The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon

by Ussama Makdisi

Focusing on Ottoman Lebanon, Ussama Makdisi shows how sectarianism was a manifestation of modernity that transcended the physical boundaries of a particular country. His study challenges those who have viewed sectarian violence as an Islamic response to westernization or simply as a product of social and economic inequities among religious groups. The religious violence of the nineteenth century, which culminated in sectarian mobilizations and massacres in 1860, was a complex, multilayered, subaltern expression of modernization, he says, not a primordial reaction to it.

Makdisi argues that sectarianism represented a deliberate mobilization of religious identities for political and social purposes. The Ottoman reform movement launched in 1839 and the growing European presence in the Middle East contributed to the disintegration of the traditional Lebanese social order based on a hierarchy that bridged religious differences. Makdisi highlights how European colonialism and Orientalism, with their emphasis on Christian salvation and Islamic despotism, and Ottoman and local nationalisms each created and used narratives of sectarianism as foils to their own visions of modernity and to their own projects of colonial, imperial, and national development. Makdisi's book is important to our understanding of Lebanese society today, but it also makes a significant contribution to the discussion of the importance of religious discourse in the formation and dissolution of social and national identities in the modern world.

Genres: History, Lebanon, Middle East, Religion, Nonfiction, Politics

280 pages, Paperback

First published June 19, 2000

Reviews

[Mostafa · Rating 4 out of 5]

كتاب تأسيسي جدًا في فهم ثقافة الطائفية في لبنان، يبدأ مقدسي من الطريق إلى أحداث 1860، وينتهي عندها.. هنا يحاول مقدسي أن يجيب عن أسئلة تتعلق بالجوهرانية الثقافية، وأيضًا يتعرض لمسألة الإصلاحات العثمانية، كيف نظر إليها الباب العالي، وكيف نظر إليها النخب، وكيف استقبلتها العوام وحاولت أن تتحرك على تخوم فهم خاطئ لها أدى في النهاية لقمع ثوراتها.. وفي النهاية، كيف كانت لبنان لمسرحًا لكل تلك التفاعلات في لحظة اليقظة الإمبريالية تجاه الشرق.. كذلك يتعرض مقدسي للحظة الإحتلال المصري الشام بالدرس ويناقشها بما لها وبما عليها دون أية تشنجات.. أعتقد أن الكتاب لا غنى عنه في قراءة التاريخ اللبناني إلى اللحظة الحاضرة

[Justin Michael James Dell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Makdisi is a gifted writer. He argues that the advent of sectarianism in modern Lebanon was a byproduct of modernity itself. Modernity was not the occasion for the eruption of a preexistent sectarianism, in other words. Makdisi never really defines "modernity," but I suppose the term stands in for the formation of the nation-state, nationalism, popular politics & issues of political representation - in short, the sweeping and profound geopolitical and domestic developments that followed in the wake of the French Revolution and permeated the globe. Makdisi credits romantic European travellers' tales about Lebanon and its history, combined with Ottoman reformism, with implanting sect-consciousness in the minds of the Lebanese. The thesis is compelling but not completely convincing, in my opinion. I feel that what should have been the most crucial part of Makdisi's argument was actually the most tenuous, namely I did not feel he cogently demonstrated from the primary sources that the Lebanese internalized either mythical notions of their own country and sect from European faux-anthropology or "Tanzimat" reformism from the Ottomans, during the critical years between 1840-1860. I realize Makdisi says they did, and he can point to some good sources in support of this premise, such as one Bishop Murad's "Notice Historique", but the quantity of source material testifying to this intellectual sea-change seem somewhat lacking. Perhaps this is due to the largely illiterate nature of nineteenth-century Lebanese society; written sources are probably pretty paltry. This possibly accounts for why the Lebanese come across as rather passive in this text, not in the terms of their actions (for they fought a brutal civil war, which Makdisi describes), but in terms of the silence of their intellectual voice.

[Karem Mahmoud · Rating 4 out of 5]

ان المؤرخ اسامة المقدسي قد نجح في تناول مرحلة اساسية من تاريخ لبنان او جبل لبنان بشكل ادق بصورة علمية ومحايدة (من وجهة نظر تأريخية بحتة) وقد نجح بشكل كبير على عكس الهوا المعتمد لدى العديد من المؤرخين الاولين الذين عكسوا ميولهم الدينية والسياسية على التاريخ.

من وجهة نظر الكاتب، فان الطائفية قد تولّدت خلال القرن التاسع عشر وتجلّت بشكل كبير في احداث ال١٨٦٠؛ غير انه بالرجوع الى منطق الاحداث والتاريخ فان مناطق عديدة في العالم قد شهدت او تشهد احداث مماثلة (دينية او عرقية او طبقية) غير ان التحدي الاساس بالنسبة للبنان هو في استخلاص العبر والاعتراف بان الطائفية هي سمة مرحلة تاريخية معينة ولا بد ان نتقدم منها الى اخر جديد متجدد يتجاوز الطائفية كحتمية تاريخية ليؤسس الى واقع اجتماعي جديد

كتاب يستحق المطالعة مع وجود العديد من المراجع التي اشار اليها الكاتب والتي تعين لمطالعة شيقة وتحليلية عن تاريخ لبنان والمشرق العربي.

[Amal Sherif · Rating 5 out of 5]

كتاب جيد يشرح اسباب الفتنة الطائفية التي حدثت في ١٨٦٠ في جبل لبنان ويوضح كيف لعبت القوى الغربية والإصلاحات العثمانية (التنظيمات) وقبلها الغزو المصري بقيادة إبراهيم باشا ابن محمد علي باشا حاكم مصر دور في التمهيد لما حدث لاحقا...
الكتاب يشرح دون تطويل أو تعقيد جذور ما حدث ويوضح كيف كان للإرساليات التبشرية وتدخل القوى الغربية ووقوف فرنسا بجانب الموارنة ووقوف الانجليز بجانب الدروز دور رئيسي في حدوث شقاق بين الجانبين وكيف تحولت مطالب شعبية إلى ازمة طائفية..

[AAE · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and convincing as a deep dive into the history of sectarian conflict in Mount Lebanon. In particular, I think it's successful in its goal of explaining how sectarianism is not an inherent, age-old nature of its people but was a new political, geographical and cultural project asserted by parties to advance their interests in a changing world. This world was in transition, and caught between factors including the appeal and identification to European powers as the Ottoman Empire waned, the partitioning of the regions along explicitly sectarian lines by those powers and the differing interpretations of the Tanzimat reforms, especially their relationship to the previous non-sectarian social hierarchy of elites.

It tells that story in Mount Lebanon conprehensively but efficiently, though it does assume a certain degree of background knowledge.

While I was initially sceptical of its argument despite knowing from speaking to people of the previous co-existence of mixed villages throughout history, I was turned around by the end. However, I was disappointed not to see any application or commentary to other contexts in the Middle East or indeed elsewhere and would be interested in seeing whether and how the framework of analysis holds up.

[Malcolm Murrell-Byrd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is great. The historical analysis and arguements that Makdisi gives are clear and well researched. However, whats needed are clearly defined meanings of certain concepts like modernism, modernity, nationalism, and so on. Interestingly though, Makdisi does open a door to history from below, rather than the copious histories that forget the people as autonomous and rational elements or complex events. Like all historical analysis to is hard work to write a history focusing on events and people on the ground. Its often the elites and literate in history that have there perspective recorded, thus the majority of people are imagined as mere pawns to larger powers. A small note to add is that I found a handful of miss-spellings and grammar mistakes which doesn't annoy or hinder me, the reader, but may bother the writer.

[Elle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A "classic", written by a well known scholar.

[Sinan Isik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very insightful and analytical. As pertinent today as when it was written.

[Mitch]

In a nutshell? Maronites and Druze (and Sunni and Shi'a and Christians and Jews) didn't engage in sectarian violence until they were pushed there. For instance, most communities in Mt. Lebanon were thoroughly mixed as far as religion goes, and if anything they were sorted by class and by which elites ruled them. Hell, Druze celebrated Maronite holidays and vice versa. But then you have French Christians who come in and are disgusted by how 'muslim' the Maronites are. They offer education and medicine, but only to Maronites. The British, in the great European proxy wars, support and arm the Druze. Elite Ottomans, Maronites, and Druzes all use this "clash of civilizations" narrative to get the stuff they want. Then all the responsible parties step back in shock when Maronite and Druzes start killing each other. How do the Euros and elites explain that without looking in the mirror? "These sectarian peoples, all they want to do it kill each other. that's how it's always been." That's where we get the myth that ethnoreligious groups in the Middle East have been killing each other "for a thousand years." Nope, bullshit. In Mt. Lebanon, it started between 1941-1960 when outsiders with their guns, medicine, education, and superior attitudes decided the Druze and Maronites shouldn't live with each other.