LITMIR.BIZ

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shaykhs, to gather a respectable number of signatures. However, these did not seem to fully satisfy the Turkish governor, who decided to force matters and exert pressure on the remaining notables to have them sign petitions prepared by his agents. Reports of threats, bribery attempts, promises of future official positions, and the counterfeiting of seals reached the Ottoman capital, where the Western ambassadors, availing themselves of consular dispatches from Beirut, totally rejected the Ottoman allegations that they were acting according to the wishes of the population.

      In the Mountain, the Church immediately understood the significance of the Ottoman campaign and launched a counter-campaign of petitions, denouncing the appointment of an Ottoman governor and claiming the restoration of Emir Bashir II. Soon the whole Mountain was engaged in this battle of pro-Ottoman and pro-Shihabi petitions, with notables sometimes signing one or another petition according to their sincere convictions, but more often affixing their seals to both petitions in order to please everybody or denouncing the forced extortion or counterfeiting of their signature on one type of petition and sanctioning the other. An analysis of these petitions as genuine representations of public opinion is therefore an elusive affair. What seems to be practically established is that the campaign for the restoration of Bashir II was not the result of a spontaneous initiative of the local population nor an expression of its genuine sanctioning of the content of the supplications. The Maronite bishop of Beirut himself, Mgr Tubiyya Awn, admitted to the British consul in Beirut, Colonel Rose, that “the party or faction (Hosb) of the Shihabs were composed of servants of the late Emir, who naturally wished for his return, but that the people of Lebanon did not care for them.”⁴¹ The pro-Shihabi campaign was instigated by the Church, which also often used quite unorthodox methods to gather as many signatures as possible. Even so, they were unable to present a unanimous Maronite espousal of their aspirations, because many of their communicants signed, willingly or unwillingly, opposite petitions.

      The “battle of petitions” of 1842 was an innovation in the Mountain, and it well illustrates the process of composing such petitions allegedly representing the “will of the people.” It inaugurated an era in which similar campaigns were continually being instigated by some party or another and used as propaganda tools to back or justify certain claims or to promote or oppose certain policies. As such they represented more the opinion of their authors and instigators than that of their signatories, seriously impairing their value as a manifestation of the aspirations of the local inhabitants.⁴²

      

      This fact was shrewdly perceived by the French consul, Bourrée, who in response to an inquiry by his minister about events, facts, and figures reported in the 1847 petitions by the Maronites of the mixed districts, prepared by Mgr ‘Abdallah Bustani, bishop of the Shuf and presented to the French Parliament by Father ‘Azar, which contained inflated estimates of the Maronite population and a dramatic account of the devastation allegedly wrought on them by the Druzes, lamented the credulity of the French politicians: “It is Arab exaggeration, proportional to the distance separating the site of production from the site of destination . . . [and which] . . . supposes no doubt that one is as ignorant in France of the affairs of Syria that the Arabs are about affairs in France.”

      Then reminding his minister of the terrible confusion that prevailed during the 1842 “battle of petitions,” he warned him that these supplications should be treated with great caution: “It is not on documents of this kind that one can appreciate the state and the wishes of the populations.”⁴³

      MOUNT LEBANON IN DISARRAY

      While the negotiators in Istanbul could congratulate themselves on having found a solution to the Lebanese predicament, the new regime adopted in 1842, or the Dual Qaimaqamiyya as it came to be known, served only to exacerbate tensions in the Mountain. Its main problem lay in the fact that the Lebanese population was not neatly divided geographically between a Christian and a Druze sector. In the Christian sector, which covered two-thirds of the Mountain, only the northern districts and part of the central districts were inhabited solely by Christians. In the Matn, attached to the Christian sector, lived a small Druze minority, while in the southern Druze sector the Christians formed a slight majority.⁴⁴ For the next three years the Porte and the Western chancelleries debated whether the Christian qaimaqam should have authority over the whole Christian population, or only over the Christian sector, leaving the rest of the Christian population under Druze rule. This controversy was stimulated and accompanied by periodic fighting in Mount Lebanon between the Druzes and the Maronites trying to enhance their position on the ground. The focal point of conflict lay in the mixed sectors, that is, the Druze sector and the Matn, where the returning Druze muqata'jis strove to fully recover their former political authority over the Christian population, whereas the latter, backed by the Maronite Church, opposed the political clout of Druze muqata'jis over them.⁴⁵

      

      The mixed districts thus represented the real battleground in the ongoing contest for supremacy in the Mountain. The Druze sector was the last stronghold of the Druzes, and they were adamantly determined to defend it. For the Maronite Church, it was the last region of the Mountain where Christian rule needed to be secured, the central and northern districts being already governed by a Maronite qaimaqam. Ensnared in the middle, the Christians of the mixed districts were the main victims of this battle for supremacy, since it exposed them to continual Druze reprisal without any effective support from the Maronites of the north.

      The growing divide between the Druzes and the Christians in the mixed districts was furthermore fueled by a set of interlocking political and socioeconomic problems that affected the whole Mountain but took on a more specific communal hue in the mixed areas. The attempt by the muqata'jis to restore their former authority in the Mountain came up against the new realities that had emerged during the long reign of Bashir II, precipitating a deep crisis of authority and legitimacy. The relentless campaign of Bashir II against the muqata'jis had undermined the authority of the latter and favored a relative emancipation of their tenants and clientele. The weakening of the power of the muqata’jis had moreover been accentuated by the economic changes triggered by the intensification of trade with the West, which had in the main impoverished the traditional ruling class and promoted the rise of a new class of merchants, middlemen, and bankers as well as well-to-do peasants and villagers, who staunchly opposed the restoration of muqata'jis’ privileges. The problem was furthermore compounded by tax issues, as the muqata'jis insisted on their right to apportion and collect taxes, on which rested their authority and wealth, whereas tenants and villagers wanted to strip the muqata'jis of their prerogatives and privileges in order to check their exactions and to impose a more equitable distribution of taxes. In the mixed districts, these overlapping political and socioeconomic disputes pitted the Druze muqta'jis and their clientele against Christians peasants, villagers, and townsmen, accentuating communal differences and promoting communal realignments and mobilizations. In the Christian district, similar issues set the Maronite muqata'jis against their former tenants and clientele, accentuating divisions within the Maronite community and paralyzing the efforts of the Patriarch to unify his community. The whole explosive conjuncture was exacerbated by the lingering negotiations between the Ottoman government and the European powers over the finalization of the new regime for this province, which, in the meantime, left the Mountain with no effective constituted authority.

      

      The negotiations in Istanbul for the finalization of the Dual Qaimaqamiyya regime lingered on until 1845, when they were prompted to their conclusion by a renewal of communal clashes in Lebanon. A new protocol, the Shakib Effendi Règlement, was adopted, addressing the pending issues that had plagued the implementation of the new regime. It provided mainly for the appointment of agents, or wakils, for the Christians of the mixed districts and allowed for the formation of administrative and judicial councils to advise and assist the Christian and Druze qaimaqams, in which the six main communities of the Mountain were to be represented each by a deputy and a judge. The councils, which were to assist the qaimaqams in the apportionment of taxes and in the adjudication of judicial cases, struck at the root of the fiscal and judicial powers of the muqata'jis without, however, altogether eliminating their local authority. Once more, this arrangement was adopted because it constituted an acceptable compromise to all the negotiating parties in Istanbul. In the Mountain,

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