Lebanese Shia Muslims (), historically also known as Matāwila (, plural of mutawāli; pronounced as metouéle in Lebanese Arabic), are Lebanese people who are adherents of Shia Islam in Lebanon, which plays a major role alongside Lebanon's main Sunni, Maronite and Druze sects. Shiite Muslims in Lebanon are synonymous with Twelver Shi'ism and are distinguished from Alawites and Isma'ilis.Riad Yazbeck. Return of the Pink Panthers?. Mideast Monitor. Vol. 3, No. 2, August 2008
As of 2020, Shiite Muslims constitute around 31.2% of the Lebanese population per the CIA's World Factbook."Lebanon: people and society", cia.gov Under the terms of an unwritten agreement known as the National Pact between the various political and religious leaders of Lebanon, Shiites are the only sect eligible for the post of Speaker of Parliament.
History Origins
Shi'i tradition traces the origins of the community in present-day Lebanon to Abu Dharr al-Ghifari, the prophet Muhammad's companion and a loyal associate of Ali. Information regarding Jabal Amel's population prior to the Muslim conquest is scant and insufficient. It is traditionally thought to have included a substantial tribal segment prior to the Muslim conquest represented by the tribe of Banu 'Āmila. According to Irfan Shahîd, the Banu 'Āmila formed part of the Nabataean foederati of the Romans, whose presence in the region dates back to Biblical times. According to 10th-century historian al-Tabari, they were also affiliates of the Ghassanids who supplied troops to the Byzantines.Harris 2011, p. 33 Galilee, which included a part of Jabal Amel, was inhabited by Christian and Jewish communities in the Byzantine period, divided along west and east respectively. Along the coast, Tyre was predominantly Christianized under the Byzantines with a minor survival of the pagan cult of Melqart up until the early Islamic period.
Shi'i elements appear to have been present in Tripoli and Sidon as early as the eighth century. Friedman notes that a Shi'i delegation from Palestine reportedly consulted the fifth Shia Imam, Muhammad al-Baqir (), in Kufa. Shi'i historian Al-Ya'qubi alludes to the settlement of 'Āmila in Palestine, which Friedman identifies as a Shi'ite tribe. During the early Islamic period, Jabal Amel and the adjacent areas likely hosted several disgruntled groups or communities that were susceptible to Twelver Shia doctrine, and a positive and inviting dialectical relationship between the theological construct of Imamism and its social milieu gave precedence to the Shiite possibility. Al-Muhajir traces the beginning of this process to the aftermath of the Hasan–Muawiya treaty of 661, while Rula Abisaad and Yaron Friedman argue that Banu 'Āmila may have already been Shiites in the seventh century. Harris further observes that the 842 revolt in Palestine gave rare exposure to a Shia-minded population on the fringes of Mount Lebanon.Harris 2011, pp. 29-30
In Mount Lebanon, the Twelver Shiites of Kisrawan were geographically separate from Jabal Amel. Harris suggests that Shia tribespeople may have settled the region as early as the Umayyad period, or following the Munaytra uprising of 759, and were likely well established there by the tenth century.Harris 2011, p. 45 By contrast, al-Muhajir dates the community's founding to the aftermath of the First Crusade () and the fall of Tripoli in 1109, which triggered the displacement of the city's Shia population.
Early Islamic period Aleppo, which figures in the scholastic heritage of Jabal Amel, had become fertile ground for Twelver Shi'ism under the reign of the Hamdanids (), and cultural and material interactions between Aleppo and Jabal Amel may have reinforced nascent local development of Twelver Shi'ism prior to Isma'ili Fatimid ascent in Egypt (). Before Fatimid Ismaili da'wa took hold in Syria, cultural exchange between scholars in Jabal Amel and Iraq contributed to a mutual systematic observation of the Ja'fari school, which also continued after Fatimid demise. Among the earliest examples of this 'Amili-Iraqi exchange is an elegy by Tyrian Shi'i poet 'Abd al-Muhsin al-Ṣūri (, ) in memory of Twelver theologian al-Shaykh al-Mufid (). Sharif al-Murtada (), the foremost Imami authority of his era, based in Baghdad, composed several treatises known as the masā'il in response to legal inquiries from the ulama (jurists) of Sidon, Tripoli, and Tiberias. His son-in-law, Abu Ya'la al-Ja'fari (d. 1070), likewise corresponded with Shi'i ulama of Sidon.
The Hamdanids also patronized Alawite (historically called Nusayri) da'wah, a ghulat Twelver group, whose adherents were numerous in Jund al-Urdunn (which includes present-day southern Lebanon) at the time of Ibn Hazm al-Andalusi (). Its followers were reportedly present in Tyre, Tripoli, Sidon and Beirut along the coast; in the city of Tiberias in the Galilee, and in Banias in the Mt. Hermon-Golan region. Per Stefan Winter, Alawite communities largely disappeared outside of Syria after the 12th century, and presumably melded into mainstream Imami Shi'ism.
In his book, Palestinian geographer al-Muqaddasī () documented Shi'i Muslim communities in Qadas, Tiberias, Amman and Nablus.Mukaddasi, Description of Syria, 1886, p. 28 In the course of his travels through Tyre and Tripoli in 1047, Nasir Khusraw recorded in his Safarnama that the majority of the two cities' inhabitants were Shi'is. According to Ibn al-Arabi of Seville (), the Palestinian littoral cities were home to sizable Shi'i communities.Drory, Joseph. 2004. “Some Observations During a Visit to Palestine by Ibn Al-ʿArabī of Seville in 1092–1095.” Crusades 3 (1): 101–24. doi:10.1080/28327861.2004.12220043. During his ten-year residence in Tyre, Ibn Asakir (), noted strong opposition to his views from some of the rafida in the city, a pejorative term denoting Shiites.
On the other hand, Tripoli was governed on the Fatimids' behalf by Banu Ammar, a Twelver Shi'i qadi dynasty who invested large sums in turning the city into a famous center for learning, until the fall of Tripoli in 1109. Tripoli became a reputed centre of Imami Shi'i scholarship, producing reputed scholars such as Ibn al-Barraj al-Tarabulsi (, ), a student of Sharif al-Murtada and Shaykh Tusi who was appointed the judge of Tripoli in 1046, and commanded a large Shiite hinterland, where the district name 'Zanniya' still recalls the Alid esotericism of its medieval population.
Mamluk period Jabal Amel provided refuge for Shia communities, offering relative safety from Sunni rule and intermittent persecution, especially following the restoration of Sunni dominance in the Levant after the fall of Frankish rule. It became an important centre of Shiite scholarship during the Mamluk period, probably as the result of short-distance immigration from the former Frankish coastal cities which were destroyed by Mamluks, namely Tyre, Sidon and Akka. When the Mamluks established a mamlaka (province) in Safed in 1260s, Shiites in the Safed region either joined neighboring Jabal Amel or converted to Sunni Islam. The towns of Jezzine, Karak Nuh and Machghara emerged as centers of Shiite learning, and Shiite scholars enjoyed protection under Shia chiefs starting from Husam ad-Din Bishara in 1187.Harris 2011, pp. 83-84 One particular scholar from Jezzine, Muhammad ibn Makki (), became a widely known Shi'i faqīh who advocated developing religious law through debate with Sunni scholars,Harris, 2011 and instructed the court of Khorasan's reigning Sarbadar in Twelver Shiism.
Between 1292 and 1305, the Mamluks carried out a series of punitive expeditions against the Shia community in the Kisrawan region in Mount Lebanon east of Beirut, headed by Aqqush al-Afram. According to Mamluk chronicler Badr al-Din al-Ayni, in 1292, the Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil compelled Baydara to take three thousand cavalry up the coast from Egypt, entering Kisrawan from the south. According to al-Ayni, the defenders, whom he called kafarat rawafid, mobilized 10,000 men who lured Mamluk contingents into ambushes.Harris 2011, p. 69 The campaign was a failure, and Baydara was only able to extricate his troops after offering gifts and releasing prisoners. In 1299, Kisrawanis attacked the fleeing Mamluk army, which brought Kisrawan back to Mamluk priority, prompting a swift retribution in 1300.Harris 2011, p. 70
Following the death of the Ilkhan Ghazan in 1304, the Mamluks assembled the main Mamluk field army for a third campaign. In July 1305, according to al-Maqrizi, al-Ayni and Druze chronicler Salih ibn Yahya, fifty thousand Mamluk troops marched from Damascus to meet up with another army under the na'ib of Tripoli coming from the north, also summoning their Druze Buhturid allies to the south. The Mamluk pincer movement converged on the Kisrawan rebels and broke their forces at 'Ayn Sawfar, resulting in battles that eventually crushed the Kisrawanis.Harris 2011, p. 71Majmu‘ Fatawa Shaykh al-Islam Ahmad ibn Taymiyah (Riyadh, 1961-66), 5:149-60 The Mamluks then devastated villages and cultivation through August 1305 and expelled much of the population, who settled in Southern Lebanon and the Beqaa valley.Harris 2011, p. 72 Estimates of the expelled population vary, with Muhammad Ali Makki estimating likely around 20,000 displaced into the Bekaa valley and Jezzine.
Under Ottoman rule
After the Ottoman conquest circa 1516, various Shiite clans in Jabal Amel, Beqaa Valley and Mount Lebanon, which had been ensconced prior to Ottoman arrival, were co-opted into the Ottoman provincial administration as mukataacıs or as governors of secondary sanjaks with fiscal and police responsibilities over a vast section of the Syrian coastal highlands.Stefan Winter, The Kızılbaş of Syria and Ottoman Shiism. in Christine Woodhead (ed.), The Ottoman World (London: Routledge, 2011). p. 171-183. The Harfushes of Baalbek received the iltizam concession for the Bekaa as well as a rank in the provincial military hierarchy. In the province of Tripoli, the Hamada clan were charged with multiple tax collection assignments in the hinterland of Mount Lebanon. Further south, the Shiites of Jabal Amel retained their tax farms well into the mid-18th century, greatly benefiting from the foreign demand for dyed cotton and good commercial contacts with the French, and by the 1750s the area provided more tax revenues than Mount Lebanon.Harris 2011, p. 120
By the late 18th century, traditional Shiite feudatories had largely become redundant and weak, to which the Ottomans enlisted other families. The Shihab dynasty managed to displace the Shia Hamades from Mount Lebanon by the 1760s, exploited Harfush internal quarrels in the Bekaa and enroached on Jabal Amel.Harris 2011, p. 105 The Druze Junblatt lords and Christian peasants bought or pushed out the Shia out of Jezzine and the hills above Sidon, while the significant Shia minority in the Tripoli hills largely departed for the Bekaa valley.Harris 2011, p. 105–106 In the late 18th century, Jabal Amel became a war zone between Ottoman authorities and rebels in northern Palestine, which continued under Jazzar Pasha (c. 1781–1805) and against the Egyptians in 1833–1841. The Shia population, estimated around 38% of Lebanon's population a few centuries prior, slid to no more than 20% by 1840.
Relations with Safavid Iran