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The Origins of the Lebanese National Idea. Carol Hakim
Читать онлайн.Название The Origins of the Lebanese National Idea
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780520954717
Автор произведения Carol Hakim
Издательство Ingram
The essay begins with an historical note on the formation of the Maronite community, reproducing what had become a leitmotif of the Maronite Church, namely the definite assertion of its perpetual orthodoxy.55 Only this time, over and above the usual specifically particularistic intent and significance of this profession,56 a new dimension was added. It was meant to emphasize the shared community of faith between the French and the Maronites, which in itself represented, in Murad's view and in the opinion of many contemporary Frenchmen, a pertinent enough basis of solidarity between these two “nations.” The traditional self-image of the Maronites thus acquired a political meaning and purport. A shared religion and a shared cause linked the Maronites and the French, according to Murad, in the general contest with the Muslim Ottoman Empire. This position did not represent the official Western stance at the time, but it did seem to constitute for Murad and for some French Catholic circles, with which he had then become acquainted, a potent and significant cause to uphold. Murad thus treated this question at length and devoted one-third of his book to it. An association and confusion between a religious and a national basis of identity and appeal can thus be discerned from the beginning of Murad's treatise. The Catholic faith of the Maronites was, for Murad, the basic characteristic of their distinct nationality, and his appeal to the Catholic French monarch and nation was based on religious grounds that, in his mind, denoted political and “national” implications.
Murad then shifts to a description of the condition of the Maronites in his days and gives some details about the size of the Maronite population, the territory of Mount Lebanon, and the situation and organization of the Maronite Church. In this context he asserted that the Maronite nation, which used to count more than a million souls, then only numbered 525,000, of whom 482,000 lived in Mount Lebanon.57
As can be seen from a comparison of the figures given by Murad with those from other contemporary sources of the time, the Maronite Archbishop had very generously inflated numbers, with the obvious purpose of overstating the importance of his community. The Maronites had, definitely, never reached anything near the million mark, nor even the 482,000 they had allegedly shrunk to. Murad did not give any detail as to the source of the precise figures he so meticulously reproduced. It is not clear whether these were already in circulation or whether he was responsible for them, purposely or unintentionally. At any rate, inaccurate and often exaggerated estimates about the size of the Maronite community were commonly reproduced in those days, when reliable statistics on the region were so scarce that French opinion could easily accept them at face value.58
The treatise then touches on the question of the frontiers of Mount Lebanon, an issue carefully avoided by the Maronite Patriarch in his petitions to the Porte. Mount Lebanon, Murad wrote, “stretches from the region of Sayda, in the West, until that of Damascus, to the East.”59 It consisted then of the two mountain ranges—Mount Lebanon proper and the Anti-Lebanon—plus the rich plain of the Bekaa, to which Emir Bashir II had already pointed as being essential for the survival of a Christian entity. Hence, for the first time, the region claimed by the Maronite clergy was delimited geographically, albeit vaguely. An organic relation between the Maronites and the territory of Mount Lebanon proper, in which they were established since the end of the seventh century, and which in his own view allowed them to resist steadfastly throughout the centuries all foreign encroachments and to preserve their special identity, can be discerned in the historical account of Murad. However, no justification was given for the inclusion of the Bekaa Valley and Anti-Lebanon in this entity, where the Maronites had had no significant historical presence. Nor were the boundaries thus presented precisely demarcated and justified. This brief and timid mention of the boundaries of the entity claimed by the Maronite clergy therefore emphasized once more the immaturity of the project of the Church. Its central and exclusive preoccupation at that time was to restore Bashir II personally. Issues of frontiers, which had varied constantly throughout the centuries, were of secondary importance and could always be settled through the usual bargaining procedure with the Ottomans.60
The Maronite Archbishop then tackles the specific issue of the Emirate. Murad depicted the history of the Emirate and the political system that then prevailed in Mount Lebanon in such a way as to suggest a timeless, disciplined, and orderly organization of the Maronites, under the governance of their own legitimate princes, throughout the entire Mountain range. The historical role of the Maronites and the Druzes in the Emirate were totally reversed. His account of the history of the Emirate gives the impression that the Maronites had always been politically and demographically preeminent in the Mountain. All the princely and shaykhly families cited by name were Maronites, although Murad conceded that “some of these Druzes, as a price for their services to the Shihabi family, have had conferred upon them the title of shaykh.”61 The religion of the Ma'ans, as well as that of the Shihabs and the recent conversion of prominent members of the latter family to the Maronite rite, was totally obscured, conveying thus the view that the these two dynasties, who had ruled over Lebanon “for six hundred years,” were really fervent Catholics. Finally, the Maronites were represented as an industrious people, educated and familiar with all the trades practiced in Europe or, in short, “civilized.” In contrast, the Druzes were depicted as marginal intruders in Mount Lebanon. It was only in the fourteenth century that, according to Murad, they decided to settle in this Mountain, where the governing princes “tolerated their residence”62 following some services that they had extended to them. Their population was implausibly reduced to 18,000, compared to the 482,000 Maronites. The historical hegemony of the Druzes over large parts of Mount Lebanon, as well as their central role in initiating and developing the so-called Lebanese Emirate, which they had dominated until quite recently, was obscured. Furthermore, to preclude totally any possibility of attributing some importance to them, the Druzes were represented as ignorant, illiterate, immoral, idolatrous, lazy, only capable of agricultural work, and ignorant of any other occupations. In short, Murad implied, without the Maronites, the Druzes would have been unable to manage on their own.63
According to Murad, this Emirate survived in the midst of the Ottoman Empire for nearly five hundred years in total independence, and it was only a hundred years earlier that the princes of Lebanon began to pay a symbolic tribute to the Ottomans in order to ward off the torments and vexations of the wali of Sayda. However, this did not impair at all the independence and sovereignty of the Shihabi prince, whose authority and power remained absolute over his subjects.64
The entity claimed by the Maronite clergy thus gained with Murad a complete legitimizing history. Most of the events and figures presented had been altered, twisted, and revised in order to form a coherent composite. The timid claim of the Patriarch to the Porte soliciting a confirmation of the rule of a Maronite governor in 1840, “in accordance with ancient custom,” had acquired much more substance. In Murad's representation, Mount Lebanon had survived virtually independently since the establishment of the Maronites in the seventh century. Moreover, this independence was substantiated and institutionalized through uninterrupted rule of the Ma'an and Shihabi princes for the past six hundred years. Finally, the Maronites were legitimately entitled to this Emirate because they represented the overwhelming majority of the population and because they had always lived there and constituted themselves into a self-governing and sovereign political society, ruled by their own princes, that had managed to preserve and defend its independence in a hostile environment. The central thesis of Murad, namely the uninterrupted existence of an independent polity in the whole of Mount Lebanon since the days of the Ma'ans, was to become a main tenet of Lebanism. It developed into the main legitimizing core of this nascent ideal. However, the insistence of Murad on the virtually exclusive Maronite character of the Emirate evolved with time to include many variations. Its principal incongruity lay not only in the fact that it did not agree with historical facts, but that it often contradicted contemporary reality and prospective objectives and had therefore to be toned down in order to allow more vital historical space to “Others.” Hence, later historians or activists aiming to associate other communities to the national Lebanese project were compelled to alter accordingly the history