Traditional Lebanese histories date the family's arrival in the Chouf to the 12th century, when they were held to have struggled against the Crusader lords of Beirut and of Sidon alongside their Druze allies, the Tanukh Buhturids.

They may have been part of a wider movement by the Muslim rulers of Damascus to settle militarized Arab tribesmen in Mount Lebanon as a buffer against the Crusader strongholds along the Levantine coast.

Two years following the advent of Ottoman rule in the Syrian region in 1516, three chiefs of the Ma'n dynasty were imprisoned for rebellion by the Damascus Eyalet governor Janbirdi al-Ghazali, but released by Sultan Selim I.

The particularly destructive 1585 Ottoman expedition against the Druze prompted the Ma'nid emir Qurqumaz ibn Yunis to go into hiding in the neighboring Kisrawan, where he died the following year.

His son, Fakhr al-Din II, emerged c. 1590 as the local chief and tax farmer of the Chouf and, in contrast to his Ma'nid predecessors, cultivated close ties with the authorities in Damascus and the imperial capital, Constantinople.

By 1613, he had amassed considerable power but lost his imperial patron, while his illicit takeover of strategic forts, hiring of outlawed musketeers, and government knowledge of his alliance with their Tuscan enemies prompted a major campaign against the Ma'ns.

Within two years, his brother Yunus and son Ali restored Ma'nid power in Sidon-Beirut and Safed, which was consolidated when Fakhr al-Din returned to lead the dynasty in 1618.

After a few years, he defeated his major rival Yusuf Sayfa of Tripoli and extended Ma'nid dominion and tax farming rights to predominantly Maronite, northern Mount Lebanon.

[1] The traditional account holds that the eponymous progenitor of the Banu Ma'n belonged to a clan of the Rabi'a, a large Arab tribal confederation with branches in the upper Euphrates River valley.

[2] He later moved to the Beqaa Valley until being transferred to the area of the Chouf (also transliterated as Shuf) in southern Mount Lebanon in 1120 by Ilghazi's ally, Toghtekin of Damascus, to reinforce the Tanukhid Druze emirs of the neighboring Gharb district around modern Aley against the Crusader lords of Beirut.

[1] The Gharb-based Druze chronicler Ibn Sibat (d. 1520) refers to Fakhr al-Din Uthman as the "emir of the Ashwaf [plural of Chouf] in the region of Sidon" who died in August/September 1506.

[14] The Ottoman sultan Selim I, after entering Damascus and receiving the defection of its Mamluk governor Janbirdi al-Ghazali, who was kept in his post, showed preference to the Turkmen Assaf clan, the Keserwan-based enemies of the Ma'nids' Buhturid allies.

[16] The son of the Ma'nid emir Yunus, Qurqumaz, was summoned and confirmed by Selim in Damascus as the chief of the Chouf in 1517, according to the 17th-century historian and Maronite patriarch Istifan al-Duwayhi.

[22] The death of Jamal al-Din Hajji in prison in 1521 and the Ottoman expeditions led the Buhturids to accept Ma'nid precedence over the Druze of southern Mount Lebanon.

[24] In 1565 the new arms were put to use by the Druze in an ambush on Ottoman sipahi (fief-holding cavalries) in Ain Dara in the Jurd sent to collect taxes from southern Mount Lebanon.

For the next twenty years, the Druze successfully beat back government attempts to collect taxes and confiscate weapons, while increasing their rifle arsenals.

In 1585 the imperial authorities organized a much larger campaign against the Chouf and the Sidon-Beirut Sanjak in general led by the beylerbey (provincial governor) of Egypt, Ibrahim Pasha.

[28] A Ma'nid chief named Yunus was recorded by the contemporary poet Muhammad ibn Mami al-Rumi (d. 1579) to have been captured and hanged by the Ottomans at an undefined date as a result of unspecified complaints by the qadi (head judge) of Sidon to the Sublime Porte.

[30] Like his father, Qurqumaz was a multazim (tax farmer) in the Chouf, though he resided in Ain Dara, and was recognized as a muqaddam of the Druze, his title of "emir" being used by local historians as a traditional honor rather than an official rank.

[37] When the veteran general Murad Pasha was appointed beylerbey of Damascus, Fakhr al-Din hosted and gave him expensive gifts upon his arrival to Sidon in September 1593.

[52] The authorities had become wary of Fakhr al-Din's expanding territory, his alliance with Grand Duchy of Tuscany, his unsanctioned strengthening and garrisoning of fortresses and his employment of outlawed sekbans.

The Ma'ns were stripped of their governorships of Sidon-Beirut, Safed, and Keserwan, but Yunus retained the tax farm of the Chouf from the governor of the newly created Sidon Eyalet in 1614.

[59] The Ma'ns then confronted their Druze rivals, namely Muzaffar al-Andari of the Jurd, the Arslan chief Muhammad ibn Jamal al-Din of Choueifat in the Gharb, and the Sawwafs of Chbaniyeh in the Matn.

[60] Growing opposition to the Ma'ns by the Shias of Safed Sanjak culminated with their backing of Yaziji's efforts to replace Ali as sanjak-bey there and their alliance with the Harfushes in 1617–1618.

[61] He moved to supervise the collection of taxes in Bilad Bishara in December, prompting the Shia notable families of Ali Saghir, Munkir, Shukr and Daghir to take refuge with Yunus al-Harfush and evade payment.

[63] Fakhr al-Din moved against the Sayfas in 1619, capturing and looted their stronghold of Hisn Akkar and four days later besieging Yusuf and the latter's Druze allies in the Krak des Chevaliers.

[66] Yusuf was dismissed in 1622 after failing to remit taxes to the Porte, but refused to hand over power to his replacement Umar Kittanji, who in turn requested Fakhr al-Din's military support.

On his way back to Mount Lebanon from the abortive Palestine campaign, Fakhr al-Din was notified that the Porte reappointed his sons and allies to Safed, Ajlun and Nablus.

[83] By the early 1630s Fakhr al-Din captured many places around Damascus, controlled thirty fortresses, commanded a large army of sekbans, and, according to a contemporary Ottoman historian, the "only thing left for him to do was to claim the Sultanate".

[101] When Israel launched its invasion of southern Lebanon in June 1982, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) heavily bombed the market area and partly destroyed the palace.