History of Lebanon under Ottoman rule
[citation needed] Ottoman administration, however, was only effective in urban areas, while most of the country was ruled by tribal chieftains, based largely on their ability to collect taxes for the sultan.
[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.
[23] 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.
[25] 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.
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.
[32] 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.
[53] 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.
[60] 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.
[62] 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.
[64] 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.
[67] 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.
[84] 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".
[102] The transfer of the Ma'n emirate to the Shihabs made the family's chief the holder of a large tax farm that included the Chouf, Gharb, Matn and Keserwan areas of Mount Lebanon.
He also captured the rebel Mushrif ibn Ali al-Saghir, sheikh of the Shia Muslim Wa'il clan of Bilad Bishara in Jabal Amil (modern South Lebanon), and delivered him and his partisans to the governor of Sidon, who requested Bashir's assistance in the matter.
At the turn of the 18th century, the new governor of Sidon, Arslan Mataraci Pasha, continued the good relationship with Bashir, who by then had appointed a fellow Sunni Muslim Qaysi, Umar al-Zaydani, as the subsidiary tax farmer of Safad.
[104] The situation worsened for Emir Haydar when he was ousted by the order of Bashir Pasha and replaced with his Choufi Druze enforcer-turned enemy, Mahmoud Abi Harmoush in 1709.
[108] The Shihabs became the paramount force in Mount Lebanon's social and political configuration as they were the supreme landlords of the area and the principal intermediaries between the local sheikhs and the Ottoman authorities.
[113] Emir Yusuf cultivated ties with Uthman Pasha and his sons in Tripoli and Sidon, and with their backing, sought to challenge the autonomous power of sheikhs Zahir and Nasif.
[116] After a four-month siege, al-Jazzar withdrew from Beirut in 1772, and Emir Yusuf penalized his Yazbaki allies, sheikhs Abd al-Salam Imad and Husayn Talhuq to compensate for the bribe he paid to the Russians.
Emir Yusuf subsequently captured Qabb Ilyas from his brother, and was transferred the tax farm for the Beqaa Valley by the governor of Damascus, Muhammad Pasha al-Azm.
[120] In 1840, four of the principal European powers (Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia), opposing the pro-Egyptian policy of the French, signed the London Treaty with the Sublime Porte (the Ottoman ruler) on July 15, 1840.
[119] According to the terms of this treaty, Muhammad Ali was asked to leave Syria; when he rejected this request, Ottoman and British troops landed on the Lebanese coast on September 10, 1840.
[citation needed] This 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 harsh rule of Abdul Hamid II (1876–1909) prompted the Arab nationalists, both Christians and Muslims, in Beirut and Damascus to organize into clandestine political groups and parties.
[142] These Catholic communities ultimately established an extensive Jesuit education system in the area, with Université Saint Joseph serving as the first institution, founded in Beirut in 1875.
[152] The railroad trade is one illustration of European countries' worldwide expansion; It originally started in 1888 when the building of Anatolian Railway leading to Baghdad was granted to German developers.
