The Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate (1861–1918, ; ) was one of the Ottoman Empire's subdivisions following the 19th-century Tanzimat reform. After 1861, there existed an autonomous Mount Lebanon with a Christian Mutasarrif (governor), which had been created as a homeland for the Maronites under European diplomatic pressure following the 1860 Druze–Maronite conflict. The arrangement formalized confessional representation in local administration and is often discussed as a key moment in the institutionalization of sectarian governance in Mount Lebanon. The Maronite Catholics and the Druze founded modern Lebanon in the early eighteenth century, through the ruling and social system known as the "Maronite-Druze dualism" in Mount Lebanon. The Mutasarrifate era marked a shift in which confessional representation became the primary framework for political administration in Mount Lebanon.
This system came during the era of Tanzimat reforms initiated by Sultan Abdulmejid I in an attempt to extricate the Ottoman State from its internal problems, and it was approved after the major sectarian strife of 1860 and the numerous massacres that occurred in Mount Lebanon, Damascus, the Beqaa Valley and Jabal Amil among Muslims and Christians in general, and the Druze and Maronites in particular; European powers intervened diplomatically after the 1860 violence and pressured the Ottoman government during negotiations over the province’s administrative structure. The Mutasarrifate era is characterized by the spread of national consciousness, science and culture among the Lebanese, for many reasons, including: the spread of schools in numerous villages, towns and cities, and the opening of two large universities that are still among the oldest and most prestigious universities in the Middle East: the Syrian Evangelical College, which became the American University of Beirut, and Saint Joseph University.
The Mutasarrifate era is also characterized by the beginning of Lebanese emigration to Egypt, Western European countries, North America, and South America, where a number of immigrants achieved great success that wasn't possible to achieve in their homeland. Additionally, many of these immigrants contributed to the revival of the Arabic language and Arabic literature after years of stagnation; this revival lasted for many years, and contributed to raising the Arab national spirit and political awareness in the period of Al-Nahda among Arabs, both in Lebanon, in neighboring countries, and across the globe. The autonomy of Mount Lebanon (Mutasarrifate) ended with the Ottoman occupation at the beginning of World War I. The defeat of the Ottoman Empire led to a French military invasion in 1918, initiating the French Mandate.
Background Mount Lebanon as an emirate
Prince Bashir Shihab II had been ruling as the Emir of Lebanon since 1788,المصور في التاريخ، الجزء السابع، ، بيروت – لبنان، تأليف: شفيق جحا، ، : أدوار حكم الأمير بشير، صفحة: 127 and he consolidated his authority over the country by eliminating his rivals from the feudal lords. In 1832, Ibrahim Pasha's Egyptian army entered the Levant and expelled Ottoman forces. Bashir II, having previously allied with Egypt's ruler Muhammad Ali Pasha, provided military support to the Egyptian campaign.Trevor N. Dupuy. (1993). "The First Turko-Egyptian War." The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History. HarperCollins Publishers, , p. 851المصور في التاريخ، الجزء السابع، دار_العلم_للملايين، بيروت – لبنان، تأليف: شفيق جحا، بهيج_عثمان، منير_البعلبكي: اللبنانيون في ظل الحكم المصري، صفحة: 161 – 168 In return for this assistance, Ibrahim Pasha, the commander of the Egyptian army, restored Bashir's full authority over the Emirate.
Bashir used this autonomy to eliminate remaining feudal rivals, confiscating their estates and appointing his own relatives to replace them. Ibrahim Pasha implemented social reforms that elevated the status of Christians, appointing them to key administrative positions within the new government. Concurrently, he ordered the confiscation of weapons from the feudal lords to diminish their military power. As the majority of these feudal lords were Druze, and the Druze constituted a smaller population compared to Christians, they perceived the Egyptian policies as discriminatory. The combination of reduced political influence and disarmament created resentment among the Druze population.
The Egyptians remained in Lebanon and the rest of the Levant for 9 years, and eventually the Egyptian army was defeated by an international alliance consisting of Britain, Austria, Russia and the Ottoman Empire,المصور في التاريخ، الجزء السابع، دار_العلم_للملايين، بيروت – لبنان، تأليف: شفيق جحا، بهيج_عثمان، منير_البعلبكي: أدوار حكم الأمير بشير، صفحة: 170–171 after the withdrawal of the Egyptian army, Emir Bashir II was exiled to Malta and then to Constantinople when he died in 1850, thus, those who had emigrated from the Druze leaders and their fiefs, fleeing from the oppression of the previous Emir and the Egyptians, returned to Lebanon.
At that time, the Ottomans appointed Prince Bashir bin Qasim bin Melhem al-Shihabi () as the country's emir. He was known as Bashir III, and his first weakness was that the Ottomans chose him, and he was not elected by native Muslim and Christian notables, as was the case in choosing most of the previous princes. The Ottomans chose him because he was weak-willed, therefore making it easy for them to direct him to implement their policy without objection, especially since foreign interference in Lebanese and Syrian affairs, especially the French and British interference, had intensified since the era of Egyptian rule in the Levant, which made the Ottomans suffer greatly in preserving Arab lands from European ambitions.المصور في التاريخ، الجزء السابع، دار_العلم_للملايين، بيروت – لبنان، تأليف: شفيق جحا، بهيج_عثمان، منير_البعلبكي: نهاية الإمارة الشهابية، صفحة: 181 – 183 The situation worsened matters for Bashir III, as the nine years of Egyptian rule had left an atmosphere of suspicion between the Druze and the Maronites that was not easy to forget; furthermore, the Druze, led by their feudal lords, had been demanding the new prince to return to the old regime during the days of the former emir, that is, that system that ensured that their weapons would remain in their hands and the return of their lands to them, while the Maronites demanded to maintain the new system established by the Egyptians, which is to reduce the authority of the feudal lords and disarm them and not to submit the peasant to the authority of the owner of the land, and since most of the farmers were Maronite Christians, this seemed to be a challenge to the entire Druze community.
Bashir III did not care about the demands of the Druze, as he refused to extract the land from the new owners who bought it from the previous emir, and he was not satisfied with that, but stripped a number of other feudal lords of their remaining privileges in collecting taxes, maintaining security in their areas, and exercising judicial authority. And since this prince was among the Shehab princes who converted to Christianity at an earlier time,سوريا ولبنان وفلسطين تحت الحكم التركي من الناحيتين السياسية والتاريخية، ، ترجمة: د. يسر جابر، مراجعة: د. منذر جابر، دار الحداثة، بيروت – لبنان. اعتناق الشهابيين للمسيحية، صفحة 118 – 123 the Druze considered him an apostate, a traitor to Islam and the Druze community in particular, before others, and the mutual hatred between them and Christians increased, until it turned in the year 1841 into a bloody conflict between Druze and Maronite peasants because of a dispute over the eligibility of a Maronite crossing and hunting partridge on land owned by a Druze.
Usually, in these types of incidents, the sheikhs and the 'Uqalā ("Those of Good-Will") would have intervened to solve it, and if they were not successful, they would raise the matter to the emir, who would issue his ruling and restore things to normal, but anxiety and tension among the population and the emir being unable to impose his will on a party that did not recognize him prevented such solutions. The conflict moved to some areas in the Beqaa, and it reached its climax when some Druze besieged the emir in the Deir al-Qamar Palace and then stormed him and arrested the emir and mistreated him. The Ottomans seized this opportunity and dealt their final blow. On 13 December 1842, that is, three months after the start of the unrest, the governor of Beirut summoned Prince Bashir III from Deir al-Qamar to Beirut, from which an Ottoman ship took him to Constantinople.
The double Qa’im-Maqamate of Mount Lebanon
After the removal of Prince Bashir III, the Lebanese Chehab emirate, which had been the ruling entity of the country and its population for many years, collapsed. The Ottomans appointed one of the most senior officials as direct ruler on the mountain, this being a Sunni Muslim of Austrian birth and Serbian ancestry named Omar Pasha Latas. The Druze welcomed him, the Christians rejected him, and the majority of the Christians stood by the Maronite Patriarch Youssef Boutros Hobeish, who announced that he refused to cooperate with any non-Lebanese ruler or any ruler not chosen by the Lebanese themselves. The Pasha had hired agents to edit petitions that showed the people's support for him and their refusal to return to the Chehab rule. A number of people signed these petitions in exchange for a bribe, a promise or a threat, and some of them signed them with consent,العمامة: موسوعة التوحيد الدرزية، سيرة البطل شبلي العريان؛ بقلم الشيخ أبو غالب حاتم قاسم حلبي when the matter of the petitions was exposed in Constantinople and the Porte got determined to dismiss the Austrian, the Pasha tried to lure the Druze to him and persuade them to fight the Christians population, but the Druze, feeling that the Pasha had taken advantage of them, led forces against him and almost stormed his palace, had it not been for a battalion of the Ottoman soldiers had rescued him, then he was sent to Beirut, where he was dismissed from his position, on the same day, the Porte and representatives of European countries reached in Constantinople a new project to govern Mount Lebanon, and to be implemented in early 1843.المصور في التاريخ، الجزء السابع، دار_العلم_للملايين، بيروت – لبنان، تأليف: شفيق جحا، بهيج_عثمان، منير_البعلبكي: نهاية الإمارة الشهابية، صفحة: 186 183
After dismissing Omar Pasha of his position, the Ottoman government tried to appoint two non-Lebanese Ottoman rulers in his place, one on the south of the mountain, that is, on the Druze-majority side, and the other on the north of the mountain, that is, on the Christian-majority side, with the rulers being the subject of the Governor of Beirut; but the Europeans stood in the way of the Ottoman plan, as it entailed strengthening the Ottoman Islamic grip on Mount Lebanon, and since the influence of the Ottoman Empire was weakening at the time and unable to compete with the European influence, the Sultan accepted the proposals of representatives of the great powers to divide the mountain into a Christian and a Druze side. On 1 December 1843, the Sultan agreed to the proposal of Prince Metternich, Chancellor of Austria, and asked Asaad Pasha, the governor of Beirut, to divide Mount Lebanon into two provinces: a northern province ruled by a Christian Qa’im-Maqam and a southern province governed by a Druze Qa’im-Maqam, both of whom are chosen by the notables, and are subject to the Governor of Beirut, this system was later known as the double Qa’im-Maqamate system.Lutsky, Vladimir Borisovich (1969)، "Modern History of the Arab Countries"، Progress Publishers، مؤرشف من الأصل في 16 يوليو 2018، اطلع عليه بتاريخ 12 نوفمبر 2009.