[citation needed] Bitter conflicts between Christians and Druzes, which had been simmering under Ibrahim Pasha's rule (mostly centred on the firmans of 1839 and, more decisively, of 1856, which equalised the status of Muslim and non-Muslim subjects, the former resenting their implied loss of superiority)[dubious – discuss] resurfaced under the new emir.

[10] Catholicism portal The system failed to keep order when the peasants of Keserwan, overburdened by heavy taxes, rebelled against the feudal practices that prevailed in Mount Lebanon.

The Druze lords began making war preparations, allegedly in co-ordination with the local Ottoman authorities, while Bishop Aoun oversaw the distribution of weapons to Maronite peasants.

According to the historian William Harris, the Christians of Mount Lebanon felt "buoyed by their local numerical superiority, yet despondent because of the hostile Muslim mood in Syria" in the aftermath of the Ottoman Empire's reforms.

[10] In March, April and May 1860, numerous acts of murder, looting and skirmishing took place across the mixed Christian-Druze districts of southern Mount Lebanon in the Druze-run sector of the Double Qaimaqamate.

[15] With Maronite militias launching raids into Metn and Shahin's forces making incursions into the Gharb area west of Beirut, the Druze muqata'jis held a war council in Moukhtara in which the Jumblatti factions and their more hawkish Yazbaki counterparts agreed to appoint Sa'id Jumblatt as their overall commander.

[16] The Druze, backed by an Ottoman commander of irregulars named Ibrahim Agha,[16] and Maronite fighters burned down the houses of the rival sect in Beit Mery.

By the day's end, the Druze fighters were in complete control of Metn, where clashes were widespread, and between 35 and 40 Maronite-majority villages were set alight and some 600 Maronites in the district slain.

The Christian defenders in Deir al-Qamar initially put up stiff resistance and inflicted heavy casualties on the Druze forces, who managed to raze the town's outskirts.

[23] Unlike their co-religionists elsewhere in Syria, the Greek Orthodox inhabitants of Wadi al-Taym were generally aligned with the Maronites of Mount Lebanon, due to shared opposition to Protestant missionary activity, and were loyal to their lords, the Sunni Muslim Shihab emirs of Rashaya and Hasbaya.

[26] The Druzes of Wadi al-Taym had been receiving numerous reinforcements from Majdal Shams, Iqlim al-Ballan and the Hauran plain, and were quietly backed by Uthman Bey.

The hostilities were set off after two Druze men from Kfar Qouq were arrested by the authorities for their suspected role in the deaths of two Christians from Dahr al-Ahmar who were shot down as they were transporting clay pots on their way to Damascus.

The Christians received assurances of safety from Emir Ali Shihab, governor of Rashaya, and the Druze al-Aryan family, which held significant influence in the town.

[29] The Druze followed up on their victory at Rashaya by raiding villages in the central Beqaa Valley and the vicinity of Baalbek together with Shia Muslim peasants and irregulars, guided by the Harfush clan.

According to an account of that confrontation, the Christians fought "without discipline" and were "heedless of danger", spreading themselves thin across the plains of Qabb Ilyas, with fighters taking up uncoordinated positions and firing their weapons.

[31] On 18 June, Druze forces under Khattar Imad's command and reinforced by Shia peasants and Sunni Sardiyah Bedouin cavalry from Hauran (3,000 men altogether) began their assault on Zahle, some of whose defenders were feuding among each other at the time of the attack.

[32] Following Zahle's fall, groups of Sunni and Shia Muslims from Baalbek used the opportunity to settle scores with local Christians and plunder the town and its vicinity.

[33] The Shia Harfush clan led the siege and assault on Baalbek, attacking the Ottoman garrison there commanded by Husni Bey and the headquarters of the district governor, Faris Agha Qadro,[33] killing several of the latter's employees.

[48] When the war spread to the Beqaa Valley, which was geographically closer to Damascus, a number of Damascenes volunteered or were dispatched to the battlefronts, including Muslims from the Salihiya quarter who marched towards Zahle.

[51] Damascene Christians, many of them poor, helped care for the new arrivals, and much of the efforts to aid the refugees came from the city's Greek Orthodox and Melkite churches, but also from large contributions from some Muslim notables, including Muhammad Agha Nimr, Abd Agha al-Tinawi, Muhammad Qatana, al-Sayyid Hasan and Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri; the latter was an Algerian Sufi cleric who had previously led resistance against the French conquest of Algeria.

[51] Muslim notables, such as Mahmud Effendi Hamza and Ahmad Hasibi, attempted to stop celebrations of Zahle's fall because it contributed to local Muslim-Christian tensions, but were unsuccessful.

He also met regularly with the French consul in Damascus, Michel Lanusse, and persuaded him to fund efforts to arm about 1,000 of his men, mostly Algerians, whom he tasked with defending the local Christians.

European consuls requested that he help bring Christian survivors of the massacres in Hasbaya and Rashaya to Damascus and to reinforce the Ottoman garrisons in the Beqaa Valley.

The European consuls also tasked Yorgaki, the vice-consul of Greece and a Turkish-speaker, with conveying their concerns to him about the danger posed to Christians amid the hostile environment in the city.

[54] Local Christian fears of attack increased during the celebrations of Zahle's fall, and the tension became more acute in late June as the four-day Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha approached.

[60] Christians hiding in cellars, rooftops, and latrines in the quarter were mostly found and attacked by the mobs, but most of those who hid in wells evaded detection and were rescued by Abd al-Qadir's men.

The acting governor of Beirut, Isma'il Pasha, deployed troops throughout the city to prevent violence, but ultimately decided that the only way to disperse the mobs was by executing the Christian suspect,[82] who consistently declared his innocence.

[83] Tensions were also raised in other coastal cities, such as Tripoli, Sidon, Tyre, Acre, Haifa, and Jaffa, but their proximity to European warships in the Mediterranean helped maintain calm.

Nonetheless, Tyre and Sidon were at the brink of civil strife due to violence between Sunni and Shia residents on the one side and Christian refugees fleeing the war on the other.

[90] An important consequence of the French expedition was the establishment of the autonomy of the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate from Ottoman Syria, with the nomination by the Sultan of an Armenian Christian governor from Constantinople, Daud Pasha, on 9 June 1861.