Corrupting the Sublime Sultanate: The Revolt of Tanyus Shahin in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon

Comparative Studies in Society and History

Volumn 42, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 180-208

  Makdisi, Ussama ^a  

^a RICE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84937326918     PISSN: 00104175     EISSN: 14752999     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0010417500002644     Document Type: Article

References (99)

1. For the case of India, see Gyan Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992)
2. Sandria B. Freitag, Collective Action and Community (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).
3. For Spain, see David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
4. Karl Marx, Collected Works, Volume 17 1858–1860 (New York: International Publishers, 1981), 429.
5. The fullest account of the violence of 1860 may be found in Leila Fawaz, An Occasion for War: Civil Conflict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1994).
6. Moshe Maoz, “Communal Conflicts in Ottoman Syria during the Reform Era: The Role of Political and Economic Factors,” in Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society, ed. Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1982), 2:91–92.
7. The latest example of such historical writing is Yaron Harel's analysis of sectarian riots in Aleppo in 1850. See his “Jewish-Christian Relations in Aleppo,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 30 (February 1998):77–96.
8. For example, Georges Corm [Liban: les guerres de l'Europe et de l'Orient 1840–1992 (Paris: Gallimard, 1992)] sees the conflict as an extension of an unrecognized geopolitical struggle of the nineteenth century (une géopolitique néconnue) between European powers and the Ottoman Empire. See also Bulus Nujaym (M. Jouplain), who repeatedly points to an Ottoman “plot” to destabilize “Lebanon” in his La Question du Liban: Étude d'histoire diplomatique et de droit international (Paris: Librairie nouvelle de droit et de jurisprudence, 1908).
9. See James A. Reilly, “Inter-Confessional Relations in Nineteenth-Century Syria: Damascus, Homs and Hama compared,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 7 (1996):213–24, for a recent criticism of primordialist historiography.
10. See also Bruce Masters, “The 1850 Events in Aleppo: An Aftershock of Syria's Incorporation into the Capitalist World System,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 22 (1990):3–20, for an analysis of the sectarian violence in Aleppo as a “reaction” to economic instability.
11. For 1860, a classic account is Dominique Chevallier's “Western Development and the Eastern Crisis in the Mid-nineteenth Century: Syria Confronted with the European Economy,” in The Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East, ed. William R. Polk and Richard L. Chambers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 205–222.
12. This article is part of a larger work on the origins of sectarianism as a modern practice and discourse. See Ussama Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History and Violence in Ottoman Lebanon (forthcoming, University of California Press).
13. For a good summary of the subaltern studies perspective and its manifold contributions to postcolonial criticism, see Gyan Prakash, “Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism,” The American Historical Review 99 (1994):1475–1490.
14. For a criticism of the subaltern studies approach, see C. A. Bayly, “Rallying Around the Subaltern,” Journal of Peasant Studies 16 (1988):110–120.
15. See Ranajit Guha, “The Prose of Counter-Insurgency,” in Selected Subaltern Studies, ed. Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 45–86
16. Sarah Suleri, The Rhetoric of English India (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992) for a study of what she calls “narratives of anxiety,” which reflect colonialists' terror, rather than dominance, in India.
17. Albert Hourani, “Ottoman Reform and the Politics of Notables,” in The Modern Middle East: A Reader, ed. Albert Hourani, Philip S. Khoury, and Mary C. Wilson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 83–109.
18. Of course, the dichotomy of elitist knowledge/sensibility and commoner ignorance/unreasonableness is not restricted to Mount Lebanon. For example, the famous Egyptian chronicler’ Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti described the actions of the commoners in their October 1798 rebellion against French occupation in the following manner: “At this point the common people jabbered senselessly and behaved heedlessly. They did and said all kinds of unheard-of things. They fabricated all sorts of lies.” ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, Tarikh Muddat al-Faransis bi-Misr, ed. and trans. S. Moreh (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975), 97.
19. Quoted in Henri Guys, Beyrouth et le Liban: relation d'un séjour de plusieurs annees dans ce pays, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dar Lahad Khater, 1985 [1850]), 1:103.
20. Haydar Ahmad al-Shihabi, Lubnan fi ‘ahd al-umara'al-shihabiyyin, 3 vols., ed. Asad Rus-tum and Fouad E. Boustany (Beirut: Editions St. Paul, 1984), 1:3–4.
21. Ahmad Cevdet, Tarih-i Cevdet (Istanbul: Matbaa-i Osmaniye, 1302), 1–2:251.
22. Shihabi, Lubnan fi ‘ahd al-umara’, 1:128–134.
23. Mikhayil Mishaqa, “Al-Jawab ‘ala iqtirah al-ahbab,” trans. Wheeler M. Thackston as Murder, Mayhem, Pillage and Plunder: The History of the Lebanon in the 18th and 19th Centuries (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 12.
24. Alphonse de Lamartine, A Pilgrimage to the Holy Land (Delmar: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1978), 122.
25. Mishaqa, Al-Jawab, 21.
26. Tannus al-Shidyaq, Kitab akhbar al-ayan fi jabal lubnan, 2 vols. (Beirut: Publications de l'université libanaise, 1970 [1859]).
27. Shihabi, Lubnan fi ‘ahd al-umara’, 1:183.
28. Shihabi, Lubnan fi ‘ahd al-umara’, 1:184
29. Shihabi, Lubnan fi ‘ahd al-umara’, 1:14.
30. Mishaqa, Al-Jawab, 230.
31. For more information on Shidyaq, see A. L. Tibawi, American Interests in Syria, 1800–1901 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 38–40.
32. Mishaqa, Al-Jawab, 23.
33. Mishaqa, Al-Jawab, 49.
34. Abbas Abu Salih, Al-Tarikh al-siyasi lil-imara al-shihabiyya fi Jabal Lubnan, 1697–1842 (Beirut: 1984), 434.
35. Shihabi, Lubnan fi ‘ahd al-umara’, 1:162.
36. Mishaqa, Al-Jawab, 76.
37. Shihabi, Lubnan fi ‘ahd al-umara’, 2:531.
38. Nasif al-Yaziji, Risala tarikhiyya fi ahwal Lubnan fi ‘ahdihi al-iqta'i, ed. Qustantin al-Basha. (Harisa: Matba'at al-qiddis Bulus, 1936), 17. As with Byzantine custom, from which it may be derived, mutilation in Mount Lebanon was used to prevent potential rivals from seizing power, for according to Shihabi a blind person could not rule as emir.
39. Shihabi, Lubnan fi ‘ahd al-umara’, 1:127.
40. See Ranajit Guha, “The Prose of Counter-Insurgency,” in Selected Subaltern Studies for an extended analysis of colonialist and nationalist interpretations of popular unrest.
41. Nirenberg, Communities of Violence, 218.
42. Başbakanlik Archives, Istanbul (hereafter BBA). Hatt-i Hümayun. 191898-A. 19 N 1247.
43. Shihabi, Lubnan fi ‘ahd al-umara’, 1:170.
44. Shihabi, Lubnan fi ‘ahd al-umara’, 1:171.
45. Shihabi, Lubnan fi ‘ahd al-umara’, 3:689.
46. The full text of the decree is in Shihabi, Lubnan fi ‘ahd al-umara’, 3:692–693.
47. For a discussion of the celali revolts as a form of bargaining with the Ottoman state, as well as the limits of collective action in the early modern Ottoman state, see Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994).
48. See also Suraiya Faroqhi, Coping with the State: Political Conflict and Crime in the Ottoman Empire 1550–1720 (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1995), 35–37, for further discussion of political action by peasants in the seventeenth century.
49. Public Record Office (London). Foreign Office Archives. FO 78/1519. Moore to Bulwer, 9 May 1860. Moore insisted that the Kisrawan insurgents were being controlled by the Ottoman governor.
50. Mansur al-Hattuni, Nubdtha tarikhiyya fi al-muqata ‘a al-kisrawaniyya (Beirut: Dar Marun ’Abbud, 1987), 287.
51. Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 1876- 1909 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998), 9–10.
52. Fawaz, An Occasion for War, 45.
53. Khalaf, Lebanon's Predicament (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 40–44.
54. Yusuf Yazbak, Al-Judhur al-tarikhiyya lil-harb al-lubnaniyya (Beirut: Nawfal, 1993), 268.
55. This is Malcolm Kerr's description. The full phrase was a “self-appointed Robin Hood, half-literate dictator of the village proletariat.” Malcolm Kerr, Lebanon in the Last Years of Feudalism, 1840–1860: A Contemporary Account by Antun Dahir al-Aqiqi and Other Documents (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1959), 22.
56. Yazbak claims that through his connection with the priest, Yuhanna Habib, Shahin picked up a few words of Italian. Yazbak, Al-Judhur al-tarikhiyya, 268.
57. This information…tentative at best…comes from Yazbak, who quotes another writer, Yusuf Mubarak, who collected testimony on Shahin's life from a variety of unnamed local sources, including interviews with older villagers who remembered Shahin from their youth. Yazbak, Al-Judhur al-tarikhiyya, 267.
58. Kerr's translation in Lebanon in the Last Years of Feudalism, 139.
59. Asad Rustum, ed., Al-Usul al- ‘arabiyya li tarikh Suriyya fi ’ahd Muhammad ‘Ali Basha, 5 vols. (Beirut: Editions St. Paul, 1988), 3–4:271.
60. The local elites also offered their own understandings of the Tanzimat, which were not always compatible with the Tanzimat officials. For more information, see Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism.
61. For more details on the Kisrawan revolt, see Yehoshua Porath's “The Peasant Revolt of 1858–1861 in Kisrawan,” Asian and African Studies 2 (1966):77–157.
62. Archives du Patriarchat Maronite (Bkirke, Lebanon). Tiroir du Patriarche Bulus Mas'ad, Documents de l'années 1857–1861 (hereafter referred to as AB).
63. Drawer of Bulus Mas'ad, n.d. but probably 1859
64. AB. Drawer of Bulus Mas'ad, 7 February 1859
65. AB. Drawer of Bulus Mas'ad, 14 March 1859.
66. Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (Belfast). D 1071 H/C/1/1/13. This is an English translation found in the private papers of Lord Dufferin at the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland. The original Arabic document is missing. The reference to the “Seven Sovereigns” is not clear.
67. AB. Drawer of Bulus Mas'ad, n.d. but presumably in 1859.
68. Antun Dahir al-'Aqiqi, Thawra wa Fitna fi Lubnan: Safha majhula min tarikh al-jabal min 1841 ila 1873, ed. Yusuf Ibrahim Yazbak (Beirut: Matba'at al-Ittihad, 1938), 162–163.
69. For earlier examples of this strategy, see Faroqhi, Coping with the State, 16.
70. ‘Aqiqi, Thawra wa fitna, 160–162.
71. AB. Drawer of Bulus Mas'ad, 4 May 1860.
72. Philippe and Farid al-Khazin, eds., Majmu'at al-Muharrarat al-siyasiyya wa al-mufawadat al-duwaliyya ‘an Suriyya wa Lubnan, 3 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-ra'id al-lubnani, 1983 [1910]), 1:384. Hereafter referred to as MS.
73. Bulus Mas'ad, ed., Al-Majma’ al-baladi (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1959), 29.
74. Al-Majma’ al-baladi., 35.
75. Al-Majma’ al-baladi, 15–16, 22.
76. Al-Majma’ al-baladi., 15–16, 26.
77. See Porath, “The Peasant Revolt in Kisrawan,” 133–47, for a detailed discussion of the role of the clergy in the Kisrawan rebellion.
78. AB. Drawer of Bulus Mas'ad, 18 May 1860. One of the most commonly repeated myths is that the patriarch was sympathetic to the insurgents because he was himself from “peasant-stock,” a phrase that was first mentioned by Charles Churchill in The Druzes and Maronites under the Turkish Rule from 1840 to 1860 (London: Garnet Publishing, 1994 [1862]) and accepted by almost every historian since, despite the fact that there is no indication from the documents of the Maronite Patriarchate that Mas'ad was in fact sympathetic to Tanyus Shahin.
79. MS, 1:385.
80. AB. Drawer of Bulus Mas'ad, 4 March 1859.
81. AB. Drawer of Bulus Mas'ad, 9 May 1860.
82. Husayn Ghadban Abu-Shaqra and Yusuf Khattar Abu Shaqra, Al-Harakat fi Lubnan ila'ahd al-Mutasarrifiyya, ed. ‘Arif Abu Shaqra (Beirut: Matba'at al-ittihad, 1952), 103.
83. See Butrus al-Bustani's Muhit al-muhit (Beirut: Librarie du Liban, 1987), 123.
84. See also R. Dozy's Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes, 2 vols. (Beirut: Librarie du Liban, 1991 [1881]), 1:229.
85. Churchill, The Druzes and the Maronites Under the Turkish Rule, 131.
86. AB. Drawer of Bulus Mas'ad, n.d, but most probably September 1859.
87. AB. Drawer of Bulus Mas'ad, 17 August 1859. In this instance, ‘Awn was referring to a Druze-Maronite intercommunal clash in Bayt Miri in 1859.
88. The Druzes and the Maronites Under the Turkish Rule
89. AB. Drawer of Bulus Mas'ad, 2 April 1860. Two popular sayings that the letter draws upon are, “People will not respect him who does not respect himself,” and “For a young man to die in his glorious prime is his wedding, and for him to live in scarcity and humiliation is his funeral.”
90. See Anis Freyha, A Dictionary of Modern Lebanese Proverbs (Beirut: Librarie du Liban, 1995 [1974]), 111, 691.
91. AB. Drawer of Bulus Mas'ad, 2 April 1860.
92. Tanzimat-era and subsequent Turkish republican historians have held that Shahin's uprising was the antithesis of the liberal intent of the Tanzimat. Such a reading, however, not only blatantly privileges an imperial standpoint by recognizing only one legitimate Istanbul-centered articulation of the Tanzimat, it also obfuscates how Shahin himself was an expression of, rather than a reaction to, the Tanzimat. See, for example, M. Tayyib Gökbilgin's essay, “1840'dan 1861'e kadar Cebel-i Lübnan Meselesi ve Dürziler,” Belleten 10 (1946):641–703.
93. It has often been assumed that the French presence in Ottoman Lebanon inculcated the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. There is no evidence to support such an assertion, which als o assumes that the French monks and consuls disseminated revolutionary doctrines, and misses the point that for most French travelers and missionaries Mount Lebanon was a haven from revolution. For one contemporary, negative Christian understanding of the French Revolution, see Shi-habi, Lubnan fi ‘ahd al-umara’, 3:551.
94. Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Paris. AE CPC/B Vol. 12, No. 18, Bentivoglio to Thouvenel, 7 January 1860.
95. AB. Drawer of Bulus Mas'ad, 12 January 1860.
96. These lines are quoted by Yazbak, Al-Judhur al-tarikhiyya, 133.
97. AB. Drawer of Bulus Mas'ad, 12 June 1859.
98. AB. Drawer of Bulus Mas'ad, n.d. but probably in 1859 after the Khazins had been expelled from most of Kisrawan.
99. I take up this theme in much greater length in my book, The Culture of Sectarianism.