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Lebanon: A History, 600 - 2011
In this impressive synthesis, William Harris narrates the history of the sectarian communities of Mount Lebanon and its vicinity. He offers a fresh perspective on the antecedents of modern multi-communal Lebanon, tracing the consolidation of Lebanon's Christian, Muslim, and Islamic derived sects from their origins between the sixth and eleventh centuries.
The identities of Maronite Christians, Twelver Shia Muslims, and Druze, the mountain communities, developed alongside assertions of local chiefs under external powers from the Umayyads to the Ottomans. The chiefs began interacting in a common arena when Druze lord Fakhr al-Din Ma'n achieved domination of the mountain within the Ottoman imperial framework in the early seventeenth century. Harris knits together the subsequent interplay of the elite under the Sunni Muslim Shihab relatives of the Ma'ns after 1697 with demographic instability as Maronites overtook Shia as the largest community and expanded into Druze districts. By the 1840s many Maronites conceived the common arena as their patrimony. Maronite/Druze conflict ensued.
Modern Lebanon arose out of European and Ottoman intervention in the 1860s to secure sectarian peace in a special province. In 1920, after the Ottoman collapse, France and the Maronites enlarged the province into the modern country, with a pluralism of communal minorities headed by Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims. The book considers the flowering of this pluralism in the mid-twentieth century, and the strains of new demographic shifts and of social resentment in an open economy. External intrusions after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war rendered Lebanon's contradictions unmanageable and the country fell apart.
Harris contends that Lebanon has not found a new equilibrium and has not transcended its sects. In the early twenty-first century there is an uneasy duality: Shia have largely recovered the weight they possessed in the sixteenth century, but Christians, Sunnis, and Druze are two-thirds of the country. This book offers readers a clear understanding of how modern Lebanon acquired its precarious social intricacy and its singular political character.
The identities of Maronite Christians, Twelver Shia Muslims, and Druze, the mountain communities, developed alongside assertions of local chiefs under external powers from the Umayyads to the Ottomans. The chiefs began interacting in a common arena when Druze lord Fakhr al-Din Ma'n achieved domination of the mountain within the Ottoman imperial framework in the early seventeenth century. Harris knits together the subsequent interplay of the elite under the Sunni Muslim Shihab relatives of the Ma'ns after 1697 with demographic instability as Maronites overtook Shia as the largest community and expanded into Druze districts. By the 1840s many Maronites conceived the common arena as their patrimony. Maronite/Druze conflict ensued.
Modern Lebanon arose out of European and Ottoman intervention in the 1860s to secure sectarian peace in a special province. In 1920, after the Ottoman collapse, France and the Maronites enlarged the province into the modern country, with a pluralism of communal minorities headed by Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims. The book considers the flowering of this pluralism in the mid-twentieth century, and the strains of new demographic shifts and of social resentment in an open economy. External intrusions after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war rendered Lebanon's contradictions unmanageable and the country fell apart.
Harris contends that Lebanon has not found a new equilibrium and has not transcended its sects. In the early twenty-first century there is an uneasy duality: Shia have largely recovered the weight they possessed in the sixteenth century, but Christians, Sunnis, and Druze are two-thirds of the country. This book offers readers a clear understanding of how modern Lebanon acquired its precarious social intricacy and its singular political character.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 29, 2017
Harris does a good job organizing the complex history of Lebanon into a coherent narrative. He is especially good the delicate balance of power between the various religions, regions, and foreign invaders. Lebanon has a rich history that, in the era covered here, involves the Arab dynasties (Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid), the Mamluks, the Ottomans, France, Britain, Syria, the United States, and Israel. The various internal religious sects, traditionally 18 in number, include the Maronites, Greek and Armenian Orthodox Christians, Shi'ites, Sunni (the latter two in nearly equal proportion), and the enigmatic Druze.
It is a lot of material and each of the six chapters of this book could easily fill their own book. Indeed, my one complaint is that the density of information presented here makes the narrative difficult to follow at times. Still this book is an excellent overview and provides a good understanding of how modern Lebanon came to be.
It is a lot of material and each of the six chapters of this book could easily fill their own book. Indeed, my one complaint is that the density of information presented here makes the narrative difficult to follow at times. Still this book is an excellent overview and provides a good understanding of how modern Lebanon came to be.
May 31, 2019
It is apparent that the author possesses immense knowledge of the subject. I consider myself as someone quite familiar with Lebanese history in the later 2 decades or so and having read that part of the book, it seemed like the author rushed a bit in recounting the events. For instance, the emergence of Hezbollah, one of the big players in contemporary politics was mentioned only in passing. With regard to earlier history and mainly the reason why I bought this book. I found the narrative confusing, with the author jumping back and forth throughout the years without much warning to the reader. This style is difficult to follow considering this is a non-fiction, history book. I understand the ambition of explaining a thousand years of history in hundreds of pages, but this book is not for a reader unfamiliar with Lebanon history, but rather for someone who knows it and is looking for an addition.
October 18, 2015
Very well-researched. Very academic. But, I was looking for a history for a more casual reader and this was not it.
August 21, 2021
Clearly a very well researched work containing a huge breadth of information, but written in a more academic style that may not be engaging to all readers. I would recommend it for the sections on pre-independence history as it is more detailed than most works you will find, but there are probably better works on Lebanon's post-independence history.
April 7, 2014
1,400 years of heartbreak punctuated by moments of beauty. Harris does an admirable job trying to capture it all though the opening is marred a bit on long recitations of tax contracts and minor players that form constellations about each. The section on the civil war of 1975-90 was blinding fast tour through tragedy.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews