Читать книгу The Origins of the Lebanese National Idea - Carol Hakim - Страница 12

CHAPTER TWO	·	The Emergence of Lebanism
		The French Connection

The end of Shihabi rule came as a blow to the Maronite clergy and represented a serious setback to its ambitions. As a result, the Patriarch immediately dispatched to Istanbul a special envoy, Abbot Nicolas Murad, who was assigned the delicate task of “earnestly requesting the immediate return of Emir Bashir II, the only [person] able to put an end to the disasters of Lebanon.”¹ Thus, the Maronite Patriarch, who for a year had tried strenuously to uphold the Emirate, was conceding defeat. Without Bashir II, he was unable to maintain the status quo that had obtained in 1840 or to control the situation on the ground.

The Maronites’ rout and their failure to rescue the last governing Shihabi Emir were followed by communal clashes during which some Maronite villages were attacked and devastated. The new Ottoman governor, ‘Umar Pasha, seemed unable or unwilling to stop the fighting, and, disapproving of his appointment, the Patriarch was loath to ask his help. The only conclusion he came up with was that the old Emir alone—he was by then nearly eighty years old—could remedy this sorry situation. Hence, Mgr Hubaysh added a new element to his former claim. He now wanted not only confirmation of the autonomous status of the Mountain under a Maronite governor but clearly and simply the return to the 1840 status quo through the restoration of Shihabi rule with Bashir II. Given the reserved reaction of the Ottomans to his first proposal, the Patriarch faced certain failure had he not benefited from an unhoped-for support.

Unexpected assistance came in the form of determined and steadfast French support for the Maronite position in the Mountain, in Istanbul, and in the other European capitals. The French government sanctioned the Maronite claim for the restoration of the Shihabs between 1842 and 1845. At the same time, it followed a sufficiently ambiguous policy to feed the aspirations of the Church. Additionally, some circles and personalities in France, directly and indirectly, fanned the expectations of the Church by advocating the Maronite cause. French support and influence was thus not only limited to political and diplomatic support by the French government. It also came in the form of political ideas promoting Christian emancipation from Ottoman rule. The multifaceted nature of French support needs to be elucidated before we resume our narrative.

THE FRANCO-LEBANESE DREAM

In 1840, the French alone, and against all the other European powers and the Ottoman government, backed Muhammad Ali's claim for confirmation of his rule in Syria.² France refused to associate itself with the London Convention of July 15, which enjoined the Egyptian Pasha to withdraw from Anatolia and most of the Syrian provinces in return for recognition of his hereditary rule in Egypt. If Muhammad Ali refused to submit, the Ottoman government, with the assistance of the signatory powers, Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, would take adequate measures to force him to yield.

Until the last minute France tried to prevent a joint military intervention against its Egyptian ally, and when the intervention ultimately occurred, secretly hoped that the Egyptian Pasha would be able to hold his ground honorably. The total rout of the Egyptian forces in Syria came as an unpleasant surprise. Not only was France's ally badly defeated, but the French position and influence in Europe, Syria, and Istanbul was badly damaged. By bluntly refusing to associate itself with the other European powers in the solution of the Eastern crisis, France lost its position inside the Concert of Europe that had been established after 1815. It had to wait until the signature of the Straits Convention of July 13, 1841, to recover its former rank among its peers. France's influence in Syria, which had rested for the past ten years on French patronage of Egyptian rule and on its informal protectorate of the Maronites, looked seriously comprised. Ottoman rule was reestablished against France's apparent will in these provinces, and the Maronites were embittered by the position of the French government, which had preferred to support unconditionally their Egyptian oppressor instead of backing up their rebellion.

As a result, Francois Guizot, who replaced Adolphe Thiers as minister of foreign affairs after these French setbacks, decided to send back Prosper Bourrée as consul in Beirut to revive French influence in Syria. The consul had warned his government some months earlier about the eventual threat to its position in Lebanon if it chose to side unconditionally with Muhammad Ali.³ He thus gained the gratitude of the Maronites, who had received the news of his recall with concern. He was therefore considered the best choice to amend the tarnished image of France with them.

Bourrée returned to Beirut in August 1841 and soon reached the conclusion that the Maronite Patriarch had emerged from the last crisis as the “real leader” of the Mountain: “Speaking of the Mountain, I should have first mentioned the patriarch, who is today its real leader. Over the past year, the patriarch has gathered into his hands all the powers and influence formerly held by the Emirs and shaykhs, who have either fallen or left with the old Emir Bashir.” Bourrée added, however, that Mgr Hubaysh, who had inherited these charges unexpectedly, was unprepared to shoulder these responsibilities without foreign assistance, and, since the Maronite prelate represented the “most powerful support for our influence in Lebanon,” the French consul henceforth endeavored to back him while relying on him to advance France's position in Lebanon.⁴ This approach was welcomed by the Maronite prelate, who was desperate for some assistance, especially in Istanbul, where lay his only chance of salvaging the situation and obtaining a political victory, through the restoration of Bashir II, which would compensate for the latest internal political and military setbacks. During a meeting with the French consul some days before the demise of the Shihabi dynasty, Mgr Hubaysh, in a desperate tone, implored the French diplomat to uphold the Maronite cause, stating, according to Bourrée: “Let France take our cause in hand, this cause is just, let her settle it in Constantinople, and we shall do whatever you instruct us.”⁵

The foundations of a solid and lasting alliance based on mutual interest between France and the Maronite Patriarchate was thus laid. The Patriarch was hence accepted by France as the “real leader” of his community, and Paris promoted and supported his position and influence within his community and on the local political scene. In return, France could rely on a powerful ally within the Mountain. The close association of France with the Maronite Patriarchate remained, in spite of some vicissitudes, a central feature of French policy in the Levant until the end of the Ottoman period.⁶

France's support of the Patriarch tallied with the new policy toward the Empire adopted by the new French foreign minister, François Guizot. The withdrawal of Muhammad Ali from Syria had delivered the Ottoman Empire of its most serious internal threat and allowed for the reestablishment of Ottoman rule in Syria. The Ottoman government had, however, to pay a heavy price for the Allied support then obtained. Ottoman officials had to endure henceforth continual intervention by the European powers, ostensibly anxious to assist and supervise the restoration of Ottoman rule in Syria on new and sound grounds and, indeed, to see a comprehensive reform of the Ottoman Empire. The Western powers had, however, serious misgivings about the Ottoman government's ability to regenerate the Empire and had opted for the preservation and reform of the Ottoman Sultanate for want of any better solution. Their main aim was to prevent a general scramble for the partition of the Ottoman Empire, which might lead to a generalized European conflict. It was hence European peace they first had in mind in seeking to uphold the integrity of the Empire and promote its reform. At the same time, in view of their misgivings about its fate, they began to prepare for an eventual collapse of the Empire and a consequent intervention.

This undeclared scramble for the informal partition of the Ottoman Empire, fanned by a climate of acute rivalry and suspicion among the European powers, involved multifarious pressures on the Ottoman government in order to obtain economic or political benefits and enhance their future options and prospects. Syria was especially coveted by France and Britain, who engaged after 1840 in an intense competition to consolidate their current and prospective future positions. At that time, the best asset of the French government in Syria was the Maronite community, whose support loosely overlapped with France's protectorate of the Catholics in the Empire. Moreover, Mount Lebanon then represented a key strategic asset, and as the recent Egyptian crisis had revealed, whoever controlled this “impregnable citadel” could dominate the rest of Syria.⁷

So, after Guizot took over the helm at the foreign ministry, he opted for a more cautious and conciliatory, but nevertheless ambiguous, policy than that followed by his predecessor. He moved to reintegrate France in the Concert of European powers, aligned France with the general European consensus aimed at upholding the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, and worked closely with the other European powers in Istanbul on the formulation of new arrangements for the administrative reorganization of Syria and Lebanon.⁸ At the same time, he emphasized more diligently the promotion of the protectorate of Catholics in the Empire and sponsored the extension of the educational activities of the Catholic missionaries, initiating a sustained cultural policy that greatly contributed to foster French influence in the Ottoman lands and more particularly in Mount Lebanon.⁹ Finally, Guizot endorsed the claim of the Maronite Patriarch for the restoration of the Shihabi dynasty and earnestly lobbied his peers to reestablish the 1840 status quo in the Lebanese Mountain.¹⁰ The ambiguity of Guizot's policy was well summarized in his instructions to his ambassador in Istanbul, just after the Egyptian rout:

I draw your attention in particular to our religious interests in the Ottoman Empire. The glorious patronage that France has extended for centuries to the Catholics of the East, the missions which she has established there and which are successfully carrying on an honorable task of Christian civilization in those lands, are for her a matter of influence and illustration that it is imperative to keep intact, for that patronage and the salutary action of those missions, by accustoming the populations to look upon France as the source of the benefit and comfort that come from the West, can only plant seeds that will favor our political designs in future eventualities [my italics].

At the same time the French minister was enjoining his diplomats on the ground to preserve “as much as possible” the integrity of the Ottoman Empire and to give to the Porte “advice in conformity with a provident and generous friendship.”¹¹

However, the latitude of the French government to pressure the Ottoman government on the Mount Lebanon issue was constrained by the often conflicting interests of the other European countries—especially Great Britain, who imposed itself as the patron of the Druzes in the Mountain—the net refusal of the Ottoman government to consider French proposals, as well as the limits of France's protectorate of the Catholics, which in no way entitled it to press for the adoption of a special political status for the Maronites in Mount Lebanon.¹²

Guizot's cautious and ambiguous stance did not, moreover, satisfy the vocal Catholic and legitimist opposition in France who, along with some liberal and republican politicians and publicists, advocated a more forceful policy to support the Maronites in Mount Lebanon, while at the same time advancing French international position and interests.¹³ Their stances were inspired by a Romantic enthusiasm, fostered by a wave of religious revival and a fascination with the Middle Ages and the Crusades that followed the restoration of the monarchy in 1815. They were also animated by news of the conflict in the Lebanese Mountain that accompanied the reestablishment of Ottoman rule and by exaggerated and at times fanciful Maronite petitions emphasizing their trials at the hands of the Druzes and the Ottomans. Throughout the 1840s, the Catholic, legitimist, and liberal opposition mounted a sustained campaign in favor of the Maronites and repeatedly criticized the policy of the government in the press and in the Parliament, where they advocated stronger French support by diplomatic, and even military, means for the Maronites in Mount Lebanon.

In one stormy parliamentary debate on the Lebanese question in 1847, for instance, sparked off by a set of Maronite petitions from the mixed districts presented by a Maronite priest, Father Jean ‘Azar, and which presented a dramatic account of the exaggerated misfortunes of Maronites, the Catholic opposition once more pressed the government for some firm French action in line with France's “secular right” to protect the Catholics of the Ottoman Empire, which they felt entitled, and indeed obligated, France to support the Maronites. “Would you renounce an ancient policy espoused by every French ruler from Charlemagne to Napoleon, including Saint Louis, Francis I, Henry IV and Louis XIV? . . . You are retreating from the protection of Lebanon's Christians, who might ask you for a single ship and a few hundred sailors!” asked the Catholic and legitimist deputy, Comte de Quatrebarbes, addressing his peers before vehemently adding: “No, you will not want the only Christian people that for eight centuries has remained independent and free in the midst of the Ottoman Empire, in the very cradle of Christianity, in the places where one cannot take a step without treading on French bones—no, you will not want that people to vanish. Sooner or later, you will force the powers that be to protect them.”¹⁴

Another eloquent exponent of the Maronite cause was the French poet and politician Alphonse de Lamartine, who as early as 1835 advocated the emancipation of the diverse nations of the Ottoman Empire from a decaying Ottoman Empire “in the name of humanity and civilization.” For him, the dislocation of Ottoman Empire was inevitable, and sooner or later the diverse populations and nations it was oppressing would replace it. Europe, and more specifically France, had a central role to play in the emancipation of these oppressed nations and their guidance on the path of civilization. In this mission civilisatrice aiming at regenerating the East, Europe could rely on the various Christian populations, and France could rely especially on the Maronites, “one of the finest, purest, and most bellicose people on whom France can, someday, depend to bring part of the Orient under its legitimate influence.” Lamartine repeatedly urged the French government to adopt a more assertive policy to support the “unfortunate” Maronites, who were subjected, since the demise of Emir Bashir II in 1840, to a campaign of “annihilation, oppression and devastation.”¹⁵

The repeated interpellations of the French opposition did not, however, perturb Guizot, who tried as best as he could to dampen their enthusiasm and who reminded his critics of the confines of the French protectorate of the Christians in the Ottoman Empire and the limits of French influence and authority on the Lebanese question: “We should not believe that our Capitulations have granted us in the Ottoman Empire sovereignty rights; we should not believe that they have granted us the right to decide on the administration of these provinces. Nothing of the kind had ever been written, or claimed or practiced. The Porte has remained and remains today sovereign over the populations, even the Catholics among them, that we protect; The Porte has never ceased one instant to exercise over them the rights of sovereignty.” The help and assistance that traditions entitled France to lend to the Maronites, added the French minister of foreign affairs, “stemmed not by virtue of a special and direct right of protectorate but by way of influence and in a way of recommendation.”¹⁶ Nevertheless, the French minister decided to dispatch, in response to his critics, a commission of inquiry, presided by the Comte de Lallemand, attaché at the French embassy in Istanbul, and Eugène Borée, an eminent Orientalist close to the French Catholic circles who maintained tight relations with the Lazarists he eventually joined, to investigate the situation in Lebanon. The commission toured the Mountain and presented a report that vindicated the conciliatory Lebanese policy of Guizot and tempered for a while the ardor of the French opposition on the Lebanese issue.¹⁷

The subtleties of the French official position with regard to Lebanon were not clearly discerned by the Patriarch and the Maronite clergy. In their opinion, as the Patriarch put it, their cause was just, and it was only natural that Catholic France should uphold and back their aspirations. The sudden celerity of the French officials to defend their cause and support them materially and politically as of 1841 only reinforced their conviction. This misguided appreciation of the French stance by Maronites clerical circles enhanced their expectations and confirmed their determination to obtain the confirmation of the rule of a Maronite governor.

The Patriarch and clergy's misreading of the French official position was also influenced by the stance of French Catholic, legitimist, and liberal opposition, whose views were beginning to filter through to the Maronite clergy by way of missionaries, travelers, and French residents. Their views, directly and indirectly, fanned the aspirations of the Maronite Church. A sort of mirror game was established between some clerical Maronite circles and these French groups whereby an idea was put forward by one of the two sides, adopted and reproduced by the other, and thus gained credibility and authority through this process of mutual confirmation. The image of “persecuted Christians groaning under the weight of Ottoman tyranny” circulating among French Catholic opposition circles in France was adopted by some Maronite clerics who readily reproduced it. In their turn, the Maronites nourished this view with their own imaginations and added their own particular visions to it. The image of Maronites oppressed by their Muslim overlords, as well as the “dream” of some French opposition circles to uphold a Christian principality in the Levant approximately matched, and sometimes even exceeded, the Maronite clergy's views and ambitions. At any rate, they could easily be adapted to the pretensions of the Church for the Maronites and rearranged to fit its own project.¹⁸ Nicolas Murad stands out as a representative figure and a typical product of this ongoing process. He was the first Maronite to publish a pamphlet in French responding to and reproducing these inferences while adding other original features to the French “dream,” which henceforth became a sort of “Franco-Lebanese dream.”¹⁹

The mirror game between some French parties and Maronite clerical circles gave birth to a vague political project aimed at establishing a Christian entity in the Levant under French aegis, as well as a whole concordant legitimizing history. The fantasies entertained by part of the French opposition and the Maronite clergy produced a prolific literature, celebrating the glorious deeds of the Maronites throughout history, praising their historic steadfastness in the middle of an hostile Muslim environment, remembering their close collaboration with the Franks during the Crusades and their ancestral devotion to France, and magnifying and romanticizing the extinguished “Emirate of the Maronites,” which had allegedly allowed them to preserve their distinct identity throughout the centuries. In sum, some in France began to portray the Maronites as a full-fledged nation that had throughout the centuries managed to survive in virtual independence under the protection of their own Emirs and according to their religion and traditions, and who had been treacherously overpowered by a Muslim Ottoman-Druze conspiracy.²⁰ They were thus presented as an already established and deserving “nation” that had earned its right to a guaranteed peaceful and independent existence and that furthermore was devoted to France. “The truth is that European readers have been served a Lebanon of fantasy, a monarchy and dynasty of fantasy . . . entitled [my italics] to proclaim forthrightly the legacy of a Christian governor . . .,” exclaimed Bourrée, who denounced the erroneous, and at times fanciful, views regarding the Maronites and Mount Lebanon entertained in France. He therefore insisted on the necessity of putting “history in the place of, I would not say poetry, but of lies.”²¹

More concretely, the French consul was deeply concerned about the political implications of such idealized representations for the Maronites themselves: “If the only outcome of all this was greater sympathy for unfortunate populations who deserve every compassion, it might be better to foster the error than to eradicate it, but the error would bring a great danger, of which they would be the first victims, for those populations would be credited with a strength that they do not have and would be thought easily capable today of a task that would overwhelm them; that is, the child would be taken for a man, and there would be speculation about his current staying power, while, left to his own devices, he would perish under the load.”²²

In the same vein, the Lallemand-Boré Commission of Inquiry sent to Lebanon in 1847 deplored the fact that “the most amazing pretensions have been raised in the name of the Christians of Lebanon, and statistics and history have been used for political purposes.” The good faith of “sincere [French] Catholics. . . . [has] been surprised by misleading stories and ridiculous information,” it added, expressing the hope that this “visible erudition . . . would not cause fatal harm when the error would be exposed.”²³

The bewilderment of the Maronite Church in the midst of all these intricacies is understandable: the views and support of unofficial French circles became confused with the already equivocal position of the French government itself. Misplaced expectations and many misunderstandings ensued regarding the real intent and substance of the latter, which was never totally clarified and which led to frequent disappointments.

THE CONFIRMATION OF LEBANESE AUTONOMY

In the first months of 1842, however, the Patriarch, still oblivious to the subtleties of the French stance, could only congratulate himself on earnest pledges of French support. His satisfaction was further enhanced by French espousal of his claim for the restoration of the Shihabs. Guizot had strongly reacted to the appointment of an Ottoman governor in Mount Lebanon, considering that it “crowned the malevolence and duplicity of the Porte” in its policy toward the Maronites since the reestablishment of its rule in Syria.²⁴ He had instructed his ambassador in Istanbul to support the restoration of the Shihabs, whom he saw as having an acquired “right” to govern the Mountain.²⁵ Therefore the French ambassador and the special envoy of the Patriarch, Abbot Nicolas Murad, urgently dispatched to the Ottoman capital to request the return of the old Emir, worked closely together, although the impetuous demeanor of this “sly levantine”²⁶ often annoyed and irritated the French diplomat. However, they were defending the same cause, and the French ambassador could only welcome the mission of Murad, which served to reinforce his own stand by substantiating it with the claims of the Maronites themselves, as expressed by Murad, in the intricate negotiations then taking place in the Ottoman capital.

Indeed, intense and contentious negotiations had opened in Istanbul between the Western powers and the Porte over the future administration of Mount Lebanon.²⁷ They were prompted by the demise of the Shihabi family and the appointment of an Ottoman governor to rule directly the Mountain, which provoked at first a common European initiative for the revocation of this last Ottoman measure and the restoration of the Shihabs.²⁸ Discussions focused on the opportunity to preserve the previous de facto semi-autonomy of the Mountain, on the basis of its former vaguely and variously perceived self-administrative traditions, and on the basis of the pledges made by British and Ottoman officials to its inhabitants in 1840 to preserve “their ancient rights and privileges” with the restoration of Ottoman rule.²⁹

These pledges came to the fore of discussions between the European powers and the Porte. Based on these promises, and on the repeated assertions of the special British envoy, Richard Wood, that he had been formally entrusted by Reshid Pasha, the then-minister for foreign affairs, to advance such pledges to the Lebanese, the European ambassadors tried to hold the Ottomans true to their word.³⁰ The Ottoman government vehemently denied having made any such promises to the Maronites, asserting that it had only offered some guarantees to Emir Bashir II personally, had he accepted to join its camp, and that this offer had been annulled by Emir Bashir's refusal to cooperate. ‘Izzet Pasha, who then commanded the Ottoman forces, and who became Grand Vizier in 1842, asserted for his part that these “promises were only general promises of good-will and protection, which he was ready to renew, or special and conditional promises to the old Emir Bashir.”³¹

The issue was complicated by the fact that there was no clear or agreed consensus among the Western powers themselves as to what these “ancient rights and privileges” represented. Some pretended that they included the “ancient right” of the local inhabitants to be ruled by a Christian prince, while others maintained that they only represented an unspecified local autonomy. As for the Ottomans, they always denied the existence of such ancient privileges.³²

In the confused talks that ensued, the Western unanimity that had emerged at first for the reestablishment of the Shihabi family soon broke out. While the French stood firm on this position, the British began to falter in view of the staunch opposition of their Druze proteges and the Ottoman officials to any restoration of the Shihabs. What the Ottomans had in mind was a greater integration of Mount Lebanon in the new administrative system being introduced in Syria, and they were in no mood to examine requests for a confirmation of its former semi-autonomous status, for the reestablishment of the Shihabs or Bashir II. From the Ottoman perspective, Bashir II was an official—an appointed multazim—who had exceeded his prerogatives; he exemplified an old and bygone order that the new policy they embarked upon after 1840 quickly rendered obsolete.³³ Moreover, the Ottomans saw in Bashir II a traitor who had defected to the Egyptian side, and they considered his “degenerate Shihabi descendants” to be “incompetent” and unfit to govern henceforth Mount Lebanon.³⁴ Reshid Pasha, expressing the state of mind in the Ottoman capital bluntly stated: “The erection of an independent principality in Lebanon is out of the question, given the fact that there was no point to have taken this country from Muhammad Ali in order to remove it again from the domination of the Porte.”³⁵

In the face of the definite opposition of the Ottomans to the restoration of the Shihabs, the Austrian Chancellor, Klemens von Metternich, who had at first endorsed the common European claim in favor of the restoration of the Shihabs,³⁶ submitted, after several months of intense haggling, a way out to the diplomatic dead end reached in Istanbul. He suggested dividing the Mountain into two separate districts, a Christian one and a Druze one, each administered by an official of its own community, under the general supervision of the Ottoman wali of Sayda.

This compromise, adopted in 1842 and refined later in 1845, had the advantage of satisfying the many contradictory demands of the European powers, which pressed the necessity of granting the Mountain some degree of autonomy in accordance with its former ill-defined privileges, and of the Porte, who was firmly opposed to such a principle. The latter had finally had to give some ground. By an official proclamation of the Ottoman minister of foreign affairs, Sarim Pasha, to the European ambassadors, the Porte agreed to Metternich's plan, conceding some self-administrative prerogatives to the local populations.³⁷ The Ottomans nevertheless managed to save face and could congratulate themselves on having succeeded in thwarting Western attempts to consolidate the previous autonomy of the Mountain, since formally the new administration remained under the authority of the wali of Sayda. The British were also satisfied to have secured for their Druze protégés a self-administrative district while at the same time redeeming the pledges made in 1840 by their agents to the Maronites, since the latter too had obtained a self-administrative district of their own.³⁸ The French, isolated in their lone insistence on the restoration of Shihabi rule, finally had to yield, gratifying themselves with the fact that they had partly succeeded in upholding the principle of Maronite self-rule in a large part of the Mountain but expressing reservations as the to the future success of the experiment.

An interesting development occurred during the 1842 negotiations, when a tentative attempt to consult the local population on its wishes for its future government was applied for the first time in Mount Lebanon. It was initiated due to the need of the Ottoman government and the European powers to support their positions in the ongoing negotiations in Istanbul by establishing them on allegedly popular wishes. As a result, a real “battle of petitions” unfolded in the Lebanese Mountain.

The custom of subjects sending petitions to the central government relating to certain specific grievances was not unusual in the Ottoman Empire, where the Porte represented the highest recourse in judicial matters and political affairs. It was this traditional device that was applied to sound out the opinion of the population, unaccustomed to being consulted on political matters and unfamiliar with voting processes. However, in a social structure in which individual opinion was conditioned and determined by the familial environment, the principle of polling public opinion, which rests on the sum of independent, individual wills, was basically flawed. As a matter of fact, most of these petitions were signed only by the shaykhs or the heads of certain family lineages, who thus engaged their whole clientele or descendance. If we add to this the fact that in 1840 the overwhelming majority of the population did not know how to read and write—an ability mostly monopolized by the higher clergy, monks, and a small number of their students who acted as secretaries to political dignitaries—the dubious representative value of the signatures assembled in these petitions becomes clearer.³⁹ Nevertheless, these considerations did not impede the interested parties engaged in this battle who seemed more concerned to use these petitions as propaganda tools than to bother about the authenticity of their reflection of any popular will.

The “battle of petitions” was initiated by the Turks who, confounded by the firm European reaction to the appointment of an Ottoman governor for the Mountain, tried to justify their move.⁴⁰ Soon after his appointment, the new Ottoman governor of Mount Lebanon, ‘Umar Pasha, began to circulate ready-made petitions expressing the satisfaction of the local population with the establishment of direct Ottoman rule and its opposition to any idea of restoring Bashir II or the Shihab family. In his endeavor, he could count on the support of most of the Druze shaykhs, some of whom had already made such claims even before ‘Umar Pasha's appointment, and on traditional divisions among Maronites 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, it did not really satisfy anybody. In spite of the relative calm that prevailed for nearly fifteen years, underlying tension persisted until the final conflagration of 1860, which eventually forced the abrogation of the Dual Qaimaqamiyya regime.

The Shakib Effendi Règlement further aggravated the crisis of authority in the Mountain. It provided for the division of political, judicial, and fiscal authority among several officials—Ottoman governors, qaimaqams, muqata'jis, judges, and wakils, notwithstanding domineering consuls—whose powers were not always neatly defined and who vied with each other to define to their own advantage, alter, or obstruct the implementation of the new regime. Hence, the new councils, which were meant to limit the fiscal and judicial authorities of the muqata'jis, were undermined by the latter, who took advantage of their remaining local authority to hinder the working of the councils by thwarting plans for a cadastral survey aiming to apportion taxes on a more equitable basis. For their part, the peasants and villagers strove to eliminate altogether the judicial and fiscal prerogatives of the muqata'jis and to put an end to their exactions. Finally, Ottoman walis, officials, and special envoys, trying to sort out all of the conflicting claims of local parties, adopted at times measures at odds with each other in an attempt to conciliate everyone; at the same time, their tentative attempts to reassert the control of the central government were frustrated by the local consuls who pulled in different directions to protect the interests of their protégés. Under the circumstances, the new regime tottered on the brink of paralysis, and in the absence of any effective authority to settle all of the conflicting claims and counterclaims, the Mountain slowly descended into near chaos and anarchy.

Festering political and socioeconomic disputes spurred realignments and mobilizations that fed into a developing process of communal crystallization and regrouping. The intertwined conflicts that pitted Christians against Druzes in the mixed districts, inconsistently backed by the Christians in the northern districts, as well as the underlying contest between both communities for overall dominance in the Mountain, hardened the boundaries between the Druze and Christian communities in the Mountain. Claims and counterclaims started to emerge in defense of the putative rights of the contesting communities, highlighting their divergent interests and enhancing the communal awareness of the members of each community.

The process of communal regrouping was furthermore buttressed by the Shakib Effendi Règlement, which formally introduced for the first time the communal factor at the political and institutional levels. The principle of allocating political and administrative charges on a communal basis, which henceforth became an enduring feature of the Lebanese political system, was adopted by the negotiating parties in Istanbul as a trade-off between the Ottoman attempt to centralize and rationalize local administrations and the concern of the European powers, characteristic of the reform period, to grant equal powers to the various religious communities. In the Mountain, the organization of the political and administrative system along communal lines activated the politicization of communal allegiances and solidarities and contributed to the gradual political identification of the people of the Mountain along communal lines.

However, the process of communal regrouping unfolded slowly, unevenly, and inconsistently. It was confounded by the many horizontal and vertical social and political divisions that drove, for instance, some Christian muqata'jis to side with their Druze counterparts against the pretensions of the peasants and villagers. At the same time, the process of communal regrouping was hindered by local and kinship ties and solidarities that highlighted the lingering and countervailing significance of such ties and complicated the process of communal mobilization and integration. Finally, the process of communal regrouping stirred up intracommunal contests in which various actors and groups vied with each other over the leadership of each community, the interpretation of communal identity, and the objectives of communal mobilization. These intracommunal divisions and contests were more pronounced within the Maronite community than the Druze, which by virtue of its geographic concentration, its smaller size, and close kinship and social ties succeeded in overcoming more easily internal tensions and rivalries and in unifying its ranks.⁴⁶ For the Maronite community, attempts at unification exposed and exacerbated diverse overlapping vertical and horizontal divisions. Local and kinship ties and solidarities encumbered efforts to rally the community in defense of its putative interests, and in the 1841 and 1845 clashes, for instance, the Maronites mobilized along parochial lines in small quasi-independent and at times rival groups that defied attempts at coordinating their efforts. Moreover, the community remained racked by disputes between muqata'jis and increasingly assertive peasants, villagers, and townsmen, determined to put an end to muqata'jis privileges and abuse. Even the Maronite Church, which strove to unify the ranks of the community, found itself paralyzed by internal divisions, as the Patriarch and various bishops and priests bickered over policies and priorities.⁴⁷ Eventually tensions boiled over in 1958, when the peasants of Kisrawan revolted against their Khazin lords. The peasants expelled all the Khazin shaykhs, along with their families, from the district and established for several months a peasant commune, precipitating a intense contest within the community that underscored once again the inability of the Church to act as an effective leader of its community, or even as an arbitrator and mediator between the conflicting parties.⁴⁸

The Peasant Revolt of Kisrawan ended in a final conflagration in the Mountain in 1860. The massacre of thousands of Christians in the clashes, as well as the slaying of more in Damascus, prompted a firm Western reaction and a French military intervention. These developments revived the “dream” of some French and Maronite circles to establish a semi-independent Christian entity in Mount Lebanon. But before moving to this new episode in the development of the Lebanist ideal, two texts of significant importance to this study need to be examined.

MURAD'S NOTICE

In the year of 1844, a brief pamphlet entitled Notice Historique sur l'Origine de la Nation Maronite et sur ses Rapports avec la France, sur la Nation Druze et sur les diverses population's du Mont Liban,⁴⁹ by Mgr Nicolas Murad, Archbishop of Laodicea and representative of his nation to the Vatican, was published in Paris. Its author was none other than the special envoy of the Patriarch sent to Istanbul in 1842, who had since then moved to Paris in an attempt to obtain French help for the restoration of the Shihabs.⁵⁰ His treatise is of special importance to our subject. It is a pure product of the post-1840 period, and it illustrates and epitomizes many of the events, ideas, and processes already observed. Murad's treatise embodied the Church's stance at this crucial stage and endorsed its political project aiming at the establishment of a Christian Emirate in the whole of Mount Lebanon under the leadership of the Shihabis. At the same time, this pamphlet, written and published in French,⁵¹ was meant to reach and influence French public opinion. It was therefore is a perfect example of the “mirror game” between some French and Maronite circles, which it typically reflected. More so, it summed up some of the views and ideas that arose from this interaction between both sides in 1844; at the same time, it served as a future reference and starting point in the ongoing operation of the process.⁵²

Murad's book also constituted the first piece of literature by a Maronite defending fledging national ideas and aspirations. His attempt to legitimize and defend, on historical grounds, the idea of a Christian Emirate constituted a foundation and a source of significant value for future Lebanist nationalist thought. It was the first attempt to conceptualize ideas along the lines according to which Lebanism later developed, and, in this sense, represented a milestone in the evolution of this nascent ideal. It thus became a model for future Lebanese nationalist thought. Not that all the authors who embraced and upheld Lebanism adopted altogether the views and opinions expressed by Murad, but most of them later reproduced some basic legitimizing historical concepts of this pamphlet for the establishment of a semi-independent or independent Lebanese entity.

The pamphlet itself is quite short. It consists of a brief introductory letter to the French king, Louis Philippe I,⁵³ to whom the whole book is dedicated, reminding him that “since the days of King Louis [IX], of sainted memory, all the very-Christian kings had honored the Maronites with their powerful protection.” Therefore, Murad goes on, he allowed himself to present to the French monarch “this work destined to make known and appreciated this devoted [Maronite] nation in France,” and most important, in the hope that “His Majesty, will not only do for us what his august predecessors did; we would like to expect even more from his high ability and personal influence.”⁵⁴ Then the essay proper, which consists of only thirty-seven pages, is followed by two brief annexes, one on the “Genealogy of the Princes of Lebanon” and the other containing a statistical survey of the populations inhabiting the Mountain.

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 of the Lebanese Emirate and to insist more on the coexistence of diverse communities in Mount Lebanon.

Why then had this entity perished? And why did Murad ask for the help of the French to restore this independent Christian entity? It is because, Murad explained, this valiant nation had been overwhelmed by a deceitful Ottoman plan to occupy Lebanon. This design had finally succeeded when the Ottomans, realizing that they could only achieve their aim by excluding the Shihabs, took advantage of the reestablishment of their rule in 1840 to dismiss Bashir II. Since then, the poor Christians of these regions were suffering all kind of torments and persecutions under Ottoman rule: “What change has been wrought in this land in just the last four years! Insulted daily by the infidel, tormented by the cruellest abuse, the most disgusting humiliations, deprived of her princely protectors, for whose return she continually pleads, the Maronite nation thought that those times of persecution, of sad, horrible memories, had returned; many of those sons, snatched from their country, are moaning amid the infidels, in oppression and slavery, happy if, in their pain and suffering, they remain loyal to the true faith, the religion of their brothers!”⁶⁵ This image of persecuted Christians appealed to Catholic circles in France and probably matched their own views and fantasies. But Murad was not only seeking to preach to the converted. He was seeking an effective French intervention, and he elaborated a full argument to substantiate his appeal for official French help, which he indirectly presented as an unfulfilled French commitment.

The French and the Maronites, in Murad's account, had maintained strong relations since the time of the Crusades and had helped each other in times of need. Hence, for instance, the Maronites had welcomed among them the last Crusaders of the region of Antioch, when that town was conquered by the Mamluks.⁶⁶ These links between the French and the Maronites had evolved into an effective “moral alliance, [my italics] the recollection of which has remained profoundly engraved on the spirit of these populations,” since the Crusade of St. Louis.⁶⁷ When the latter landed in Cyprus, Murad wrote, he recruited Maronites who advised him to land in Beirut and conquer Syria instead of Egypt and thus benefit from their support. Instead, Louis IX chose to attack Egypt and met disastrous consequences. When he finally managed to reach Acre, “the prince of Lebanon send to King Louis . . . twenty five thousand men . . . led by one of his sons, laden with all kinds of presents and provisions.”⁶⁸ In recognition of his gratitude, the august king sent a letter to the Emir of Mount Lebanon and to the bishops of his nation promising henceforth the protection of the Maronites by the French monarchs.⁶⁹ More so, the French king even adopted the Maronites, assimilating them to the French nation itself: “We are convinced that that nation, established under the name of Saint Maron, is part of the French nation, for its friendship for the French people resembles the friendship that French people feel for one another. It is therefore just that you and all the Maronites should enjoy the same protection that the French enjoy near us, and that you should be accepted into employment as they are themselves.”⁷⁰ It is necessary here to make a brief digression to examine more closely the issue of this letter of protection from St. Louis to the Maronites, which is today generally recognized as apocryphal.⁷¹ Murad asserted in a footnote of his Notice that “this letter is from a very old Arabic manuscript in the Maronite archives; the manuscript's author claims to have translated it from Latin to Arabic.” ⁷² However, no copy of the Latin original was presented or has ever been found.⁷³

The absence of documentary evidence raises some questions about the role of Murad in initiating the “St. Louis legend,” which was long considered as an established fact reproduced by many eminent historians and publicists, and which merits some further examination. A study of other letters by Murad to King Louis Philippe reveals that in an earlier petition dated February 1840, Murad, soliciting French intervention in favor of the Maronites of Aleppo, reminded the king of the traditional protection of his community by the French monarchs, according to “traditions based on authentic documents.” Murad then textually quoted the letters of Louis XIV and Louis XV without any mention of a letter by St. Louis.⁷⁴

It is only in a letter dated April 30, 1844, and addressed to the French king, that Murad mentioned for the first time the letter of St. Louis that, according to him, “our historians found in our archives.”⁷⁵ Hence, it seems plausible to suggest that he might have been one of the first to initiate the St. Louis “myth,” or at least that he was one of the first to reproduce it.⁷⁶ In this case, the mystery remains as to who so fortuitously “discovered” or penned this letter, and, if it was Murad, what factors or persons influenced and incited him in this direction. It must be remembered that Murad was then visiting Paris, where he was in close contact with Catholic circles and where “he appears to have found an abundant supply of aliment for that overheated zeal which he had previously displayed in service of the House of Shihab.”⁷⁷

This assumption can be further substantiated by the fact that in his text Murad reproduced, along with St. Louis's letter, two other letters of protection by Louis XIV and Louis XV—duly authenticated this time. However, the protection promised by these two kings was much more modest than that of St. Louis. The two monarchs committed themselves only to protect and defend the spiritual and religious liberty of the Maronites, in line with the general protectorate of the Catholics in the Ottoman Empire. This may explain why Murad was in need to produce, or at least reproduce, the much stronger moral commitment found in the letter of Louis IX. He also aimed to relay the impression of an effective and continuous protection of the Maronites by French kings since the days of St. Louis.

Murad moreover situated the origin of the “moral alliance” between the French and the Maronites at the end of the period of the Crusades, when the Franks were in need of the help of the Maronites. Given that Murad intended to ask for French help this time, he might have “selected” to date the beginning of their alliance during this period in order to present his request for French help as a kind of reciprocated service. This view is substantiated by a letter of the Maronite bishop to Louis Philippe, in February 1840, in which he asserts that “the powerful protection which France used to bestow upon the Maronites was a reward for the services they had done them.”⁷⁸

In the same way, Murad elaborated on an imagined confirmation of this protection by Napoleon Bonaparte, whom the Maronites used to consider an “enemy of the Church.” The French general, Murad added, had allegedly declared to a delegation of Maronites coming to meet him near Acre: “I recognize that the Maronites have been French from time immemorial; I too am Roman Catholic; you will see that through me, the Church will triumph and extend its domain far and wide.”⁷⁹ Pushing this argument of an identification between Maronites and the French, Murad asserted that even the Turks acknowledged this fact by forwarding their messages to the Maronites with the following formula: “To the Maronite-Frankish nation, to the Frankish-Maronites.”⁸⁰ The Maronites themselves had also come to assume that they were a “French nation, by sentiment as well by religion.”⁸¹ The Maronite nation thus imperceptibly turned into the “French of the Levant,” an expression found since then in some French and Maronite texts.

Thus, in Murad's narrative, the ties between the Maronites and the French had evolved through history into a total identification between the French and Maronite “nations.” However, the two partners in this relationship were not equal. It was more of an affiliation between a patron owing protection to his younger relative, due to obligations imparted on him for moral and religious considerations. Hence, for Murad, the Maronites were at one and the same time “the allies and the protégés of the French.”⁸²

This moral obligation of the French to protect the Maronites is one of the main underlying themes of Murad's book. It aimed at reinforcing his appeal for French help. Indeed, the whole of Murad's book is directed toward this final aim, and the bulk of it is only a mandatory preamble to this objective. So, after relating the history of his community and that of its historical links with France, Murad finally comes to the point. For four years, the Maronite nation had been overwhelmed by the “worst torments,” he asserted. Since it lost the protection of its legitimate princes and that of France, it had been overpowered by a hostile Muslim Ottoman army and was in dire need of French assistance. If France did not want to help them any more, the Maronites were ready to die in defense of their religion. However, they hoped that France would not abandon them to this dreadful fate: “France, we hope, will not remain indifferent to our plight, deaf to our entreaties and our prayers; on more than one account, she owes the Maronite Christians her effective and powerful protection [my italics]. As a Catholic country, could she watch her brothers in Jesus Christ oppressed, slaughtered in cold blood? As a Great Power, is she not bound by the most formal assurances, by treaties, by letters from her kings? Would gratitude not suffice for her to see this protection as a duty?”⁸³

This is why Murad finally appealed to France to fulfill the “commitment reiterated by Guizot to . . . do her utmost to restore to the Maronites of Lebanon the government they had lost and yearn for with all their heart.”⁸⁴

Murad did not specify in his treatise the kind of French help he had in mind. For that, we have to consult his personal correspondence, among which two letters addressed to Guizot, one dated March 27, 1842, and the other November 27, 1842, explicitly solicit a French military intervention “in the name of Christendom, with a view to re-establishing Shihabi rule.”⁸⁵ Thus, the political project of the Maronite Church of establishing a semi-independent Emirate in Mount Lebanon became tied to and, more so, dependent upon, French military intervention. After the collapse of the plans of the Maronite Patriarch to mobilize his community and to impose its dominance on the ground, and following his reliance on French diplomatic support in Istanbul and the failure of such policies, the Church was slowly turning toward the only solution left: foreign military intervention. The recent military operation of the Allies and the Ottomans to reestablish Ottoman rule or, more probably, the intervention of the European powers that contributed to the liberation of the Greeks some years earlier, as well as the numerous exhortations of some French circles, may have inspired and instigated such designs. But the main reason for this plea for foreign military intervention was the acknowledgment by the Church, after its reversals locally and in Istanbul, that it did not possess the means required to fulfill its ambitions. Or, to use Murad's own words in a personal letter to King Louis Philippe, “[The Maronites] know that they must await their deliverance from the King of France . . . after God.”⁸⁶

The aspirations of the Maronite Church to establish an autonomous Christian Emirate hence became tied to French designs in the region. However, if the French government needed the Maronites to secure its influence and a foothold in the region in case of an eventual intervention, should the Ottoman Empire disintegrate, it was not willing as yet to take any initiative toward the realization of the Maronite project, a fact that generated much friction and misunderstanding between both sides as well as some frustration among some Maronite circles.

The legacy of Murad was therefore twofold. First, he laid the basis for the historical legitimization of the Lebanist project and ideal. Many Lebanese and foreign publicists would follow in his footsteps, refining his initial blueprint. The second aspect of Murad's legacy is more ambiguous. Murad's views concerning the religious affinity and the identification of the Maronites with the French were more rarely integrated into the core of the Lebanist ideology. Future advocates of a Lebanese identity preferred to tone down such an association, or to appeal to more secular grounds of affinity between the Lebanese and the French, but they did often refer to Murad's vision of France's “moral obligation” to assist in the liberation of the Lebanese without encroaching on their independence and identity.⁸⁷

More concretely, Murad was to have a successor in the person of Father ‘Azar, who, in 1846–47, undertook a mission to France similar to that of Murad, with the aim of requesting France's support for the Maronites. Less distinguished than his eminent predecessor, and speaking barely a few words of Italian and no French at all, Father ‘Azar seems to have endured many difficulties before being introduced to members of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, to whom he presented apparently outdated, and greatly exaggerated, petitions regarding the distressful situation of the Maronites and their urgent need for French support. These supplications ended up in the French Chamber of Deputies through the intermediation of a Catholic deputy, provoking strong criticisms of French governmental policy concerning Mount Lebanon.⁸⁸

Ultimately, ‘Azar's political mission, like that of Murad before him, ended in failure; both discovered that the policy of the French government was in effect much more circumspect than that of the French circles they used to frequent. More important to this study is that ‘Azar, like Murad before him, apparently scribbled some notes on the history of the Maronites that were then translated into French in the form of a brochure and circulated, along with ‘Azar's petitions, in Catholic and colonial circles.⁸⁹ The brochure was duly published some five years later in France, in the form of a book entitled Les Marounites, d'après le manuscrit arabe du R. P. Azar.

‘Azar's book was clearly rewritten by a Frenchman who interjected himself into the text by frequent reference to “us” or “our country” when mentioning the French and France. Moreover, the text was updated to fit changing circumstances and governments. The publication of the book corresponded with the proclamation of Napoleon III as Emperor, and it was addressed to him, enjoining him to carry on the great deeds of his uncle and all his eminent royal predecessors and to save and protect the Maronites: “Prince, turn your gaze upon Lebanon, and see the blows that have been dealt against France, against humanity, against the Catholic faith. . . . Associate your name with the names of St. Louis, Louis XIV and Napoleon; let us have our life, let us have our faith, you can do it: when France wants to do something, it can—especially when she is governed by those Napoleons.”⁹⁰ Moreover, to strengthen this plea the small phrase allegedly attributed by Murad to Napoleon himself, to the effect that the Maronites were French “since immemorial times,” is continually reiterated throughout the text.

Most themes dealt with by Murad on the history of the Maronites, their historical Emirate, their close association with the French, and the traditional French protectorate of the community are reproduced in ‘Azar's book, with some slight alterations and stronger emphasis. For example, the identification of the Maronites with the French is pushed even further in'Azar's book, and the Maronites are not only the French of the Levant, or even the protégés of France, but clearly and simply French since the time of the Crusades: “The Maronites, then, are indeed French; they mix their blood with French blood on the battlefield; a noble fraternity of arms exists between them and the French. They also mix their blood through marriage; French blood flowed and still flows in Maronite veins.”⁹¹ Similarly, the moral obligation, and indeed duty, of the French to succor the Maronites in their time of suffering is strongly underscored in ‘Azar's text. Moreover, the advantages France could reap from such an endeavor, and indeed the identity of interests between the French and the Maronites, are more clearly highlighted. Hence, the author discussed at length why it was in French interest to help these “400,000 Maronites ripe to form a nation.”⁹² The Ottoman Empire was collapsing, and “the political eventualities which might arise in the Orient required that we protect the Maronites,”⁹³ “this European colony transplanted in Asia.”⁹⁴ In short, as the author asserted: “In the East, there is only one people that has virtue: the Maronite people; the Maronites are destined for greatness; on their own they will be able to revive and reinvigorate Asia: all of civilization's hopes rest upon them.”⁹⁵

‘Azar's book, like that of Murad, had more immediate impact in France than in Mount Lebanon, where both works seem to have remained unknown for a long time. They were, however, rediscovered, along with many other French works of the same epoch, by some Lebanese intellectuals at the beginning of the twentieth century who drew much inspiration from them. Bulus Nujaym, also known as Jouplain, for example, often referred to ‘Azar's manuscript in his major work, La question du Liban.⁹⁶