasion) to consolidate power at the expense of traditionally strong notable families, the Janbulats were further diminished and one of the ‘Imad shaykhs was killed in the course of the uprising. Nevertheless, the surviving rebels were granted aman. Ibrahim Pasha wrote to Bashir Shihab, “Emir. As regards the Druzes of Jabal al-Shuf, let bygones be bygones. Do not harm them when they return to their homes. Allay their fears and set their minds at rest.”^[28] Past crimes, for which more than a thousand rebels had been cast into the “fires of hell,” were forgotten according to the principle of letting bygones be bygones.

Discursively, history was turned back. The rehabilitated Druze shaykhs returned to reclaim their land and titles. Their heresy had been in their rebellion. In other words, as far as Ibrahim was concerned, the Druzes were “heretics” only when in the act of transgression. To submit was to lift the stigma and become loyal subjects like any other. In short, the Christians were mobilized by the authorities to divide and rule within the normal elite Ottoman channels of careful control and dispensation. For Ibrahim Pasha, the mobilization was a ruthless and utterly calculated move, but it was also a temporary measure. In other words, the Christian identity of the Lebanese came to the fore only as a method for the authorities to separate them from the Druzes, to arm them, and to send them against the Druzes. Once the rebellion was over and the threat of disorder contained, the Christian-Druze dichotomy was meant to be erased; all subjects were to resume their former social standing. Hence the decision to abolish the memory of past deeds and transgressions. The Druze rebels and Christian loyalists were commanded to return to being equally tranquil and obedient villagers and subjects. To fulfill this reinscription of the Ottoman social order, Ibrahim quickly ordered the disarming of the Christians. Nothing less than total reassertion of the social status quo ante was acceptable.

In 1839, however, Sultan Abdülmecid, who found himself under tremendous military pressure from Ibrahim Pasha and who was quite literally at the mercy of European diplomacy, promulgated the Gülhane decree. The Tanzimat was officially inaugurated. The 1839 decree stipulated the equality of Muslim and non-Muslim subjects before the law and insisted that this equality was fully compatible with the empire’s glorious Islamic past. However, even as Ottoman officials described obviously new laws and rights as arising out of (as opposed to contradicting) an Islamic Ottoman tradition, European powers viewed the Tanzimat as a mandate for intervention on behalf of the empire’s non-Muslim subjects—and what better place to begin than in what they perceived to be the beleaguered tribal refuge of Mount Lebanon. As a result, Mount Lebanon became a battlefield to determine the future of the Ottoman Empire. On its terrain, Europeans, Ottomans, and locals were locked in a war over the meaning and direction of the Tanzimat, which itself contained several overlapping discourses of religious equality, Islamic tradition, political legitimacy, past glory, and present sovereignty, all framed implicitly by a Europe-dominated modernity. The upshot was that Britain decided, based on various interests of its own, to put an end to Mehmed Ali’s imperial ambitions. In 1840 it led a campaign which ousted the Egyptians from Syria and Mount Lebanon, restoring those areas to Ottoman rule. The rest of this chapter examines the emergence of a local politics of restoration in the shadow of the Tanzimat.

Restoration Politics

In 1840, Ibrahim Pasha faced yet another revolt against his onerous conscription policy. This time the revolt united Druzes and Christians and succeeded because of timely Ottoman and European intervention. The revolt against Bashir Shihab and his Egyptian master, as well as their own attempts to suppress it, were formulated as a return to legitimacy. Initially, it seemed that the rebellion would be quickly snuffed out by Ibrahim Pasha’s army. The Egyptian authorities were confident that they would easily erase all traces of the rebellion “as if it never was.”^[29] Order was once more equated with knowledge, rebellion with ignorance. Bashir accused the rebels of having succumbed to the devilish “temptation” (waswasa) that filled their “ignorant” minds. Ibrahim was convinced that the revolt was caused by fears planted by “some contemptible [men] lacking their wits,” which had played havoc with the “deficient understanding” of the local population. Like Abdullah Pasha, Ibrahim promised the insurgents amnesty if they immediately reentered the domain of obedience. However, also like Abdullah, he warned them that if their actions stemmed from their “own volition”—in other words, if they chose to persist in their rebellion and ignore the window of opportunity that the discourse of ignorance opened for a peaceful surrender—then he would move to “annihilate” their “betrayal.”^[30]

Although the rebellion was spontaneous and fragmented, lacking a single leader and center, Druze and Christian rebels were united by their common fear and hatred of foreign troops and oppressive duties, and, more specifically, by their fear of conscription and disarmament. The commoners’ mobilization was characterized by a unity of purpose that was reflected in a proclamation issued on 8 June 1840 at a church in Antilyas by Christian, Druze, Sunni, and Shi‘a villagers from Mount Lebanon; there, the rebels declared themselves of “one mind and one voice.”^[31] Druze rebels swore at the altar of a Christian saint and invoked his wrath on them if they failed in their loyalty toward the other rebels. Religion was important as a source of encouragement in these difficult times despite Bashir Shihab’s promises to his Egyptian masters that his efforts “to divide Druze and Christian will soon bear fruit.”^[32] After some hesitation and despite fear of the apparently leaderless nature of the uprising, the Maronite Patriarch finally urged the priests and monks in Mount Lebanon to aid in al-qiyam al-jumhuri, or the popular uprising of all sects. He insisted that al-salih al-jumhuri, or the popular welfare, could be served only if Egypt’s oppressive reign ended.^[33]

The Maronite Patriarch’s intervention in the realm of politics was as unusual as that of commoners such as Abu-Samra Ghanim and Ahmad Daghir, who took the lead in skirmishes with Ibrahim’s troops.^[34] Both the Church and the ahali justified their invasion of political space as a temporary incursion caused by the unbearable “tyranny” that had befallen “the people of this country.”^[35] Soon enough, however, several disaffected shaykhs swelled the ranks of the rebels, including a Khazin shaykh from Ghusta who proclaimed himself to be the military commander of the rebellion. These elites sought to provide the commoners’ rebellion with a “respectable” face. They regarded the uprising as a means to restore the Ottoman regime and maintain the privileges that they claimed had been usurped by Bashir Shihab and the Egyptians. They assumed, for example, that the Sultan’s decrees promoting good administration in no way superseded their privileges of old. Like the commoners and the Maronite Church, they fought against “tyranny” and in the hope “that things should revert to the way they had been.”^[36] For the rebel elites liberty, Gülhane, and tradition amounted to one and the same thing: a full restoration of their traditional social position and a revived notable politics. Accordingly, and on behalf of the Shi‘a, Druze, and Christian communities, Yusuf Shihab, Faris Hubaysh, Haydar Qa’idbey, and Francis Khazin jointly appealed to France in the name of liberty, Britain in the name of humanity, and the Ottoman Empire in the name of legitimacy. They begged the Sultan to once again grace them with his benevolent justice; they urged the French to involve themselves in the quest for “liberty” (but not, significantly, equality) and the restoration of their “original and legitimate ruler”; and they pleaded with the British to intercede on their behalf so that they could soon enjoy the benefaction of the Gülhane decree.^[37]

None of the rebels gave much thought to the contradictory memories of the past that were bound to come into play if and when the Egyptian occupation ended. Nor did they ponder the incongruity of a discourse of restoration in an Ottoman Empire that was itself undergoing profound change in the age of the Tanzimat. The British and Ottoman governments contributed to this ambiguity, for the British proposed and the Ottoman government approved of sending secret agents such as Richard Wood to encourage the notables in their revolt. Wood promised a full restoration of past “privileges” to several key families. He declared that he worked for a return of the “legitimate” Ottoman sovereign and guaranteed “the inhabitants of Lebanon the enjoyment of their ancient franchises.”^[38] Jesuit priests such as Père Ryllo and French aristocratic figures seeking to experience some Eastern romance joined the effort, each promising and believing that they held the destiny of Mount Lebanon in their hands. At this critical stage, therefore, it was not Ottomans who arrived at the shores of Mount Lebanon to rally the rebels but Europeans who acted on behalf of the Ottomans and who supplied the ships and material for a restoration of Syria to its “lawful” sovereign.^[39] Europe, particularly Great Britain, represented the reforming Ottoman Empire in its own periphery.^[40]

Translating the Tanzimat

In the aftermath of the restoration of the Sultan’s rule to Syria, Ottoman officials were stymied by the ambiguity inherent in the Ottoman project of reform. Precisely because the Tanzimat was not a coherent package of reforms, it was elaborated as much in its application as in its textual formulation. Precisely (and perhaps most crucially) because British power read Mount Lebanon in religious tribal terms, what to the Ottomans was a secular project of imperial renewal was expressed in Mount Lebanon from the outset as a sectarian project of local restoration. Restoration politics and the vacuum created by Bashir’s downfall created the space for reworked communal identities to emerge in the public sphere. Druze and Maronite leaders were responsive to the presence of many powers, each of which sought out leaders to act as interlocutors for the religious communities of Mount Lebanon. Therefore, although the Druze Nakad shaykhs had historically controlled only a few particular districts in the Shuf region, they appealed to the British—themselves already predisposed to divide the natives into religious “tribes” or “races”—on behalf of all the Druzes. Similarly, the Maronite Church spoke on behalf of the entire Maronite ta’ifa.^[41]

In the face of these claims, Ottoman reformers were at a loss to distinguish between “legitimacy” as understood by Druze Nakad notables and “liberty” as embraced by their Christian tenants.^[42] The Tanzimat embodied both principles in the person of the Sultan, who as a legitimate ruler decreed the religious equality of all his subjects. But what about regions like Mount Lebanon where the Sultan was absent and where liberty and legitimacy were open to fundamentally incompatible interpretations? Ottoman reformers obviously did not take into account the demographic character of Mount Lebanon. How was equality of treatment of religious communities going to be reconciled with demographic majorities and minorities, especially after the Maronite Patriarch declared the Maronites to be the “majority” of the population?^[43] How were “local customs” (which the Ottoman government pledged to uphold in Mount Lebanon) to be accommodated within the “new laws” of the Tanzimat?^[44] How exactly was Selim Pasha, thrust into Mount Lebanon to restore Ottoman sovereignty, to accomplish his task when it was European ships that had allowed him to invade, European weapons that had enabled him to fight, and European munitions that had permitted him to reaffirm (if not buy) the loyalty of the rebels in the first place?

These unanswered questions gnawed at the coherence of Ottoman restoration. The transfer of the Ottoman governor’s seat from Acre to Beirut and the investiture of Bashir Shihab’s second cousin with power in place of the old emir in 1840 did little to resolve the confusion of restoration politics. The decree confirming Bashir Qasim as emir of Mount Lebanon was addressed to the “Pride, the Glory and the Notability, the Shaykhs of the Druze tribes.” Bashir Qasim was appointed as the lawful ruler of the “Mountain of the Druzes,” a term that reflected the power and demographic balance of the old regime, when Druze families dominated the social order.^[45] The realities of the European-aided restoration of Ottoman rule as well as the interregnum of Egyptian occupation for nearly ten years, however, rendered even the term “Mountain of the Druzes,” or Cebel-i Düruz, an anachronism that would be replaced by 1845, in Ottoman usage at least, by the term “Mount Lebanon,” or Cebel-i Lübnan.^[46] Bashir Qasim ruled more than just “Druze tribes,” and Cebel-i Düruz encompassed regions which fell under the influence of an increasingly active Maronite Church.

Ottoman sovereignty of the kind stressed in the Gülhane decree remained a fiction, and the local elites knew it. To that end, they sought to realign themselves, however ambivalently, behind one or another of the Great Powers while they reaffirmed their “unwavering” loyalty to the Sublime Porte. European states needed local communities to justify their involvement in the Ottoman Empire. France under François Guizot worked hard to reestablish communications with the Maronite Church, while Britain sought to “[tain for [the Druzes] the best security that hereafter they shall not be disturbed in the free enjoyment of their own institutions & liberty, & security for their persons and property.”^[47] In an effort to regain their sequestered proprieties, Druze notables at once invoked the rights of restoration before Ottoman officials and promised British representatives that they were capable of “delivering up their Country to the protection of Great Britain.”^[48] In turn, the Maronite Church cultivated its relationship with both Catholic nations and the Sublime Porte.^[49]

The point of contact and collaboration between the Great Powers and the local elites was communal; the problem lay in the definition of the community—its boundaries, its structure, and its history. In a bid to reduce tensions that his own reckless promises helped create, Wood suggested a sectarian administration for Mount Lebanon in the early months of 1841. He proposed that a religiously mixed council be created under Bashir Qasim that would include three members “elected” by the Maronite, Orthodox, and Greek Catholic patriarchs respectively. To these would be added, among others, one Druze, one Sunni, and one Shi‘a to strike a communal balance.^[50] Wood’s proposal satisfied neither the Druzes nor the Maronite Church, which had stepped forward during the restoration to represent the Maronite “clergy and people.”^[51] As outlined in a list of demands submitted to the Austrians in 1840, the Maronite Church explicitly stated that it was distinct from all other sects and desired to be treated “without being mixed with any other sect.” Its sense of community was not territorially bounded, for it demanded protection for all Maronites “wherever they may be found.”^[52] In addition, its request for “favors” from the Sultan for the “Maronite Patriarch, his Bishops, his Maronite clergy and people” indicated not only a hierarchical sense of who constituted the Maronite sect but a fairly clear demarcation between the people (al-sha‘b) and the clergy.^[53] Most of the appeal focused on the ecclesiastical world, but the twelfth demand explicitly broached the topic of secular politics. It stated that the “ruler of Mount Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon according to old convention (al-mu‘tad al-qadim) will only be a Maronite from the noble Shihab family, as the majority of the population of the aforementioned Mountains are Maronites, and that the Ruler be appointed without the involvement of the Sublime Porte.” In te thirteenth point the Patriarch asked that there be only one taxation annually—one miri and one jizya (a poll tax collected from non-Muslims)— and that all other taxes not “sanctioned of old” be abolished.

The Maronite Church’s explicit involvement in politics was the clearest indication of a break with traditional order. Its claim that tradition legitimized the appointment of a Maronite ruler over Mount Lebanon was immediately rejected by Druze notables. The fluid political situation of 1840 allowed the indigenous elites to make new political claims that invoked mythologized sectarian pasts.^[54] Their petitions and letters that spoke of an historically Christian or Druze Mount Lebanon revealed an incipient culture of sectarianism in its moment of production. The conflicting appeals of the elites reflected a developing sectarian consciousness that was torn between old and new and oriented both to Europe and to the Ottoman Empire. The demands submitted by the Patriarch were indicative of these currents. The Maronites, according to the Patriarch, were indeed a ta’ifa, or sect, seeking Austrian protection, but the meaning of that ta’ifa was still predominantly ecclesiastical. Although the Church claimed to speak on behalf of all Maronites, its notion of the community remained firmly within old regime understandings and social boundaries. At the top of the hierarchy sat the Patriarch, himself from one of the great families of Mount Lebanon, and then came the bishops, among whom were members of the Karam and Khazin families. Following the bishops came the clergy and finally the people. All that was new in the petition was the claim of a tradition that sanctioned a Maronite ruler over Mount Lebanon.^[55]

The Violence of 1841

The most obvious sign, indeed the culmination, of the transition from traditional notable politics to restoration politics was the revolt by Druze notables against Bashir Qasim and the Christian ahali of Dayr al-Qamar in 1841.^[56] A struggle over land and control of taxation underpinned and gave the impetus for intercommunal tensions, which led to the first major sectarian clashes between Maronite and Druze in Mount Lebanon.^[57] As it happened, the Druze Nakads and the Janbulats returned from exile in Egypt to reclaim their former properties. Although Bashir Qasim restored all the former properties to their “legitimate” owners, he did not restore Dayr al-Qamar to its Nakad shaykhs, and he handed over control of several other villages to his relatives. The Druze notables, taking up the slogan of restoration and believing what had been promised them by both the Ottomans and the British, demanded a full restitution of their rights.^[58] The Maronite villagers of Dayr al-Qamar disputed the right of certain shaykhs to their properties.^[59] They demanded rights of protection and equality that they thought were guaranteed to them by the Gülhane proclamation and the promises of Wood. Although they were suspicious of Bashir Qasim, whom they accused of having led the Druze shaykhs against them, “plundering our properties, money and animals,” they were unwilling to return to vassalage under their former Druze lords.^[60] The Druze Nakads, therefore, understood the Tanzimat as restoration. The Maronite villagers saw it as a rupture with Druze control, and they were backed in their interpretation by the Maronite Church, which, in turn, called for the reestablishment of a “traditional” Maronite emirate. It took only a spark to set off war.

The violence that occurred in Dayr al-Qamar in 1841 is worth recounting because it sheds light on some of the new features that characterized restoration politics. The chronicler Mishaqa wrote:

A Christian from Dayr al-Qamar was hunting with his gun on B‘aqlin land, and a Druze from there objected. Bad blood surfaced between them, and helpers came to both sides, the fray ending with the discharge of weapons. The cry reached Dayr al-Qamar that the people of B‘aqlin had killed their men, so the Nakad shaykhs got on their horses and rode to the place to quell the disturbance, and the men of Dayr al-Qamar too came armed and running. When they arrived they found the men of B‘aqlin gathered together and some men were slain. Shots were fired and a fierce battle was fought until the B‘aqlin men were driven back with all those who had come to help them.^[61]

From Mishaqa’s own testimony, the incident began in “B‘aqlin land” over a seemingly trivial issue and then escalated to the point of pitched battles that raged between the two villages. over two dozen Druzes were slain. The shaykhs and the Maronite Patriarch tried to stop the fighting and indeed, for a short while, a truce was called.^[62] However, on learning that Bashir Qasim was on his way to the Shuf to organize the tax collection, several Nakad shaykhs and other Druzes from the Shuf laid siege to Dayr al-Qamar, trapping Bashir Qasim inside. After a three-week siege, the Druzes finally succeeded in ambushing the emir. They beat him senseless and stripped him of his clothing. Moreover, the Nakads slew Christians who had served them for years and had even traveled with them in their exile. The fact that the Druze shaykhs had killed those who had served them violated the traditions of both hospitality and loyalty that had underpinned the old regime. That the Druze had brought in outsiders from neighboring villages increased the sense of unease. Quite simply, in the eyes of the Dayr al-Qamar ahali, the shaykhs had betrayed tradition; they had killed after giving aman. The shaykhs for their part were incensed at the alleged disloyalty and haughtiness exhibited by the ahali, which had resulted in conflict and the death of several Druze shaykhs.^[63]

Several layers of conflict were involved in the sectarian clashes at Dayr al-Qamar. On one level, an elite struggle between the Druze notables and Bashir Qasim for control of land and taxation was expressed as a Druze-Maronite confrontation. On another level, a social crisis was represented by the refusal of Maronite commoners of Dayr al-Qamar to accept Druze notable hegemony as well as by the insistence of Druze notables on imposing their “legitimate” rights on Christian subjects amid a breakdown of the old regime symbiosis that had bound Druze elites to the Maronite Church. On a third level, a marked redefinition of the relationship between religion and politics had profound implications for a multireligious society. The old regime had been dependent on a notion of a quietist religion and passive subjecthood that had underpinned and yet was separate from a nonsectarian notable politics. Restoration politics, however, had singled out the religious identity of the local inhabitants as the point of departure for a modern reformed and ambivalent Ottoman sovereignty in Mount Lebanon. Although material factors related to taxation and control of land underlay the violence of 1841, the Christian villagers of Dayr al-Qamar rejected the control of the Nakads because they were Druze notables. In this new development the social, the political, and the religious were explicitly and, following the bloodshed at Dayr al-Qamar, antagonistically fused together. A far-reaching crisis of coexistence emerged. Immediately, the fighting spread to other regions of the Shuf. Hundreds of villagers, both Druze and Christian, were slain. A feeling of uncertainty prevailed. What had begun as a local conflict in B‘aqlin degenerated into open conflict across the Shuf. The smallest of incidents threatened to explode into open warfare. The triviality of the hunting incident captured the terrifying reality embodied in communal politics. Conflict could happen anywhere and anytime. The uneasiness was further exacebated because communal boundaries were shifting; religion was detached from its social environment and treated it as a cohesive, exclusivist, and organic force; neighbors suddenly became potential enemies. Yet just as unsettling was the fact that coreligionists often refused to aid one another during sectarian clashes. Few Christians from outside the Shuf bothered with the Christians of the Shuf, just as the Druzes of the Matn refrained from siding with the Druzes of the Shuf. Following the logic of sectarian discourse, those who did not help their coreligionists were labeled “traitors.”^[64]

It is important, however, to place these developments in perspective. Precisely because sectarianism was not an explosion of latent or endemic religious animosities, because it was not a primordial resurgence, there was still room for the elites to maneuver, and there was time to define the contours of an emerging sectarian landscape. The Maronite Church did not sever contact with the Druze elites. Following the outbreak of hostilities, it called for tranquillity and order across Mount Lebanon. Maronite villagers continued to live under Druze shaykhs, and families such as the Janbulats still employed Christian teachers and advisors.^[65] Even before the Dayr al-Qamar incident, the Druze notables had tried to put an end to this development of sectarianism by evoking memories of old-regime elite solidarity. They had urged the Christian shaykhs to unite with them in obedience to the Sultan and in their love for and sincere relationships with each other. They had even pleaded that the notables of each ta’ifa should work for their common interest, noting that the rank and station of each should be preserved according to tradition and right and that disputes should be settled peacefully in accordance with customary law.^[66] To the extent that the Maronite Church and the secular Christian notables never for a moment contemplated opening the realm of politics to the ahali, they were in sympathy with the Druze proposal. Yet while old-regime traditions of elite compromise were based on common values and a stable social order that regulated the distribution of wealth among notable families, restoration politics altered the ground rules and marked the beginning of an open-ended struggle for a definition of the community and control of land in which the söz sahibleri were no longer the masters of words.

Reform arrived in Mount Lebanon in a complex of guises. There was the specific text of the Gülhane decree—and many interpretations of it. There were the many solemn promises made by Ottoman and British officials to local notables. And there were overlapping discourses of reform, legitimacy, liberty, and security. In contrast to the old regime, where the transgression of social order invited a defined, ritualized retribution, the restoration marked the autonomous entrance of the ahali into, and hence the unsettling of, politics. Simultaneously, however, the elites embarked on a frantic search for a political solution to close the door on such subaltern mobilization. They drew heavily on old-regime metaphors and understandings even as their competing claims steadily narrowed the areas for compromise. The rest of this study will therefore dwell on key moments of the collapse and reconstitution of the social order, up to and including 1860. Following 1841, restoration politics gave way to a new form of sectarian politics that was focused on redefining Mount Lebanon geographically, politically, and culturally.

Notes