anasawad wrote:@Palmyrene
Lebanon has been a separate political entity and has had defined borders for over 4000 years.
It wasn't created by France.
Being part of an empire doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Actually I've read this really good book called "Inventing Lebanon" by Kais Firro which disproves this. I'll give you my short review on it.
Despite what the title suggests, the author is not especially critical towards Lebanese nationalism. He begins by summarizing the movements and groups within Lebanon that called for Lebanism, and then compares that to the Syrianists and the Arabists. In fact, if he has any intellectual predisposition, it is against nationalism in general, as he repeatedly quotes scholars who are critical of nationalism such as Hobsbawm, Ernest Gellner, Anthony Smith, Paul Brass, and Benedict Anderson. A general background knowledge is definitely required, as he references the Ma'ans, Shihabs, the Emirate, and the Mutassarrifate immediately and without explaining much about them, although to be fair doing so would require an entire other book.
His critique of the Lebanists - the proponents of a Greater Lebanese state - shows that the concept was extremely muddled to begin with, both territorially and in terms of identity. Many of the most prominent intellectual proponents of Lebanism fluctuated in their ideology with the changes in French policy, from Syrianism to Arabism to Lebanism. One early proposal for Greater Lebanon ranged from southern Turkey to Egypt! (p. 19). Some definitions of Lebanese identity were solely Christian, for example Khairallah Khairallah's book which argued that Mount Lebanon was "Lebanese rather than Druze". (p. 23) Many of the Lebanists had first been Syrianists until the change in French policy [in 1919 towards the Greater Lebanon project], such as George Samne and Shukri Ghanim. The Phoenicianist Jacques Tabet who seemed to be strongly anti-Arab and somewhat anti-Muslim, initially wrote in 1916 that Syrians were Phoenician people and that "Lebanon is the core of Syria" p.26. He argued that those Lebanese Christians in Egypt who supported Arabism were "collaborators with Egypt and Britain." Samne oddly argues that the Phoenicians were a Semitic people who originated from the Persian Gulf. Tabet argues that they originated in the heart of Syria, but that the culture of the Phoenicians had survived in the region through millennia of occupiers and invaders (except the Crusaders, who were protectors) most purely in the Maronite people. He also argues for the ethnic purity of the Syrian Phoenician race. Michel Chiha, the writer of Lebanon's constitution, meanwhile, tried to undercut Arabism by arguing that Lebanon was not semitic thanks to all the non-semitic people who had settled it, but that these various races coalesced into a distinct ethnic group under the Phoenicians. He then tried to undercut the links to Syria by arguing that the crusaders settled with the people of Lebanon. It is remarkable to see how similar these Lebanist authors (Samne, Tabet, Ghanim, Chiha, al-Sawda, etc.) were to the Zionists in their language and ideas. Their ideology was replete with mythologizing and romanticizing a vague ancient civilization, and their rhetoric was infused with talk of "rebuilding" a glorious powerful state that had not existed for many thousands of years. They both also emphasized the role of danger - how Israel (as a homeland for Jews) and Lebanon (as a homeland for Christians/Maronites) must always live under the threat of the other ("the transient").
After a brief overview of the Arabist discourse in Lebanon, which he claims to have been far more popular amongst the masses than Lebanism, Firro then moves on to analyze the fluctuating positions of Kamal Salibi, Lebanon's foremost historian. Prior to the civil war in 1966, his writing was effluent with complimentary views of Lebanon as a state. In 1985, Salibi declared that "in all but name, Lebanon today is a non-country." (p.43) Then he paradoxically argues that through this war, the Lebanese have morbidly developed for the first time a shared common identity. Salibi also argues, ironically, that the Maronites and Shi'is and Druzes all have their ethnic origins in Arabia.
Next, Firro discusses the how the competing narratives of the 1920s still dominate political discussion today. He breaks it down into 6 groups.
1. Unity in Diversity - Antoine Messarra and Ilya Harik:
Confessionalism is the natural primordial element of Lebanon that has always existed and keeps Lebanon alive as a state.
2. Arab Lebanon - Munah al-Sulh and al-Fadl Shalaq:
Lebanon is a single culture, Arab culture, but its separation from the Arab world is a fait accompli. It is a sectarian state because it was designed to be sectarian from the beginning. Solution is that minorities must abandon their separatism, and the Arab-Muslim majority must create a democratic rational framework to address the insecurities of minorities.
3. Colonialism at the Root of Confessionalism - Anis al-Sayigh and Joseph Mughayzil:
Lebanon is an Arab country and confessionalism is a direct result of French colonialism. Sits within Marxist discourse, arguing that confessionalism has historically been used as political instrument by elites.
4. Arab-Muslim Tradition vs. Western Colonialism - Ma'n Ziyada and Wajih Kawtharani:
There is only one culture in Lebanon: Arab-Muslim culture. Lebanon was arabized before Islam and remained Arab after it, and the existence of minorities doesn't negate that fact. Confessionalism is a result of Ottoman and European colonialism.
5. Hyphenating Confessionalism and Class - Mas'ud Dhahir and Mahdi Amel
Marxist point of view. Dahir argues that confessionalism is "directly determined by economic factors, ie., by a European power subordinating the country to the demands of market capitalism, whereby the class struggle was played out behind the ideological disguise of confessionalism."p.56
6. Confessionalism is nothing - Mehdi Amil
Similar to Dahir's views, Amel is a Marxist who argues that the confessional system is a political tool of Maronite domination. "Consequently Maronitism permeates beyond the frontiers of the community and history... the Phoenicians are Maronitized." He argued that the confessional system is an extension of the feudal class system, and that it relies on al-iqta'at al-siyasiyya, the clan and confessional representatives to allow the bourgeoisie to dominate. This creates a natural system of competition and dispute between the confessions. "...'Amil insists that only in the historical circumstances of the class struggle as it was played out since the Mandate did the confessional form of this struggle emerge. This leads him to deny the existence of al-ta'ifa (the confession) as an ethnic group in the modern sociological sense: "Al-ta'ifa, therefore, is not an entity. It is not essence. It is nothing. It is a political relationship determined by a certain historical form of the class struggle which is controlled by the bourgeoisie in the political absence of its class alternative."p.65 Amil is also closer to the Arabists, although he criticizes them for also using the primordial argument.
After this, Firro then transitions from Amil's and Dahir's analyses to spend some time discussing the emergence of the state confessional system and Lebanon's class-clan structure. There is an interesting comparison of the mafia system in Sicily with Lebanon's rural zu'ama and qabadayat (tough men). This discussion is dominated by French political and economic policies that favoured the Maronite community. There were violent riots all over Lebanon at the start of the Mandate, and France even proposed returning territories such as Tripoli to Syria proper (p.78). The decline of Druze in positions of political power is touched upon, and then French designs to use the Mandate areas as cashcows, "using the region as a source of raw materials for France and as an import market for finished European goods" p.85. Interestingly, one French strategy of disconnecting Mandate Lebanon from Mandate Syria was through high tariff barriers on transactions between the two. (p.127). Muslim rejectionism is also discussed, particularly that of the Sunnis. Eventually, France would soften them to the idea of the state through a combination of harsh repression (arrests and exile of Sunni rejectionists), and what Firro calls, the Carrot and Stick policy, of economic and political incentives to elites within the new state.
This then leads to a discussion of the state elite. Chapter 3 covers statistics on how many families had deputies in the parliament at certain periods, highlighting the oligarchical and dynastic nature of Lebanon from its inception. Chapter 4 is concerned with showing how the French Mandate brought into existence a different form of patrimonialism that had existed during the Ottoman period, and the author tries to track and posthumously catalog the rise of the state elite into their current positions of power. He carefully traces individual families from their rejectionist Arab nationalist position, to acceptance of the Greater Lebanon project and their swift accession into the state bureaucracy.
The author then begins a long discussion on feudalism and large land owning families in the chapter entitled "Between Town and Countryside". He runs through different power relationships and different forms of contracts, such as mugharasa and musaqa (long-term) in the mountains and muzara'a (short-term) in tobacco farming areas (p.90). Then land ownership in different areas of Lebanon, such as the latifundia and musha' systems.
From this the author transitions into a discussion on the titles of the state elite, and the anarchic proliferation of titles and honorifics through the entire society. He recounts how the French approached the Sunni branch of the al-Shihab family to break the Muslim boycott of the new state, and: "As it would safeguard their entitlement to top-ranking public offices, the Shihabi princes did not hesitate long before they accepted this invitation "to ascend Mt. Hermon"." P.92. Whereas some Sunni families were exiled for their rejectionist stance of the state under the accusation of conspiracy in the assassination of Sa'id Pasha Khurshid, other Sunni families saw this as an opportunity "to join the zu'ama who in the past would never have been able to secure a position in the elite stratum." P.93. Once the Muslim boycott of the new state was broken, this then engenders a discussion on the formation of the new bureaucratic state elite from the previous class of zu'ama and landowners. He cites other studies to show that "62% of the members of the various parliaments between 1920 and 1970 were related through the kinship attachments prevailing among them," and that "35% of all parliament seats were monopolized from 1920 to 1972 by no more than 6 families." P.97
In Chapter 4, 'Did the System Create the Zu'ama or Vice Versa?', Firro traces the first Sunni families who break the Muslim boycott of the state in 1925-26 and take part in the government of Dabbas. The Sulh, Salam, and Karami families became more hardline rejectionist, while the High Commissioner turned to leading merchants and zu'ama, allowing them to climb the social ladder in ways they could not previously. This leads to the December 1926 government of August Adib that mixes successful urban merchants and rural landlords. Firro then discusses the rise to prominence of Sheikh Muhammad al-Jisr. He was appointed Speaker of Parliament and was supported by the French authorities and by the Maronites and propped up as the representative of all Muslims, to counter the weight of prominent Sunnis (Abd al-Hamid Karami,Abd al-Latif al-Bisar and `Arif Hasan al-Rifa'i) who had been arrested by French authorities and had planned a congress in 1927 to discuss territorial revision. Ie - businessmen break the Muslim boycott to take important state positions instead of the traditional leading families.
Following this there is some discussion of various politicians, followed by a lengthier section on Emil Edde. After this is discussed Edde's educational reform that sparked Muslim anger against the state, as well as their rejection of a government proposal to recognize Lebanese vernacular as an official language. P.111 Firro argues that Edde's reforms "increased expenditure on institutions that could benefit the elite of the country" (p.111) and "reinforce 'national' culture" (p.112). He cites a League of Nation report to show that 70% of non-Christians went to state schools, whereas more than 70% of private school students were Christians. p. 112 This crisis even spread to Syria and Iraq, where the press called it a Christian plot against Islam. Edde is said to have replied: "If the Muslims are not content in the Lebanese Republic and its separation from Syria ... they have no choice but to go back to the desert whence they came." p.113
Throughout, there were protests across the country: "As early as 1920, there were a good many uprisings, some large, some small, and other forms of violence throughout Jabal al-'Alawiyyn, Jabal al-Duruz, Jabal 'Amil, al-Biqa' and al-Shuf. Peasant unrest also spread through large rural areas around Aleppo and a-Jazira (near the Syrian-Iraqi border) as late as 1923." p. 71 There were also various attacks on Christians throughout the country, who were seen as collaborators with the French. (p. 78)
"...the leaders of Sidon organized a demonstration in favor of "union" with Syria which, the British consul writes, "was badly handled by a Christian Gendarmerie officer and resulted in an ugly little riot in which four demonstrators met their deaths and several were wounded." Soon demonstrations and strikes extended to Tripoli.." p. 147
As this was occurring, new parties and organizations were being created by Muslim intellectuals to call for union with Syria and other Arab lands, and there were seemingly numerous congresses and conferences held on the matter that amounted to nothing. The Hizb 'Usbat al-'Amal al- Qawmi (the "Party of the League of National Action"), established in August 1933 as the outcome of a conference of Arab nationalists from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Palestine, who had come together at the initiative of the Druze intellectual Ali Nasir al-Din. In 1933, a faction of other Arabists was led by Salim 'All Salam and 'Abd al- Hamid Karami, both organizers of the 'Coastal Conference' that rejected Lebanese statehood. They also demanded an end to "discrimination" against Muslim communities, claiming that "the "annexed areas," where the Muslims constituted the majority of the population, paid 82% of all taxes while Mount Lebanon received 80% of all expenditures." Salam would hold another similar conference of Muslim intellectuals in 1936. Another conference was held in Damascus in 1933 at the house of Faris al-Khuri, a Christian Arab nationalist, to discuss territorial revision.
A more conciliatory approach was taken up by Sunni families such as Bayhum, Da'uq and al-Ahdab, who "had agreed to take up official posts in the legislative and executive institutions of the Lebanese state, but continued to express a "unionist" ideology." p. 134
Finally, the al-Sulh family led a third more conciliatory trend, and this is what led ultimately to the National Pact. The Hizb al-Istiqlal al-Jumhuri, The Republican Party for Independence, was established in 1931: "The party comprised politicians from a number of leading Sunni and Druze families, such as 'Adil al-Sulh and Zakaria Nusuli (Sunnis) and Sami Arslan and Fu'ad Nakad (Druzes), who joined Christian intellectuals such as D'aybis al-Mur, Niqula Zuhayr, William Usayli, Michel Talhami andAziz al-Hashim. Together they worked out a common stand on the suspension of the constitution and formulated the ideological position of the party, stressing the "unity between Christians and Muslims within the democratic republic of Lebanon," whereby they saw "Arabism" as the determining factor of the "national character of the Lebanese state." Through this party, the al-Sulh family adopted a form of Arabism that accepted Lebanese statehood.
Muslim strategy remained chaotic well into the 30s when Abdullah Bayhum demanded a new demographic survey. Some Muslims again boycotted, as they had done in 1921, while some Arabist newspapers called for Muslims to register as Syrians.
The Communist party was formed in 1932-33 and immediately outlawed. It tried to break both the rule of the zu'ama aqtab and the confessional system.
*** (Coffee Break) ***
This has to be one of the most marvellous books I've ever read on the subject of Middle Eastern politics. The author is supremely strict in not revealing any ideological favoritism, and his analysis is uniquely valuable thanks to his taxonomy of the Lebanon's intellectuals. The primary underlying thesis of this book is how nationalism and nationhood requires the establishment and effective propagation of a national myth, a patriotic narrative and self-understanding (a la Hobsbawm). And in Lebanon's case, this was never managed because of the nature of its creation from afar with crystal clear favoritism towards one particular minority group. Firro then analyzes the main currents of national mythmaking in the wake of the state (including the many rejectionists), and shows clearly how Lebanon's wars, Lebanon's confessional politics, and Lebanon's current intellectual climate, are all haunted by the circumstances of its birth as a state, and the resulting intellectual currents of the 1920s. Lebanon, in effect, is still grappling with this identity crisis and still today uncomfortable with itself.
Page 67 provides a fitting dust-jacket quote:
"From the outset all Sunni and large segments of the Shi'i, Druze, and Greek Orthodox intellectuals and politicians rejected the new state they had become part of, refusing to accept borders that had been drawn by the French and a political structure that had been put in place by the established elite around Michel Chiha. And when, after 1926, they began to come around to the idea of Greater Lebanon as a territorial state, this only intensified the debate among them as to what the defining national features of that state ought to be. Al-sigha al-Shihawiyya [Chiha's argument] now came up against the multiple forms of collective identity that had survived and even been reinforced by the establishment of Greater Lebanon..."
TLDR:
- France created Lebanon and Muslims (and some Christians) were not happy about this. Many riots and conferences and boycottes achieved nothing. People were killed and exiled.
- Later on some Sunnis began to accept the state. This led to a debate in the 1920s about the national character of the country, whether Lebanism, Syrianism, or Arabism. The impacts of those debates last until today.
They're not Arab. Arab colonial empires did reach Lebanon, true; However, that does not mean Lebanese people became Arabs.
Are you talking about the Ottomans? The Ottomans are Turks not Arabs. Arabs didn't have a colonial empire. Well Oman did surprising but it only reached Africa and Bahrain not Lebanon.
They
are indigenous to Lebanon. Lebanese are Arabs. The territory of Lebanon was invaded by Arab Muslims, but there were Arabs living in the area scattered about hundreds of years before the Islamic invasion.
They are mentioned in both Persian records as well as in Alexander the Great's siege of Tyre, where it was recorded that he fought Arabs living in the Antilebanon mountains. This is 700 years before the Islamic conquests. It's mentioned in The Arabs In Antiquity by Jan Retso, who states: "The Arabs in the Antilebanon are mentioned for the first time in sources dealing with Alexander but it is most likely that they had been there for some time." It's mentioned by several historians. Plutarch states: "On Mount Libanus also the peasants (agrestes) of the arabes attacked the Macedonians when they were in disorder, killed about thirty and took a smaller number of prisoners." P.264 of Retso.
"We learn from all variants of this story that the arabes dwelt in the Antilebanon, i.e. quite far from the cedar forests exploited by the Macedonians. This is a new entity of arabes that now emerges into the light of history and is added to those known previ- ously in the Gazira, in Dumah and between Palestine and the Nile Delta. ... The pres- ence of the Macedonians in the west and in Damascus thus encircled the areas of the arabes in the Antilebanon. We have suggested that these arabes may be identical to those mentioned in the list of arkhonts added to Xenophon's Anabasis. As we shall see, the Arabs in the Antilebanon are mentioned quite often later in antiquity. 13 Alexander had to conduct two complicated sieges during his campaign along the Levantine coast, and Arabs were involved in both." P.265
On top of all that, the oldest records we have of Arabic being spoken as a language come from Syria, Palestine, Jordan, northern Saudi, and Sinai. The language then very clearly spreads to neighbouring regions.
It's irrefutable that Arabs are indigenous to Lebanon.
False. Check your history.
Yazidis are not an ethnic group.
Druze are Arab migrants from Yemen, simply they're a different religious group.
Lebanese tribes, specifically Baalbek tribes have been in Lebanon for nearly 7000 years and have never been Arabs.
Arabs come from Yemen and Hijaz, not everyone in the middle east is an Arab.
Yazidis are a different ethnic group though. Ethnicity is defined by both culture and language mostly which is why Japan's Butakumin are a completely different ethnic group even though they're genetically identical to regular Japanese.
The Druze intermarry within themselves enough that they practically are genetically a completely different race. The Druze religion was started by a Persian and it began in Persia until they migrated to the Levant.
The oldest record of the Arab language comes from the Levant so that is false.
- By skinster