Hitti,

No such state was constructed by Moslems in modern history. Nor did any other Moslem state prove to be more enduring. To his people Sulayman was known as Al-Qanuni (the lawgiver).… To outsiders he was known as the Magnificent, and magnificent indeed he was, with a court exercising patronage over art, literature, public works and inspiring awe in European hearts.3

Because of lack of space in this book we are not permitted to delve into the detailed history of Gibran’s homeland. Still, to quench our intellectual curiosity, I will briefly mention a few historical data under the Ottoman Empire, since this was the main foreign oppression Gibran lived under.

When the Sultan Selim I defeated in 1516 the Mamluks and established a Turkish dynasty, Lebanon was then mostly inhabited by peasants and farmers. In the northern part, Kisrawan, the Maronite Christians were predominant while in the southern districts of Shuf, the Druze constituted the majority. The Ottoman conquest did not affect deeply the political structure, the language and the way of life of the people of Lebanon. In practice customary law was supreme, and social power was in the hands of the feudal lords, on whom the Ottoman governors, like their predecessors the Mamluks, mainly relied for the security of local order and the collection of taxes.

Such being the flexibility of Ottoman politics, it was possible for the feudal dynasties of the country to pursue their factions and virtually one to vanquish the other. Thus, the greatest figure at that time was the Druze Amir Fakhr al-Din II, the head of the Ma’anids dynasty of the Shuf, who governed Lebanon throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During his reign (1586-1635), he extended the geographical boundaries far beyond Lebanon, sometimes reaching up to the portico of Damascus and down to the Pilgrimage route that leads to the Hijaz. He was open minded toward foreign religious creeds and on several occasions encouraged European missionaries to build Christian churches. In matters of internal affairs, he cared for the prosperity, the warfare and the welfare of his country. With the aid of European architects and advisors he erected castles, developed agriculture and traded with Europe.

Captured in 1635 after a defeat by the governor of Damascus, Kuchuk Ahmad Pasha, he was sent prisoner to Istanbul where he was sentenced to death for wanting to overthrow the Ottoman Sultan. With his death followed the decline of the Ma’anids, who were succeeded in 1697 by the Chihab hegemony. This new Amirate ruled throughout the 18th century; flocks of mountaineers of the Maronite Kisrawan then migrated to the southern Shuf and mingled with the local Druzes, working unanimously for the betterment of the unified Lebanon. Of course, life was not so peaceful; from time to time there were misunderstandings between families and factions of the two traditional descendants of the Ancient Arabians of Qays and Yaman. The former were settlers of North Arabia, the latter of South Arabia. However, when Haydar Chihab won victory against Mahmud Pasha, head of the Yaman faction, many of the Yamani Druzes emigrated from the metropolis of Lebanon to the hilly district of Mountain Hawran in Syria now called Jabal-al Druz. For conclusion to this period the historian Hourani writes,

In the remainder of Syria no less than in Lebanon the eighteenth century was marked by conflict and unrest. Finally a great part of the country fell into the hands of Bosnian Jazzar, Pasha of Acre, who ruled it ruthlessly and cruelly from 1775 until 1804.

Generally speaking, the history of Lebanon during the Ottoman Turks was principally the story of the Maronites and the Druzes. Both of these religions have shaped the political fate of Lebanon. I may even say, religion or “confessionalism” was the whole politics in this part of the world. Nowadays also the political institution of Lebanon is still deeply determined by the partitions of the various religious confessions.

The Maronites are followers of the hermit St. Maron (d. 410), an ascetic monk who lived on a mountain in the region of Apamea, in Syria secunda. Being persecuted by the caliphates of Damascus and Baghdad, the Maronites escaped the Northern Syria and began some time during the 8th century to seek refuge from the harassments by the Melchites, Monophysites and Muslims in the impenetrable mountains of Lebanon.5 The Maronite Church, to which Gibran belonged, still uses Syriac language in the liturgy and adheres to Catholicism. Their first temple erected in the mountains of Lebanon was established around 749. Ever since their settlement in Lebanon the faithful organized a feudal system of government in the northern parts under the combined leadership of clergy and nobility, delegating the patriarch as their feudal in religious affairs and civil matters. At the time of the Ottomans the clergy feudalism exerted a fearful and ferocious influence over the poor peasants. Often, the clergy would practice “simony” and play the role of a corrupt politics. Most of Gibran’s criticisms aimed at religion stem from and are directed against the feudalism of the Maronite institution.

As for the Druze religion, it entered southern Lebanon in about 1020. Such creed owes its name to Muhammad ibn-Ismail Al-Darazi (tailor in Turkish).