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183-776: In the 12th–13th centuries it was a borderland between the Crusader states along the coast and the Muslim governments in Damascus . Its inhabitants at that time were Twelver Shia Muslims , Alawites , Druze and Maronite Christians . While the Kisrawanis acted independent of any outside authority, they often cooperated with the Crusader lords of Tripoli and Byblos . Soon after the Sunni Muslim Mamluks conquered

366-478: A new crusade . Passionate sermons raised religious fervour, and it is likely that more people took the crusader oath than during recruitment for the previous crusades. Tannus al-Shidyaq Tannus ibn Yusuf al-Shidyaq ( c.  1794 – 1861), also transliterated Tannous el-Chidiac , was a Maronite clerk and emissary of the Shihab emirs, the feudal chiefs and tax farmers of Ottoman Mount Lebanon , and

549-941: A papal legate excommunicated the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in 1054. The patriarchs of Alexandria , Antioch , and Jerusalem sided with the Ecumenical Patriarch against the Papacy, but the East–West Schism was not yet inevitable, and the Catholic and Orthodox Churches remained in full communion . The Gregorian Reform enhanced the popes' influence on secular matters. To achieve political goals, popes excommunicated their opponents, placed entire realms under interdict and promised spiritual rewards to those who took up arms for their cause. In 1074 Pope Gregory VII even considered leading

732-505: A small central region directly. Counts and dukes ruled other regions, and some of them were remarkably wealthy and powerful—in particular, the dukes of Aquitaine and Normandy , and the counts of Anjou , Champagne , Flanders , and Toulouse . Western Christians and Muslims interacted mainly through warring or commerce. During the 8th and 9th centuries, the Muslims were on the offensive , and commercial contacts primarily enriched

915-639: A "horrific crime". Silk and wheat warehouses belonging to the sheikhs were plundered and the goods were redistributed among the peasants of the Kisrawan. By July, the Khazens had been routed and between 500 and 600 family members had fled to Beirut in an impoverished state. Shahin broadened the peasants' main demands of tax relief and refunds for the illegal payments they had previously paid to the Khazen sheikhs to also include political and legal reforms. Shahin cited

1098-653: A chronicler best known for his work on the noble families of Mount Lebanon, Akhbar al-a'yan fi Jabal Lubnan (The History of the Notables in Mount Lebanon). He was born in the Keserwan area of Mount Lebanon to a long line of clerks serving the Shihab emirs and other local chieftains. Tannus was taught Arabic and Syriac grammar and throughout his career serving the Shihab emirs and as a merchant, he pursued education in

1281-562: A crusader oath. The Latin chronicles of the First Crusade, written in the early 11th century, called the Western Christians who came from Europe Franci irrespective of their ethnicity. Byzantine Greek sources use Φράγκοι Frangi and Arabic الإفرنجي al-Ifranji . Alternatively, the chronicles used Latini , or Latins . These medieval ethnonyms reflect that the settlers could be differentiated from

1464-661: A decade marked by strife between the Druze and Maronites of Mount Lebanon, Tannus advocated for the Maronite notables. Tannus began writing historical works in 1833, starting with Tarikh al-ta'ifa al-Maruniyya (History of the Maronite Sect), a now lost summary of the Maronite historian and patriarch Istifan al-Duwayhi 's 17th-century history of the Maronites. He also wrote a Lebanese colloquial Arabic dictionary, which

1647-706: A decisive Crusader victory over the Fatimid Caliphate , after which territorial consolidation followed, including the taking of Tripoli . In 1144, Edessa fell to the Zengid Turks , but the other three realms endured until the final years of the 13th   century, when they fell to the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt . The Mamluks captured Antioch in 1268 and Tripoli in 1289 , leaving only the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which had been severely weakened by

1830-562: A group of peasants from the Kisrawan lodged a formal complaint against the Khazens to Khurshid Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Beirut. Later, in March 1858, the Khazens held a summit for the people of the Kisrawan to garner support for their nomination of a new qaimaqam . Instead, the peasants participating in the summit voiced their dissent against the Khazens and in October, several villages in

2013-543: A group of pious knights about a monastic order for deeply religious warriors was likely first discussed at the council of Nablus. Church leaders quickly espoused the idea of armed monks, and within a decade, two military orders , the Knights Templar and Hospitaller , were formed. As the Fatimid Caliphate no longer posed a major threat to Jerusalem, but Antioch and Edessa were vulnerable to invasion,

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2196-471: A large force, committing all of his kingdom's available resources. The leadership divided on tactics. Raynald urged an offensive, while Raymond proposed defensive caution, although Saladin was besieging his castle at Tiberias. Guy decided to deal with the siege. The march towards Tiberias was arduous, and Saladin's troops overwhelmed the exhausted Frankish army at the Horns of Hattin on 4   July 1187. Hattin

2379-518: A marriage alliance with the Byzantines. Baldwin married Manuel's niece, Theodora , and received a significant dowry. With his consent, Manuel forced Raynald into accepting Byzantine overlordship. The childless Baldwin   III died in 1163. His younger brother Amalric had to repudiate his wife Agnes of Courtenay on grounds of consanguinity before his coronation, but the right of their two children, Baldwin IV and Sibylla , to inherit

2562-700: A military campaign against the Turks who had attacked Byzantine territories in Anatolia. Turkic migration permeated the Middle East from the 9th   century. Muslim border raiders captured unconverted Turkic nomads in the Central Asian borderlands and sold them to Islamic leaders who used them as slave soldiers. These were known as ghilman or mamluk and were emancipated when converted to Islam. Mamluks were valued primarily because

2745-550: A month after Baldwin's arrival, a Christian mob killed Thoros and acclaimed Baldwin as doux , the Byzantine title Thoros had used. Baldwin's position was personal rather than institutional, and the Armenian governance of the city remained in place. Baldwin's nascent County of Edessa consisted of pockets separated from his other holdings of Turbessel, Rawandan and Samosata by the territory of Turkic and Armenian warlords and

2928-759: A new province was established, the Sidon Eyalet , and its governor Bustanji Pasha attempted to wrest control of the Kisrawan but was repulsed by the Sayfas. The Sayfas permanently lost the district in 1616, when Fakhr al-Din's son Ali and brother Yunus, with Ottoman backing, defeated the Sayfas' Druze allies and caused Hasan Sayfa (Yusuf's son) to flee for Akkar. In 1621, Fakhr al-Din, who had since returned to Mount Lebanon, compelled Sayfa to relinquish to him his remaining properties in Ghazir and Antelias to settle Sayfa's mounting debt. The Khazens of Ballouneh had relocated to

3111-642: A number of struggles with the Druze Ma'ns over control of the Kisrawan, the Sayfas permanently lost their hold over the region to them in 1616. Under the patronage of the Ma'nid emir Fakhr al-Din II , the Maronite Khazen family gradually came to dominate the area, purchasing large tracts of land from Shia Muslim villagers. Their activities fostered the overwhelming Maronite majority of the region that persists until

3294-645: A proclamation that he could raise a 50,000-strong army for the Christian side, Shahin's militia mainly guarded their home region of the Kisrawan, while the Druze advanced against their Christian opponents elsewhere in Mount Lebanon. Under pressure by the Maronite Church and the Ottomans, Shahin practically disbanded his peasants' republic. The following year, after an international intervention ended

3477-407: A prominent Arabic author from Mount Lebanon. Unlike his better known brothers As'ad, who became a Protestant , and Faris, who converted to Islam and adopted the name Ahmad, Tannus remained a devout Maronite. He attempted, unsuccessfully, to dissuade As'ad from embracing Protestant teachings; As'ad eventually died in the custody of the Maronite Church for his beliefs. In his career during the 1840s,

3660-575: A punitive campaign against them in 1292. It was led by Baydara , the viceroy of Egypt, the second highest-ranking official in the sultanate, after the commanders of Damascus expressed reticence fighting the experienced mountaineers in the region's narrow passes. Baydara was defeated and was able to withdraw his men only after bribing the Kisrawani chiefs. When the Mamluks were routed by the Mongols of

3843-687: A split in the Ismā'īlist branch of Shia Islam. The Persian missionary Hassan-i Sabbah led a breakaway group, creating the Nizari branch of Isma'ilism. This was known as the New Preaching in Syria and the Order of Assassins in western historiography. The Order used targeted murder to compensate for their lack of military power. The Seljuk invasions, the subsequent eclipse of the Byzantines and Fatimids, and

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4026-483: A truce with Saladin. Gümüshtekin released Raynald of Châtillon and Baldwin's maternal uncle, Joscelin III of Courtenay , for a large ransom. They hastened to Jerusalem, and Raynald seized Oultrejourdain by marrying Stephanie of Milly . As Baldwin, a leper, was not expected to father children, his sister's marriage was to be arranged before his inevitable premature death from the disease. His regent, Raymond, chose William of Montferrat for Sybilla's husband. William

4209-444: Is no information about his early education; the modern historian Kamal Salibi presumes he was homeschooled. He was taught rudimentary Arabic and Syriac by teacher Yusuf al-Hukayyim in the nearby village of Ghosta in 1809. His studies were interrupted before the year's end when Bashir II, who had become the paramount strongman and tax farmer of Mount Lebanon, appointed Tannus's father the mutasallim (tax collector) of Shuweir in

4392-452: Is now southeastern Turkey , northwestern Syria , and northern Lebanon ; and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the southernmost and most prominent state, covered an area in what is now Israel , Palestine , southern Lebanon, and western Jordan . The description "Crusader states" can be misleading, as from 1130 onwards, very few people among the Franks were Crusaders. Medieval and modern writers use

4575-645: Is traditionally defined as the part of the Mount Lebanon region northeast of Beirut between the Ibrahim River in the north and the Kalb River in the south. It straddles the Mediterranean coast, extending eastward to the western slopes of the Mount Lebanon range. During the early Muslim period (630s–1099), the Kisrawan was part of Jund Dimashq (the military district of Damascus ) and

4758-441: The atabeg kept power after his ward reached the age of majority or died. The Seljuks adopted and strengthened the traditional iqta' system of the administration of state revenues. This system secured the payment of military commanders through granting them the right to collect the land tax in a well-defined territory, but it exposed the taxpayers to an absent lord's greed and to his officials' arbitrary actions. Although

4941-641: The Assaf dynasty continued to rule the Kisrawan with the onset of Ottoman rule in 1517. In alliance with the Maronite Hubaysh family, whose members served as their stewards and agents, the Assafs patronized Maronite settlement and prosperity in the region. The last Assaf emir was killed in 1591 by Yusuf Sayfa , the governor of Tripoli, who proceeded to take over the Kisrawan and kill the Hubayshes. After

5124-641: The Ayyubid Sultanate after the siege of Jerusalem in 1244 . The Crusader presence in the Levant collapsed shortly thereafter, when the Mamluks captured Acre in 1291 , ending the Kingdom of Jerusalem nearly 200 years after it was founded. With all four of the states defeated and annexed, the survivors fled to the Kingdom of Cyprus , which had been established by the Third Crusade . The study of

5307-526: The Edict of Gülhane , which mandated equality for all Ottoman citizens. Shahin declared a republic in the Kisrawan and a government composed of a 100-member council of representatives of the Kisrawan's villages, mostly peasants but also landowners and clergymen, presided by Shahin was established to govern the region backed by his 1,000-man militia. The republic was mainly supported by the villages of Rayfoun, Ajaltoun, Ashqout , Qleiat and Mazraat Kfardebian, and

5490-677: The Fatimid vizier , Al-Afdal Shahanshah at Ascalon . When Daimbert of Pisa , the papal legate, arrived in the Levant with 120 Pisan ships, Godfrey gained much-needed naval support by backing him for the Patriarchate of Jerusalem , as well as granting him parts of Jerusalem and the Pisans a section of the port of Jaffa . Daimbert revived the idea of creating an ecclesiastic principality and extracted oaths of fealty from Godfrey and Bohemond. When Godfrey died in 1100, his retainers occupied

5673-713: The Greek patriarch of Antioch . Bohemond never returned. He died, leaving an underage son Bohemond II . Tancred continued as regent of Antioch and ignored the treaty. Richard's son, Roger of Salerno , succeeded as regent on Tancred's death in 1112. The fall of Tripoli prompted Sultan Muhammad Tapar to appoint the atabeg of Mosul, Mawdud , to wage jihad against the Franks. Between 1110 and 1113, Mawdud mounted four campaigns in Mesopotamia and Syria, but rivalry among his heterogeneous armies' commanders forced him to abandon

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5856-718: The Holy Land , as an exceptionally sacred place. They all associated the region with the lives of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible . All of the holy sites in Judaism were found there, including the remains of the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70AD. The New Testament presented Palestine as the venue of the acts of Jesus and his Apostles . Islamic tradition described the region's principal city, Jerusalem, as

6039-564: The Ilkhanate at the Battle of Wadi al-Khaznadar near Homs in 1299, the mountaineers attacked and robbed Mamluk troops in their panicked flight through the Kisrawani coastal roads and the road between Beirut and Damascus. The Mamluks reasserted their position in the Levant in 1300 and took punitive action against the Kisrawan. Under the Damascus governor Aqqush al-Afram , the Mamluks routed

6222-620: The Islamic world . Europe was rural and underdeveloped, offering little more than raw materials and slaves in return for spices, cloth, and other luxuries from the Middle East . Climate change during the Medieval Warm Period affected the Middle East and western Europe differently. In the east, it caused droughts, while in the west, it improved conditions for agriculture. Higher agricultural yields led to population growth and

6405-750: The Lebanese Civil War of 1975–1990, the Kisrawan was a stronghold of the Maronite-dominated Lebanese Forces militia. The name Kisrawan has Persian origins. According to the historian Kamal Salibi , "the very name Kisrawan must have originally been that of a Persian clan called the Kisra". "Kisra" is the Arabic form of the common Persian name Khosrow and "Kisrawan" is the Persian plural form of Kisra. The Kisrawan

6588-705: The Matn area south of Keserwan and soon after of Zahle in the Beqaa Valley as well. The family consequently moved back to Hadath where Tannus taught As'ad the Arabic and Syriac grammar he had learned in Ghosta. In 1810 he served as a clerk for the Shihab emir Salman Ali and assisted him in conscription efforts in Shahhar , near Beirut. In 1813 Tannus was sent to learn at the Maronite monastic institution of Ayn Warqa ,

6771-478: The People of the Book , like Christians and Jews. The dhimmi were second-class citizens, obliged to pay a special poll tax , the jizya , but they could practise their religion and maintain their own law courts. Theological, liturgical, and cultural differences had given rise to the development of competing Christian denominations in the Levant before the 7th-century Muslim conquest . The Greek Orthodox natives, or Melkites , remained in full communion with

6954-419: The Roman Empire had previously held, would be handed to Alexios' Byzantine representatives. Only Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse refused this oath, instead promising non-aggression towards Alexios. The Byzantine Tatikios guided the crusade on the arduous three-month march to besiege Antioch , during which the Franks made alliances with local Armenians. Before reaching Antioch, Baldwin and his men left

7137-448: The Shihab emir Qasim ibn Umar, the father of Bashir II . He eventually settled in Hadath , continuing to work for Qasim until the latter's death in 1768, after which he worked for two other Shihab emirs. Tannus's father succeeded Mansur and later served the Shihab emir Hasan ibn Umar, who moved him back to the Shidyaq ancestral village of Ashqout in Keserwan. Tannus was about 10 years old when his family relocated to Ashqout and there

7320-457: The Tower of David to secure his inheritance for his brother Baldwin. Daimbert and Tancred sought Bohemond's help against the Lotharingians, but the Danishmends captured Bohemond under Gazi Gümüshtigin while securing Antioch's northern marches. Before departing for Jerusalem, Baldwin ceded Edessa to his cousin, Baldwin of Bourcq . His arrival thwarted Daimbert, who crowned Baldwin as Jerusalem's first Latin king on Christmas Day 1100. By performing

7503-497: The indigenous Levantine peoples , having separate legal and religious systems. The ancient Jewish communities that had survived and remained in the holy cities of Jerusalem, Tiberias , Hebron , and Safed since the Jewish–Roman wars and the destruction of the Second Temple were heavily persecuted in a pattern of rampant Christian antisemitism accompanying the Crusades . The terms Crusader states and Outremer ( French : outre-mer , lit.   'overseas') describe

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7686-399: The " Mardaite " rulers of the northern parts of the mountain before proceeding in separate chapters, not in chronological order, with the rule of the Buhturids of the Gharb , the Ma'nids of the Chouf , the Assafs of Keserwan, the Sayfas of Akkar , the Shihabs, the Abi'l-Lamas and the Arslans of the Gharb. Tannus cited as his sources the Maronite historian Ibn al-Qila'i (d. 1516),

7869-429: The 11th   century. In contrast, the Catholic ideology of religious war quickly developed, culminating in the idea of crusades for lands claimed for Christianity. Most crusades came from what had been the Carolingian Empire around 800. The empire had disintegrated, and two loosely unified successor states had taken its place: the Holy Roman Empire , which encompassed Germany , part of northern Italy , and

8052-506: The 1305 campaign and thereafter disappeared from the historical record. Many Shia Muslim families were relocated to Tripoli and were permanently displaced from the coastal area. They remained the majority population in the Kisrawan, but their numbers never recovered. The Maronites also suffered significantly, but the displacement of Shia and Alawite communities eventually paved the way for Maronites from northern Mount Lebanon to settle in their place. The Mamluks settled Sunni Muslim Turkmens in

8235-523: The 1523 records, the Kisrawan had a population of 391 Muslim households, 37 Muslim bachelors, 7 imams, and 198 Christian households and 21 Christian bachelors. The Christian population had grown substantially by 1530, with 297 households and 5 bachelors, while the Muslim population grew to 404 households and 103 bachelors, the number of imams decreasing to 3. By 1543, the Muslim population decreased to 377 households, 65 bachelors and no imams, while Christian households and bachelors rose to 372 and 34. According to

8418-449: The 17th-century Maronite historian Istifan al-Duwayhi , Shia Muslims from Baalbek moved to Faraya , Bekataa and Harajil , Sunni Muslims from the southern Beqaa Valley settled in Fatqa , Sahel Alma , Faitroun , Fiqqay, Aramoun and Jdeideh , while Druze from the Matn settled in Brummana and smaller hamlets. Christians from northern Mount Lebanon continued to migrate to the Kisrawan, with Maronites from al-Majdal moving to Aramoun and

8601-436: The 1830s and 1840s and Khazen influence over the Maronite Church waned. To compensate for their economic, social and political stagnation, the Khazens increased their pressure on the peasants of Kisrawan in the late 1850s, while also spending extravagantly. The Khazens opposed the creation of the "Double Qaimaqmate" in Mount Lebanon in the 1840s, which divided Mount Lebanon into Druze and Christian-run sectors, and were incensed at

8784-412: The 630s. Salibi holds that Mu'awiya also settled the Persians in the Kisrawan. Information about the Christians of the Kisrawan before the 12th century is scant, though the local, 19th-century chronicler Tannus al-Shidyaq held there was an organized Christian, likely Maronite , community governed by village headmen by the early 9th century. The modern historian William Harris asserts that the origins of

8967-457: The Alam al-Dins. Abu Nadir consolidated Khazen control of the Kisrawan by purchasing large tracts of land there from the impoverished Twelver Shias of the district. His son Abu Nawfal continued his father's land acquisitions and, with his sons, was granted an extensive estate in the district by Sultan Mehmed IV in 1671. Moreover, Abu Nawfal gained the influential office of French vice-consul in Beirut in 1658 and again in 1662. His descendants held

9150-494: The Apostle Saint Peter 's successors, and their prestige was high. In the west, the Gregorian Reform reduced lay influence on church life and strengthened papal authority over the clergy. Eastern Christians continued to consider the popes as no more than one of the five highest ranking church leaders, titled patriarchs , and rejected the idea of papal supremacy . This opposition, together with differences in theology and liturgy, caused acrimonious disputes which escalated when

9333-409: The Arab Banu Munqidh seized Shaizar , and Tutush's sons Duqaq and Ridwan succeeded in Damascus and Aleppo respectively, but their atabegs , Janah ad-Dawla and Toghtekin were in control. Ridwan's retainer Sokman ben Artuq held Jerusalem; Ridwan's father-in-law, Yağısıyan , ruled Antioch; and a warlord representing Byzantine interests, called Thoros , seized Edessa. During this period

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9516-402: The Arabs as al-Sham ) and Upper Mesopotamia . Edessa extended east beyond the Euphrates . In the Middle Ages the Crusader states were also called Syria or Syrie . From around 1115, the ruler of Jerusalem was styled 'king of the Latins in Jerusalem'. Historian Hans Eberhard Mayer believes this reflected that only Latins held complete political and legal rights in the kingdom, and that

9699-420: The Beqaa-based Hanash family. In 1541 Mansur had them both assassinated, effectively voiding the brewing opposition against Assaf–Hubaysh domination. The blow to the Hanash and Turkmens in the Kisrawan opened the door to further Maronite migration from the north. In 1545 Maronites from Jaj moved to the district, the ancestor of the Khazen family moved to Ballouneh , the Gemayel family moved to Bikfaya and

9882-448: The Byzantine alliance. This dispute resulted in the march stalling in north Syria. The crusaders were becoming aware of the chaotic state of Muslim politics through frequent diplomatic relations with the Muslim powers. Raymond indulged in a small expedition. He bypassed Shaizar and laid siege to Arqa to enforce the payment of a tribute. In Raymond's absence, Bohemond expelled Raymond's last troops from Antioch and consolidated his rule in

10065-423: The Byzantine imperial church, and their religious leaders often came from the Byzantine capital, Constantinople . In the 5th   century, the Nestorians , and the Monophysite Jacobites , Armenians , and Copts , broke with the Byzantine state church. The Maronites ' separate church organisation emerged under Muslim rule. During the late 10th and early 11th   centuries, the Byzantine Empire had been on

10248-408: The Byzantines and Franks jointly besieged Aleppo and Shaizar but could not take the towns. Zengi soon seized Homs from the Damascenes, but a Damascene–Jerusalemite coalition prevented his southward expansion. Joscelin made an alliance with the Artuqid Kara Arslan , who was Zengi's principal Muslim rival in Upper Mesopotamia. While Joscelin was staying west of the Euphrates at Turbessel, Zengi invaded

10431-450: The Byzantines from campaigning in the Levant. In theory, Saladin was Nur ad-Din's lieutenant, but mutual distrust hindered their cooperation against the crusader states. As Saladin remitted suspiciously small revenue payments to him, Nur ad-Din began gathering troops for an attack on Egypt, but he died in May 1174. He left an 11-year-old son, As-Salih Ismail al-Malik . Within two months, Amalric died. His son and successor, Baldwin   IV,

10614-435: The Byzantines, Arabs, and Turks squeezed populations of Armenians . The Seljuks contested control of southern Palestine with Egypt, where Shia rulers ruled a majority Sunni populace through powerful viziers who were mainly Turkic or Armenian, rather than Egyptian or Arab. The Seljuks and the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt hated each other, as the Seljuk saw themselves as defenders of the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate and Fatimid Egypt

10797-566: The Cilician Armenian prince, Ruben   III . Saladin granted a truce to Bohemond and made preparations for an invasion of Jerusalem where Guy took command of the defence. When Saladin invaded Galilee, the Franks responded with what William of Tyre described in his contemporaneous chronicle as their largest army in living memory but avoided fighting a battle. After days of fierce skirmishing, Saladin withdrew towards Damascus. Baldwin dismissed Guy from his position as bailli , apparently because Guy had proved unable to overcome factionalism in

10980-498: The Cilician plain. In 1133, the Antiochene nobility asked Fulk to propose a husband for Constance, and he selected Raymond of Poitiers , a younger son of William IX of Aquitaine . Raymond finally arrived in Antioch three years later and married Constance. He reconquered parts of Cilicia from the Armenians. In 1137, Pons was killed battling the Damascenes, and Zengi invaded Tripoli. Fulk intervened, but Zengi's troops captured Pons' successor Raymond   II , and besieged Fulk in

11163-420: The Crusader realms, they launched a series of punitive expeditions in 1292–1305 against the mountaineers of the Kisrawan. The assaults caused wide scale destruction and displacement, with Maronites from northern Mount Lebanon gradually migrating to depopulated villages in the region. The Mamluks established Turkmen settlements in the coastal part of the Kisrawan to keep guard over the region. Their chiefs from

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11346-408: The Crusader states in their own right, as opposed to being a sub-topic of the Crusades , began in 19th-century France as an analogy to the French colonial experience in the Levant, though this was rejected by 20th-century historians. Their consensus was that the Frankish population, as the Western Europeans were known at the time, lived as a minority society that was largely urban and isolated from

11529-454: The Druze historian Ibn Sibat (d. 1520), al-Duwayhi, Haydar al-Shihabi (d. 1821), the biography of Fakhr al-Din II by al-Khalidi al-Safadi (d. 1624), Father Joseph Assemanus (d. 1782), Father Hananiyya al-Munayyir (d. 1820) of Zouk Mosbeh , the Melkite poet Butrus Karami of Homs (d. 1851), and oral and printed histories and court registers of the Shihab, Jumblatt , Khazen , Hubaysh and Talhuq genealogies. The first and second parts of

11712-403: The Euphrates. As the crusaders marched towards Antioch, Syrian Muslims asked Sultan Barkiyaruq for help, but he was engaged in a power struggle with his brother Muhammad Tapar . At Antioch, Bohemond persuaded the other leaders the city should be his if he could capture it, and Alexios did not come to claim it. Alexios withdrew, rather than join the siege, after Stephen, Count of Blois (who

11895-483: The Frankish lands east of the river in late 1144. Before the end of the year, he captured the region, including the city of Edessa. Losing Edessa strategically threatened Antioch and limited opportunities for a Jerusalemite expansion in the south. In September 1146, Zengi was assassinated, possibly on orders from Damascus. His empire was divided between his two sons, with the younger Nur ad-Din succeeding him in Aleppo. A power vacuum in Edessa allowed Joscelin to return to

12078-714: The Franks offered the regency and the Egyptian invasion's command to Baldwin's crusader cousin Philip I, Count of Flanders . He wanted to be free to return to Flanders and rejected both offers. The plan for the invasion was abandoned, and the Byzantine fleet sailed for Constantinople. Baldwin negotiated a marriage between Hugh III, Duke of Burgundy , and Sibylla, but the succession crisis in France prevented him from sailing. Tension between Baldwin's maternal and paternal relatives grew. When Raymond and Bohemond, both related to him on his father's side, came to Jerusalem unexpectedly before Easter in 1180, Baldwin panicked, fearing they had arrived to depose him and elevate Sibylla to

12261-423: The French nobleman Raynald of Châtillon as her second husband. From 1149, all Fatimid caliphs were children, and military commanders were competing for power. Ascalon, the Fatimids' last Palestinian bridgehead, hindered Frankish raids against Egypt, but Baldwin captured the town in 1153. The Damascenes feared further Frankish expansion, and Nur ad-Din seized the city with ease a year later. He continued to remit

12444-480: The Holy Land, although in the decades following the destruction of the large Crusade of 1101 in Anatolia, only smaller groups of armed pilgrims departed for Outremer. The Fatimids' feud with the Seljuks hindered Muslim actions for more than a decade. Outnumbered by their enemies, the Franks remained in a vulnerable position, but they could forge temporary alliances with their Armenian, Arab, and Turkic neighbours. Each crusader state had its own strategic purpose during

12627-428: The Hubaysh family of Yanouh settling in Ghazir . Assaf moved his headquarters to Ghazir; previously he divided his time between estates at Aintoura and Ain Shaqif. His move away from his Turkmen tribesmen's abodes closer to the coast, namely Zouk Mikael , Zouk Kharab , Zouk Mosbeh and Zouk Amiriyya, contributed to the estrangement between them and Assaf and his household. In Ghazir the Assafs cultivated ties with

12810-408: The Italian city-states of Amalfi , Genoa , Pisa , and Venice . They replaced the Muslim and Jewish middlemen in the lucrative trans-Mediterranean commerce, and their fleets became the dominant naval forces in the region. On the eve of the Crusades, after a thousand years of reputedly uninterrupted succession of popes, the Papacy was Catholic Europe's oldest institution. The popes were seen as

12993-419: The Khazens to stir the peasants to revolt against him. The revolt against Bashir Ahmad soon turned against the Khazen sheikhs and their feudal allies. The peasant subjects of the Khazen sheikhs had long been wary of their rule due to the excessive taxes they imposed as well as the additional gifts the peasants were virtually obligated to give the sheikhs, which many peasants considered humiliating. In early 1858,

13176-666: The Kisrawan Shia community in the 12th–13th centuries "are shrouded in mystery, with no clues in Arabic chronicles". Twelver Shia Muslim communities may have been established in the Kisrawan and the bordering Byblos area to the north during the 10th century when Shia Islam was in the ascendant in Tripoli and the Islamic world at large. According to the historian Jaafar al-Muhajir, the Twelvers of Kisrawan were likely remnants of

13359-574: The Kisrawan acted independently of the Kingdom of Jerusalem , which controlled Sidon and Beirut, and the County of Tripoli , as well as the Muslim rulers of Damascus, all of whom claimed control of the Kisrawan. The Maronite chiefs there likely cooperated with the Crusaders and were strongly allied with the Embriaci lords of Byblos , who were vassals of the count of Tripoli. The Islamic communities in

13542-493: The Kisrawan allied against the Khazen sheikhs. A muleteer and youths boss from Rayfoun , Tanyus Shahin , was chosen by this alliance of peasants as their leader in December, and was declared the wakil awwal (first delegate). In January 1859, Shahin intensified the armed revolt against the Khazen sheikhs and with 800 of his peasant fighters, he besieged the Khazens during a summit they were holding in Ghosta. The siege prompted

13725-549: The Kisrawan did not share the Sunni Muslim faith of the Damascene rulers and may not have been enthusiastic supporters of their cause against the Crusaders, possibly even cooperating with the latter, although there's no historical evidence or mention of such a cooperation in the chronicles of the time. The Mamluks conquered Crusader Tripoli in 1289 and Beirut in 1291. According to the geographer al-Dimashqi (d. 1327),

13908-623: The Kisrawan from his base in Beirut. Five years later Qaytbay died and Hasan's son Mansur, with the support of the Hubaysh family, took charge of the Kisrawan. In the late 1530s, Sunni Muslim opposition against Mansur and the Hubayshes was raised in the Kisrawan by the Turkmen chief of Zouk Mikael, who was resentful at the neglect by the Assafs in favor of the Maronites, and the Arab chief of Fatqa from

14091-506: The Kisrawan village of Ajaltoun in 1606. The prominence they soon acquired in the region stemmed from their close alliance with Fakhr al-Din. The head of the Khazens, Abu Nadir (d. 1647), was Fakhr al-Din's aide and held the tax farm of Kisrawan in 1616–1618 and 1621. The Khazens lost control of the district to the Alam al-Dins after Fakhr al-Din's downfall in 1633, but regained it four years later when Fakhr al-Din's nephew Mulhim Ma'n defeated

14274-473: The Kisrawan, Sayfa antagonized the Druze chief and district governor of Sidon-Beirut Sanjak , Fakhr al-Din Ma'n , whose jurisdiction bordered the Kisrawan. In 1598 Fakhr al-Din and the governor of Baalbek, Musa al-Harfush, with Damascene backing, routed the Sayfas in a battle at the Kalb River. Fakhr al-Din captured the Kisrawan but returned it to Sayfa a year later as part of an agreement with him. During

14457-438: The Kisrawani warriors and imposed heavy penalties on the inhabitants and their leaders. Kisrawani rebel activity resumed within a few years and Aqqush led a final, large-scale campaign against the mountaineers in 1305. Hundreds of fighters were slain and the Mamluks destroyed numerous villages, churches and vineyards, while massacring and displacing many of the inhabitants. The Alawites of the Kisrawan were particularly hard hit in

14640-454: The Kumayd family moved to the Ghazir area. Assaf dominance over northern Lebanon, including the Kisrawan persisted through Mansur's death in 1580 and the first five years under his son and successor Muhammad. In 1585 the Ottomans launched a punitive expedition against the rural chieftains of Mount Lebanon. Muhammad was arrested and imprisoned in the imperial capital Constantinople but returned

14823-564: The Levant profoundly. Frankish rulers replaced local warlords in the cities, but large-scale colonisation did not follow, and the new conquerors did not change the traditional organisation of settlements and property in the countryside. The Muslim leaders were massacred or forced into exile, and the natives, accustomed to the rule of well-organised warbands, offered little resistance to their new lords. Western Christianity's canon law recognised that peace treaties and armistices between Christians and Muslims were valid. The Frankish knights regarded

15006-597: The Maronite population of the Kisrawan combined with rural northern Mount Lebanon to be 50,000 in 1690 and 115,000 in 1783. Crusader states The Crusader states , or Outremer , were four Catholic polities that existed in the Levant from 1098 to 1291. Following the principles of feudalism , the foundation for these polities was laid by the First Crusade by the European Christians, which

15189-467: The Maronites, particularly the Hubaysh family, with Assaf and his sons Hasan and Husayn recruiting the Hubaysh brothers as their stewards and agents. The Hubayshes also acted as intermediaries between the Assafs and their Maronite subjects in the mostly Maronite Bilad al-Jubayl (the Byblos region). After Assaf died in 1518 his youngest son Qaytbay killed Hasan and Husayn, drove out the Hubayshes, and took over

15372-632: The Mediterranean began in the second half of the 11th century. Norman warlords conquered southern Italy from the Byzantines and ousted the Muslim rulers from Sicily; French aristocrats hastened to the Iberian Peninsula to fight the Moors of Al-Andalus ; and Italian fleets launched pillaging raids against the north African ports. This shift of power especially benefited merchants from

15555-464: The Mediterranean coast to Jerusalem. On 15 July 1099, crusaders took the city after a siege lasting barely longer than a month. Thousands of Muslims and Jews were killed, and the survivors sold into slavery. Proposals to govern the city as an ecclesiastical state were rejected. Raymond refused the royal title, claiming only Christ could wear a crown in Jerusalem. This may have been to dissuade

15738-625: The Nativity was thought to enclose his birthplace in Bethlehem . The Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque commemorated Muhammad's night journey. Although the most sacred places of devotion were in Palestine, there were also shrines in neighbouring Syria. As a borderland of the Muslim world , Syria was an important theatre of jihad , though enthusiasm for pursuing it had faded by the end of

15921-416: The Ottoman government. The Assafs ruled over the area with mildness and the government collected taxes at a relatively low rate. These conditions spurred increased resettlement of the region. Ottoman tax records indicate there were 28 villages in the subdistrict in 1523, rising to 31 in 1543. The tax records did not distinguish different Muslim groups from each other, nor different Christian denominations. In

16104-566: The Seljuk state worked when family ties and personal loyalty overlapped the leaders' personal ambitions, the lavish iqta' grants combined with rivalries between maliks , atabegs , and military commanders could lead to disintegration in critical moments. The region's ethnic and religious diversity led to alienation among the ruled populations. In Syria, the Seljuk Sunnis ruled indigenous Shias . In Cilicia and northern Syria,

16287-549: The Seljuk threat. What the Emperor probably had in mind was a relatively modest force, and Urban far exceeded his expectations by calling for the First Crusade at the later Council of Clermont . He developed a doctrine of bellum sacrum (Christian holy war) and, based mainly on Old Testament passages in which God leads the Hebrews to victory in war, reconciled this with Church teachings. Urban's call for an armed pilgrimage for

16470-591: The Seljuks of Rum, Saladin concluded a two-year truce with Baldwin and, after launching a short but devastating campaign along the coast of Tripoli, with Raymond. For the first time in the history of Frankish–Muslim relations, the Franks could not set conditions for the peace. Between 1180 and 1183, Saladin asserted his suzerainty over the Artuqids, concluded a peace treaty with the Rum Seljuks, seized Aleppo from

16653-508: The Shias of Tripoli who relocated to the Kisrawan during or after the Crusader siege of Tripoli in the early 12th century. During Crusader rule in Tripoli and Beirut ( c.  1099 –1291), the Kisrawan was a rural borderland between the Crusader dominions along the Mediterranean coast and the Muslim states in the interior regions of the Levant. Its inhabitants were Twelver Shia, Alawite , Druze and Maronite tribesmen. The mountaineers of

16836-507: The Shidyaqs). The most important of Tannus's works was Akhbar al-a'yan fi Jabal Lubnan (The History of the Notables in Mount Lebanon), which he completed in 1855. The printed work was 770 pages and divided into three parts. The first part centered on the natural and political geography of Mount Lebanon and its surroundings and consisted of five chapters: the first chapter defined the boundaries of Mount Lebanon and surveyed its population;

17019-633: The Shihabs in a minor political embassy that year. He continued his mercantile career until his death and was also employed by the Shihabs as a political agent and spy, giving him significant insight into the political intrigues of his age. He participated with Bashir II's forces in battle against the Ottoman governor of Damascus in 1821. As a result of the death of his father in 1821, Tannus became financially responsible for his mother, his two younger sisters, Adla and Wardiyya and his brother Faris. Sometime afterward he married and had two sons, Faris and Naja,

17202-577: The Sultanate of Rum to reopen the Anatolian pilgrimage route towards the Holy Land. His defeat at Myriokephalon weakened the Byzantines' hold on Cilicia. Upholding the balance of power in Syria was apparently Raymond's main concern during his regency. When Saladin besieged Aleppo in 1174, Raymond led a relief army to the city; next year, when a united Zengid army invaded Saladin's realm, he signed

17385-560: The Turkic mounted warlords as their peers with familiar moral values, and this familiarity facilitated their negotiations with the Muslim leaders. The conquest of a city was often accompanied by a treaty with the neighbouring Muslim rulers who were customarily forced to pay a tribute for the peace. The crusader states had a special position in Western Christianity's consciousness: many Catholic aristocrats were ready to fight for

17568-615: The Turkmens, killing their leader Ali ibn al-A'ma. The Mamluks captured and soon after freed Ali's brother Umar, probably to not afford the Buhturids too much advantage from the Turkmens' losses. The Ottomans conquered the Mamluk Sultanate in 1516–1517 and the Ottoman sultan Selim conferred on the Turkmen emir Assaf the inheritable lordship of the Kisrawan, as well as the neighboring Bilad Jubayl (the mountains of Byblos) to

17751-518: The West for campaigning. Thierry, Baldwin, Raynald and Raymond III of Tripoli attacked Shaizar. Baldwin offered the city to Thierry, who refused Raynald's demands he become his vassal, and the siege was abandoned. After Nur ad-Din seized Shaizar in 1157, the Nizari remained the last independent Muslim power in Syria. As prospects for a new crusade from the West were poor, the Franks of Jerusalem sought

17934-610: The Zengids and re-established the Egyptian navy. Meanwhile, after the truce expired in 1182, Saladin demonstrated the strategic advantage he had by holding both Cairo and Damascus. While he faced Baldwin in Oultrejordain, his troops from Syria pillaged Galilee. The Franks adopted a defensive tactic and strengthened their fortresses. In February 1183, a Jerusalemite assembly levied an extraordinary tax for defence funding. Raynald

18117-505: The ailing Baldwin   V's guardianship. As there was no consensus on what should happen if the boy king died, it would be for the pope, the Holy Roman Emperor, the kings of France and England to decide whether his mother Sibylla or her half-sister Isabella had stronger claim to the throne. Bohemond was staying at Acre around this time, allegedly because Baldwin   IV wanted to secure Bohemond's support for his decisions on

18300-519: The appointment of a sheikh from the mixed Druze-Christian Abu'l-Lama family as the qaimaqam (deputy governor) of the Maronite section of the Qaimaqamate. The Khazens feared that such an appointment would formally subordinate them to the Abu'l-Lama sheikhs. Following the Abu'l-Lama sheikh's death in 1854, his successor Bashir Ahmad Abu'l-Lama attempted to further reduce the Khazens' influence, prompting

18483-483: The army. In November 1183, Baldwin made Guy's five-year-old stepson, also called Baldwin , co-ruler, and had him crowned king while attempting to annul the marriage of Guy and Sibylla. Guy and Sibylla fled to Ascalon, and his supporters vainly intervened on their behalf at a general council. An embassy to Europe was met with offers of money but not of military support. Already dying, Baldwin   IV appointed Raymond bailli for 10   years, but charged Joscelin with

18666-528: The barons but Baldwin of Ibelin and Raymond swore fealty to the royal couple. Baldwin went into exile, and Raymond forged an alliance with Saladin. Raynald seized another caravan, which violated the truce and prompted Saladin to assemble his forces for the jihād. Raymond allowed Muslim troops to pass through Galilee to raid around Acre. His shock at the Frankish defeat in the resulting Battle of Cresson brought him to reconciliation with Guy. Guy now gathered

18849-421: The barons to Nablus to a general council. In his absence, Sybilla's supporters, led by Joscelin and Raynald, took full control of Jerusalem, Acre and Beirut. Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem crowned her queen and appointed Guy her co-ruler. The barons assembling at Nablus offered the crown to Isabella's husband Humphrey IV of Toron , but he submitted to Sybilla to avoid a civil war. After his desertion, all

19032-485: The book were published on 13 June 1855 by the American Press under the oversight of Butrus al-Bustani. The third part was published on 26 May 1859. According to the historian Youssef Choueiri, Tannus's "reputation as a chronicler largely rests on his Akhbar al-a'yan ". Salibi interprets Akhbar al-a'yan as the work of a Maronite layman, who wrote "as a Lebanese rather than a Maronite", without consideration to

19215-466: The border castle of Montferrand . Fulk surrendered the castle and paid Zengi 50,000   dinars for his and Raymond's freedom. Emperor Alexios' son and successor, John II Komnenos , reasserted Byzantine claims to Cilicia and Antioch. His military campaign compelled Raymond of Poitiers to give homage and agree that he would surrender Antioch by way of compensation if the Byzantines ever captured Aleppo, Homs , and Shaizar for him. The following year

19398-561: The ceremony, the Patriarch abandoned his claim to rule the Holy Land. Tancred remained defiant to Baldwin until an Antiochene delegation offered him the regency in March 1101. He ceded his Principality of Galilee to the king, but reserved the right to reclaim it as a fief if he returned from Antioch within fifteen months. For the next two years, Tancred ruled Antioch. He conquered Byzantine Cilicia and parts of Syria. The Fatimid Caliphate attacked Jerusalem in 1101 , 1102 and 1105 , on

19581-504: The city leaders sought external protection. They allied with the adventurous Artuqid princes, Ilghazi and Balak , who inflicted crucial defeats on the Franks between 1119 and 1124, but could rarely prevent Frankish counter-invasions. In 1118 Baldwin of Bourcq succeeded Baldwin   I as King of Jerusalem, naming Joscelin his successor in Edessa. After Roger was killed at Ager Sanguinis ('Field of Blood'), Baldwin   II assumed

19764-513: The city, but he was unable to take the citadel. When Nur ad-Din arrived, the Franks were trapped, Joscelin fled and the subsequent sack left the city deserted. The fall of Edessa shocked Western opinion, prompting the largest military response since the First Crusade. The new crusade consisted of two great armies led overland by Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany , arriving in Acre in 1148. The arduous march had greatly reduced

19947-562: The civil war, a rival Maronite leader, Youssef Karam , defeated Shahin at a battle between Rayfoun and Ashqout. They reconciled soon afterward and Shahin formally relinquished the republic. During the 1975-1990 civil war the Kisrawan became a stronghold of Samir Geagea ’s Lebanese Forces (LF). In 1990 the LF retained control of the area, as well as East Beirut, despite a month long offensive by Lebanese Army troops loyal to General Michel Aoun which caused extensive damage and many casualties. At

20130-461: The coastal villages of the Kisrawan in 1306 to serve as a permanent direct guard for the government over the region and the road to Beirut. Their territory extended along the coastal region of the Kisrawan between Antelias in the south and Nahr al-Mu'amalatayn, just north of the Bay of Jounieh . The Turkmens were granted this territory as an iqta . Although iqta -holders in principal were only granted

20313-487: The conquest, but tens of thousands of Franks were enslaved. Those who could negotiate a free passage or were ransomed swarmed to Tyre, Tripoli, or Antioch. Conrad of Montferrat commanded the defences of Tyre . He was William's brother and arrived only days after Hattin. The childless Raymond died, and Bohemond's younger son, also called Bohemond , assumed power in Tripoli. After news of the Franks' devastating defeat at Hattin reached Italy, Pope Gregory VIII called for

20496-525: The defence of the northern crusader states took much of Baldwin   II's time. His absence, its impact on government, and his placement of relatives and their vassals in positions of power created opposition in Jerusalem. Baldwin's sixteen-month captivity led to a failed deposition attempt by some of the nobility, with the Flemish count , Charles the Good , considered as a possible replacement. Charles declined

20679-448: The developing Principality of Antioch. Under pressure from the poorer Franks, Godfrey and Robert II, Count of Flanders reluctantly joined the eventually unsuccessful siege of Arqa. Alexios asked the crusade to delay the march to Jerusalem, so the Byzantines could assist. Raymond's support for this strategy increased division among the crusade leaders and damaged his reputation among ordinary crusaders. The crusaders marched along

20862-545: The disintegration of the Seljuk Empire revived the old Levantine system of city-states. The region had always been highly urbanised, and the local societies were organised into networks of interdependent settlements, each centred around a city or a major town. These networks developed into autonomous lordships under the rule of a Turkic, Arab or Armenian warlord or town magistrate in the late 11th   century. The local quadis took control of Tyre and Tripoli ,

21045-433: The expansion of commerce, and to the development of prosperous new military and mercantile elites. In Catholic Europe, state and society were organised along feudal lines. Landed estates were customarily granted in fief —that is, in return for services that the grantee, or vassal , was to perform for the grantor, or lord. A vassal owed fealty to the lord and was expected to provide military aid and advice to him. Violence

21228-498: The feudal armies commanded by western nobles. By dazzling them with wealth and charming them with flattery, Alexios extracted oaths of fealty from most of the Crusader commanders. As his vassals, Godfrey of Bouillon , nominally duke of Lower Lorraine ; the Italo-Norman Bohemond of Taranto ; Bohemond's nephew Tancred of Hauteville ; and Godfrey's brother Baldwin of Bologne all swore that any territory gained which

21411-414: The feudal families of Mount Lebanon, with each family entitled to a chapter and grouped into three categories: Muslims, Maronites and Druze—the originally Muslim and Druze Shihab and Abi'l-Lama families, at least parts of which converted to Christianity, were grouped with the Maronites. The third and longest part of Akhbar al-a'yan dealt with the dynastic and feudal rulers of Mount Lebanon, beginning with

21594-440: The fields of medicine, jurisprudence, logic, ethics, natural sciences, Turkish and Italian. Tannus wrote manuscripts about his Maronite sect, Arab and Islamic history, the colloquial Arabic of Mount Lebanon and his family, some of which were lost. The most important of his works was Akhbar al-a'yan fi Jabal Lubnan , which was supervised by Butrus al-Bustani , and published in separate parts in 1855 and 1859. In it he described

21777-696: The first of whom died in infancy. After the deaths of his brothers Ghalib in 1840 and Mansur in 1842, he also became responsible for the former's young sons Zahir and Bishara and Ghalib's son. His mercantile business reported deficits for most of the period between 1821 and 1856 and to meet the needs of his increased dependents, he earned extra income as a teacher and copyist. He also began studying medicine in 1823 and began practicing six years later. Tannus continued his education in different fields, studying logic in 1832, Turkish and Italian in 1835, natural sciences in 1848 and jurisprudence in 1849. During that last year he also studied rhetoric with Nasif al-Yaziji ,

21960-675: The first years of its existence. Jerusalem needed undisturbed access to the Mediterranean; Antioch wanted to seize Cilicia and the territory along the upper course of the Orontes River ; and Edessa aspired to control the Upper Euphrates valley. The most powerful Syrian Muslim ruler, Toghtekin of Damascus , took a practical approach to dealing with the Franks. His treaties establishing Damascene–Jerusalemite condominiums (shared rule) in debated territories created precedents for other Muslim leaders. In August 1099, Godfrey defeated

22143-533: The four feudal states established after the First Crusade in the Levant in around 1100: (from north to south) the County of Edessa , the Principality of Antioch , the County of Tripoli , and the Kingdom of Jerusalem . The term Outremer is of medieval origin, whilst modern historians use Crusader states, and the term Franks for the European incomers. However, relatively few of the incoming Europeans took

22326-548: The headquarters was originally in Zouk Mikael before being relocated to Rayfoun. Opposition to the government was strongest in the villages of Ghosta, Aramoun, Ghazir and Ftuh. Shahin's star rose among the Christians of Mount Lebanon in general, who saw in him their defender against the Druze landlords and the traditional Maronite elites. In response to complaints of harassment of Shia Muslim villagers by local Christians in

22509-565: The indigenous population by language and faith. The Franks were mainly French-speaking Roman Catholics, while the natives were mostly Arabic- or Greek-speaking Muslims, Christians of other denominations, and Jews. The Kingdom of Jerusalem extended over historical Palestine and at its greatest extent included some territory east of the Jordan River . The northern states covered what is now part of Syria, south-eastern Turkey, and Lebanon. These areas were historically called Syria (known to

22692-417: The kingdom was confirmed. The Fatimid Caliphate had rival viziers, Shawar and Dirgham , both eager to seek external support. This gave Amalric and Nur ad-Din the opportunity to intervene. Amalric launched five invasions of Egypt between 1163 and 1169, on the last occasion cooperating with a Byzantine fleet, but he could not establish a bridgehead. Nur ad-Din appointed his Kurdish general Shirkuh to direct

22875-477: The kingdom. In 1134, he repressed a revolt by Hugh II of Jaffa , a relative of Melisende, but was still compelled to accept the shared inheritance. He also thwarted frequent attempts by his sister-in-law Alice to assume the regency in Antioch, including alliances with Pons of Tripoli and Joscelin   II of Edessa . Taking advantage of Antioch's weakened position, Leo , a Cilician Armenian ruler, seized

23058-573: The last occasion in alliance with Toghtekin. Baldwin   I repulsed these attacks and with Genoese, Venetian, and Norwegian fleets conquered all the towns on the Palestinian coast except Tyre and Ascalon . Raymond laid the foundations of the fourth crusader state, the County of Tripoli. He captured Tartus and Gibelet and besieged Tripoli. His cousin William ;II Jordan continued

23241-459: The leading nobility placed them in the second strata of the local aristocracy and as such their members held the title of shaykh , a local rank below emir and equal to that of the feudal chieftains of the area. Tannus's grandfather Mansur left Keserwan to serve the Shia emir of Baalbek , Haydar al-Harfush in 1741 for two years, and then moved to Hazmiyeh near Beirut in 1755 where he served

23424-549: The liberation of the Eastern Christians and the recovery of the Holy Land aroused unprecedented enthusiasm in Catholic Europe. Within a year, tens of thousands of people, both commoners and aristocrats, departed for the military campaign. Individual crusaders' motivations to join the crusade varied, but some of them probably left Europe to make a new permanent home in the Levant. Alexios cautiously welcomed

23607-508: The link of their prospects to a single master generated extreme loyalty. In the context of Middle Eastern politics this made them more trustworthy than relatives. Eventually, some mamluk descendants climbed the Muslim hierarchy to become king makers or even dynastic founders. In the mid-11th   century, a minor clan of Oghuz Turks named Seljuks , after the warlord Saljūq from Transoxiana , had expanded through Khurasan , Iran , and on to Baghdad. There, Saljūq's grandson Tughril

23790-460: The main army and headed to the Euphrates river, engaging in local politics and seizing the fortifications of Turbessel and Rawandan , where the Armenian populace welcomed him. Thoros, then ruler of this territory, could barely control or defend Edessa, so he tried to hire the Franks as mercenaries. Later, he went further and adopted Baldwin as his son in a power-share arrangement. In March 1098,

23973-400: The major division in the society was not between the nobility and the common people but between the Franks and the indigenous peoples. Despite sometimes receiving homage from, and acting as regent for, the rulers of the other states; the king held no formalised overlord status, and those states remained legally outside the kingdom. Jews, Christians, and Muslims respected Palestine, known as

24156-766: The military operations in Egypt. Weeks before Shirkuh died in 1169, the Fatimid caliph Al-Adid made him vizier. His nephew Saladin , who ended the Shi'ite caliphate when Al-Adid died in September 1171, succeeded Shirkuh. In March 1171, Amalric undertook a visit to Manuel in Constantinople to get Byzantine military support for yet another attack on Egypt. To this end, he swore fealty to the Emperor before his return to Jerusalem, but conflicts with Venice and Sicily prevented

24339-484: The more popular Godfrey from assuming the throne, but Godfrey adopted the title Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri ('Defender of the Holy Sepulchre') when he was proclaimed the first Frankish ruler of Jerusalem. In Western Europe an advocatus was a layman responsible for the protection and administration of church estates. The foundation of these three crusader states did not change the political situation in

24522-406: The most prestigious Maronite school at that time whose pupils included Butrus al-Bustani . Several bouts of headaches compelled him to end his studies there before the end of the year, after which his brother As'ad took his place. After As'ad graduated in 1818 Tannus studied ethics with him. Tannus began his career in commerce in 1818, engaging in business in Damascus where he also represented

24705-652: The natural and political geography of Mount Lebanon, documented the genealogies of its feudal families, and chronicled the history of its rule by families, such as the Buhturids , the Ma'ns , the Assafs , the Sayfas and the Shihabs. His chronicle has been one of the main sources for modern-day histories of Mamluk and Ottoman Lebanon. Tannus was likely born around 1794. He was the eldest of five sons of Abu Husayn Yusuf al-Shidyaq,

24888-455: The neighbouring lands; and France. Germany was divided into duchies , such as Lower Lorraine and Saxony , and their dukes did not always obey the emperors. Northern Italy was even less united, divided into numerous de facto independent states, and the authority of the emperor was barely felt. Carolingian's western successor state, France, was not united either; the French kings only controlled

25071-542: The next decades. Raymond of Poitiers joined forces with the Nizari and Joscelin with the Rum Seljuks against Aleppo. Nur ad-Din invaded Antioch and Raymond was defeated and killed at Inab in 1149. The next year Joscelin was captured and tortured and later died. Beatrice of Saone , his wife, sold the remains of the County of Edessa to the Byzantines with Baldwin's consent. Already 21 and eager to rule alone, Baldwin forced Melisende's retirement in 1152. In Antioch, Constance resisted pressure to remarry until 1153 when she chose

25254-626: The next year. At that point his authority was expanded to include the tax farms for all the districts of northern Mount Lebanon, excluding the city of Tripoli. The governor of Tripoli and a former dependent of the Assafs, Yusuf Sayfa , was also the chieftain of Akkar and thus a fiscal subordinate of Muhammad. He resolved to eliminate the Assaf emir and take over his territory. He refused to pay his tax arrears and when Muhammad moved against him in 1591, Sayfa had him assassinated. Afterward Sayfa married his widow and took over Assaf properties in Ghazir and gained

25437-723: The north of Nahr al-Mu'amalatayn, in return for annual payment. Administratively, the Kisrawan became a nahiya (subdistrict) of the Sidon-Beirut Sanjak (Sidon-Beirut District) of the Damascus Eyalet (Damascus Province). Through the following several years the Kisrawan experienced peace and prosperity while conditions in the Druze Mountain to its south (i.e. the districts of the Matn, Gharb, Jurd and Chouf) were characterized by chaos and punitive expeditions by

25620-543: The offensive on each occasion. As Edessa was Mosul's chief rival, Mawdud directed two campaigns against the city. They caused havoc, and the county's eastern region could never recover. The Syrian Muslim rulers saw the Sultan's intervention as a threat to their autonomy and collaborated with the Franks. After an assassin, likely a Nizari, murdered Mawdud, Muhammad Tapar dispatched two armies to Syria, but both campaigns failed. As Aleppo remained vulnerable to Frankish attacks,

25803-779: The offensive, recapturing Antioch in 969, after three centuries of Arab rule, and invading Syria. Turkic brigands and their Byzantine, also often ethnically Turkic, counterparts called akritai indulged in cross-border raiding. In 1071, while securing his northern borders during a break in his campaigns against the Fatimid Caliphate, Sultan Alp Arslan defeated Byzantine Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes at Manzikert . Romanos' capture and Byzantine factionalism that followed broke Byzantine border control. This enabled large numbers of Turkic warbands and nomadic herders to enter Anatolia . Alp Arslan's cousin Suleiman ibn Qutulmish seized Cilicia and entered Antioch in 1084. Two years later, he

25986-515: The offer. Baldwin had four daughters. In 1126, Bohemond reached the age of majority and married the second-oldest, Alice , in Antioch. Aleppo had plunged into anarchy, but Bohemond II could not exploit this because of a conflict with Joscelin. The new atabeg of Mosul Imad al-Din Zengi seized Aleppo in 1128. The two major Muslim centres' union was especially dangerous for the neighbouring Edessa, but it also worried Damascus's new ruler, Taj al-Muluk Buri . Baldwin's eldest daughter Melisende

26169-463: The office for considerable periods through the late 17th and early 18th centuries. During this period, Abu Nawfal divided his estate in the Kisrawan among his eight sons. The sons and their descendants mainly based themselves in the villages of Ghosta , Ajaltoun and Zouk Mikael, and to a lesser extent Daraoun and Sahel Alma. Khazen domination of the Kisrawan facilitated its demographic transition into an overwhelmingly Maronite-populated region. Besides

26352-424: The old Islamic conflict between Sunni and Shia made the Muslim peoples more likely to wage war on each other than on Christians. The Byzantines augmented their armies with mercenaries from the Turks and Europe. This compensated for a shortfall caused by lost territory, especially in Anatolia. In 1095 at the Council of Piacenza , Emperor Alexios I Komnenos requested support from Pope Urban II against

26535-402: The other four being Mansur, As'ad, Ghalib and Faris . The Shidyaqs were learned Maronite laymen originally from ancient Syria and later resident in the Keserwan area of central Mount Lebanon . Members of the family served as teachers and clerks for the Muslim, Christian and Druze nobility of Mount Lebanon and its environs from the early 17th century. Their education and relationships with

26718-428: The patronage of the Khazen chiefs, Maronite migration made the community the majority group in the Kisrawan. Likely during the 18th century, a proportion of the remaining Twelver Shias there converted to Maronite Christianity. Unlike in the parts of Mount Lebanon south of the Kisrawan where Druze landlords held sway, many of the Maronite peasants in the Kisrawan owned their agricultural property. Western travelers estimated

26901-430: The present day. The Khazens lost their grip over the region during a peasants' revolt led by Tanyus Shahin , who declared a republic over the Kisrawan in 1859. Although the Kisrawani militia played a key role sparking the 1860 Mount Lebanon civil war , the area largely avoided the bloodshed and destruction of that conflict. Shahin was defeated and disbanded the republic after his defeat by Youssef Karam in 1861. During

27084-438: The rebellion of Ali Janbulad of Aleppo, Fakhr al-Din allied with the rebels and took over the Kisrawan in 1606, following the flight of Sayfa from Tripoli. He installed Yusuf al-Muslimani as his deputy over the subdistrict. When Fakhr al-Din fled Mount Lebanon for Tuscany during an Ottoman punitive expedition in 1613, the Kisrawan was restored to the Sayfas by the commander of the expedition, Hafiz Ahmed Pasha . The following year

27267-444: The regency of Antioch for the absent Bohemond   II. Public opinion attributed a series of disasters affecting the Outremer—defeats by enemy forces and plagues of locusts—as punishments for the Franks' sins. To improve moral standards, the Jerusalemite ecclesiastic and secular leaders assembled a council at Nablus and issued decrees against adultery, sodomy, bigamy, and sexual relations between Catholics and Muslims. A proposal by

27450-536: The regency of Edessa. The Byzantines took the opportunity to reconquer Cilicia. They took the port but not the citadel of Laodikeia . Bohemond returned to Italy to recruit allies and gather supplies. Tancred assumed leadership in Antioch, and his cousin Richard of Salerno did the same in Edessa. In 1107, Bohemond crossed the Adriatic Sea and failed in besieging Dyrrachion in the Balkan Peninsula . The resulting Treaty of Devol forced Bohemond to restore Laodikeia and Cilicia to Alexios, become his vassal and reinstate

27633-476: The region was part of the amal (subdistrict) of Baalbek, which was part of the al-Safaqa al-Shamaliyya (Northern Region) of Mamlakat Dimashq (Damascus Province). According to Salibi, it was part of the amal of Beirut, part of the same region and province. In the aftermath of the Crusader withdrawal from the Levant, the mountaineers of the Kisrawan frequently blocked the coastal road between Tripoli and Beirut and harassed passing Mamluk troops. The Mamluks launched

27816-404: The region, Shahin assaulted and looted Shia villages in the Kisrawan and Byblos hills in late 1859. In May 1860, Shahin's militiamen intervened on the side of Christian villagers in the neighboring Matn region to the south during clashes with their Druze counterparts. The tit-for-tat clashes spiraled into a full-scale civil war mainly between the Druze and the Christians of Mount Lebanon. Despite

27999-434: The richest heiress of the kingdom, and gaining Galilee. Nur ad-Din's empire quickly disintegrated. His eunuch confidant Gümüshtekin took As-Salih from Damascus to Aleppo. Gümüshtekin's rival, Ibn al-Muqaddam , seized Damascus but soon surrendered it to Saladin. By 1176, Saladin reunited much of Muslim Syria through warring against Gümüshtekin and As-Salih's relatives, the Zengids . That same year, Emperor Manuel invaded

28182-404: The right to an area's revenues as a salary and to provide for their troops, the Turkmens, like their Druze Buhturid neighbors to the south, held them on a practically inheritable basis. The Turkmens temporarily evacuated the Kisrawan for Ottoman -controlled Anatolia in 1366 to escape punishment by the Mamluks for failing to heed unspecified government orders. When the Circassian sultan Barquq

28365-432: The roads impassable. In 1130 Bohemond II was killed raiding in Cilicia, leaving Alice with their infant daughter, Constance . Baldwin II denied Alice control, instead resuming the regency until his death in 1131. On his deathbed Baldwin named Fulk, Melisende, and their infant son Baldwin   III joint heirs. Fulk intended to revoke the arrangement, but his favouritism toward his compatriots roused strong discontent in

28548-417: The rule of Emir Bashir Shihab II , general economic hardship, and the decreasing availability of land. Khazen power had been significantly diminished under Bashir. To meet the latter's increased tax demands and finance their attempt to consolidate their control over Kisrawan's silk production, the Khazens took loans from Beirut lenders and accumulated significant debts. Several family members became destitute in

28731-409: The second summarized the histories of the eight principal coastal towns of the Phoenicians , namely Tripoli , Batroun , Byblos, Jounieh , Beirut, Sidon , Tyre and Acre ; the third described the mountain's nine main rivers ; the fourth detailed the feudal districts of the mountain and the fifth was a table of the population. The second part of Akhbar al-a'yan was devoted to the genealogies of

28914-434: The sheikhs to flee the village, and the peasants under Shahin subsequently plundered the Khazens' estates. Shahin and his men proceeded to attack the Khazens in other villages with little blood spilled in the process, with the exception of the wife and daughter of a Khazen sheikh who were killed in Ajaltoun in July during a raid on their home by the peasants. The Maronite patriarch, Paul Peter Massad , condemned their killing as

29097-565: The siege after Raymond's death in 1105. It was completed in 1109 when Raymond's son Bertrand arrived. Baldwin brokered a deal, sharing the territory between them, until William Jordan's death united the county. Bertrand acknowledged Baldwin's suzerainty, although William Jordan had been Tancred's vassal. When Bohemond was released for a ransom in 1103, he compensated Tancred with lands and gifts. Baldwin of Bourcq and his cousin and vassal, Joscelin of Courtenay , were captured while attacking Ridwan of Aleppo at Harran with Bohemond. Tancred assumed

29280-451: The site of the Isra' and Mi'raj , Muhammad's miraculous night travel and ascension to Heaven. Places associated with holy people developed into shrines visited by pilgrims coming from faraway lands, often as an act of penance . The surge in Christian pilgrimage also inspired many Jews to return to the Holy Land. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built to commemorate Christ's crucifixion and resurrection in Jerusalem. The Church of

29463-410: The start of Ottoman rule, the Kisrawan was sparsely populated. Maronites from the north increasingly moved into the region through the 16th century, such that they nearly equaled the number of Twelver Shia there by the 1569 census. It showed Muslims, presumably Twelver Shias, and Christians, presumably Maronites, comprising 43% and 38% of the Kisrawan's 892 households. By around the mid-17th century, under

29646-408: The succession. Back in Antioch, Bohemond kidnapped Ruben of Cilicia and forced him into becoming his vassal. Saladin signed a four-year truce with Jerusalem and attacked Mosul. He could not capture the city but extracted an oath of fealty from Mosul's Zengid ruler, Izz al-Din Mas'ud , in March 1186. A few months later, Baldwin   V died, and a power struggle began in Jerusalem. Raymond summoned

29829-415: The tax collection rights the family obtained on a practically inheritable basis, the Khazens monopolized the silk trade in Kisrawan, fostering sericulture there and the migration of Maronite peasants from northern Mount Lebanon. Frustration had been mounting among the peasants of the Kisrawan from the mid-19th century, due to the burdens of corvée (unpaid labor for a landlord) that had been imposed during

30012-486: The tax farm of the Kisrawan. Hubaysh influence took a decisive blow, with Sulayman Hubaysh and his nephews Mansur and Muhanna arrested and executed by Sayfa. The Shia Hamade clan gained influence in their place under Sayfa rule. The takeover of the Kisrawan by Sayfa caused consternation with the provincial government in Damascus. It viewed the district's control by the governor of Tripoli (Sayfa) as effectively separating it from Damascene administration. Further, by controlling

30195-451: The term "Outremer" as a synonym, derived from the French word for overseas . By 1098, the Crusaders' armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem was passing through the Syria region . Edessa, under the rule of Greek Orthodoxy , was subject to a coup d'état in which the leadership was taken over by Baldwin of Boulogne , and Bohemond of Taranto remained as the ruling prince in the captured city of Antioch . The siege of Jerusalem in 1099 resulted in

30378-415: The throne under their control. To thwart their coup, he sanctioned her marriage to Guy of Lusignan , a young aristocrat from Poitou . Guy's brother Aimery held the office of constable of Jerusalem , and their family had close links to the House of Plantagenet . Baldwin's mother and her clique marginalised Raymond, Bohemond and the influential Ibelin family . To prepare for a military campaign against

30561-491: The tribute that Damascus' former rulers had offered to the Jerusalemite kings. Baldwin extracted tribute from the Egyptians as well. Raynald lacked financial resources. He tortured the Latin Patriarch of Antioch , Aimery of Limoges , to appropriate his wealth and attacked the Byzantine's Cilician Armenians. When Emperor Manuel I Komnenos delayed the payment he had been promised, Raynald pillaged Byzantine Cyprus . Thierry, Count of Flanders , brought military strength from

30744-412: The two rulers' forces. At a leadership conference, including the widowed Melisende and her son Baldwin   III, they agreed to attack Damascus rather than attempt to recover distant Edessa. The attack on Damascus ended in a humiliating defeat and retreat. Scapegoating followed the unexpected failure, with many westerners blaming the Franks. Fewer crusaders came from Europe to fight for the Holy Land in

30927-437: Was 13 and a leper . The accession of underage rulers led to disunity both in Jerusalem and in Muslim Syria. In Jerusalem, the seneschal Miles of Plancy took control, but unknown assailants murdered him on the streets of Acre. With the baronage's consent, Amalric's cousin, Raymond   III of Tripoli, assumed the regency for Baldwin   IV as bailli . He became the most powerful baron by marrying Eschiva of Bures ,

31110-451: Was a massive defeat for the Franks. Nearly all the major Frankish leaders were taken prisoner, but only Raynald and the armed monks of the military orders were executed. Raymond was among the few Frankish leaders who escaped captivity. He fell seriously ill after reaching Tripoli. Within months after Hattin, Saladin conquered almost the entire kingdom. The city of Jerusalem surrendered on 2   October 1187. There were no massacres following

31293-419: Was administered from Baalbek . Mu'awiya I , the governor of the Levant in 639–661 and first Umayyad caliph ( r.  661–680 ), settled Persian civilians and soldiers from other parts of the Levant in Baalbek and Tripoli . These Persian settlers had remained in the Levant after the Byzantines reconquered the region from the Persian Sasanian Empire and converted to Islam after the Muslim conquest in

31476-406: Was decentralised, polyglot, and multi-national. A junior Seljuk ruling a province as an appanage was titled malik , Arabic for king. Mamluk military commanders acting as tutors and guardians for young Seljuk princes held the position of atabeg ('father-commander'). If his ward held a province in appanage, the atabeg ruled it as regent for the underage malik . On occasion,

31659-474: Was deserting) told him defeat was imminent. In June 1098, Bohemond persuaded a renegade Armenian tower commander to let the crusaders into the city. They slaughtered the Muslim inhabitants and, by mistake, some local Christians. The crusade leaders decided to return Antioch to Alexios as they had sworn to at Constantinople, but when they learnt of Alexios' withdrawal, Bohemond claimed the city for himself. The other leaders agreed, apart from Raymond, who supported

31842-529: Was endemic, and a new class of mounted warriors, the knights , emerged. Many built castles, and their feuds brought much suffering to the unarmed population. The development of the knightly class coincided with the subjection of the formerly free peasantry into serfdom, but the connection between the two processes is unclear. As feudal lordships could be established by the acquiring land, western aristocrats willingly launched offensive military campaigns, even against faraway territories. Catholic Europe's expansion in

32025-422: Was granted the title sultan —'power' in Arabic —by the Abbasid Caliph . The caliphs kept their legitimacy and prestige, but the sultans held political power. Seljuk success was achieved by extreme violence. It brought disruptive nomadism to the sedentary society of the Levant, and set a pattern followed by other nomadic Turkic clans such as the Danishmendids and the Artuqids . The Great Seljuk Empire

32208-405: Was his heir. He married her to Fulk of Anjou , who had widespread western connections useful to the kingdom. After Fulk's arrival, Baldwin raised a large force for an attack on Damascus. This force included the leaders of the other crusader states, and a significant Angevin contingent provided by Fulk. The campaign was abandoned when the Franks' foraging parties were destroyed, and bad weather made

32391-450: Was killed in a conflict with the Great Seljuk Empire. Between 1092 and 1094, Nizam al-Mulk, the Sultan Malik-Shah , the Fatimid Caliph, Al-Mustansir Billah and the vizier Badr al-Jamali all died. Malik-Shah's brother Tutush and the atabegs of Aleppo and Edessa were killed in the succession conflict, and Suleiman's son Kilij Arslan I revived his father's Sultanate of Rum in Anatolia. The Egyptian succession resulted in

32574-401: Was overthrown by the Turkish Mamluks who had previously ruled the sultanate in 1289, the Turkmens supported the Turks, while their Buhturid rivals backed Barquq. The Turkmens assaulted the Buhturid domains, killing 130 Buhturids and sacking their lands and houses in the Gharb area southeast of Beirut. Barquq retook the sultanate in 1390 and dispatched Arab tribesmen from the Beqaa Valley to attack

32757-447: Was proclaimed by the Latin Church in 1095 in order to reclaim the Holy Land after it was lost to the 7th-century Arab Muslim conquest . Situated on the Eastern Mediterranean , the four states were, in order from north to south: the County of Edessa (1098–1144), the Principality of Antioch (1098–1268), the County of Tripoli (1102–1289), and the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1291). The three northern states covered an area in what

32940-496: Was read by the American missionary Eli Smith but whose whereabouts are currently unknown. He penned an unfinished book on the Turkish language in 1835 and summarized another work of al-Duwayhi's, Tarikh al-azmina (History of the Times), in 1845. Three years later he wrote a history of Arab and Islamic rulers, which is also lost. In 1850 Tannus wrote a history of his family, the principal source of his biography, entitled Tarikh wa a'mal banu ash-Shidyaq (History and Achievements of

33123-429: Was the chief Shi'ite power in Islam. The root of this was beyond cultural and racial conflict but originated in the splits within Islam following Muhammad's death. Sunnis supported a caliphal succession that began with one of his associates, Abu Bakr , while Shi'ites supported an alternative succession from his cousin and son-in-law, Ali . Islamic law granted the status of dhimmi , or protected peoples, to

33306-405: Was the cousin of both Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and Louis   VII of France. In 1176, Baldwin reached the age of 15 and majority, ending Raymond's regency. He revisited plans for an invasion of Egypt and renewed his father's pact with the Byzantines. Manuel dispatched a fleet of 70 galleys plus support ships to Outremer. As William had died, and Baldwin's health was deteriorating,

33489-414: Was the sole Frankish ruler to pursue an offensive policy. He attacked an Egyptian caravan and built a fleet for a naval raid into the Red Sea . Byzantine influence declined after Manuel died in 1180. Bohemond repulsed his Byzantine wife Theodora and married Sybil, an Antiochene noblewoman with a bad reputation. Patriarch Aimery excommunicated him and the Antiochene nobles who opposed the marriage fled to

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