About 3.5 million inhabitants, plus a large Diaspora of 4 million emigrants since the beginning of the 19th century. In counterpart, Lebanon had to welcome about 900 000 Arabs (Moslems), including 600 000 Palestinians.

Lebanon, as mentioned in the Bible (Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Solomon...) is the Mount Lebanon range. Its Aramaic name means white, symbol of snow on the peaks. Aram is the country of the Arameans, the highlanders.

In the 6' century and inside the Byzantine Empire, there were numerous heterodoxies in conflict with the official creed, as well as with each other. The small Maronite community living on the banks of the Orontes River in Syria, under Byzantine rule, was caught in the violent controversy raging between the Monophysites', the NestorianS2 and others.
In 517 AD, 350 Maronites were massacred in prelude for a period of systematic persecution. A century later and shortly before the rise of Islam, the Maronites, fleeing the persecution of their fellow Christians, had begun their exodus toward the South, seeking refuge in the Lebanese mountains and joining their Maronite brothers' communities (founded two centuries earlier by Abraham). Monasteries throughout the mountains and rural communities welcomed them.

1^st quarter of the 7^th century: A new religion appeared In the Arabian Peninsula: Islam. It united the Arab tribes who launched their famous campaigns "the Fatah" (conquest), seeking to conquer new territories, in the name of God "Allah", and bring the whole mankind to the true faith (Islam).

636 AD: The Muslims defeated the Byzantine army on the Yarmuk river near Jerusalem and overran the imperial provinces of Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia and Egypt. The Byzantine withdrew to Minor Asia, leaving the fate of Christianity, in the eastern side of the Mediterranean up to the Taurus Mountains, in the hands of the Muslim conquerors.
The coastal and suburban cities of Lebanon were seized and the victorious march toward the West and the North went on, shying away from Mount Lebanon, the rugged terrain of the Maronites' homeland where a new and large population gathered, fleeing the conquered cities. Later, the conquerors were swift to bring Muslim tribes to the area to neutralize Christian predominance and monitor potential rebellions.
At a time when the cities and plains of the Christian East fell prey to the Muslim onslaught, the mountains became the repositories of the Christian resistance to Islam. In Lebanon, Armenia, Assyria, the Christians dug their heels in and awaited the revival of Christendom.

For a decade, this Christian entity managed to preserve its independence until 685 AD when the Byzantine and the Muslims reached an agreement to crack down on the new independent state. When the Maradas or Mardaites (Christian warriors) warlords were fighting the Muslims they refused the orders of emperor Justinian to leave Lebanon. So he summoned them to a meeting in the Biqaa Valley, to the east of Mount Lebanon, and treacherously had them slain. As a result 12,000 Mardaite warriors left Lebanon for Asia Minor, while the others stayed back and merged with the predominantly Maronite population of the country.

7. A Christian Entity in Lebanon - The Second Mardaite State (685-758)

Following the Byzantine betrayal, the Christians were unable to hold their ground and withdrew North from Palestine to Mount Lebanon. Around the same time, the Muslims launched an offensive against the Mardaites living in Mount Arnanus in Northwest Syria, forcing them to abandon their villages and settle in the Muslim plain.
At the beginning of the 8th century, Lebanon remained the only independent Christian entity South of the Taurus Mountains and West of the River Tigris and the sole refuge for the Maronite community to preserve its physical, religious, social and economic status. This small Christian entity extended from the Shuf (east of Sidon) to the Akkar (northeast of Tripoli).

From the middle of the 8th century onwards, the Abbasid Caliphs implemented a plan to quell the Christian resistance by sending Orthodox Sunni Muslim tribes to Lebanon.
Under this military and demographic pressure, the Christian entity shrank further to the North, leaving the whole Gharb and Shuf areas (east and southeast of Beirut) to the newcomers. The Dog River (nahr el-kalb), 8 miles north of Beirut, became the border between the Christian entity and what had now become a Muslim part of Lebanon.
In the 10th century, the "great divide " between Sunni and Shiite Islam took place and led various heterodox sects (Druzes, Alawites) to seek refuge in Lebanon. As a result of this heterodox influx, the Orthodox Sunni character of Muslim Lebanon faded away, and the Southern part of the mountain became a land of predilection for those rejecting the central authority.
Around the same time, Maronites and other Christians who were being persecuted in Northern Syria fled to Lebanon, and the Maronite Patriarchate established its See in the Lebanese mountain, thus underlining the historical image of Lebanon as refuge for the oppressed.

At the end of the 13th century, Islam breached the last Frankish ramparts on the Syrian coast, and the last Crusaders fled to Cyprus. The Muslims now turned their attention to Lebanon whose population had been cooperating with the Westerners since the 11th century. Lebanon had then an overwhelming Christian population with a heretical Muslim minority. In the north (Bsharri- Kesrwan): Christians, Shiites and Alawite Muslims. In the South (Gharb- Shuf): Druze with a small Christian minority.

In 1297, the Mamluk Muslim (Egypt) armies entered the Kesrwan and subdued the Christians and heretics living there. The invaders then marched North and overran the district of Bsharri, while thousands of Maronites fled the country, across the sea, to Cyprus. For the first time in history, the whole Mount Lebanon had bowed to Islam. The Christians had proved too divided to resist, and their traditional military structure based upon regional warlords was unable to withstand the assaults of the Muslim war machine. In 1305, the Mamluks launched another devastating military campaign targeting principally the Shiites of the Kesrwan and tangentially the Maronites. The century-old Christian entity in Lebanon had now lost its political autonomy, but managed to preserve its social and religious institutions.

11. Lebanon after the fall of Constantinople - The Ottoman Occupation (1514-1918 )

In 1453, The Muslim Turks conquered Constantinople. In 1571, Cyprus fell, and the whole Eastern Mediterranean became a mare islamica. Soon the Turks besieged Vienna while most of Eastern Europe and parts of Central Europe fell under the domination of the new conquerors.

Felt isolated, the Christians of Lebanon found local allies: The Druzes. In the 2" half of the 16th century, an alliance between the Maronites and the most prominent Druze family, the Maan, led by Fakhreddin, took place.

The Maronites were in a position to contribute substantially to the plans of Fakraddin, a Druze prince educated by a Maronite. The Maronite community was extremely well structured and organized, religiously, administratively and legally. Intellectuals and civil servants were needed to assure and maintain the link with European instances. In exchange, Fakraddin helped the Maronites to resist the Sunni and Shiite Muslims who were exerting pressure on them from the Biqaa and from the coastal towns. He encouraged the Maronites' movement South. As a result, Fakhreddin was able to build an autonomous principality conducting its own diplomacy and contracting trade agreements with European powers: An independent Lebanon with Christian political influence. This was unacceptable by the Ottomans Turks. Therefore, they launched different military campaigns against the Lebanese prince. In 16335 Fakhreddin was executed in Istanbul, capital of the Ottoman Empire. Persecution of Christians in the whole Middle East followed (in1667 the Syriac-Catholic Patriarch came to settle in Mount Lebanon). In Lebanon, Shiites and Sunnis rebelled and thousands of Christians were victims of hate and fanaticism.

Under the rule of the Shehab (some of whom had secretly converted to Christianity), the Maronite clergy became the dominant power in the country. Under the rule of Bashir Shehab 11 (1794-1840) the alliance between the Prince and the Maronite Church at the expense of the aristocracy helped the Maronites expand over the whole Mount Lebanon, from Bsharri North to Jezzine South, thus recreating the demographic pattern of medieval times when the Mardaites ruled Lebanon. Gradually, the Maronite community became the comer stone of the Lebanese Mountain political system.

In 183 1 the Egyptian army of Muhammad Ali Pasha, led by his son Ibrahim Pasha, invaded Syria, routed the Ottoman armies and concluded an alliance with Prince Bashir of Lebanon. At first the Christians welcomed the Egyptians as liberators, but the autocratic rule of Muhammad Ali and his propensity for acute centralization, coupled with a deterioration of the economic situation in the country, led the people of the mountain, Christians and Druzes, to rebel.
The Druzes rose under the banner of their feudal lords who sought to overthrow Prince Bashir and reestablish their local power. As for the Christians, they rebelled against the despotism of the Egyptians who sought to disarm the Christian villages and dissolve local militias. Their uprising was directed against the Egyptians, Prince Bashir and the aristocracy.

In May 1840, 10,000 warriors gathered in the mountain and marched against the Egyptians. Masses were celebrated in all villages and farms to support the resistance, as monks and priests blessed the insurgents' weapons. A month later, however, the Egyptian army (led by colonel Seves. a French officer who had converted to Islam defeated the Lebanese in two major places: Zahleh and Sidon. On July 15, 1840 a British fleet anchored in Jounieh in the Kesrwan and distributed 30,000 rifles to the 'insurgents. Soon, the Lebanese were able to take back the control of the mountain. As the Europeans and the Ottoman Turks intervened militarily, the Egyptians withdrew from Syria and Prince Bashir went into exile. The rebellion Succeeded. And for the first time provoked the internationalization of the Lebanese crisis.

In order to regain legitimate interference in domestic Lebanese affairs, the Ottomans began to foment sectarian conflicts. Druzes, Shiites and Sunnis were determined to regain the -round lost to the Christians during the rule of Prince Bashir. They resented the privileges accorded to the Christians who could only be second class citizens, under the law of Islam. On the Christians side, European ideas of justice, equality and democracy were growing. Conditions were favorable for sectarian conflicts and eventual clash. The trigger was released in fall 1841 when the Druze feudal lords attempted to regain control of the lands previously confiscated by Prince Bashir and distributed to Maronite peasants. The Druzes attacked Christian villages in the Shuf and Matn districts and massacred their inhabitants, while in the Biqaa Valley, the Christian town of Zahleh successfully withstood the Druzes' onslaught. Concurrently, Druze leaders requested the termination of the autonomous status of Lebanon and a return to direct Ottoman rule in order to curtail the power of the Christians and the growing influence of Europe in the country. The Ottoman army intervened to stop the feud, and on January 15, 1842, the "Sublime Porte" announced the termination of Lebanese autonomy.

The Christians were dismayed. The Maronite Patriarch retreated to the heart of the mountain where Ottoman soldiers never dared to venture. Europe intervened and imposed a solution whereby Lebanon would be divided into two counties (caimacamats), a Northern one ruled by a Christian Prince and a Southern one ruled by a Druze. The Beirut-Damascus road became the dividing line between the two counties. Yet, it soon appeared that the system was not workable, especially since there was a substantial number of Christians living in the Southern (Druze) county. At the end of 1843, in Dayr-al-Qamar, capital of the Southern County, more than a thousand Maronite dwellings as well as many churches and monasteries were ransacked and destroyed. In the spring of 1845, the Druzes and their Shiite allies rose once again killing Christian villagers, priests, monks and European missionaries, razing churches and monasteries to the ground, and desecrating Christian cemeteries. The onslaught lasted six weeks until the Ottomans intervened to stop the massacres and introduced major political reforms in the country. The main novelty consisted of an elected Council: an institution that will have consequences on the political Christian establishment. Indeed, as the Maronite Church was eager to curtail the power of the aristocracy. It encouraged and supported the Christian commoners' candidacy to the council. As a result, the Maronite feudal lords lost their final battle after a century of inroads by the lower clergy and the peasantry.

The ideas of the French Revolution and European Democratic movements reached the Christian villages of the Mountain. In 1858, a blacksmith by the name of Tanius Shahin rose in arms in the Kesrwan. demanding the immediate emancipation of the Peasantry. Soon the whole Christian Mountain was in turmoil, as peasants attacked castles and mansions, killing the aristocrats and taking, control of the yards. Within few weeks the peasants were in control of the whole Northern County up to Beirut-Damascus road. By 1859, the revolutionary movement gained sympathy among the Maronite peasants of the Southern (Druze) county who also demanded emancipation from their feudal lords and sought the alliance of the Druze peasantry. However, the Druze peasants sided with the Druze aristocracy against their Maronite colleagues. In the summer of 1859, the Druzes started attacking the Christians in the Shuf, Gharb and Matn districts. A series of incidents provoked by the Druzes in the Southern County set the communal strife in motion. Thus the social revolution advocated by Christian democrats became a religious civil war. The whole country was up in arms, Muslims against Christians. Sunnis and Shiites sided with the Druzes, while the Maronites, The Greek-Orthodox and the Greek Catholics stood side by side. Three days after the start of the onslaught, Christian villages in the mountain and on the coastal line as well were burned and razed to the ground in an obvious desire of preventing their hounded inhabitants ever from returning. Christian villagers of the Biqaa Valley fled to the mountain and to Zahleh, the only remaining large Christian community East of Mount Lebanon. Soon, 17,000 Druzes, Shiis, Sunnis and Bedouins besieged the town. Zahleh resisted at first awaiting the help of the Christian militia from west of the mountainside, but the latter never came. Instead, the Druzes, disguised as Christians with the Banner of the Cross, tricked the defenders and entered the town, looting and slaughtering. The Ottoman contingent soldiers, who were supposedly sent to protect the Christians, joined in with the assailants and committed the worst atrocities: butchering children, raping and killing women. In the South, the Christians of the Shuf fled to the coastal town of Sidon, where the Sunni Muslims weren't any better than the Druzes. In Dayr-al-Qamar 2,200 Christians were mercilessly slaughtered in a single day. In Hasbayya, the Christians led by young lass bravely resisted the Druze onslaught. Besieged without any ways of help, they finally entrusted their lives, their women and their children to the Ottoman garrison which disarmed them before handing them over to the Druzes, who killed each and every one of them. The same thing happened in Rashayya, East of Hasbayya. By June 1860, there was no Christians left South of the Beirut-Damascus road. But in the Northern county, where 49,000 Christians had sought refuge, the revolution was still holding its ground, and when the Muslim army marched on Bikfayya, the capital of the Christian county, the militia defeated it, forcing it to withdraw South. 
As the Lebanese Christians were organizing their counter-offensive in the mountain, Christians in other parts of the Middle East were suffering too. Thus, In Damascus, thousands of Christians were massacred by the mob, while others fled West to Mount Lebanon. The extension of the massacres to Syria compelled Europe to intervene. A French expeditionary force was sent to Lebanon to reestablish peace and order and protect the Christians. French ships anchored at Beirut harbor on august 16, 1860. The ordeal of the Christians "as over. Now, they can bury their dead, look after the hungry and care for the orphaned children. 
In Lebanon alone, 360 Christian villages were destroyed in a premeditated attempt to alter the geographic repartition of the population: 250 Christians were killed in battlefield; 11.000 treacherously butchered and 4,000 died of hunger; 6,000 widows and 10,000 orphans; 100,000 homeless. The Druzes had lost 1,300 men in battlefield. Only 176 were murdered.
Eastern Christians were dismayed and close to desperation. For twelve centuries, since the Islamic conquest of the eastern Mediterranean territories, Maronites, Armenians, Greek-Orthodox, Greek-Catholics, Jacobites, Nestorians and other minorities were settling in Lebanon as their last line of defense. A land of refuge and grace where they can preserve their faith and identity.

In 1861, the Europeans and the Ottomans agreed to reorganize the Lebanese political system. The agreement called for the establishment of an autonomous entity in Mount Lebanon called "Moutasarrifia", ruled by a non-Lebanese Christian Ottoman official. The autonomous entity included a population of 300,000 with an overwhelming Christian majority (89%). 
Lebanon, once again, appeared to be a secured place for Eastern Christians; this could explain why in 1895, Gregorian and Catholic Armenians suffering from the persecutions in their homeland, arrived and settled in Lebanon in great numbers. Around the same time, Greek-Catholics suffering under the same authoritarian rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II also flocked to Lebanon. As Lebanon became a land of freedom for Eastern Christendom, a base for European missionaries and a cultural and commercial center, the Ottomans raised their pressure and resumed interfering in the mountain's affairs, jeopardizing what has now become the last Christian resort. This provoked a swift reaction from the United States of America who sent a fleet to Beirut in 1903, ready to intervene should the Ottomans persist harassing both local Christians and Europeans. Such Western involvement raised the confidence and the hope of the Lebanese people in their nation's future as an independent and sovereign homeland. In 1909 the mountain welcomed a new influx of Gregorian and Catholic Armenians, main victims of the Ottomans cleansing policy.

As soon as the Turks entered the war as allies of the Austro-Germans, they abolished the autonomous status of Lebanon and occupied the country militarily. The Ottoman army's incessant requisitions and confiscation of citizens' goods, the economic blockade of the mountain and the attack of the locust forced the peasants to sell their land and abandon the villages. The mountain roads became littered with hungry peasants heading for the coast, eating roots and even cats and dogs. By 1916, the number of the dead raised to 80,000.

Concurrently, the Ottomans were hounding the Lebanese nationalists. On September 24, 1915, eleven Lebanese dignitaries and intellectuals were hanged in Beirut. In June 1916, the Maronite Archbishop of Beirut was deported; few months later, he died in exile. The Red Cross officials accompanying the British army estimated the number of dead from repression and starvation to be 200,000. 
The end of the Lebanese Christians Calvary was marked by the arrival of the European Allies. Still, they had to fight for their identity as a nation and for Lebanon as an independent entity. Indeed, the panarabic movement found an overwhelming support among the Moslems. Arab demands for an immediate unification between Lebanon and Syria, were persistent while in September 1917, the Lebanese nationalists reaffirmed their right to full independence from Syria. 
Notwithstanding Lebanese wishes, Prince Faysal of Arabia cabled Beirut on October 2, 1918, asking his supporters to raise the Arab flag over all official buildings. Nonetheless, he ordered one of his officers stationed in Damascus, to assume possession of Beirut in the name of the "Arab Government of Mecca". To prevent clashes between Arabs and Lebanese, the British occupied Beirut on October 6 and asked for the withdrawal of Faysal's troops into Syria.

In accordance with the Sykes-Picot Agreement (February 1916) between the Allies, Lebanon and Syria became a French "zone of influence". Thus, the British army evacuated Lebanon and the French moved in. In January 1919, the Paris Conference gave France a mandate over Lebanon and Syria.

Research & Studies
Orientation Department
Lebanese Forces Political Council

(2) Nestorians: Followers of Nestorius. The Nestorian heresy regarded Christ as a human person joined to the divine person of God's Son.