5. Back to the Mountain

Emigrants who returned to Lebanon came back to a place in flux. As part of a modernizing Ottoman world, Mount Lebanon was experiencing many of the same bureaucratic reforms as well as political and economic changes that were underway in the rest of the imperial territories. While the language and intent of these reforms would have struck many emigrants as familiar, it was the social changes which would have given them the most profound sense of déjà vu. In Lebanon, as in many of the surrounding lands, the “modern woman,” the “middle-class family,” and “scientific education” were an integral part of a modernizing project that was meant to bring the Ottoman empire, Egypt, and Iran “away from Asia.”^[1] And, as in all these areas, discussions in Lebanon were focused on the construction of the category of “woman” as a universalizing and totalizing identity; women's roles—as mothers, wives, and managers of households—were intimately linked with a newly construed private sphere. In turn, as Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid argue for the case of South Asia, this middle-class discursive production of public and private spheres was tied, either explicitly or implicitly, to the formation of this class within wider economic and political processes.^[2] In other words, the constructions of family and gender were integral to the definition of a new middle class in Lebanon, which in turn further crystallized the roles that women and men of this class were to play.

To emigrants this was a familiar scene. Newspapers in the mahjar had carried the same discussions and arguments about “modernity” and “tradition.” In fact, their experiences were even more intense as they took place in countries where the invention of the “modern” had been going on for a longer time and where it had come to be more deeply integrated into the fabric of society. In the mahjar, emigrants had grappled with a hegemonic society that demanded that they abandon their “traditional” ways and embrace “modernity” in order to be permitted entry. Hence, and on their return to Lebanon, emigrants could not but infuse the debates, arguments, and compromises that made up their most recent social history in the mahjar into their villages and towns. Whether they were visiting for a spell or going back for good, they crammed their trunks with the stuff of the new hybrid culture which they struggled to make in the mahjar. Franji (Western) clothes, chiming clocks, and new foods were only a few items of the “New World” which they brought along. Quaint accents, new family “traditions,” and new gender roles were additional cultural baggage. As much as these things had set them apart ethnically from the “mainstream” in New York or Buenos Aires, in Mount Lebanon they came to distinguish returned emigrants as members of a middling class.

For emigrants, then, there was some confluence—if not absolute similitude—between the “modernity” they had left in the mahjar and the one which was being made in Lebanon. This convergence had two ramifications for the history of Lebanon. While in other parts of the Middle East the middle classes remained a small percentage in comparison with the overwhelming peasant and laboring classes, in Lebanon returning emigrants swelled the ranks of the middle class to make it far more visible and potent in the making of a “modern” Lebanon. Moreover, while this process remained centered in the major cities of most of the region, in Lebanon emigrants brought the debates and tensions surrounding the definition and articulation of “modernity” into the hinterlands. Yet, as in the mahjar, emigrants were not merely idle observers and adopters of these changes. Rather, they brought their own desires and experiences to bear on the process of making the “modern” in Lebanon. In other words, not only did the experiences of Lebanese emigrants greatly amplify the intensity and reach of the debates within Lebanon about “modernity,” but they also helped contour and define its constituent manners and customs. This process stands out as one of the main and lasting effects of emigration on Lebanon, and we turn to it now.

Ambiguous Numbers

Before embarking on an analysis of the middle-class world which returning emigrants helped to construct in Lebanon, we need to establish that enough returned to make my contentions plausible. So we ask, How many emigrants ultimately returned to the Mountain? The answer is simple: we do not know. More accurately, we do not know exactly how many Lebanese returned to the Mountain before the onset of World War I. Still, as historians are prone to do, we can estimate. Our sources vary from the anecdotal to the quasi-scientific. Writing in 1903, Ravndal, the U.S. consul general in Beirut, recounted the following conversation: “H. E. Naoum Pacha, for 10 years Governor General of Lebanon, told me once, half in jest, half in earnest, that the time seemed not far-off when the whole province would become American property and all its inhabitants American citizen[s].” Ravndal went on to affrm in his report that indeed “one find[s] American citizens of Syrian birth in villages all over the Lebanon mountains.”^[3] In a more specific report that he made earlier, Ravndal noted that “in one 5-year period more than 330 returned emigrants have been placed on our Register as American citizens.” He added, in an irritated tone, “As an instance of the disregard of the formalities required of an American citizen [upon returning to Lebanon,] I beg to cite the case of a party that landed here during the recent cut in Atlantic transportation rates. The majority of the 75 Syrians from New York onboard were stated by passengers to possess evidence of American citizenship yet not one asked for the assistance of this consulate in landing, although two did actually come to the Consulate for the purpose of registry.”^[4] If for every returned emigrant who registered there were thirty-seven or thirty-eight who did not, by doing a bit of arithmetic we can estimate that in the five-year period of which he spoke over twelve thousand emigrants returned. Perilously extrapolating from these numbers, we reach a rate of return of about 45 percent.^[5]

Needless to say, such estimates are hardly as straightforward as the process of division and multiplication would make them to appear. For example, it is difficult to assert a constant ratio of those who registered versus those who did not—that is, the 37:1 ratio that was used in reaching the twelve thousand figure. (Although it does seem from many consular reports that indeed only an absolute minority of returned emigrants bothered to go to the U.S. consulate in Beirut for the purpose of informing Ravndal and his colleagues of their presence in the country.) Another thorny issue has to be considered: How do we know that the rate of return was constant? Records from the Ottoman customs house in Beirut are almost nonexistent, and the maritime companies did not bother to keep regular or accurate records. Moreover, it was only toward the first decade of the twentieth century that U.S. immigration officials began to record the departure of immigrants. Pushing aside such troublesome considerations for a moment, we can mine the immigration records for another set of numbers. For the three years between 1908 and 1910, the U.S. Immigration Commission reported that 3,981 “Syrians” left the United States and went to—presumably—Mount Lebanon. Over the three years, these emigrants returned at a fairly constant rate: 1,355 in 1908, 907 in 1909, and 1,058 in 1910. In other words, if these figures are any indication, the rate of return was fairly stable, albeit smaller than that calculated from Ravndal's comments. In the estimate of the Commission, these figures represent 26 percent of the Syrians who emigrated to the United States in this time period, or—put another way—the rate of return to the Mountain from the United States was one in four.^[6]

To make the numbers even more ambiguous, a French report for this same time period provides a much higher rate of return. In 1927, Commandant Pechkoff reported to his superiors in the French Ministère des Affaires Ētrangèresthat of the “9,188 Lebanese migrants who were registered at their entry into the United States between 1908 and 1909, 8,725 (i.e. 95 per cent) were reported to have returned to their homeland in the following years.”^[7] Although this number is certainly far too high and is clearly at odds with the figures from the U.S. Immigration Commission, it expands dramatically the range of possibilities for the rate of return migration. A fourth possible source of information is Arthur Ruppin's 1917 study of the economic conditions of Bar al-Sham (Levant). Quoting the “official” statistics for the port of Beirut, Ruppin reports that 27,868 individuals arrived there between 1912 and 1915, while 41,752 people departed during that same period.^[8] Assuming that the great majority of passengers in both directions were peasants on their way out or back to the Mountain, then the rate of return would amount to 66.75 percent. To add to the puzzle, emigrants were returning to Mount Lebanon from Argentina and Brazil as well as from the United States. According to one study, the rate of return from Argentina was a little over than 29 percent.^[9] Of course, into all the preceding confusion we must throw the ultimate wrench in the machine: we do not know how many emigrants returned permanently to the Mountain as opposed to those who merely went back for a visit. Frustratingly, then, we are left with as many “guesstimates” as sources.^[10]

So, how do we answer our original question? The truth of the matter is that exactitude in numbers is not as important for our purposes as simply knowing that “many” emigrants did return to the Mountain after spending some years in the mahjar. In other words, these wildly varying rates of return can still provide us with a crucial answer. If we accept the lowest of all five rates of return to be the most valid, we still end up calculating that by 1914 somewhere around 77,594 emigrants had returned to the Mountain.^[11] Even at this low rate of return (and it is equally likely that the rate was higher), it should be clear that return migration added a significant number of people—with a disproportionate financial worth—to the 414,400 people in the Mountain. And most of these people began their journey back by the turn of the century, with most returning sometime toward the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. Having reached this conclusion, it behooves us to reflect, even if briefly, on the reasons for this return.

An implicit assumption in early U.S. studies of immigration was that those who returned to their country of origin were the immigrants who did not succeed in the United States. These “Fourth of July Orators”—as one historian called them—could not conceive of any other reason that would compel immigrants to leave the land of opportunity for the “old” country, with its “outdated and oppressive customs.”^[12] More sophisticated commentators who actually talked to emigrants decided that there were in fact two types of returning emigrants: those who succeeded and those who failed.^[13] There is no doubt that some returned because they had not been able to attain their dreams of financial wealth. However, those would have been few and far between. If they had indeed failed to accumulate money, then it certainly would have been difficult for them to afford the $40 or $50 needed to buy the return ticket on a steamer. More likely, their hesitation to go back derived from the shame factor. These folks had left their homes and—in many cases—their families only to make money. To go back as poor as they had been when they left (or even poorer) would have been rather shameful, particularly as many others returned with pockets full of dollars. Therefore, poorer emigrants would have been more likely to stay in the mahjar than to return empty-handed. However, many did return simply because they had attained their main goal for coming: to make money.

But money was not the only factor. Just as many reasons prompted people to emigrate in the first place, there were an equal number for their return to their villages and towns. Some emigrants returned because they were homesick. They missed their families, their homes and villages, their language and food. As the years went by, their memories of what they had left behind grew fonder and more romantic. Zajal rhymes buried the muddy fields and cold winters under images of grapevines laden with fruit and luxuriant summer days. As one zajal poet who lived in the mahjar, As‘ad Saba, lamented:

	There near the river on the hills
	In my verdant village
	Do you think I will ever go back to roof the ‘irzal
	And spend the evenings?
	Gather the figs and cluster the grapes.[14]

Another emigrant poet, Michel Trād, appealed, in the name of the “Mountain,” to anonymous emigrants:

	Stay with us here in the Mountain
	I will make your bed out of jasmine
	I will cover you with clouds and roses
	I will feed you almonds and figs.[15]

In evening conversations friends in the mahjar recalled the good times and interspersed their recollections with mijana‘ and ‘ala dal‘ouna, the trademark songs of the Mountain. All this rekindled the desire to go home. So it is not surprising that some did go back for just that reason.

Amplifying this homesickness was the fact that others did not like America. Their visions of streets laden with gold—which had attracted them in the first place—were corrected on their arrival. They saw the misery of the industrial capitalism that was fueling America's economic revival. The following words, written by a Russian Jewish immigrant in the Yiddish newspaper Forverts, echoed the sentiments of many other immigrants, including those from Mount Lebanon: “Where is the golden land, where are the golden people? What has happened to human feeling in such a great wide world, in such a land which is, as it is said, a land flowing with milk and honey? When in such a rich city like New York on 88 Clinton Street a woman is dying of hunger, of loneliness, and need—that can only say: 'Cursed be Columbus, cursed be he for discovering America.'”^[16] In other words, many were perceptive enough to understand that in return for material comfort the United States exacted a social cost. Furthermore, as we noted in the previous chapter, the lives of immigrants were under scrutiny, if not attack, by middle-class social reformers and nativists, who sought to “Americanize” and “modernize” these “foreigners.” While such attempts rarely attained their specific goals, they nonetheless took a toll on the identities and lives of immigrants. Some were willing to make those compromises. But others turned their backs on middle-class “American” society and headed home for what they hoped would be a familiar and comfortable social setting. In the end, one must add, these reasons were not mutually exclusive. Rather, financial success, homesickness, and unwillingness to accept the harsh pace of life in the United States meshed into a singular desire to go “home.”

“Home”

Their first glimpse of that “home” was the crowd of relatives and friends waiting for them at the port of Beirut or Tripoli eager to celebrate their return—and to see the gifts they came bearing. For emigrants of greater wealth, poets were commissioned to write panegyrics, and newspapers published news of their “happy return.” In October of 1906, for instance, an article announced the return “from the American lands” of “the exalted Amir Hani Qa‘adan Shihab with his family after an absence of 7 years during which he obtained his goals.”^[17] Qaysar Ibrahim Maalouf—“the exalted writer”—also returned that year to Zahleh “from the American lands . . . after he spent in it a long time where he was an example of energetic work and honesty.”^[18] Those who were not quite as prominent, financially or otherwise, were still feted, albeit in more modest and localized fashion. In either case, the celebrations went on for weeks. During the villagewide celebrations, sheep were slaughtered in honor of the returned emigrants, and feasts were laid out for the whole village. No sooner was that phase over than the emigrant was expected to return the favor—in double for good measure.

But all was not that joyfully simple or straightforward. “Home” had changed, and romanticized images were quickly dispelled. Politically, Mount Lebanon was in the midst of both continuation and change. The Mutasarrifiyya government—which had run the affairs of the Mountain since 1861—was replete with corruption and nepotism under various governors.^[19] Yet beyond the government bureaucracy—which, to be fair, included many conscientious civil servants—attempts at reforms were afoot. Critics were demanding that the government be more responsive to the citizenry of the Mountain. In practical terms, this demand translated into calls for transparency in the hiring and firing of government employees and for considering merit above political connections in doling out positions.^[20] Moreover, the government of Mount Lebanon had “modernized” its postal service and customs at the port of Beirut and had attempted to create a coherent and “clean” judicial system to deal with the growing number of law suits. On a civil level, political clubs (secret and public) were debating the idea of citizenship and nationality as it pertained to the Lebanese within the Ottoman Empire. Although only the radical few (such as the Arab society al-Fatat) envisioned a separate nation, the majority of Lebanese intellectuals still wanted to safeguard and enhance the Mountain's semi-independence from the Sublime Porte.^[21] One of these clubs was Harakat al-Islah, which argued for a larger degree of self-government in the Arab provinces, including Lebanon. In making their respective arguments, these intellectuals employed the language of the “modern,” and particularly democracy, to justify their claims.

Debates were not always centered overtly around politics. Rather, a large number of “clubs” and societies were dedicated to exploring scientific and literary themes. Members of these various associations would meet to discuss a book authored by a European scientist or the poetry of al-Mutanabi (a fabled medieval Arab poet). They would “read” the history of the Arabs from the perspective of newly found nationalist aspirations and discuss language as a “modern” tool of self-expression. To satisfy the growing demand for knowledge and thought (which was promoted by the proliferation of institutions of higher education), a vibrant press emerged in Beirut and in the Mountain. Between 1858 and 1918 close to 350 Lebanese newspapers and magazines were published in Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon, and various parts of the Mountain.^[22] While many of these periodicals lasted a year or two at most, some (like Hadiqat al-Akhbar and Lubnan) survived for decades. In addition, journals and newspapers that were established by Lebanese émigrés in Egypt were circulated widely in Beirut and the Mountain. For example, al-Muqtataf, which was established by Ya‘qub Sarraf and Faris Nimr, and al-Hilal, which was founded by Jirji Zaidan, were two commonly read magazines that published articles on “modern” knowledge of science and literature. On a larger scale, an encyclopedia was compiled and published in periodical parts by Butrus al-Bustani throughout the 1870s and 1880s. Regardless of the duration of any particular publication, the sheer volume of printed issues points to a substantial and dedicated readership. And—as we will see later in this chapter—this press, like its counterpart in the mahjar, was regularly engaged in discussions about “modernity” by the time emigrants began steaming back into the port of Beirut.

On the economic side, some changes had also taken place. Villages and towns were prospering thanks in large part to the influx of money from the mahjar, which accounted for about half of the annual income of the Mountain. Beirut continued to blossom as a commercial center, and tourism was emerging as a new industry (which catered mainly to Egyptian elites), even as industry and agriculture languished because of the befuddled economic policy of the administration of the Mountain. Roads—which were meant to support the tourist trade and extend the control of the central government—had been built throughout the mountains surrounding the coastal cities. By 1917 over eleven hundred kilometers of roads snaked across the face of the mountains.^[23] Coupled with faster carriage service, these roads allowed for more connections between city and village. They transported people, goods, and ideas more frequently and swiftly between the two worlds and thus brought them closer than they had been before.

But more apparent—and more familiar to emigrants than any of these changes—were those in the realm of society. By the time emigrants began their influx into the Mountain, most of these changes were visibly centered in the city of Beirut. Like other major cities in the Ottoman Empire, Beirut was undergoing a transformation in its landscape that was emblematic of the rise of a new urbanized middle class.^[24] This change was easily apparent to emigrants as they came into the port of Beirut. Scanning the horizons of the city, they would have noticed that most of the roofs were gleaming red as opposed to the prevalent flat roofs that they had last seen ten or twelve years before as they departed for the Americas. Moreover, their eyes would have had to range over a larger space to see the new suburbs that had emerged in their absence. After disembarking, they would come to know the names of these as Achrafiyeh, Ras el-Naba‘a, Mazra‘a, and Ras Beyrouth. The growth of these districts had come about to accommodate the swelling of the population of the city from 80,000 in 1880 to 110,000 in 1906. And these newcomers were mostly members of a middle class of professionals, artisans, clerks, and salaried employees. Thus, as May Davie argues, the city had been transformed in this process from a medieval Arab-Islamic city to a “ville bourgeoise méditerranéenne.”^[25] As we shall see later in this chapter, the more intimate manifestations of this process at the level of gender and family are the ones which would have struck returning emigrants as familiar.

Leaving behind the city and climbing up to their villages, the emigrants discovered that even there things were not what they had imagined them to be while in the mahjar. “Home” was the poverty of the place with its dirt roads and small hovels. It was the “coarse” clothes on the backs of their peasant relatives. It was the lack of running water, outhouses, and other amenities that they had encountered during their recent sojourns in New York or Rio de Janeiro. Contrasted with their fresh memories of the metropolis, these visions must have been disappointing at some level; a disappointment that was made more profound by the pastoral images they had painted of “home” while in the mahjar. Such feelings produced a sense of dislocation because they highlighted how much these emigrants had changed. Panama hats and shorter dresses, dangling gold watches and new coifs were signs of that change. But that was not all. The peasants who had stayed in the Mountain were also different. All had gotten older, some had married and even had children, others had passed away, still others may have gotten poorer or richer, and a few may have moved to a different village. Socially, many disputes and arguments had taken place, and the topography of power and authority had changed over time. Most certainly there would have been some element of jealousy and resentment toward the “newcomers” who flaunted their financial comfort. These feelings combined to make the meeting of returning emigrants and resident peasants far more awkward than anticipated by anyone involved in the communal celebrations. Such awkwardness meant that most returned emigrants would come at various times to the realization that they had to forge new places for themselves in the communities they left behind, just as they had to previously establish a niche for themselves in “American” society.

Although the process of defining that “place” was carried out in a great many different ways, a few stand out as common denominators among the experiences of most returned emigrants. These included the houses that emigrants built, the clothes they wore, the food they ate, the way they raised their children, and how men and women behaved. Into all these matters emigrants introduced the mannerisms and traditions that they had developed in the mahjar and which resonated with the elements of an emerging middle class in Beirut. Consciously or otherwise, they had brought back with them things they thought they were leaving behind. And these clearly set them apart as different. This difference was further accentuated by the mixture of disdain and envy with which many villagers and townspeople reacted to these “innovations.”

Internally and externally, then, many of the returned emigrants were coming to be lumped together as a new social class that was distinct from the peasant society out of which it grew and altogether different from the upper classes of Beirut; in other words, they were drawing together into a middling class of sorts. Parts of the framework of this class were already put in place by those who previously made money within the silk industry and by those who had newly settled in Beirut. However, return emigrants greatly expanded the reach of that class as they surged back to the Mountain. Their sheer number coupled with their newly acquired wealth expanded the numbers of the middle class from a sprinkling in some towns to a ubiquitous presence in almost all the villages of Lebanon—a phenomenon that was not common at that time in Egypt, Syria, Iran, or Turkey. Moreover, in their desire to make others cognizant of their struggle overseas, they surrounded themselves with material wealth and cosmopolitan airs. These elements made the boundaries of the coalescing social class sharper than had ever been before. In these ways the returning emigrants left their indelible mark on the middle class. To understand this process and its inherent tensions, we need to turn now to its details.

The House

Like Polish, Greek, and Italian return emigrants, one of the first and most common elements that came to distinguish those Lebanese emigrants who came back from their kinsfolk and fellow villagers was the house they built for themselves.^[26] Invariably, the returnees chose to build for themselves a house that was bigger and more ornate than any other in the villagehsave, perhaps, for that of another, wealthier emigrant. Undoubtedly, part of the reason for such expenditure was the returnees' desire to display their financial success. In addition, having experiencedheven if from visual encounters instead of actual residencehbetter housing, emigrants were loathe to live in the old hovel. But there were other aspects of themselves that returned emigrants, for conscious reasons or rather more submerged ones, wanted to show. In design and function their new houses were partly a reflection of their new self-images and social habits, which they had piled on top of the old ones. To illustrate this point we need to look at the house as historical artifact.

In order to fully understand the historical significance of the new “emigrant house,” we have to digress a bit and look at the “traditional” house in the village. Throughout the greater part of the nineteenth century, most peasant families lived in a one- or two-room hovel whose walls were made of the local ubiquitous stone and whose flat roof was a combination of timber logs and packed dirt. One of the rooms was used to keep the animals in during the winter, and the other served as living, cooking, eating, and sleeping space. This room was sparsely furnished with a few mattresses, a portable brazier, and maybe a chest of drawers if the peasant was well-off. There were few cooking utensils; most of them were built in, and the rest were manufactured locally. Storage space for the few utensils and linens was shelves built into the walls.^[27] Bread, the main ingredient in the peasants' diet, was baked on a tannour^[28] that was located right outside the house.

Architecturally, the peasants' houses were hardly appealing. Most travelers, except for those whose eyes were clouded by thick romantic notions about the Holy Land, remarked at the misery of peasant abodes.^[29] For instance, in 1860 David Urquhart described the house where he had to spend one night as a crowded hovel that contained a few “potteries” and little else. He went on to state that “the rest of the villages in this area were, if not worse, no better than the state of this village.”^[30] And F. Bart lamented that “these habitations [of peasants] could afford a splendid view. But practically all [of these houses] have only one room, without a window, which serves all the needs of the home.”^[31] Late-nineteenth-century photographs of villages (and not just individual houses) in the Mountain confirm thathto some extenththese statements did not simply express the unflattering personal views of European sojourners. Moreover, these observations are not surprising in view of the fact that a peasant's house was built by members of his family who had little if any experience in masonry. Stones were selected to fit on top of each other as tightly as possible without much shaping since the tools and expertise necessary for constructing tight-fitting walls were not readily available to the fellah. In addition, if a house was built without interior supports, the dimensions were limited to a mere twenty square meters, a space that was barely adequate for four people. To construct a larger house, peasants had to use wooden beams or pillars of stone. However, both of these materials were extremely expensive. Wood was becoming a precious commodity in the Mountain, as silk factories had consumed tons of wood to fire up their spinning machines.^[32] Even when a peasant could afford it, the space added was only six square meters. And while stone pillars added much more space, the cost of constructing this larger space was much higher than most peasants could afford.^[33]

Aside from being larger versions of this typical house, the homes of wealthier peasants and even of many of the shuyukh were only different in two ways: content and location. These wealthier homes may have contained a big iron bed, many more pillows, a cupboard or two, some wooden trunks, and a low table.^[34] While a few items, like the bed, were imitations of European possessions common in Beirut, most of the other possessions were “traditional” household goods. Such contents marked their owners as rich and elite members of peasant society but hardly as “modern” in the European sense. Another distinguishing factor was the location of the house within the general layout of a particular village. The most influential members of the village occupied its central part, while poorer ones lived at the periphery. For example, in the village of ‘Ammatur, the two main clans of ‘Abd as-Samad and Abu-Shaqra occupied the center of the village, while the lower class Druzes and Christians lived at the periphery of the village, and an outcast Christian-Muslim couple had to live at a considerable distance from the village.^[35] This visual rendition of social hierarchy immediately clued visitors to the locus of power and directed them to the house where they could expect the greatest amount of hospitality.

A decade or two after Urquhart's visit to Lebanon (1870–1880), money from silk was showing up in—among other things—slightly better homes for wealthier peasants.^[36] The large, single, and multipurpose living space was no longer sufficient, nor was the proximity to animals desirable. The first change in the construction of peasant houses was the adoption of two-level rectangular houses, with the lower level reserved for the animals. The physical separation of living and service areas terminated the cohabitation of human and animal. One observer saw this shift as “symbolizing man's emancipation from unremitting toil.”^[37] Even if we do not subscribe to such dramatic views, we can still argue that this physical elevation was meant as an indication of a social rise above the general peasantry. The way these new types of houses were constructed confirms this point. While the lower level of the house—or the reserve of animals and the tannour—was still a crude construction of stone walls and dirt ceiling, the second level was a different affair altogether. Reserved for people, the upper level displayed better masonry work and consisted of a bigger room with a couple of slightly larger windows. One door on that level let out to the road and another to the roof of the lower level which served in the summer as a terrace.^[38] Yet, despite the larger dimensions, the living space of the family was essentially the same as that in older and poorer houses in that it was multipurpose. In other words, the same physical space served as a communal sitting room, eating area, and—at the end of the day—sleeping area. Thus, we can fairly conclude that the first eighty or so years of the nineteenth century were marked by slow changes in the architecture, interior design, and functions of the Lebanese house.

The following thirty years were different. Emigrant money funded the most rapid and dramatic transformation of that house at every level, creating in the process the “central-hall house.” This was long assumed to be the Lebanese house parexcellence, and it is etched into the collective memory as a national icon whose roots derive from the “Mountain”—and to a much lesser extent from the Phoenician past.^[39] In fact, rather than simply emanating from the Mountain, these houses were emigrant adaptations of the mansions of the upper bourgeoisie of Beirut. In turn, this style was an earlier extroversion of the Arab-Islamic interior, which dominated the mountain houses mixed with Italian and French material and ornamentation. Moreover, these edifices—while remaining unique in some ways—were part of a Levantine bourgeois architecture that was emerging around the same time throughout the Eastern Mediterranean.^[40] For example, Zeynep Çelik speaks of similar architecture and of the integration of “western appliqué façades on traditional interiors,” which was remaking the elite houses in Istanbul.^[41] Put another way, the “central-hall house” was a dialectical outcome of the various cultural currents that ran through Beirut and into the Mountain villages. These came from the Ottoman metropole, from the peasant villages, and through Italian and French architects and builders.

Regardless of their roots, these houses stood in the villages of the Mountain as unambiguous and impressive testaments to the wealth and status of their owners—returning emigrants. As Friedrich Ragette commented rather dramatically about architecture in the Lebanese village, “Towards the end of the nineteenth century . . . the houses turned into veritable villas . . . majestically dominating their surroundings.”^[42] Ranging between 140 and 200 square meters (and sometimes reaching palatial dimensions with 300 square meters of floor space), these harat (as they were called) were larger than any of the older houses. Beyond size, the striking elevated triple-arch motif of the central hall—which included two ornate windows that framed the door—made these houses stand out among the plain façades of the older homes. Finally, the coup de grâce was the signature red-tiled roof, which stood out ever so dramatically against the green and brown surroundings.

Digging a little deeper, we find that from their foundations these harat were different from their poorer cousins. Many of these houses (some of which are still standing today) show in their details that construction was assigned to local professional masons. The stones for the walls were better dressed and arranged, and the ceiling was sometimes sealed with trabé franjié (“European soil”), or cement.^[43] More interesting, this elaborate variation included arches within the house. Each set of arches was called habl qanater, or a “cord of arches,” and the house could contain one, two, or three such cords depending on the wealth of the family.^[44] Functionally, these arches improved the insulation of the house, which was also enhanced by the new way that the walls were constructed. These new walls, which could be as thick as one meter, were generally constructed as two separate walls with dirt filled in between them.^[45] The outside wall was made of carefully selected stones, called mdamik, that were shaped to fit on top of each other without the need for mortar and with the joints barely apparent. Alternating sandstone and limestone (the limestone being used in façades exposed to the winter rains or in more load-bearing areas) created a most pleasing decorative effect that contrasted with the monotonous exterior of older homes.

Ornamental designs in windows, shutters, and porticos distanced this house even further from its plain cubic neighbors. Doors and their frames incorporated moldings and carvings that made them more attractive than the old doors, which consisted of pieces of wood nailed together. On a more cosmetic level, windows with paned glass as well as wooden shutters became more common, and ornamental glazed circular windows were placed near the top of walls in order to infuse the inside with a multitude of colors. In 1890 these changes were just emerging, as observed in a French report: “today the use of glass windows is being generalized very quickly.”^[46] Its author went on to estimate the amount of window glass imported yearly at 450,000 square feet, at an average cost of 1,400 piasters per 100 square feet.^[47] By 1911 we find that the importation of window glass had surpassed the million-square-foot mark.^[48] It would appear from these numbers that returning emigrants wanted the power to see and to be seen—when they chose—from within the private space of their distinct houses.

Ultimately, however, the most visually striking sign of emigrant wealth appeared on the roof. Imported brilliant red tiles covered the new slanted roofs, which contrasted strongly with the traditional flat roofs of peasant homes. These blushes of wealth became popular and common enough that while in 1887 one million red tiles were imported from France, five years later this figure had doubled, and by 1911 it had crossed the five-million mark.^[49] Although many of these tiles were destined for houses being built in Beirut, a large proportion made their way to the villages of Mount Lebanon as observed by various contemporaries. For example, Ernest Weakley, a British parliamentarian who was writing in 1911 about commerce in Mount Lebanon, commented that “all new households in Beirut as well as in the villages on the Lebanon are covered with the bright red foreign article [tiles].”^[50] Ravndal was more explicit in his observation of this phenomenon: “When it is considered that there is hardly a village in the most remote parts of the Lebanon that has not at least 2 or 3 new houses with tiled roofs and that even whole villages have been thus constructe— the amount of money diverted from America and permanently invested in Syria can be easily recognized.”^[51] These observations are all the more dramatic when one takes into account the fact that until the late 1870s “one could hardly find a single red-tiled roof in the Mountain.”^[52]

Changes were as dramatic—albeit less publicon the inside of these emigrant homes. Floors were covered with mosaic tiles, sanitary fixtures and equipment were added, and better heating stoves were installed. Most notably, large multipurpose space gave way to a number of smaller rooms with a specific use for each. Although there were some differences from one house to the next, in general the floor plan remained quite similar. The main door opened unto an entry hall that led straight ahead to a central hall—hence the name of this design. This central hall was the main living room and reception area for guests; this much of the basic design was the same as that of “traditional” and poorer peasant homes. However, additional rooms (the number of which depended on the size of the house) branched off to the side of the entryway. These rooms dramatically altered the layout of the house by creating specialized spaces that had never really existed before. One of these was the kitchen, and the others were the bedrooms. Each of the bedrooms had a door that—when closed—effectively isolated the happenings in that room from the rest of the family life. In other words, a more distinct sense of privacy derived from the design of these houses. This privacy separated guests (in the central hall) from the occupants of the house who—for whatever reason—were in their bedrooms. Equally, the “modern” interior separated the parents' room from that of the children, and then again the boys from the girls.

Because of the enlargement and subdivision of space, the house acquired different types of furniture. The few mattresses which seated and slept the whole peasant family were no longer enough for all of the bedrooms as well as the living room. Beds—complete with iron frames—had to be purchased for the bedrooms; cushions, a sofa, and a couple of chairs were placed in the central hall. The increased demand for Western-style furniture translated into a rise in the number of imported chairs. While in 1868 only twelve thousand items of furniture were imported, during the 1890s eighty thousand chairs en bois courbé (of curved, or bent, wood) alone were imported yearly to Beirut and Mount Lebanon. Iron beds were another big import item by the end of the 1890s. In 1887, for instance, more than thirteen thousand English-made iron beds were imported to Beirut, with about a third destined for the villagers in the mountains.^[53] Two decades later, the figures had doubled.^[54] Demand for these goods finally propelled some local companies to build franji furniture. Early on in the twentieth century, these companies were advertising their wares in most of the popular newspapers, like Lubnan. One local manufacturer of furniture placed the following advertisement:

Al-Suyufi Factory: [We] manufacture and sell in it all kinds of furniture . . . like armoires with mirrors, sinks of all kinds, buffets, and dining tables . . . drapes and coffee tables, hall trees . . . sofas and chairs, etc.^[55]

Other local stores were opened to sell a greater number of imported luxury goods. For instance, no fewer than three separate stores advertised the availability of clocks, armoires, and sofas at their various outlets in the Mountain. Since advertising was still fairly uncommon in Lebanon in the 1910s, we can appreciate that there were many other stores which did not advertise yet which were selling the same wares.

Inside the armoires emigrants hung their franji clothes. Gone were the days when a peasant could not don the clothes of a shaykh without fear of retribution.^[56] By the turn of the twentieth century the Lebanese middle class bought whatever fashion they could (and in some instances, could not) afford. The styles, as one zajaliya (popular poem) recorded, were distinctly different from those of the peasants—and of the shuyukh, for that matter. For the “little ones” there was:

	a blue suit with buttons
	and each button costing sixty misriyya
	On the waist there must be a leather
	Belt, according to the latest in fashion
	And a straw hat with
	A band all around
	And an ironed collar
	And a tied neck-tie

Women, the poet continued in his laments, were even more “lavish.”

	I want a short corset
	And two dresses that are tasteful
	I want a jeweled comb
	And I want earrings and a choker
	The hat costs four liras
	And the dress is from heavy wool
	And a raincoat that
	has no equal in the country[57]

Men wore their Panama hats, leather boots, and waistcoats with a gold watch dangling from a pocket.

Such was the demand for these luxury items that by the first decade of the twentieth century stores catering to these acquired tastes had spread throughout the larger cities of the Mountain. One of those, located in Beirut (where most of these stores were established), was Bon Marché, which advertised among its wares “parasols, pantaloons, handkerchiefs . . . perfumes and powders . . . fans . . . etc.”^[58] While it was rare to find similar stores with finished goods in the larger towns of Dayr al-Qamar, Jubayl, Brummana, Zahleh, and Batrun, all had franji tailors. For instance, by end of the nineteenth century, there were five such tailors in Dayr al-Qamar, and, more tellingly, a provincial city like Jubayl boasted of seven tailors who catered to the surrounding villages.^[59] Even smaller and more distant towns like Brummana, Bsherri, and Jezzine could count on one or two tailors in their areas.^[60] All advertised themselves as capable of clothing men and women in the latest European fashion.

Amidst this “modern” wardrobe there was increasingly little room for the sirwal (peasant pants) and labbada (wool peasant hat) or for the geometric tattoos on the arms and faces of women. By wearing franji clothes, the rural middle class used their bodies to display their wealth, sophistication, and social difference. When this effort is considered along with the emergence of the harat, it should become clear that the members of this social group (dominated, as it was, by emigrants) worked hard to distinguish themselves from their poorer peasant neighbors through their novel styles of sitting, eating, sleeping, and dressing. Although these efforts at contrast stretched over years of history, they are nonetheless striking. Even as emigrants, these people had consciously and anxiously wanted to come back to their villages; once there they were equally desirous to distance themselves from the social milieu. In the mahjar they had elevated peasant life to romantic heights, but upon their return they shunned its “traditional” reality for their version of “modernity.” This simultaneous presence in the village and distance from its poorer inhabitants was a source of tension that exaggerated the social stratification within the village, a stratification already begun in part by commercialization of silk and the establishment of silk factories.

The growing distance between the peasants and the rural middle class becomes more apparent when we compare the social spaces of the “traditional” and the “modern” house. Before the 1890s (and even afterward in peasant houses), working and living spaces in the villages were almost indistinct visually and, for most of the year, functionally.^[61] People, animals, work, and play intermeshed across the physical boundaries of the house. Women worked on raising their silkworms inside the house to add to the income of their families; lentils were spread on the flat roofs to dry them for the winter; and chickens and goats were brought in in the winter to safeguard the family's investment from the harsh weather. The roofs—built in close proximity to each other—were also a physical space; there women socialized with each other and participated in the public life of the village. Moreover, the dark and cramped interior of older peasant homes encouraged women to spend most of their time outside the house. In sum, the “traditional” house of the peasant was an integral part of the overall socioeconomic texture of the village and the fabric of daily life.

However, the ‘atbeh (threshold)of the harat pushed the internal life of a family into a more isolated sphere. Animals did not meander in, nor was it necessary to bring them in during the winter nights—they had their “stable” beneath the house. And while women continued to work within the house, their labors were no longer remunerated financially in any direct way. Cooking, cleaning, and raising children still went on behind the walls of the house, but sitt al-bayt (the lady of the house) did not need to raise silkworms. (This is ironic since many of these women had worked in the mahjar to help the family accumulate its money.) In addition, the new design also served to curtail sitt al-bayt's social interactions in the public sphere. Women in the emigrant household no longer had to go to the ‘ayn in the village to get water; either their servants did that, or water was brought much closer to the house. Cooking, normally an outdoor activity, was brought into the added kitchen, where more complicated and time-consuming meals were prepared. Finally, the beautiful pyramid of red tiles which topped these houses made it most impractical to climb on top of the roofs. Altogether, then, and in contrast to the “traditional” peasant abode the “central-hall house” afforded women fewer possibilities to go outside.

Isolating them further was the fact that the ‘atbeh also symbolized the division between those who owned the land and those who worked for them. One anecdote told about the wealthy Habib Doumani family from the town of Dayr al-Qamar dramatizes this separation. One day, “Sitt [Lady] Sa‘ada [Habib's wife] was bothered when she saw tens of shuraka‘ peasants [workers on the landowner's land] entering her house with their muddied boots dirtying her white and red tiles, and she complained of the matter to her husband.”^[62] Not always nor in every new household was the separation so distinct. Yet the division was obvious all over the Mountain since most of the returned emigrants ceased to work on their land (as we will discuss later). It was all the more apparent as the sons (and some daughters, as we will also see later in this chapter) of these same emigrants were sent off to school while the youth of their peasant neighbors were busy tilling the fields. Thus, women of the harat could no longer easily intermingle with women of lesser financial stature, as all such relations had an undertow of unequal social power. One need not exaggerate the extent of this distinction to realize that it furthered the stratification of the village society even as—and because—it pushed middle-class women into a more distinguishable private sphere.

Womanhood

Affrming this “modern” ideal of an insular life for middle-class women—a model that the emigrants had encountered and engaged in the mahjar—was a localized cult of domesticity which had been, and was still being, enunciated in Beirut. From the 1880s onward, numerous newspapers and magazines and the authors of various books and speeches were engaged in the project of inventing a universal “woman.” Readers and listeners were instructed that “all that is inside the house is relegated in its administration to the woman just as all external affairs are the domain of the man.”^[63] Such a created “tradition” needed ideological underpinnings to justify its existence and to make it appear as old as time and as natural as the air. Thus, it was infused with the utmost importance. One author, in highlighting that importance, wrote that women are the moral pillar of the family—and by extension the nation—because “there are none like them in organizing society and safeguarding its order and morals, because they are the goddesses of their families and homes.”^[64] This deification is quite startling when it was still common at the time for male peasants to refer to their wives as “The House” or “Our Paternal Cousin”^[65] and when mentioning a woman's given name sent the husband into apologetic contortions for fear of offending the listener.

As the host of articles in women's magazines and newspapers constantly reminded their readers, women were not quite to the point of being “goddesses of their families and homes.” One woman wrote, in an open letter to her bride-seeking son, “You asked me to find you an appropriate girl to be a partner in your life . . . for you want a rational, energetic and capable wife, and these qualities I have not found in an Eastern young woman.”^[66] In this one paragraph the writer created the model of “womanhood” to which “Eastern” women must aspire. Injecting the division of the world into two distinct spheres of “East” and “West” into her discourse on womanhood, this writer deftly linked “modernity” and the “woman” through the general qualities of knowledge, energy, and capability. And in every instance she found the “Eastern” young woman wanting.

To rise to these levels, the middle-class woman had to follow numerous novel ways. From breastfeeding children to setting a table, from using antiseptic hygiene to different social manners, and from comforting her husband to speaking at appropriate times, the “modern” woman had to jump through many hoops in order to reach her social peak. Advice in all these matters was abundant. For example, Ibrahim Bayk al-Aswad dedicated ten pages in his almanac—which ran through four editions between 1906 and 1910—to the act of breastfeeding. Shunning the “outmoded and unscientific” methods of yesteryear, he recommended the following regimen: “While breastfeeding her baby a mother should remain seated while supporting her back with a pillow . . . and for her [the mother's] comfort and that of her infant she needs to organize the times of breastfeeding in the first few weeks so that [she breastfeeds] once every two hours for 10 to 12 minutes only, and at night . . . she should give him the breast around 4 o'clock in the afternoon and allow him to eat enough and not breastfeed him again till the morning.”^[67]

Undaunted by the prospects of engorged breasts and crying hungry infants at night, the same author goes on to provide equally “scientific” advice for weaning a baby. At nine months, he wrote, a baby should be weaned according to the following formula:

	7 A.M.—12 tablespoons of milk and one tablespoon of cream and teaspoon of sugar mixed with 3 tablespoons of water;
	10:30 A.M.—milk, sugar and water as in the preceding and 2 teaspoons of “mellin” food dissolved in warm water and added to the milk
	2 P.M.—as was fed at 10:30 A.M.
	6 P.M.—as was fed at 10:30 A.M.
	7 P.M.—as was fed at 7 A.M.[68]

He proceeded to detail the feeding schedule for infants from ten to fourteen months, fourteen to eighteen months, and finally from eighteen months to the end of the second year. Variations of such demanding schedules were also recommended in articles published in women's magazines.^[69] No doubt they were intended to reduce infant mortality and to produce healthier children. Nonetheless, they placed a great burden on the mother—and the mother alone—to attend to the welfare of her child.^[70]

One woman's magazine, al-Hasna’, expounded at large on the “principles in raising children.” One of its articles listed eight ways to ensure the health of a child:

1. Children are to be given the best room in the house
2. The room has to be large with many windows so that it will allow sun and air to come in easily
3. They must sleep early and they need no less than 10 hours of sleep
4. They have to spend two hours outside the house to get fresh air and they must never be exposed to cold air unless they are wearing clothes that protects them from it
5. They must be encouraged [to engage] in athletic [activity] that strengthens the body and to practice . . . regularly and in an orderly fashion
6. They need to eat at a table special for them until they reach the age of 10, and food should be heavy at lunch and light for dinner
7. They should refrain from eating sweets and doughy food and unripe fruits and all that badly affects digestion
8. They must not be exposed to exciting subject matter such as murder, wiliness and other very dangerous events^[71]

To implement such rigorous rules necessitated access to money and facilities that only the middle class could hope to have. But, more important, these rules presented a radically different approach to raising children. Unlike their peasant cousins, these children were to be protected as much as possible from the roughness of life. While peasant boys and girls started working in the fields from the age of six, children of the harat were to be spared deleterious exposure to work, cold weather, damp air, and violence. A “good” mother would also attend to her children's education. She needed—according to the same “experts”—to sit beside them every evening to help them with their homework and to read to them. In sum, the middle-class mother's task was to shelter and guide her children so that they would grow up to be healthy young men and women who could then contribute better to society. This is the same enthusiastic sentiment that was concurrently running through the discourse of social reformers in Iran and Egypt. For example, in his Murshid al-amin lil-banat wal-banin, Rifa‘a al-Tahtawi stated that educating Egyptian women was important because it “prepares [them] to raise their children well. . . . That children should be given a sound . . . tarbiyya [education/upbringing] is of enormous social consequence.”^[72]

This process of defining women within the context of a household—albeit a gilded one—was not limited to their role as “modern” mothers. Additionally, a middle-class woman was expected to manage her house properly. Al-Hasna’ editorialized that “a lady must know the principles of this art [management of the house] and work according to them because she is . . . the manager of its affairs. And it [the home] is the mirror of her works and the proof of her taste, her hard work, and the guide to her emotions; . . . this is particularly important because home life influences the morals and shapes personalities.”^[73]Al-Hasna’subsequently dedicated close to a third of its pages to ensuring that its women readers approached these ideals of “modern” femininity. One article, for example, spoke about the new ways of washing clothes; another expounded on the effects of kohl, eyeliners, and powders (“heavy make-up is deleterious for the health of your skin”); and a three-page article described the “scientific” method for cleaning (“to rid the house of germs and vermin”).^[74]

Under the title “Managing the House,” the same magazine instructed:

Put a little ammonia in a bowl and immerse in it a piece of soft cloth and rub the jewelry with it vigorously then dry it with another piece of cloth and polish it well. Ammonia also cleans leather gloves and silk textiles from spots and removes from black silken and woolen clothes the reddishness which is caused when citric liquids falls upon them. . . . Silver utensils and dinnerware which are used during mealtimes must be washed with water and pure white soap and dried very well with an old soft towel and polished twice a week with white soft esfidaj mixed with alcohol . . . and if the silver has black spots that are not removed by rubbing with esfidaj then rub it with piece of flannel cloth wetted with citric acid and then polish it. If you want another way . . . ^[75]

Fatat Lubnan, another women's magazine, went further in stating the importance of such laborious tasks. It preached that “the proper management of the house is not limited [in its benefits] to the comfort of the family, but goes beyond it to the happiness of the nation, its wealth, dignity, and sovereignty.”^[76]

Finally, a woman's role—women were told, mostly by male writers—included catering to the needs and desires of the “man of the household.” Many writers argued that women could do so only if they avoided such “trivialities” as reading romance novels and attending parties, and paid greater attention to the more “meaningful” things in life. Among these consequential matters they listed cooking proper meals, setting a good table, carefully managing expenses, and making sure the children were clean and well kept. In taking care of all these matters, a woman would simply be acting out her proper role as a helpmate for her husband because “she and she alone can . . . help him in his business and affairs even if she did not have a direct hand in them or knowledge about them.” If she performed these “duties” with a smile, and if she did not complain or “gripe,” the house would be a source of contentment and rejuvenation for the husband.^[77] Even more liberal commentators listed similar conditions for a happy home. Elias Tweyni, who expounded at length and in several articles about giving women respect and rights, wrote, “It is important to give a woman the rights that support her elevated status within the family because she [the woman] is the real helper for it [the family] and her husband, for God has created her for this purpose and she is capable of helping her husband and supporting him in his work.”^[78]

In an article entitled “The Woman's Kingdom: A Discourse on Domestic Politics,” one author summed up these various elements of a “modern” middle-class woman's life. “Making husband and child happy must be the main purpose behind the efforts of every woman who deserves to be described as feminine. . . . Yes, ladies, this [longing looks from the husband and kisses from the children] is the only thing that brings us happiness, we women; . . . and it does not come easily and without trouble . . . but rather it comes through a path full of exertion and difficulties, [where we] deny ourselves and shun our interests in favor of the welfare of those around us.”^[79] It all amounted to a large sacrifice of a woman's individuality in order to nurture that of her husband and children. This ideal (and we will question its reality in a following chapter) was notably different from the sacrifice of peasant women, who were not quite so alone in subsuming their own interests to that of the family. Although the level of sacrifice among rural families was hardly distributed equally among their members, husband and wife and children all worked for the survival of the family. The possibilities for individual self-expression were limited by the dearth of financial and educational resources. Across the class divide, the “goddesses” of the house stood far more alone and shouldered the greater burden of life's sacrifices. Like middle-class women in Istanbul or Teheran, these women were asked to forego the homosocial life which had sustained their grandmothers and mothers because it was threatening to the new social order in which women were the “special, almost exclusive agents of what has been called the relations of social reproduction.”^[80] Making this isolation more poignant was the fact that these middle-class women gazed on a larger spectrum of alternative lives across the growing distance between “private” and “public.” They knew about those possibilities and were expected to help their husbands and children attain them, at the same time that they were expected to recede further into a lonely existence. In that sense their sacrifice was as mentally painful as the hardships which peasant women lived with every day were physically painful.

Education

But women had to accept this trying shift in responsibilities, and they had to be prepared to accomplish all the tasks that it entailed. Even if some women embraced these new duties, others who had traveled to and worked in the mahjar would have been loathe to being shunted so readily into what must have appeared to be an isolated and stilted life-style. This reluctance is apparent to us from the recurring complaints by middle-class reformers about women's insistence on “frivolous” socialization and from the innumerable articles that were meant to make women “better” mothers, wives, and managers of their households. Because of this reluctance, many contemporaries argued that constructing the “new woman” required the education of the younger generation of women. On this premise, they engaged the debate about this issue; a debate that began in the 1870s and was still going strong by World War I. Hence, we have the emphatic and very “motherly” statement by one contemporary who wrote, “Breastfeeding them [women] the milks of science is as important a duty as breastfeeding an infant, and as necessary as water is for plants.”^[81] And another expressed the same idea in a few lines of poetry:

	Teach her she will be succor of happiness
	Succor of family and children
	Let her know she is the source of good
	The basis of wealth and happiness[82]

Less poetic, but more direct, was the affrmation in 1909 by the editor of a woman's magazine:

Rearing [children] is the primary duty of a woman, given that God has singled her out with natural inclination [toward child raising] and what social traditions dictate. . . . So that she can perform this primary duty . . . she needs to be prepared for that with learning and schooling and to continue to follow the latest opinions . . . and these are the most important necessities for every mother who wishes the well-being of her children, and there is not a mother in the world who does not.^[83]

These ideas meandered from the pages of magazines and newspapers into the ideological foundations of girls' schools. For instance, during the dedication of the Friends' School for Girls in Brummana, the principal, Eli Jones, “spoke for one and a quarter hours on the subject of female education—and was translated into Arabic.”^[84] His talk centered around the notion of providing women with an education to make them better companions for men.^[85]

The content of girls' education was geared toward that function. One writer expounded on this matter by stating that “among the most important of the sciences that women must learn is the art of managing the house because she needs to know how to organize her home and its affairs and its needs such as cooking, baking, cleaning the furniture and setting a proper table.” In addition, along with rudimentary knowledge of geography and history, it was deemed necessary to teach a woman to read so that she could peruse literary books and newspapers, “in order to amuse herself during the long idle hours and to benefit her children with knowledge,” as well as to provide better companionship for her husband.^[86] A few writers even thought it of the utmost importance to teach women about hygiene, nursing, and “even physiology” so that they could take better care of their children's health. Finally, women were to learn proper “home economics” in order to make their husbands' income stretch further. Quoting Benjamin Franklin, one self-appointed arbiter of women's tasks wrote, “Fear spendthriftiness for the smallest holes sink the largest ships.”^[87]

Al-Hasna’and other women's journals dedicated page after page to this same subject.^[88] But Fatat Lubnan was the most adamant in its pronouncements about this issue. In one of many articles the editor, Salima Abi Rashid, proclaimed that the cause for the “great gap between the peoples of the West and the peoples of the East [is the relative knowledge of] home economics. Their learning has made them dominate everything and our ignorance has made us dominated by everything, so they have power over truths and fantasies have power us.” Such a “sorry state of affairs” could be resolved only by imitating the curriculum which young girls in Europe were receiving in their schools. At length she wrote,

In elementary schools girl students receive lessons in the art of cooking . . . as well as in washing clothes and ironing it according to the most modern of ways, and managing the house and cleaning it, and in avoiding the ill-effects of toilets and chimneys and in disinfecting it, and other lessons in the principles of safeguarding health and caring for children, and in the ways of treating illnesses and dealing with sudden emergencies [until] the doctor arrives, and lessons in the science of home economics, and in correlating between income and expenditures.^[89]

She concluded her critique of Lebanese society by pleading that “[our] life has become corrupted to such an extent that it is feared that our social structure will descend to such a stage as to make it impossible to ever rise again. And this corrupted life cannot be changed except by educating the girl.”^[90] Articles in other magazines agreed—albeit in a less passionate and dramatic tone—that “proper” young girls must be prepared to play the roles of middle-class wives and mothers within the boundaries of middle-class houses.

This circular construction, where gender roles define class, and class implies particular gender roles, was given urgency through links to the wider political spectrum of “nation” and its confrontation with a dominating “West.” Thus, making a “nation” was inextricably linked with producing good mothers; one could not be attained without the other—at least according to some. This strategy was similar to the one that was employed by other middle classes of colonized “nations,” be they in China, South Asia, or other parts of the “Orient.” For example, Tani Barlow argues that female writers in China presented the same argument in demanding changes in the status of women in the 1890s and 1910s. One of these writers asked, “Why isn't China strong? Because there are no persons of talent. Why are there no persons of talent? Because women do not prosper.”^[91] Similarly, and around the same time, some Iranian intellectuals situated the need for women's education within the political struggle between an “East” and a “West.” Arguing that education is necessary for the preparation of the “woman” for her role as a manager of the household, one writer noted that “even in household management women of Europe and America have surpassed those of Asia. . . . Nations that have mothers like European women can conquer other lands and rule over other nations.”^[92] So it was in Lebanon, as in these other places, that the “modern woman” became essentialized into an ideal type whose role in bringing up children and serving her husband was a prerequisite for an independent nation that would be equal to the “West” and able to repel its domination.^[93]

The evangelical emphasis on the role young women had to play in lifting Lebanese society—and neighboring ones, as other scholars have pointed out—from its corruption was made all the more impressive by the absence of any such a role for boys. For them there were no lessons in “home economics,” table manners, sewing, or anything of the sort. Rather, as told by H. J. Turtle, in Protestant schools, “boys are trained in all the useful branches of education, and some to trades. They go out as teachers . . . , and also as clerks and apprentices in merchant's offices and factories in Beirut.”^[94] Catholic schools (which were concerned about “losing” Lebanese boys to other missionaries) also changed their curriculum to provide a more practical education, greatly deemphasizing religious instruction in the process. Writing in 1866, the director of the Jesuit school in Ghazir observed that ‘Aintoura—a rival school run by the Lazarists—“is a nursery [i.e., school] for young men who want to take up commercial or industrial careers.”^[95] The Jesuits soon followed suit in providing such a new curriculum, which was implemented in all the schools under their direction.^[96] Finally, one finds that all the institutions for higher education catered to young men—of good social means—and produced doctors and lawyers who added to the ranks of the professional middle class. (The Université Saint Joseph and its rival, the Syrian Protestant College—later known as the American University of Beirut—were two such institutions, and it was not until the aftermath of World War I that women were allowed to enter their hallowed halls.) Boys were, then, educated to work outside the home, in the ever-expanding “public sphere.” In this manner, education was of the essence in constructing the “private” and “public” sides of the middle-class society and in ensuring their separation according to gender.

As seen in the dramatic change in the number of girls attending schools in Mount Lebanon, members of this class seem to have heeded calls for educating girls. Numbers tell part of this tale. As late as the first quarter of the nineteenth century, girls' education was considered inappropriate and even immoral by peasants and shuyukh alike, for it was thought to promote licentious behavior.^[97] The first to break this “tradition” were Protestant missionaries, who set up schools for girls in Beirut and nearby villages. The American Presbyterians led the way as early as 1826 by providing some basic education—mostly in subjects like knitting and sewing—for about thirty girls who were in “occasional attendance” at six schools.^[98] Most of these “schools” were located in the residences of the missionaries, and the wives of the missionaries carried out the instruction. It was not until 1835 that a separate room on the mission's ground was set aside for girls' education. This came to be known as the Female School, and it was headed by an American mistress and a Lebanese assistant who taught on average about twenty-five girls. However, this and other girls' schools established by the American missionaries remained limited to a few well-off Christian girls.^[99] Then, in 1846, these missionaries established a boarding school for girls in Beirut and another in Suq al-Gharb in 1858, both of which offered subsidized liberal education in the arts and sciences.^[100] The popularity of both schools induced the British missionaries to set up the Girls Training School in Shimlan a few years later.

Although credit must be given to the American missionaries for their early dedication to the concept of female education, the lead in that matter soon passed to the Catholic and Maronite nuns. The Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, who arrived in Lebanon in 1849, were the first Catholic missionaries to set up schools for girls. By 1869, the sisters—twenty-eight from France and twenty-eight from Lebanon—had built a hospital in Beirut and an orphanage that took in young girls who were deprived of their parents by the civil war in 1860.^[101] In addition, the sisters established a school for young girls in 1863 which had forty-three boarding students. The high cost of the school—400 francs or 1,600 piasters per year—made it accessible only to the daughters of well-off families from Beirut and the surrounding mountains. At the same, the sisters established eight schools in Mount Lebanon, concentrated within twenty miles of Beirut except for two that were established in the Kisrawan region. All the schools taught the same curriculum—French, Arabic, arithmetic, history and geography—in addition to providing religious instruction, and education in the eight institutions outside Beirut was free for all 569 students.^[102]

Indigenously, two associations of Lebanese nuns in cooperation with the Jesuits were established in 1853 to further female education in Lebanon in the “proper”—that is, Catholic—direction. One of these was the Association of Mariamiyyat, established in Bikfaiya, and the other was the Association of the Heart of Jesus in Zahleh. The first association opened schools in the areas of Kisrawan, Metn, Futuh, Jubayl, and Batrun, while the second opened schools in the Biqa‘a valley and Damascus region. Yet, despite these efforts, the number of girls attending schools remained minimal. For example, Constantin Petkovich, the Russian consul general to Beirut, reported in 1885 that all the schools in Mount Lebanon tutored no more than 1,598 girls.^[103] Of these, almost a third were girls from the nascent Protestant community in Lebanon, and the remainder came from the other Christian communities. He further noted—in a disappointed tone—that while a mere 135 girls were Maronite, and another 155 were Greek Catholic, none came from the Greek Orthodox community.^[104]

Matters began to change fairly rapidly by the turn of the century. Within the span of two decades (1893–1914), the number of girls' schools in the Mountain mushroomed. Beginning in 1893 various orders of Catholic nuns opened schools in the Mountain. For example, the Nuns of Love established a total of twelve new schools—spread all over the mountain—in the span of fourteen years. Nuns from the St. Joseph order followed suit with four boarding schools for girls, while the Besançon nuns established another four schools in Bikfaiya, Jounieh, Ba‘abdat, and Baskinta.^[105] While we do not know the exact number of girls who were enrolled in these schools, we can get a glimpse of the dramatic rise in enrollment from the few examples we have available. For instance, by 1914 nuns from the Association of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary were undertaking the education of 6,000 girls in over thirty schools.^[106] In 1894 Jesuits schools were educating a total of 2,130 girls in twenty schools spread over the Mountain. Similarly, by the end of the nineteenth century, the British Syrian mission alone was educating 4,000 pupils—at all levels—in Mount Lebanon, and of these a third were girls.^[107] Beyond these specific numbers, we know that other Protestant missionary schools were educating another thousand or so girls around the Mountain, and the remainder of the Catholic schools enrolled at least another two or three thousand girls in their various institutions. In total, then, we can safely estimate that at least reach ten thousand girls were attending schools in the Mountain, as compared to the sixty thousand students who were boys.

The magnitude of this change can be brought into greater relief when we compare these numbers with numbers from surrounding regions within the Ottoman Empire. Geographically, the closest to Mount Lebanon of these regions was the caza of Sidon. By the last decade of the nineteenth century that caza had a total of five secondary schools, mostly located in the city of Sidon, with a total of 470 students; 200 of them went to two Protestant schools, and just a handful were girls.^[108] Even less educationally developed was the region of Sūr, slightly further south than Sidon. In that whole region there were no secondary schools, and for a population of about thirteen thousand there were only seven elementary schools catering mainly to boys.^[109] In the Jabal ‘Amil district where one hundred thousand people—mostly Shi‘ites—lived, formal schooling was almost nonexistent as late as the middle of the twentieth century.^[110] Casting our glances even further across the Ottoman empire, we find similar contrasts. Consider, if you will, that in the province of Aleppo only 4,150 girls out of a population that totaled 921,345 went to school. Further to the northeast, in the province of Ankara—which included over one million people—even fewer girls (3,650) were sent to school. In fact, of the thirty-six provinces listed in the official Ottoman statistical books, none had more girls per capita attending school. To put it another way, while girls attending schools in Mount Lebanon amounted to 2.35 percent of the total population, the closest any other Ottoman province came to this figure was that of Sivas, where girls attending school equaled 1 percent of the population at large; most other provinces did not come close to even half a percent.^[111] Another perspective is provided by the percentage of girls making up the total school population. While in Mount Lebanon it was almost 17 percent, it rarely broke the 6 percent mark in the remaining Ottoman regions.^[112]

However, the weight of the changes in education in the Mountain transcends the issue of numbers. Out of the geographical distribution of these schools over the landscape of the Mountain, we can tease another fact pertinent to the story we are telling. What quickly emerges when the locales of the new schools are plotted is the fact that most were being built further away from the main cities and closer to the villages. This was hardly a matter of happenstance. Rather, we find that in many cases these schools were established in response to the demands of the local population. Take, for example, the village of Bishmizeen—a village of many emigrants. Around 1892 the people of Bishmizeen decided that it was important for their children to obtain an education. Thus, a delegation of village elders approached the Greek Orthodox bishop in Tripoli with a request to establish a school in Bishmizeen. The bishop vacillated and recommended that the villagers send “their children to the Russian mission school in the neighboring village of Amyoun.”^[113] This solution was not acceptable to the delegates from Bishmizeen, who deemed their village important enough to warrant its own school. The bishop then responded by saying that the people of Bishmizeen were enough trouble as it was and with an education they would become unbearable. Such a tactless argument only roused the delegates to proclaim that if the Greek Orthodox Church could not supply its parishioners with an education, then they would have to resort to the “American Missionaries.”^[114] The bishop upped the ante by obliquely hinting that such a move might threaten their children's religious well-being—that is, they might be excommunicated. Not to be deterred, one of the delegates replied, “Your Holiness, we don't mean that our children should change their faith; we want them to be educated as your Holiness was at a missions school. Your Holiness did not change your faith, and our children need not change theirs.”^[115] The delegates then went back to the missionaries and asked them to open a school, which they did.

Ba‘abdat, Bayt Shabab, Bikfaiya, Baskinta, Zahleh, and Jubayl were all towns like Bishmizeen where schools were built to accommodate the growing demand for education. What is also interesting in all of these—and otherases cases is that a third to a half of the townspeople were returned emigrants. Without assuming that those who did not emigrate had no desire to educate their children, we can still argue that returned emigrants pushed this trend more than others did. We can make that statement because returned emigrants—more commonly than other Lebanese—were able to afford the relatively high cost of schooling in the predominantly private institutions of the Mountain. At the St. Joseph school in Bikfaiya, for example, the cost of education in the early 1900s averaged around 220 French francs for boarders and 80 francs for nonboarders.^[116] Costs aside, their experience abroad made it more likely that emigrants would accept educating their children as a “normal” part of raising them. While they were in the mahjar, many of these emigrants had grown accustomed to sending their children to public schools, if for no other reason than the fact that the law required it. Beyond the arm-twisting laws, emigrants had encountered the debates that raged across the pages of Arab-American newspapers about women's education and status within society. They had carried those discussions into their coffeehouses and living rooms and had gone back and forth between the pros and cons of educating girls. These various factors accounted for the large percentage (76.7 percent) of emigrant children who were attending schools (public and otherwise) in New York, for example. Similar high rates existed as well among the emigrant community in Argentina and Brazil.^[117] Therefore, in addition to the fact that they had the financial wherewithal, exposure to education made returned emigrants more prone to send their girls to school than were those who had stayed behind.

But there was a far more utilitarian and, perhaps, compelling reason for families to provide their daughters with an education: “marriageability.” Preparing a young woman through education to be a “goddess” of the house was considered more and more of a necessity to enhance her chances of betrothal to a man of good social standing. Here we find the remainder of the cycle which tied class with gender. Young women needed to be educated in order to be better wives and to be able to marry well; doing so would guarantee them—and, by extension, their families—a place within the middle class. As the Maronite Monsignor Emmanuel Pharès argued in 1908, young women should be taught (according to the “American” model) how to run the household economy and contribute to it by better management of their time in order to attract returning emigrant men.^[118] A more popular remark, common in the early 1900s, affrmed that “she is a school girl now; we cannot hope to have her marry our [poor] son!”^[119] Underlying these and many other similar statements is the keen awareness that the institution of marriage, itself, was in the process of changing. Within the ranks of this emerging rural middle class, marriage was being transformed—however slowly and incompletely—from a mechanism for solidifying the patrilineal bonds of a clan into one that reinforced relations within the same social class. To fully comprehend this transformation we need to cast a glance at marriage traditions that predated the emigration movement.

Marriage

As far back as the seventeenth century, the process of marriage among Maronite peasants followed a common path, with few occasional and minor variations. Generally, at the age of sixteen or seventeen a young boy was considered ready for marriage, and “the parents would search for a companion worthy of their son and of the family.”^[120] Marriage had to be contracted between majaweez, or “marriageables.”^[121] These were families whose heritage and lineage were considered by other families honorable enough to allow for intermarriage. More likely than not the “companion” would be a close paternal cousin from within the extended clan.^[122] This tradition cut across the social classes and religious boundaries to apply to everyone who resided in the Mountain. For instance, William Polk, in his study The Opening of South Lebanon: 1788–1840, found that of 189 marriages in the Druze family ‘Abd as-Samad of ‘Ammatur, 171 were contracted between paternal cousins. Similarly, the Abu Shaqra clan favored patrilineal cousin marriage in 149 of 184 marriages.^[123] Among the Maronite families in the village of Bsus before 1873, only 6 percent of all marriages were contracted with members of different clans.^[124]

The pressure to marry cousins was at times so extreme as to pit son against parents. For instance, in 1870 in the town of Dayr al-Qamar a young man from the Basilius clan wanted to marry a young woman from the Kik clan. His parents, however, insisted that he marry one of his cousins, and when he persisted in his refusal, they locked him up in “one of those vaults specially assigned to those who commit an offense or go against the opinion of his parents in family matters.” Finally, the young man succeeded in escaping and eloping with his lover to Turkey.^[125] If this tradition of eloping—well established as it was in the Mountain—provided a safety valve for the social system, it was also the exception to the rule: most young people submitted to their parents' opinion in marriage matters.

If not every young man married his cousin, the rest tended to marry from within the same village. Endogamous marriage was much preferred to exogamous marriage as practice and tradition verbalized in proverbs show. For example: “He who marries from a distant area is like that who drinks from a jar [i.e., he does not know what is in the water], and he who marries from his village is like that who drinks from a glass [i.e., he knows whether the water is clean or dirty.]”^[126] Another was more explicit: “The daughter of your village will carry through good and bad.”^[127] Available statistics show these proverbs to be descriptive of reality. In the town of Bsus, in the Shūf region, the number of endogamous marriages between 1873 and 1882 amounted to about 87 percent of the total nuptials.^[128] In the village of ‘Ammatur—also in the Shūf region—only 16 out of 189 marriages in the ‘Abd as-Samad clan were contracted with families from other villages. Similarly, in 187 marriages in the Abu Shaqra clan, only twenty-four brides were from a village outside ‘Ammatur. Even in the few cases where the bride and the groom were from separate villages, the distance that separated them was rarely more than ten miles.^[129] Finally, in the Greek Orthodox village of Munsif, no exogamous marriages were recorded before 1890.^[130]

The overwhelming predominance of cousin marriage—common to most Mediterranean societies—arose from the economic conditions in Mount Lebanon. As Jane Schneider argues for the case of southern Italy and Greece, fragmentation of the land in an area where resources are limited meant a reduction in the power of the family. It also multiplied the boundaries which a family had to defend and increased the potential for conflict over encroachments by one person on another's patrimony.^[131] Cousin marriage thus kept the land in the same clan and established social ties between its members in a way that defused most disagreements over land. And when conflicts arose, they were kept within the boundaries of the clan, whose elders would act as judges in such matters to limit any divisive interference from the outside. A more positive reason for the predominance of lineage endogamy among Lebanese peasantry derives from the nature of the land itself. As Robert Creswell argues, land could only become capital for the peasants if it was terraced for farming. Therefore, the lineage that had with the most sons and that practiced lineage endogamy could, “by putting more and more land into cultivation, increase its capital at each succeeding generation.”^[132]

However, the financial prowess of the new rural middle class—which consisted largely of returned emigrants—made these issues less important. Specifically, by the end of the nineteenth century, returned emigrants were relying on their financial capital (and not their human capital) to increase their landholdings. Al-Mashriq magazine lamented this fact while noting that emigrants, who had spent many years toiling in some part of the Americas, were investing in land that returned no more than 1.5 percent rather than in projects with higher returns.^[133] Examples of investment in land abound. A woman and her husband from Hadeth el-Jobbeh returned from Mexico to the village and bought about 200 dirhems of land when the three main notables of that village collectively owned 248 dirhems.^[134] In 1898 Assaf Khater returned to his native village of Lehfed after a seven-year stay in Uruguay and invested a good part of his savings in large plots of land.^[135] In total, of the estimated $8 million that came back from the mahjar, close to half was invested in land. In short, many returned emigrants had the money to buy land and thus did not need to depend on a large family to carve it out of the mountain. This made cousin marriage less pertinent to them as gentlemen farmers. What had become more critical was the articulation and preservation of an elevated social status. Thus, many rural, middle-class families moved away from relying primarily on lineage in assessing the “marriageability” of a potential groom or bride and began to place more emphasis on wealth (the crass definition of social class). But, here again, it would be far too simple to assume that only money mattered. Equally, the changed expectations of emigrant men helped transform the meaning of marriage. In the mahjar, most of them were exposed, to one |extent or another, to a more cosmopolitan life where many women were educated and more liberated in their social milieu. In the cities of Boston and Buenos Aires, they saw—from the doorways—the ideal middle-class home: the woman beautifying that haven while waiting for her husband to return from his daily encounter with a tumultuous world. In the Arab-American press they read (or listened to someone reading) essays about the virtues of an educated bride and companion and about the vices of arranged cousin-marriages. They themselves, as a result of their peddling activities, had learned enough of a foreign language and arithmetic to at least assume greater sophistication and knowledge. Thus, their experiences during years of peddling in cities, their exposure to a more urbane life-style, and the education they acquired combined to change their social attitudes and expectations. One commentator back in Lebanon summarized this metamorphosis by saying of these emigrant men that they had a difficult choice because “the young woman of their class [is] lamentably lacking intellectually.”^[136] Thus, they wanted a more educated woman of a better class to equal their individual achievements, be they real or imagined.

By the 1910s, this change in attitudes and the emergence of a middle class launched a trend—reflected in marriage records—toward exogamous marriages in Mount Lebanon. Returning to the village of Bsus, we find that while only 13 percent of marriages were exogamous between 1873 and 1882, but that percentage leapt to 34 percent in the years between 1893 and 1902.^[137] In Munsif, the percentage of exogamous marriages went from zero—between 1860 and 1889—to 12.5 percent by 1914 and to 33 percent by 1930.^[138] Even in the remote village of Hadeth el-Jobbeh, exogamous marriage had taken hold by the beginning of World War I, at which time 11 percent of all marriages were exogamous.^[139] When compared with marital trends among Muslims (who rarely emigrated), this shift becomes even more pronounced. In the Muslim village of Haouch el-Harimi, 86 percent of the 283 contracted marriages in 1963 were endogamous, and the 40 who did marry someone from outside the village chose their spouses from close by.^[140] And as late as 1980, 50 percent of Muslim marriages in Lebanon were contracted among cousins, whereas among Christians this figure was only 22 percent.^[141]

If these numbers tell us anything, it is that marriage was in a state of flux by the first decade of the twentieth century. “Traditional” cousin-marriages, which were arranged by families, persisted alongside a “modern” type of marriage where lineage was but one consideration, at best. Wealth, education, and even premarital love were added, in various portions, to the formula of marriage. Rather than creating a “modern” and singular tradition of betrothal, these factors simply made for greater uncertainty as to the meaning and purpose of this institution within the middle-class society under construction. Was marriage solely the means to bring forth children and populate the society, or was it a culmination of the love between two people? Or both? If cousins should not necessarily be wedded, then how were people to select their spouses? Was money more important than schooling, or was it the other way around? How was beauty to be measured? Should love conquer religious and social boundaries?

Answers were not easy to come by, but many tried to arrive at some definitions. One of the most comprehensive of these attempts was a serialized essay by Elias Tweyni entitled “The Philosophy of Marriage.” In trying to introduce his readers to a new meaning of marriage, Tweyni began by describing the history of marriage among various peoples (Persians, Romans, Greeks, Gaels). His purpose for such a circuitous journey to “modern” marriage was to affrm that throughout many times and places “a man cannot be a man and neither the woman a woman ... except in marriage.” Yet, he also argued that marriage is not static but changes with times and place. Therefore, for Lebanese society on the cusp of the twentieth century, he provided a “model” notion of marriage. He emphasized that marriage is a union of two individuals; one that should be based on “compatibility in morals, characteristics and interests.” A peasant woman and a middle-class man, or the reverse, would be hard-pressed to share any of these elements. Without excluding the family from playing a role in arranging this confluence of two individuals, Tweyni reminded his readers that in the end the man and the woman decide such crucial matters. Beyond a shared culture, Tweyni counseled, “no rational person can deny that a poor educated woman is better [as a wife] than a rich ignorant one.”^[142] It was not that he considered money unimportant but that an ignorant woman would squander her “husband's wealth” while an educated one would certainly add to the financial well-being of the family by being frugal and not as inclined toward “senseless” expenditures on “make-up and clothes.” Finally, Tweyni contended that for marriage to work properly “the man must not abuse his authority over her, and the woman must not demean his rights.”^[143] In other words, it must be based on “true love,” whereby the man treats his wife as his equal “not only because she is a woman but because she is his wife,” and the woman supports her husband and listens to his counsel. Tweyni concluded his treatise by stating, “If the husband and wife understand all of this then they will live happily ever after.”^[144] Tweyni was expounding the same ideology as various reformers in Egypt, Iran, and Turkey. In place of supposed awe of wife for husband, he proposed a friendship. In other words, he was intent on redirecting the attention of the woman and the man from their homosocial spheres toward a heterosexual sociability that unites them in a familial unit isolated from kin and directed toward the “nation.”

Conclusion

Tweyni and others were writing against the backdrop of what they understood of peasant “traditions” of marriage and gender relations. Equality, love, and mutual individual interests were posited in sharp contrast to inequality, arranged betrothal, and the interests of the clan. This opposition—along with the juxtaposition of the harat with peasant homes and of education with “ignorance”—was necessary and integral to the process of defining the boundaries of the middle class. Central to this process was gender and its “modern” articulation into two separate “but equal” spheres. Ideally, one was the private and serene domain of the “home,” where women were supposed to reign as “goddesses” who created an earthly haven for the family and trained the children of the nation. The other was the harsh “public” world of commerce, government, and trade, where men toiled in endless competition to gather money and support their families.

This cultural process gained a particularly vigorous social momentum in Lebanon because its ideological contents overlapped with the practical desires of a large group of Lebanese who had returned from the mahjar with new money and manners. Over the span of three decades (1890–1920) these emigrants employed their money to build new houses, to buy land, and to educate their children. Their actions were meant both to distinguish them from the peasants surrounding them in the villages of their birth and to allow them to live in greater comfort. To give meaning to their departures, returned emigrants sought to associate themselves with the “modern” as they had experienced it in the mahjar and as they read about it in the newspapers of Beirut. From both sources, they articulated their own notions of the “modern,” and they applied them to their own lives. In this regard, new ideas about gender, family, love, and marriage became metaphors for “modernity.” Franji clothes on the backs of rural middle-class women were a distinctive sign of the “modern”; education of girls was a boundary that separated the lot of peasants from a refined middle-class life; and the circumscribing of women's homosociality was deemed to be “progress.” In other words, many emigrants displayed their “modernity” by embracing and helping to define a new meaning of “womanhood.” To inculcate this “natural” state of being into their daughters, they sent them to schools which taught them the art of managing a household and which prepared them to be better wives and mothers. They would also be prepared to marry into a better social status and thus continue the cycle of producing and reproducing a middle class. However, not all were happy with this new state of being.

Notes