Tuğçe Kayaal, “The issue of Ottoman centralisation and local reactions: po litical and ideological transformation of mount Lebanon between 1858 and 1900.”

and Druze elites attempted to fill the power vacuum left in its wake. The loss of Egyptian power on Mount Lebanon began in 1838 when Druze and Maronite peasants rose in rebellion against Shihab, united by their common disdain for Shihab’s heavy tax collection and heavy exploitation of the Mountain’s resources.25 Initially, the majority of the elites, including the Maronite Church, joined the rebellion.26 However, in 1839, international interventions fractured solidarity among the elites. The Ottomans, encouraged both by French and British pledges of military assistance as well as by the weakened state of Egyptian rule, decided to recapture the Syrian lands. The two elite factions of the Mountain saw an opportunity to advance their own interests by aiding the European and Ottoman reconquest, although they aided different powers: the Maronites aided the military efforts of Catholic France while the Druze opted to support their old Ottoman overlords and the British efforts. Division among the local elites resulted in a low-level civil war that became characterized by sectarian overtones. For instance, Druze elites who chose not to fight were called “traitors” by their co-religionists, and the language of “Ta’if” (religious community) became commonly used to differentiate the two factions.27 Thus, immediately following Egypt’s retreat, sectarian strife began characterizing the Mountain’s elite politics, although it had not yet become widespread. This sectarian strife plagued Ottoman attempts to re-establish order upon their reconquest of Mount Lebanon in 1841. The Ottomans received substantial help from the French and British armies during the war to recapture the Syrian lands from the Egyptians, which gave France and Britain significant leverage in the postwar negotiations that brought all the Great Powers to the table. There were competing settlement proposals emanating from the Maronite and Druze camps. Although the Maronites requested the continuation of the Emirate that favoured their numerical superiority, Ottoman authorities

25. Fawaz, An Occasion for War, 21-23.; Makdisi, Culture of Sectarianism, 60, 195 n41. 26. Kayaal, “Ottoman Centralization,” 28. 27. Makdisi, Culture of Sectarianism, 65, 198 n64-n65.; Salibi, The Modern History of Lebanon, 53.; Fawaz, An Occasion for War, 26-28.

initially implemented the Druze request to restore their old estates.28 The Ottomans agreed to also restore their traditional political and financial prerogatives under the condition that the Druze elite comply with the Tanzimat reforms intended to modernize the governance of the Empire. Among other reforms, the Tanzimat promise of equality between Muslims and non-Muslims present in the Gülhane Edict of 1839 resonated strongly with the Mountain’s large Christian population.29 Consequently, Druze elites resisted the Ottoman’s Tanzimat reforms and claimed that, since “it was by [their own] effort [that] the Shihab government was overthrown,” they were unwilling to bend to Ottoman Tanzimat initiatives.30 Thus, the continuing tension between Maronite and Druze elites was not alleviated by the settlement of 1841, which demonstrates the lasting impact of Egyptian policy on the development of sectarianism. The final settlement of the elites’ political divisions would enshrine sectarianism as the Mountain’s dominant political model. In 1842, the Ottoman foreign ministry and the ambassadors of Ottomans’ European allies convened a conference in Istanbul to find a compromise that suited each community. Three distinct and contradictory settlements caused an impasse during this conference, with the French supporting the Maronite cause, the British supporting the Druze cause, and Istanbul’s desire to centralize the Ottoman Empire. Austrian Chancellor, Klemens von Metternich managed to overcome this impasse by dividing the Mountain into two selfgoverning districts: Northern (Kiserwan) and Southern (Shuf). Each district would be governed by a Qa’ym Maqam (Ottoman Turkish: -ائ==-,, Anglicized: Qaimaqam) who was a military-ranking official that would act as governor. This official would be appointed according to the demographic weight of the ethnoreligious groups for each district and their loyalty to the Sultan. On October 29, 1842, Metternich’s suggestions were implemented in a system known as the Double Qaimaqamate; a Maronite governor was appointed in

28. Makdisi, Culture of Sectarianism, 67.; Salibi, The Modern History of Lebanon, 53-55, 58-60. 29. Maoz, Ottoman Reform, 30-32. 30. Kayaal, “Ottoman Centralization,” 30.; Salibi, The Modern History of Lebanon, 59.