Youssef Alvarenga Cherem, Danny Zahreddine Integraon, conict, and autonomy among religious minories in the late Ooman Empire:

the Greek-Catholic (Melkite) Church and sectarian turmoil in Mount Lebanon and Damascus

Integration, conﬂict, and autonomy among

religious minorities in the late Ottoman

Empire: the Greek-Catholic (Melkite)

Church and sectarian turmoil in Mount

Lebanon and Damascus

Integración, conﬂicto y autonomía entre las minorías

religiosas a ﬁnales del Imperio Otomano: la Iglesia greco-

católica (melquita) y la agitación sectaria en el Monte

Líbano y Damasco

Integração, conﬂito e autonomia entre as minorias no ﬁm

do Império Otomano: a Igreja Greco-Católica (Melquita) e

os confrontos sectários no Monte Líbano e em Damasco

Youssef Alvarenga Cherem

Danny Zahreddine

DOI: 10.5752/P.2317-773X.2020v8.n4.p59

Received in: September 04, 2020

Accepted in: November 16, 2020

A

The 19

century was a time of social and political upheaval for the Ottoman Em-

pire. To contend with dwindling territories, uprisings, unrest, and international

military, political, and economic pressure, it had to overcome structural decien-

cies in the armed forces, economy, and State bureaucracy that kept it lagging

behind its European counterparts. The modernizing impetus ultimately took the

form of full-edged legal and institutional reform by mid-century, transforming

but also unsettling the Ottoman State and society. In this article we discuss a

central component of those reforms and of the international relations of the

Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century: the legal status of non-Moslem

minorities. We frame our discussion in the analysis of two moments: the ocial

recognition of the Greek-Catholic (Melkite) religious community in 1848 and the

sectarian civil conict in Mount Lebanon and Damascus in 1860. The intersect-

ing vectors of economic religious and political interests in their local, regional

and international dimensions will be eshed out, evincing a more nuanced and

multilayered, and less monolithic and state-centered, approach toward the inter-

national relations of the late Ottoman Empire and the working of its institutions.

Keywords: Ottoman Empire. Religion. Lebanon. Syria. Melkites. Druze.

1. BA in International Relations from the

Pontiﬁcal Catholic University of Minas

Gerais (2003), MA and PhD in Social

Anthropology from the State University

of Campinas (2005, 2010), currently

teaching at the Federal University of

São Paulo. His research focuses chieﬂy

on the History of the Middle East, Islam,

and anthropology of religion. ORCID:

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2516-9657

2. BA in International Relations from the

Pontiﬁcal Catholic University of Minas

Gerais, MA and PhD in Geography from

the Postgraduate Program in Spatial

Information Treatment (PUC Minas).

Professor at the Department of Inter-

national Relations at PUC Minas and a

permanent member of the Postgraduate

Program in International Relations (PUC

Minas). Leader of the Middle East and

Maghreb Study Group - CNPq (GEOMM).

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-

7400-0300.

estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 59-79

R

El siglo XIX fue una época de agitación social y política para el Imperio Otomano.

Para hacer frente a territorios perdidos, levantamientos, presiones y disturbios

militares, políticos y económicos internacionales, tuvo que superar las deciencias

estructurales en las fuerzas armadas, la economía y la burocracia estatal que lo

mantenían detrás de sus homólogos europeos. El impulso modernizador terminó

tomando la forma de una profunda reforma legal e institucional a mediados de si-

glo, transformando, pero también perturbando, el estado y la sociedad otomanos.

En este artículo, discutimos un componente crucial de estas reformas y relaciones

internacionales en el Imperio Otomano del siglo XIX: el estatus legal de las mi-

norías no musulmanas. Incluimos nuestro debate en el análisis de dos momentos:

el reconocimiento ocial de la comunidad religiosa greco-católica (melkita) en

1848 y el conicto civil sectario en Monte Líbano y Damasco en 1860. Discutire-

mos los vectores de intersección de intereses económicos, religiosos y políticos en

su dimensión local, regional e internacional, mostrando un enfoque más matiza-

do y multifacético y menos monolítico y estatocéntrico de las relaciones interna-

cionales del Imperio Otomano tardío y el funcionamiento de sus instituciones.

Palabras clave: Imperio Otomano. Religión. Líbano. Siria. Melquitas. Drusos.

R

O século XIX foi uma época de turbulência social e política para o Império Oto-

mano. Para lidar com perda territórios, levantes, distúrbios e pressões militares,

políticas e econômicas internacionais, ele teve de superar as deciências estruturais

nas forças armadas, na economia e na burocracia do Estado que o mantiveram

atrasado em relação aos seus homólogos europeus. O ímpeto modernizador acabou

assumindo a forma de uma profunda reforma jurídica e institucional em meados do

século, transformando, mas também perturbando, o Estado e a sociedade otoma-

nos. Neste artigo, discutimos um componente crucial dessas reformas e das relações

internacionais do Império Otomano no século XIX: o status jurídico das minorias

não muçulmanas. Enquadramos nossa discussão na análise de dois momentos: o

reconhecimento ocial da comunidade religiosa greco-católica (melquita) em 1848

e o conito civil sectário no Monte Líbano e Damasco em 1860. Os vetores de in-

tersecção de interesses econômicos, religiosos e políticos em suas dimensões locais,

regionais e internacionais serão iluminados, evidenciando uma abordagem mais

matizada e multifacetada e menos monolítica e estatocêntrica em relação às relações

internacionais do Império Otomano tardio e ao funcionamento de suas instituições.

Palavras-chave: Império Otomano. Religião. Líbano. Síria. Melquitas. Drusos

Introduction: The Ottoman Empire and the “Eastern Question”

The twilight of the eighteenth century did not bode well for the pros-

pects of the ruling House of Uthman in the coming decades, which wit-

nessed constant setbacks at the hands of European powers. The Ottomans

were pushed to make an alliance with Great Britain against the French in

Egypt (1798–1801), defeated in the long war for Greek independence (1822–

1829), then against their nominal subject, Muhammad

(Mehmet) Ali, ruler

of Egypt, whose dominions extended to most of the Ottoman Middle East

possessions and Sudan. Mehmet Ali’s army was only held back in Syria by

dint of British intervention. By then, both the Ottomans and the Egyp-

tian Khedive had soon realized that their destiny lied increasingly in their

ability to adapt, modernizing its army and State apparatus along the lines

of their European counterparts. The roots of reform lie earlier, in the ex-

3. Throughout this text we have opted

to employ a simpliﬁed transliteration of

Arabic words and names. Diacritics have

been suppressed, and long vowels, whe-

re needed, are marked as a grave accent

(^). Hamza is marked by a closing single

quote mark (’) and ‘ayn, by an opening

single quote mark (‘). Proper nouns follow

the most usual spelling in English.

Youssef Alvarenga Cherem, Danny Zahreddine Integraon, conict, and autonomy among religious minories in the late Ooman Empire:

the Greek-Catholic (Melkite) Church and sectarian turmoil in Mount Lebanon and Damascus

tinction of the Janissaries in 1826 and the formation of a modern army (Ni-

zam-e Jedid), and even before, in the massacre of the Mamluks by Mehmet

Ali in Cairo in 1811 and his far-reaching state-building reforms, but much

of the modernizing impetus that was to prove so momentous for future

developments was fostered by Sultan Abdulmejid I (reigned 1839–1861) and

continued under his brother and successor Abdulaziz (r. 1861–76).

The reforms needed to face the geopolitical and economic chal-

lenge meant a total overhaul of the Ottoman State apparatus through

modernization (new law codes, ministries, a new bureaucracy structure,

reform of the armed forces, a new taxation system, new land laws, etc.)

and the creation of an economic infrastructure (railways, ports, postal

service, banks, urbanization and industrialization).

Starting in the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire lagged behind

other European powers in terms of State revenue, a situation which is

congruent to their relative decit in armed power and a series of military

setbacks in the eighteenth century (KARAMAN; PAMUK, 2010). The

tax-farming system syphoned revenue away from the State. For a popu-

lation of around 20 million in the Balkans and Anatolia, it was estimated

that by 1809 State revenue “scarcely equalled 2.25 million British pounds

[…] By comparison, Britain, with only 9.5 million inhabitants in 1787-90

had an average annual revenue of 16.8 million pounds, while France with

a population of 24 million had revenues equal to 18 million pounds in 1787

and 24 million pounds in 1789” (LEVY, 1982, p. 239). Moreover, according

to Findley (2012, p. 56), the Ottoman bureaucracy totaled between a pal-

try 1,000 and 1,500 scribes by the end of the eighteenth century.

The diculty was compounded by rising costs of increasing and

maintaining a modern army, and ination.

Military reform depended

on scal (SHAW, 1975; KARAMAN; PAMUK, 2010), bureaucratic (FIND-

LEY, 2012), and economic modernization – all of which were interdepen-

dent. A crucial aspect was how to deal with concomitant rising costs and

plummeting revenue due to ination:

The Ottoman economy went through one of its worst periods between 1770 and

1840. Adjusted for ination, government expenditures may have tripled under

Selim and Mahmud. The government could not cope without reorganizing

and centralizing its nances. Still the eects of crisis were felt at all levels of the

economy, and Mahmud II carried out the most drastic coinage debasements in

Ottoman history (FINDLEY, 2010, p. 49).

The reformist wave was characteristically spearheaded by the sec-

tor linked to the government’s foreign relations. The reforms undertaken

by Sultan Abdulmejid I (r. 1839–1861) and his brother Abdulaziz I (r. 1861–

76) were implemented by the cosmopolitan elite, dubbed by Bunton and

Cleveland (2009) as the “French knowers” (in fact, Abdulmejid I himself

spoke French, and Abdulaziz was the rst sultan to visit Western Europe).

Momentous changes were brought about by the expansion of the Eu-

ropean State system, the capitalist economy (the free-trade Anglo-Ottoman

Treaty of 1838) and nationalism (autonomy and later independence of the Eu-

ropean provinces). The Ottoman Empire was deeply aected by these trends,

both within the power structure and regarding the Sublime Porte’s relation

to its subjects, throughout the 19th century. The entrance of the Ottoman

Empire in the “European Concert” (Treaty of Paris, 1856) inaugurates a pe-

4. In an ironic twist of history, “Ottoman

society rejected westernizing reform

in the reign of Selim III, but the same

society accepted it, in a deﬁnitive and

irreversible manner, less than two

decades later, in the reign of Mahmud II

(1808-1839).” (LEVY, 1982, p. 242).

estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 59-79

riod of thorough institutional reforms, known as Tanzimat, whose goal was

to modernize the State to face the long decline of the Empire’s relative power

on the European stage. One of the key constituents of the process of “reorga-

nization” or “restructuring” (whence the meaning of the word “Tanzimat”),

was the improved legal status of its non-Muslim subjects, enacted with the

direct participation of European powers in the drafting of their decrees – the

Edict of Gülhane of 1839 and the Reform Edict of 1856. It is important to bear

in mind that, although the Ottoman Empire had become a recognized actor

in international society and has never been directly colonized or completely

dominated by European powers, its very survival depended on a delicate in-

terplay between autonomy, reforms and international alliances, and its status

as a “second-class member” of the European Concert derives both from its

military and economic fragility and from the European balance of power

(Austria-Hungary, United Kingdom, France, Prussia / Germany, and Russia).

The Tanzimat period (1839-1876), the subsequent period of authoritar-

ianism under Sultan Abdulhamid (r. 1876-1909), as well as the turbulent peri-

od of the Young Turks Revolution (1909) and the First World War can be seen

as permeated by the interdependence of international relations and the Ot-

toman political system. As symbolic and economic exchanges with the West

deepened, structures and attitudes towards modernity, as well as political

currents, that emerged during this period would inform future generations.

In this context, interreligious relations are a privileged locus, a

“prism” for a reading of the modernization process and creation of mod-

ern states in the aftermath of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Issues

that arose during or immediately after this “long 19th century” are at the

root of modernization and state-building processes in Europe (Balkans,

Central and Eastern Europe) and the Middle East and North Africa.

In this article, we will deal specically with one of the main vec-

tors of autonomy vis à vis the central administration of the Empire, con-

stituting a crucial and sensitive feature of the internal and international

political landscape of the Ottoman Empire – the issue of non-Muslim

“minorities”. We shall rst briey sketch the symbolic and institutional

eld that dened these relations within the scope of the religious and le-

gal practices of Islam and regarding the political reforms of the Ottoman

Empire in the 19th century. The traditional hierarchical form of social

and political organization in the Empire will undergo profound changes

during the 19th century, under European inuence and internal reforms,

in the shadow of monumental economic and geopolitical challenges.

We shall then turn our attention to two case studies: the seemingly

inconsequential

and often overlooked establishment of the Melkite millet

in 1848 and the momentous sectarian conicts in Mount Lebanon in 1860 as

events that both reected and helped shape the course of modernization and

integration with the Western international/economic order. In both cases

we witness the dialectic between integration, conict, and autonomy, in a

delicate negotiation between communities and local authorities, the center

of power in Constantinople, and the European powers directly or indirectly

involved in this process. Finally, we conclude considering the impacts, con-

tinuities, and ruptures established in this process, which still echo in the so-

cial, political, and symbolic structure in some countries in the Middle East.

5. In hindsight, one could easily dismiss

and explain away the Melkite union

with the Roman Catholic Church and

its subsequent recognition as an auto-

nomous millet by the Ottoman Empire

as simply a result of European political,

economic and religious encroachment

upon native religious communities,

just one in a series of Churches in the

Middle East that split and united with

Rome (whence its slightly derogatory

epithet “Uniate Churches”). However, as

we shall endeavor to demonstrate, the

Melkite case presents its own cultural

and religious peculiarities, which cannot

be wholly subsumed into an economic

or political explanation of foreign

inﬂuence. Local and regional dynamics

(in politics, economy, and society) must

be given pride of place side by side

broader Mediterranean conﬂuences

with the European powers. Moreover,

the development of the Melkite Church

and its community has been taken as a

mere backdrop for other, more momen-

tous developments, such as the creation

of autocephalous (i.e., autonomous)

Orthodox Churches in the Balkans in the

latter half of the 19th century.

Youssef Alvarenga Cherem, Danny Zahreddine Integraon, conict, and autonomy among religious minories in the late Ooman Empire:

the Greek-Catholic (Melkite) Church and sectarian turmoil in Mount Lebanon and Damascus

Islamic attitudes toward other religions

The issue of tolerance of Islam toward other religions has been

extensively discussed (FRIEDMANN, 2003; CRONE, 2009; DERINGIL,

2000; GODDARD, 2000; SHARKEY, 2017; LITTLE, 1976; O’SULLIVAN,

2006; BAER; MAKDISI; SHRYOCK, 2009; BRAUDE; LEWIS, 1982, inter

alia). Among its most public and political features, some brief comments

are in order. Apologists of all hues, whether Muslim or not, are prone to

quote verse 2:256 of the Koran:

No compulsion is there in religion. Rectitude has become clear from error. So

whosoever disbelieves in idols and believes in God, has laid hold of the most rm

handle, unbreaking; God is All-hearing, All-knowing [Tr. Arberry]

Yet, the hermeneutical issue is not so easily settled. According to

Crone (2009), there are several traditional interpretations of this verse

(which were subsequently carried over or modied by modern exegetes):

• It was abrogated, because it had appeared at a time when Mu-

hammad should compromise with the population of Mecca,

since he had no power at the time.

• It was historically restricted and irrelevant afterwards: it

only meant that Muslims in Medina, at the time of the revelation

should not try to force their children to convert.

• It only applied to the so-called Peoples of the Book (“Ahl

al-Kitab”). The “pagans” only had two options, the sword or

the conversion). According to a contemporary expounder,

Amr Abd al-Aziz: “the verse was revealed specically about

Christians and Jews. Idolaters and similar godless and per-

missive people have to be compelled to adopt Islam, since

they cannot be accepted as dhimmis and do not deserve any

consideration because of their godlessness, stupidity, error

and foolishness” (apud Crone, 2009).

• It was descriptive, according to the mu’tazilites (an interpre-

tation later accepted by other groups): there was no compul-

sion for God, neither for Muslims nor for others. But men, for

various reasons, could force the practice (and not, by deni-

tion, belief). This served both for the good of the community

as a whole (the maintenance of an Islamic public order) and

for the descendants of the “convert”.

It was in the 19th-20th centuries that interpretations of this passage

took a new turn, to accommodate in a certain way the post-Enlighten-

ment Western perspective. Indeed, a similar mutation has occurred with

the concept of jihad in the XIX century, according to Cook (2015).

However, in many traditionalist clerical milieux there still persists

a variation of those historical interpretations. Crone sums up the theolog-

ical debate: “everybody is agreed that Islam goes in for religious freedom,

but not on what it means, except that Christians and Jews shouldn’t be

forced to convert. Everything else is unclear” (CRONE, 2009). What are

then, the features of this freedom given to the dhimmis – Jews, Christians

and possibly others –, whose religions can be tolerated)?

The Muslim attitude toward the so-called “Peoples of the Book” (Ahl

estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 59-79

al-Kitab) or “Protected People” (Ahl al-Dhimma) can be briey summa-

rized as ambiguous and supercilious. As noted by Ussama Makdisi (BAER;

MAKDISI; SHRYOCK, 2009), tolerance does not mean equality. There was

no policy of forced conversion for dhimmis, but one of subordination, es-

pecially in the public space. There was an expectation of a game between

visibility and invisibility, autonomy and submission, freedom and coercion.

The visibility of Jews and Christians should not be ostentatious, and could

frequently be discriminatory (such as sumptuary laws). There was autono-

my in the sense that the religious communities were allowed to follow their

own religious laws, chiey in the domain of personal status – yet this auton-

omy was also given to the Muslim communities (accounting for the abys-

mal gap between the State and society in the pre-modern period). In other

words, for most of the time the population was left to their own devices.

According to Sharkey:

Muslim leaders [...] combined tolerance on the one hand, with a scorn for and

persistent mild denigration of Christian beliefs on the other. This treatment,

combined subsequently with various inducements (such as tax breaks and profes-

sional opportunities), made conversion to Islam quite attractive for the Christian

people placed under Muslim rule (SHARKEY, 2017, p. 38).

In this context, a central feature of the Ottoman system of gov-

ernment came into play: the assimilation and integration of conquered

peoples, which composed an empire that spanned three continents, in-

cluding the central lands of the Islamic world.

Ethnic and religious diversity in the Ottoman Empire

Although the empire’s bureaucracy assimilated its various ethnic

components into a centralized Islamic-dynastic unity (the elite identify-

ing themselves as Ottoman, not Turkish), based on a religious premise

(the ocially recognized religious communities, the millets), there was a

split between ethnicity and religion in the various regions of the empire:

• Albanians could be Muslims (Sunnis, Bektashis), Orthodox

or Catholics; [FOOTNOTE: The Bektashis were a su order.

“Bektāšīs believed that formal worship was incumbent only

on outsiders (zahirler) and that the šarīa was not directed to

individuals, having rather the cosmic function of maintain-

ing order in the universe.” (ALGAR, 1989)]

• Bulgarians, Orthodox or Muslims (pomaks);

• Greeks and Bosnians could be orthodox or Muslim;

• Turks could be Sunnis, Shias or Sus (or variations and syn-

cretism between these divisions)

• There were Jews who converted to Islam (the Dönmeh);

• Kurds could be Sunnis or Yezidis;

• Jews could be Arabs (Mizrahim), Sephardic (Ladino speak-

ers, with a strong presence in Saloniki);

• There were orthodox “Greeks” (karamanlides) who wrote

Ottoman Turkish in the Greek alphabet;

Youssef Alvarenga Cherem, Danny Zahreddine Integraon, conict, and autonomy among religious minories in the late Ooman Empire:

the Greek-Catholic (Melkite) Church and sectarian turmoil in Mount Lebanon and Damascus

• Arabs could be Sunnis, Shiites, Druze, Alawites, Orthodox,

Catholics or Protestants...

The question is: who was the “Ottoman”? Was he Sadık Pasha, né Michael Izador

Czaykowski, a Polish count who entered the Ottoman service in the 1830s, con-

verted to Islam, and went on to pursue a distinguished military career? Or was

he Amir Bashir Shihab, a Christian Lebanese who in the early 1820s “practiced

Sunni Islam in public and Christianity in private, [and] allowed a Maronite priest

to take charge of his spiritual life”? Or was he the Druze and Alewi chieftain in

the Lebanese mountains who practiced taqiya (dissimulation), while “by centu-

ries old tradition” taking his disputes to Ottoman Sunni Shariat courts? Or was

he Grand Vizier Mehmed Sokollu (Sokolovič, 1505–1579), whose brother, the

monk Makarios, ruled as the Patriarch of the Serbian Church at Peč? (DERIN-

GIL, 2000, p. 550).

The very social fabric of Ottoman society, and even more of its

elite, was originally a “melting pot”, due to the intensive practice of hav-

ing concubine slaves and the devshirme. According to Peirce, after an ini-

tial period in which there were marriages to Anatolian potentate daugh-

ters (the rst two generations), no royal consort was Muslim or Turkish

(PEIRCE, 1993, p. 37). The attitude towards the conversion of non-Mus-

lims to Islam that seems to have predominated was essentially pragmat-

ic, especially when it came to skilled labor: in Deringil’s expression, “go

through the motions and you are accepted” (DERINGIL, 2000).

The two institutions that dealt with this internal and external plu-

rality were, respectively, the millet system and capitulations. Regarding

millets, although they were only formally characterized in the nine-

teenth century (BRAUDE, 1982), the traditional Islamic governance pol-

icy of the dhimmis provided more latitude than the European policy of

cuius regio, eius religio:

[W]hereas the Ottoman Empire was strict in its condition of political allegiance

but accommodated a religious allegiance out of state, the European countries

conated the two and deemed any religion other than the state religion a poten-

tial source of disloyalty or treason (BERGER, 2014, p. 161).

Yet one could also inversely argue that, once one excludes a reli-

gious group out of the legitimate participants of the political game, that

group is relegated to a dichotomous and subordinate position consisting

either of asserting an unwavering allegiance out of existential fear or en-

gaging in open rebellion. Either way, the French Revolution and subse-

quent policies that extended popular sovereignty would eventually make

this point moot.

This structure of recognition and autonomy, separation and sub-

ordination of religious communities would be aected by two contradic-

tory forces. The modernization brought about by the Tanzimat is inher-

ently unstable: on the one hand, there was a push for integration with a

certain legal equality between Muslim and non-Muslim subjects; on the

other hand, autonomy, privileges and socio-economic development were

linked to Europe (eventually leading to nationalism and independence).

We have chosen here to expound two cases that epitomize this tension:

the ocial recognition of the Greek-Catholic (Melkite) millet and the civ-

il war in Mount Lebanon in 1860.

estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 59-79

The establishment of the Melkite millet in 1848

The Greek Catholic or Melkite Church is a Byzantine rite Church

that separated from the Greek Orthodox and united with the Roman

Catholic Church in 1724. Most of them dwelt in cities, which were the

base of their bishoprics, and were Arabic speakers. Contrary to an “eth-

nic” theory for the split with the Orthodox, “the patriarchs and bishops

until 1724 were mostly of Arab origin” (WALBINER, 2003, p. 11).

The union with Rome is the result of a long process, in ts and

starts, enmeshed with local and international rivalries.

Already in 1684

Euthymius al-Ṣai, metropolitan of Tyre and Sidon, united with Rome.

His independence from the Orthodox patriarch of Antioch, who resides

in Damascus, was supported by local potentates and French merchants

(WALBINER, 2003, p. 11). Institutional build up and support by foreign

powers, missionaries, and local and international merchants was funda-

mental to strengthen the pro-Catholic cause among Orthodox commu-

nities. They made the mountains of Lebanon their rst strongholds: the

Monastery of the Savior (Dayr al-Mukhalliṣ), whose construction started

in 1708, and the Monastery of St. John, in Shuwayr (WALBINER, 2003, p.

11). In the period up to 1724, several metropolitans sent their professions

of faith to Rome, and the patriarchs had an ambiguous position toward

this trend. The crucial step in ocial communion with Latin Christen-

dom came from the important city of Aleppo, in present northwest Syria.

The presence of Western Catholic missions and socio-economic fac-

tors made the majority of the population of the city of Aleppo in the early sev-

enteenth century pro-Catholic. The election of the rst “ocially” Catholic

patriarch took place in 1724, when the Damascenes elected Seraphim Tânâs,

named patriarch under the name of Cyril VI. However, when the Sublime

Porte conrmed the election of the monk Sylvester (a Greek) to the patriar-

chy, Cyril ed to Shuwayr, where he was conrmed patriarch by the pope in

1729 (MASTERS, 2004, p. 89). Sylvester’s policy alienated Aleppo’s population

(who had apparently supported his nomination because they had not been

consulted on Cyril’s election in Damascus, according to Masters). Catholics

in the city, in a petition supported by Muslims, claimed that Sylvestros’ policy

had caused many Christians to leave the city, thus causing economic harm –

a threat that would be repeated several times (MASTERS, 2004, p. 91).

The Catholics struggled for institutional support in Aleppo. The

Metropolitan of Aleppo, Maximos al-Hakim, declared himself a Catholic

and was appointed by the pope in 1730. Maximos got approval from Istan-

bul through the “gift” of 45 bags of silver coins. After several twists and

turns, with both communities appealing to local judges and in Istanbul,

and after an exile in Lebanon, Maximos returned to Aleppo in 1734. The

question remains: why did conversion to Catholicism occur mainly in two

major cities (Istanbul, with the Armenians, and Aleppo)? According to

Masters, the two main hypotheses put forward – the presence of Europe-

an traders (and also missionaries) and the desire to arm an ethnic (Arab)

identity – are not satisfactory. These two hypotheses cannot account for

several anomalies: the city of Izmir, which had a much stronger presence

of European traders, and Damascus, a quintessentially Arab city, did not

6. Whose beginnings we can attri-

bute to the Counter-Reformation: the

establishment of Eastern colleges in

Rome in the 16th century and of the

Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide

in 1622. (Ruthenians / Ukrainians had

previously separated from the Orthodox

in the Union of Brześś in 1595–96, with

subsequent unions in 1646 in Uzhhorod

/ Ungvár and in 1664 in Mukachevo).

Youssef Alvarenga Cherem, Danny Zahreddine Integraon, conict, and autonomy among religious minories in the late Ooman Empire:

the Greek-Catholic (Melkite) Church and sectarian turmoil in Mount Lebanon and Damascus

embrace the Catholic cause so fervently. Furthermore, Armenians and

Jacobites

did not have a strong “linguistic gap” between the liturgical

language and the vernacular. Thus, something else must be at play.

According to Masters, a plausible explanation is that “Catholicism met

the political, cultural, and spiritual needs of an emergent Christian mercan-

tile bourgeoisie and they embraced it with enthusiasm” (MASTERS, 2004,

p. 96). One aspect of this change is reected in the creation of lay brother-

hoods (HEYBERGER, 1996). Another crucial factor was the maintenance

of Byzantine traditions (married clergy, fermented bread, holidays, etc.). A

psychological transformation, according to Masters, was also at stake:

They were protected behind that all-important façade of tradition, while

committing themselves to a place in a new economic and political world-order,

increasingly dominated by the West. (MASTERS, 2004, p. 97)

Figure 1 – Melkites in Lebanon and Syria – Historical and Contemporary Presence

7. The Jacobite or Syriac Orthodox Chur-

ch is Monophysite (non-Chalcedonian)

Christian Church. As the Maronites,

they follow the West Syriac Antiochene

rite, but with extensive use of Syriac

as a liturgical language. The Syriac

Catholic Church emerged between the

late seventeenth and early eighteenth

centuries and has around 150,00 faith-

ful. Its patriarch resides in Beirut. The

Syriac Orthodox Church has more than

2 million followers mainly in Syria, India

(Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church),

and elsewhere in the diaspora. There

is also a sizable recently converted

community in Guatemala.

estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 59-79

It is also worth noting the allure of Catholicism to women, who

had more freedom and agency in the face of the stricter restrictions of the

Orthodox Church. Missionaries valued more the role of women, who be-

gan to become literate or choose a life of celibacy (Orthodox monasteries

were common to men and women), culminating in their insertion in the

capitalist economy at the end of the nineteenth century and in public life

(although not in politics) around the same time. The missions were also

inuential for the Arabic “renaissance” (Nahda) in the late 19th century,

with gures such as the Melkite Nasif al-Yaziji (1800–71), the Maronite/

Protestant Butrus al-Bustani (1819–83) , who participated in the transla-

tion of the Bible into Arabic, and the writer Faris/Ahmad Shidyaq (Ma-

ronite, and later Anglican and nally Muslim).

It would be the case, then, of “elective anities” and a “hybrid”

worldview, although not necessarily political for the time being. The

identity was strengthened by the “persecutions” at the hands of the Or-

thodox, by a hierarchy that could be perpetuated (note Euthymius’s eort

to appoint bishops), the refuge granted on Mount Lebanon by the local

potentates (Druze) and the Maronites,

and the capacity to use economic

and political power (WALBINER, 2003, p. 14). In this regard, its presence

in Egypt is illustrative. According to Crecelius:

the diasporas of the so-called Melkite or Greek Catholic Christians to the

Mediterranean seaports of Egypt and the Levant was one of the most important

developments aecting trade between Egypt and Syria and between these two

provinces and Europe (CRECELIUS, 2010, p. 156).

Establishing themselves with great success in the Levant, the Mel-

kites supplanted Europeans in commerce at the end of the eighteenth cen-

tury. They acted as agents for the governor of Acre, Ahmad Jazzar Pasha,

in the lucrative cotton trade, defending his monopoly. After the 1770s, the

Mamluk shaykh al-balad in Egypt, Ali Bey al-Kabir, transferred Egyptian

customs from Jews to the Melkites, who then controlled customs at all

ports except Suez. Given these connections, they proted greatly from

import and export monopolies (CRECELIUS, 2010, p. 158).

Issawi (1982, p. 261) noted that

foreign or minority groups played a very important role as intermediaries

between Western capital and the local population: Chinese in Southeast Asia,

Indians in Burma and East Africa, Lebanese in West Africa and so on (...) The

function of the millets was essentially that of middlemen between the Muslim

masses and the forces that were transforming them, i.e., European capital and

enterprise and modernizing Middle Eastern governments.

The historian Bruce Masters arms that the need to institution-

alize its distinct status that lead to the ocial recognition of the Mel-

kite millet in 1848 was more a result of what could be characterized as

an “identity policy” – borrowing Hobsbawm’s term: “protonationalism”

– than a question of dogma (MASTERS, 2010).

The Melkites, although

primarily of Arabic demanded a millet separate from the one that would

cover all Catholics (the Armenian Catholic millet had been recognized

in 1830). However, Greek Catholics did not identify themselves with a

8. The Druze religion is an esoteric

offshoot of Isma’ili Shiism. The Druze

people are concentrated in the Levant

(present-day Israel, Syria, and Lebanon).

The Maronites are Catholic a community

that has been in union with Rome since

the 13th century. They follow the Syria-

c-Antiochene rite. Originated from a

monastic community in near the Orontes

river, present-day Syria, the sought

refuge from other Christian groups, and

later from Moslems, in Mount Lebanon.

They progressively adopted the Arabic

language for daily usage and literature

both sacred and profane, and also for

most of the liturgy.

9. Hobsbawm deﬁnes protonationalism

as “Certain variants of feelings of col-

lective belonging which already existed

and which [...] could ﬁt in with modern

states and nations” (HOBSBAWM,

2012, p. 46).

Youssef Alvarenga Cherem, Danny Zahreddine Integraon, conict, and autonomy among religious minories in the late Ooman Empire:

the Greek-Catholic (Melkite) Church and sectarian turmoil in Mount Lebanon and Damascus

“national Church” (like the Orthodox Bulgarian Church, recognized

as a millet in 1870). The argument used by the Melkites was that they

were simply the Byzantine Christians (Rûm) of Syria (Suriya, not Bilâd al-

Shâm), and that they had never deviated from loyalty to either the Pope

or the Sultan (as the Orthodox Greeks had).

In the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century , Christians and,

to a lesser degree, Jews, thrived not only on commerce and industry but

also in the liberal professions, forming a large portion of the urban mid-

dle class, public servants, and foreign companies. In commerce, industry,

liberal professions, and the bureaucracy, they naturally amassed a great

deal of wealth – though, as Issawi noted, “the vast majority remained in

the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie or lower”. (ISSAWI, 1982, p. 262). This

situation of relative prosperity and privileged status (as perceived by the

Muslim population) did not change until the nationalist upheavals of the

middle 20th century.

Figure 2 - Minority shares in the import-export

sectors of Trabzon (1884) and Beirut (1848).

Source: Kuran, 2011, p. 192.

From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, most importers and

exporters in major cities of the Empire – Alexandria, Baghdad, Aleppo,

Beirut, Izmir, Trebzon, and even Istanbul – were held in the hands of

either foreigners or local minorities (Figures 1 and 2). In this, the local

Christian minorities in Aleppo were no exception. “In Aleppo, Muslims

maintained a major presence in commerce, but all the wealthiest mer-

chants were Christian.” (KURAN, 2011, p. 193.) Therefore, foreign com-

mercial presence alone does not explain such a prolonged, winding shift

in religious allegiance as the process Melkite-Orthodox divide.

10. The policy of the orthodox millet,

centered on the ﬁgure of the ecume-

nical patriarch of Constantinople, was

founded on the latter’s claim of authority

over all orthodox subjects in the empire.

Paradoxically, Ottoman uniﬁcation

offered the possibility of claiming more

direct control of the Orthodox by the

patriarch of Constantinople, especially

after the Mamluks (Jerusalem was very

important to be conceded autonomy to,

but the other headquarters, Alexandria

and Antioch, elected their own leaders).

The quest to strengthen the ecumenical

patriarch’s authority was also linked to

Catholic missionaries, active at least

since the mid-seventeenth century.

The two millets recognized in the 18th

century - Armenian and Orthodox - had

their own liturgical languages, and

Christians who were neither Armenian

nor Orthodox were under the “political”

jurisdiction of the Armenian patriarch.

estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 59-79

Figure 3 - Muslim and minority shares of major Ottoman traders, 1912.

Source: Kuran, 2011, p. 193.

This peculiar position was fostered, besides the reforms, by foreign

protection and foreign education. “As of the mid-nineteenth century, in

Aleppo alone more than 1,500 non-Muslim Ottomans were engaged in

international trade under a foreign government’s protection.” (KURAN,

2011, p. 201). Many local Christians were favored by the so-called sys-

tem of capitulations, whereby European subjects and their local protégés

were granted exemption from the jizyah impositions (MASTERS, 2009)

and other taxes, payed the same amount of customs duties as the Mus-

lims (3%, compared to 5% paid by dhimmis) and legal protection through

a legal concession named berat (MASTERS, 2004, p. 74).

A notable development was the increase in power of local Consuls,

who intervened on behalf of their nationals and local allies. Bruce Mas-

ters also adds that “Many of the critics of the protégé system also point to

its wholesale abuse for either monetary or political gain by the European

consuls who obtained berats far in excess of the numbers to which they

were entitled.” (MASTERS, 2004, p. 78).

The Christians’ socio-economic status was, through the reforms

carried out since the period of Egyptian occupation, raised by Westerniz-

ing reforms, increasing juridical equality, and European protection, being

a source of resentment for the Muslim majority (DERINGIL, 2015, p. 38;

HADDAD, 2015). The Tanzimat reforms were put to test, surprisingly,

not in the central or more prosperous European domains of the empire,

but in the events in Mount Lebanon and Damascus.

The massacres of 1860 in Mount Lebanon and Damascus

In the rst centuries of Ottoman dominion, Mount Lebanon and

its environs were able to secure a certain autonomy vis-à-vis the Sublime

Porte. The Maronites and the Druze were the core constituents of an

autonomous emirate in Mount Lebanon from the 16

century onwards,

particularly after the rule of Emir Fakhr el-Din al Ma‘an (ruled 1591-1635).

France had developed ancient political ties with the Maronites

and claimed to be protectors of the Catholics of the Ottoman Empire,

whereas the Maronites regarded France as their allies and supporters

in a hostile environment, perched high in their strongholds in Mount

Lebanon. Maronite identity was, then, shaped throughout the centuries

11. “By the end of the eighteenth

century, when the Ottoman population

was around 30 million, the Austrian

alone were protecting 200,000

Ottoman subjects (...) By 1808, Russia

had extended protection to 120,000

people, mostly Greeks. In 1882, “foreign

subjects” accounted for 112,000 of the

237,000 residents of Galata, Istanbul’s

leading commercial district; most were

natives. In 1897, half of all the Jews in

Egypt were foreign nationals” (KURAN,

2011, p. 201).

Youssef Alvarenga Cherem, Danny Zahreddine Integraon, conict, and autonomy among religious minories in the late Ooman Empire:

the Greek-Catholic (Melkite) Church and sectarian turmoil in Mount Lebanon and Damascus

largely through the relationship with the Catholic Church and France

(HEYBERGER, 2018; ARSAN, 2016) They would also be instrumental in

the crystallization of a Christian-centered, Maronite based nationalism

(HAKIM, 2013; KAUFMAN, 2014) and Lebanese independence (ARSAN,

2015; FIRRO, 2002)

Religious missions, such as the Franciscans and Dominicans, and

later the Jesuits, helped to keep the relationship with Rome constant and

deepened a sense of distinct Maronite identity. In addition, the creation

of the Maronite College in Rome in 1584 for Maronite seminarians was

also of great importance.

The institutionalization of what is known as sectarianism or com-

munitarianism in the Lebanese political and social context emerged in

the nineteenth century, as a result of the conuence of regional and inter-

national factors. As Usama Makdisi writes, “it is imperative to dispel any

illusion that sectarianism is simply or exclusively a native malignancy or

a foreign conspiracy” (MAKDISI, 2000, p. 2). Sectarianism, as conceptu-

alized by Makdisi, is “refers to the deployment of religious heritage as

a primary marker of modern political identity” (MAKDISI, 2000, p. 7).

Here we follow Makdisi’s lead, situating the fateful events in the context

of the Ottoman modernizing reforms.

Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the social structure in

Lebanon could be described as a local variant of the Ottoman pattern:

• Muslims and dhimmis (mostly commoners, with a large

peasant base);

• The “nobles” (manâsib) and the “commoners” (‘amma)

• Local potentates and central power

• Muqata‘jis (tax farmers, holders of an iqtâ‘a or iltizâm)

The social division was expressed by a feudal stratum (mostly

Druze) and a mainly peasant base (most Christians). The nobles lived by

extracting income, through iqtâ‘a or by renting land. There were often

conicts among the nobility or with central power (see Fakhr el-Din in

the seventeenth century and Bashir Shihab II in the 19

). “Local rulers (...)

generally controlled a port, trade route or vital produce (coee, cotton,

silk, etc.)” (TRABOULSI, 2012, p. 4).

Revolts concerning taxation were common. Emir Bashir Shihab II

(1788–1840) (the Sunni dynasty of Shihab had succeeded that of the Ma

‘an in the seventeenth century) allied with Druze leader Bashir Jumblat

against the tax revolt in 1820-21. The alliance ends in 1825, when Shi-

hab tries to extend his power at the expense of the Druze lords. Jumblat

opposes Shihab (now openly declared a Christian) and gets help from

the governor (wâli) of Damascus. Shihab, on the other hand, already had

as an ally the governor of Acre, who managed to attract Jumblat to his

city and behead him. As a result, the Druze lords were stripped of their

efdoms, only two of which remaining in their hands. These lands were

distributed among the Shihab family, who got closer to the Maronite

Church (TRABOULSI, 2012, p. 11).

Bashir Shihab II helped with the invasion and Egyptian control of

the Levant, under the command of Ibrahim Pasha, son of Muhammad

Ali, governor of Egypt. The policies implemented in Egypt’s government

estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 59-79

were reproduced in Syria. Industry and foreign trade were stimulated.

The State had a monopoly on silk, and Beirut being established as a man-

datory entrepôt for the product. Ibrahim Pasha’s government was not

popular with the local population, due to high taxes, forced labor and

military service. To ght a Druze revolt in Ḥawrân, which had spread

to Beqaa and Wadi al-Taym, Ibrahim had armed the Christians against

the Druze and others. The catalyst for Christians to join the revolt was

the decision to retake their weapons. In 1840, Maronites, Druze, Shiites

and Sunnis started a revolt against Bashir. The revolt was mainly led by

popular leaders (sheykh shabâb) (TRABOULSI, 2012, p. 13).

With European support (the British feared the Ottoman weaken-

ing vis-à-vis Russia), Ibrahim is defeated and retreats to Acre. The new

emir, Bashir Milhim Qasim (Bashir III), took over with foreign support.

Yet the Maronite Church wanted the continuation of the emirate of the

Shihab, the Druze wanted instead a return to the previous status quo

(HARRIS, 2014, p. 140). The Ottomans and the British supported the re-

turn of properties to Druze (TRABOULSI, 2012, p. 14), while the Ma-

ronites and Melkites of the Shuf and Jezzin did not want the Druze to

return to further increase the tax, on top of the tax they were already

paying (HARRIS, 2014, p. 140).

At that time, there was a social, political and economic disjunction

between the Christians and the Druze:

a Druze bloc, primarily tribal, in which the tributary and military function dom-

inated, and a Christian bloc, with a wide peasant and artisan base and commer-

cial/nancial ramications (TRABOULSI, 2012, p. 15).

If in the north Christian manâsib extracted income from Christian

peasants, in the south, Druze manâsib dominated Christian peasants.

Druze commoners paid little tax, if at all. As Traboulsi shows, Christians

beneted much more from the expansion of regional and internation-

al trade and industrial and artisanal production in cities on commercial

routes – Deyr al-Qamar, Zahlehh, Beirut (TRABOULSI, 2012).

After the fall of Bashir III, the Druze, supported by the British, de-

manded a Muslim governor, while the Maronites defended a Christian

governor. Although the Druze theoretically demanded a Muslim gover-

nor, they did not welcome Governor Ömer Pasha, a Muslim Croat, sent

by Istanbul to administer Mount Lebanon directly from Deyr al-Qamar.

Austrian Chancellor Metternich proposed a division of the north,

with a Christian governor, and the south, with a Druze governor – the

system known as Qaimaqamatayn. Neither party accepted the agreement

well: the Maronite Church demanded that southern Christians (60% of

the population) be under the authority of the northern qaimaqam, while

the Druze demanded complete control over Mount Lebanon.

Youssef Alvarenga Cherem, Danny Zahreddine Integraon, conict, and autonomy among religious minories in the late Ooman Empire:

the Greek-Catholic (Melkite) Church and sectarian turmoil in Mount Lebanon and Damascus

Figure 4 – The Qàim Maqamiya System – Mount Lebanon (1842 – 1861)

A series of conicts emerged in this context:

• intra-elite conicts: in the South, the Jumblats did not accept

the appointment of Amin Arslan as qaimaqam; in the North,

the Khazins opposed the Abi Lama‘as.

• the muqata‘jis resisted the implementation of the 1858 Otto-

man land ownership law;

• conicts between the returning Druze and commoners

• cities freed themselves from the control of the muqata‘jis -

Amchit from the Khazin; Ghazir, from Hubaysh, Deyr al-Qa-

mar, from the Druze Abu Nakads, and Zahlehh from the Abi

Lama‘as. Zahleh also managed to connect with the wilaya of

Beirut, and afterwards of Sidon, escaping the administrative

sphere of Mount Lebanon.

estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 59-79

The revolt against the rule of the muqata‘jis broke out in late 1858

under the leadership of Tanius Shahin (1815–95), and controlled the Kes-

rawân region for two years. A directly elected council had Shahin as pres-

ident. According to Traboulsi, they were pioneers in implementing the

provisions of Tanzimat. They railed against excessive or additional taxes,

demanded the establishment of a court to settle conicts between sheiks

and the people, called for an end to the sheikhs’ political and legal privileg-

es, political participation (appointment of a governor), and the abolition

of feudal mores – forced labor, “gifts” for sheiks (coee, tobacco, sugar,

soap), distinctive clothing and kissing the sheikhs’ hands. Two tendencies

emerged in the revolt: the “bourgeois”, according to which the criterion

of distinction should be property, and the peasant, who demanded equal-

ity with the Christian sheikhs and with the Muslim majority of the Em-

pire. The Maronite Church steered a middle path between the peasants

and the conservative upper strata of the Maronite clergy and society.

The so-called “events of 1860”

can be interpreted under the prism

of the social and political struggles in the northern districts and against

the backdrop of the wider measures of the Tanzimat:

The ghting in the southern part of Mount Lebanon was initiated by the Druze

leadership as a preemptive measure to ward o the possible repercussions of

the Kisrawan revolt but, more importantly, to overcome the social and political

agitation of their ‘own’ Christian commoners (TRABOULSI, 2012, p. 33).

The city of Deir al-Qamar fell, resulting in an estimated massacre

of 900 to 2,000 Christians. The Druze claim that there were about 4,000

weapons in the city, but, according to Christian reports, the weapons

had already been collected by Turkish authorities, from which protection

was expected. The Druze also sacked the Orthodox villages of Hasbaya

(where 17 Sunni Shihab sheikhs were killed) and Rashaya. Zahleh was

pillaged, having received no help from the Maronites in the Mountain.

Both communities took the opportunity to expel Shiites from their re-

spective territories (TRABOULSI, 2012, p. 35). In the end, around 11,000

persons lost their lives in the Lebanon conict (FAWAZ, 1994, p. 226).

Sectarian conict spilled over to Damascus and took a dierent

turn. In 1860, after simmering tensions, the mob went berserk, going af-

ter the Christians, especially in the quarter of Bab Touma, which was vir-

tually razed to the ground. The violence lasted for days. There was kill-

ing, looting, burning, rape and abduction of women and children. The

Turkish authorities were negligent; the Moslem religious leaders, the ula-

ma, abstained; the police and irregular troops actively participated in the

riots. The rampage soon turned to Westerners: “Foreign consulates were

an early target, a measure of Muslim belief in foreign plots and resent-

ment against the humiliations inicted on them by the Western powers.”

(FAWAZ, 1994, p. 89).

According to estimates 12,000 people perished in

Damascus in a week (FAWAZ, 1994, p. 226; SALIBI, 1988, p. 138). Many

were saved by the Algerian emir Abd al-Qadir, a resident of Damascus at

the time. The number of displaced, injured, maimed, or abducted, or of

those who lost their property and livelihood, is impossible to ascertain.

The sense of upended social order explains, according to Masters

(2004), the series of popular riots aimed at Christians: Aleppo (1850), Mo-

12. The Lebanese have a tendency of

euphemistically calling their wars and

conﬂicts mere “events” (al-ahdath), such

as in the last Civil War (1975-1990).

13. An eyewitness to the massacre was

the American vice-consul in Damas-

cus, Mikhail Mishaqa, who wrote a

history of the conﬂict. Mishaqa was

a Greek Catholic who had business in

Egypt, Galilee, Syria, and Lebanon and

converted to Protestantism by American

missionaries (ROGAN, 2004).

Youssef Alvarenga Cherem, Danny Zahreddine Integraon, conict, and autonomy among religious minories in the late Ooman Empire:

the Greek-Catholic (Melkite) Church and sectarian turmoil in Mount Lebanon and Damascus

sul (1854), Nablus (1856), Jeddah (1858), Egypt (1882) (MASTERS, 2004;

POLLEY, 2020; SHARKEY, 2017, p. 146). Fawaz (1994, p. 99-100) argues

that economic resentment was at play both in Aleppo and in Damascus.

On the other hand, Grehan contends that “the origins of these distur-

bances lay not in the penetration of the modern world economy but in

the extended political crisis that shook the Ottoman Empire during the

late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.” (GREHAN, 2015, p. 491.)

The Damascus aair also illustrates the opposition to the Tan-

zimat. Spurred by economic resentment and socio-political grievances,

the crowd turned against the most visible signs of what they perceived

as their humiliation and gave vent to their anger. Moslems in Damas-

cus celebrated the fall of Zahleh, the Melkite stronghold in the Beqaa

and their rivals in grain and livestock trade, at the hands of the Druze

(FAWAZ, 1994, p. 81). Whereas the strife in Mount Lebanon pitted Druze

against Maronite, in Damascus the mob attacked mainly Melkites, who

had cultural and commercial ties with foreigners, especially the French

merchants. Signicantly, the mobs spared the Jews and poor Christian

neighborhoods (SHARKEY, 2017, p. 215).

Pressure from the massacres on Mount Lebanon and Damascus

prompted Istanbul to send Foreign Minister Fuad Pasha to Beirut, where

he arrested the governor, Khurshid Pasha and several Druze leaders, in-

cluding Said Jumblat. In Damascus, the reaction was brutal. Fuad Pasha

arrested and executed Governor Ahmad Pasha, ocers, soldiers and o-

cials (TRABOULSI, 2012, p. 35).

The authorities arrested hundreds of Muslim men, and publicly executed scores

of them. Records identied the executed by their professions, thereby oering

some insight into class origins: they included lemonade sellers, barbers, bead

traders, carpenters, and other assorted shopkeepers and artisans. On one day

in August 1860 alone, Ottoman authorities executed 167 men as their families

and other members of the public looked on; they then suspended the corpses of

57 of them in bazaars and streets, and on gate-posts, as grisly memorials of the

punishment (SHARKEY, 2017, p. 151-152).

As foreign pressure mounted, a French expeditionary force of 6,000

men was sent to Beirut. The government of Mount Lebanon was struc-

tured through the 1860 Règlement Organique, as an autonomous area gov-

erned by a non-Lebanese Christian appointed by the Sublime Porte.

Several authors tended to view these events in 1860 either as an out-

break of atavism, or as a plot by foreign powers (Turkish historiography)

or the Ottoman Empire (Arab historiography) (MAKDISI, 2000, p. 5–6).

Fuad Pasha himself described the events as “a very old thing”, adopting a

paternalistic and authoritarian imperial language, consistent with the on-

going Tanzimat reforms (MAKDISI, 2002). This period, between the fall

of Bashir Shihab II and the establishment of Mutasarriyah – “long peace”

from 1860 to 1914 (AKARLI, 1993) – can be contextualized as a period of

transition in the context wider range of reforms from the Ottoman Em-

pire in the second half of the nineteenth century. As Makdisi states:

Sectarianism emerged as a practice when Maronite and Druze elites, Europeans

and Ottomans struggled to dene an equitable relationship of the Druze and

Maronite “tribes” and “nations” to a modernizing Ottoman state (MAKDISI,

2000, p. 6).

estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 59-79

The intermingling of foreign and domestic politics, together with

the redenition of social and political roles and a deepening of econom-

ic insertion, were crucial aspects in the denition of Lebanon’s political

structure after the First World War under the French mandate.

Conclusion

Both cases dealt with here resulted from changes in the social, eco-

nomic and geopolitical context in the Levant in the 19

century. The

crucial milestones of these changes were:

a) the European political, cultural, economic and religious presence;

b) the integration of Christian communities and individuals in

the discourse and a worldview of modernity and the recogni-

tion and strengthening of their religious identity, and

c) the Ottoman reform policy, both at the imperial and local levels.

These factors concurred both to the gruesome events in Mount

Lebanon and Damascus in 1860 and to the creation of an autonomous

region in Mount Lebanon, leading to the formation of the Lebanese State

in the 20th century. Foreign missions, schools, trade, and diplomacy were

instrumental in creating a new social, and subsequently political mindset

among the Christian subjects of the Empire in the Middle East. Aleppo

was the center of Catholic missions in the region, that the port cities of

Tire, Beirut, Sidon and Acre had European consuls and commerce domi-

nated by Christians (LONGVA, 2012). This presence was fundamental for

the creation of Uniate churches from the eighteenth century onwards (the

Chaldean union in Iraq had several setbacks and another dynamic). Until

then, the only Catholics in the Middle East had been either Latin-rite (for-

eigners) or Maronite. The conicts between 1840 and 1860, culminating

in the massacres on Mount Lebanon and Damascus, served to rearm,

under the aegis of international protection and intervention, the autono-

my of Mount Lebanon in the context of Tanzimat, conrming a Maronite

desire and serving as a basis, after the destruction of the Ottoman Empire,

for the establishment of the State of Greater Lebanon under the French.

Furthermore, ties with Europe, and specically with France, fostered the

development of non-Arab nationalism under Maronite hegemony (FIR-

RO, 2002; HAKIM, 2013; KAUFMAN, 2014). Western education, through

missionaries or local agents, was a decisive aspect of this process, and at

the beginning of the 20

century, literacy was almost universal among

Maronites, unlike other communities, Christian or not (LONGVA, 2012).

One must bear in mind that religion in the Ottoman Empire (and

in many cases, in the contemporary Middle East) is quite dierent from

a contemporary context in which individuals are shaken and sometimes

uprooted from an assigned social belonging and urged to actively iden-

tify with one cult or faith available in the spiritual and social “market”,

sometimes dissolving these phenomena in a literally transnational and

“cross-cultural” movement (ROY, 2014).

In the Ottoman Empire, religion was a cultural and social marker

that is often divorced from faith and practice.

It is signicant that Protes-

tant missions in the Middle East failed to win many converts (MAKDISI,

14. This type of identiﬁcation is the

opposite of social contexts in which

the identiﬁcation of an individual is a

social marker that, in the end, does

not need to be linked to faith (the case

of the communist Shiite, the “atheist

Protestant” or “secular Jew”) , but in a

“civic religion” (as in the Roman Empi-

re), merely social or nominal – see the

charge that “nominal Catholics” are not

“true” Christians, or the more extreme

charge of evangelicals that “traditional”

Christians are only nominal Christians,

and the accusation by Salaﬁsts /

Wahhabis that all other Muslims are

unfaithful (kuffâr) – precisely because

their membership is “merely cultural”

and, therefore, invalid. So, as Roy notes,

“it is hard to conceive of an atheist

Pentecostalist, an agnostic Salaﬁst, or

an intellectual Jehovah’s Witness” (ROY,

2014, p. 7).

15. This phenomenon is not new:

traditional and contemporary examples

abound. For a comparative analysis

of European “cultural religion”, see

Demerath (2000); for an in-depth analy-

sis of contemporary Scandinavia, see

Zuckerman (2008).

Youssef Alvarenga Cherem, Danny Zahreddine Integraon, conict, and autonomy among religious minories in the late Ooman Empire:

the Greek-Catholic (Melkite) Church and sectarian turmoil in Mount Lebanon and Damascus

2011). As we have seen, in the Ottoman Empire, as well as in many con-

temporary situations, religious belonging is “a matter of fact”. Conver-

sion is the exception, not the norm. It is, therefore, perfectly possible for a

Turk to remain a Muslim even though she drinks alcohol, does not pray

and does not don the hijab, or that an Israeli remains a Jew even though

he thinks, like the founders of the State of Israel, that the Bible is a nation-

al epic, closer to myth than historical reality – even though fundamental-

ists of all stripes would staunchly deny legitimacy to this “ecumenical”

identities in the public space.

The challenge of maintaining the territorial integrity of an exten-

sive political unit, characterized by a multireligious and multiethnic pop-

ulation, is faced by most Empires. They search for an elusive formula

that would maintain social contentment and political stability, ensure

constant tax collection and military conscription, and garner allegiance.

The Ottoman Empire was no dierent in this sense. For a long

time, its political and economic structure made it a formidable contender

for supremacy in the European stage. The rise of industrial capitalism,

nationalism, and the modern, rational bureaucratic apparatus (in the We-

berian sense) and military encroachment and cultural challenge instigat-

ed a vigorous response that transformed the structure of the Ottoman

State. Even if ultimately the survival of the Ottoman Empire rested on

the European balance of power, the Tanzimat gave it a new lease on life.

Yet the paradoxes of Ottomanism as a new overarching political identity

would not be unraveled until its utter dissolution during World War I and

its tragic consequences for the Ottoman Middle East.

As noted, one of the main features of the Tanzimat reforms lay in

law and the juridical status of non-Moslems, and the minorities were a

central component of the institutional and economic modernization of

the Empire and of its international relations. The military conicts be-

tween the Empire and the great European powers shaped the course of

nationalist movements in Eastern Europe and the Middle East (including

episodes of ethnic cleansing and forced migrations), the sectarian con-

icts in Lebanon and the Balkans, and ultimately played an essential role

in the creation of Greater Lebanon in 1920. We hope that further stud-

ies of the intricate intermingling of religion and power in International

Relations seriously and critically reconsider the crucial role of religions

identities in the construction of the modern international states system.

References

AKARLI, Engin. The Long Peace: Ottoman Lebanon, 1861-1920. 1st edition. Berkeley: Univer-

sity of California Press, 1993.

ALGAR, Hamid. Bektāšīya. In: ENCLOPAEDIA Iranica. [S.l.: s.n.], 1989. Available at: http://

www.iranicaonline.org/articles/bektasiya. Accessed on: 01 sep. 2020.

ARSAN, Andrew. “There is, in the Heart of Asia, an Entirely French Population”: France, Mount

Lebanon, and the Workings of Aective Empire in the Mediterranean, c.1830-1919. In: LORCIN,

Patricia; SHEPARD, Todd (eds.). French Mediterraneans: Transnational and Imperial Histo-

ries. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. p. 76-100.

ARSAN, Andrew. The Patriarch, the Amir and the Patriots: Civilisation and self-determination

at the Paris Peace Conference. In: Fraser, T. G. (ed.),The First World War and itsAftermath:

The Shaping ofthe Middle East. London: Haus, 2015. p. 127-145.

estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 59-79

BAER, Marc; MAKDISI, Ussama; SHRYOCK, Andrew. Tolerance and Conversion in the Ot-

toman Empire: A Conversation. Comparative Studies in Society and History, v. 51, n. 4, p.

927–940, 2009. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40270367. Accessed on: 24 jun. 2019.

BERGER, Maurits. A Brief History of Islam in Europe – Thirteen Centuries of Creed, Conict

and Coexistence. Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2014.

BRAUDE, Benjamin. Foundation Myths of the Millet System. In: LEWIS, Bernard; BRAUDE,

Benjamin (Ed.). Christians & Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Soci-

ety. New York: Holmes & Meier Pub, 1982, v. 1, p. 69–88.

BRAUDE, Benjamin; LEWIS, Bernard; (Ed.). Christians & Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The

Functioning of a Plural Society. New York: Holmes & Meier Pub, 1982, v. 1.

BUNTON, Martin; CLEVELAND, William L. A History of the Modern Middle East. 4th Ed.

Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2009.

COOK, David. Understanding Jihad. 2nd edition. Berkeley: UC Press, 2015.

CRECELIUS, Daniel. Damiette and Syrian-Egyptian Trade. In: SLUGLETT, Peter; WEBER,

Stefan. Syria and Bilad al-Sham under Ottoman Rule. Leiden: Brill, 2010. p. 155–175.

CRONE, Patricia. No pressure, then: religious freedom in Islam. Open Democracy, nov. 2009.

Available at: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/no-compulsion-in-religion/. Accessed on: 01

sep. 2020.

DEMERATH, N. J. The Rise of ‘Cultural Religion’ in European Christianity: Learning from

Poland, Northern Ireland, and Sweden. Social Compass, v. 47, n. 1, 2000, p. 127–139.

DERINGIL, Selim. “There Is No Compulsion in Religion”: On Conversion and Apostasy in the

Late Ottoman Empire: 1839-1856. Comparative Studies in Society and History, v. 42, n. 3, p.

547–575, 2000. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2696645. Accessed on: 01 sep. /09/2020.

DERINGIL, Selim. The Land of Polite Fictions: The Tanzimat State and Mount Lebanon. In:

DE CLERCK, Dima, EDDÉ, Carle; KAIDBEY, Naila; SLIM, Souad. (ed.) 1860, histoires et

mémoires d’un conit. Beyrouth: Presses de l’Ifpo, 2015, p. 33-47.

FAWAZ, Leila Tarazi. An Occasion for War: Civil Conict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860.

Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994.

FRIEDMANN, Yohanan. Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim

Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

FINDLEY, Carter Vaughn. Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity: A History. London:

Yale University Press, 2010.

FINDLEY, Carter Vaughn. Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte,

1789-1922. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012[1980].

FIRRO, Kais. Inventing Lebanon: Nationalism and State under the Mandate. London: IB

Tauris, 2002.

GODDARD, Hugh. A History of Christian-Muslim Relations. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univer-

sity Press, 2000.

GREHAN, James. Imperial Crisis and Muslim-Christian Relations in Ottoman Syria and Pales-

tine, c. 1770-1830. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, v. 58, n. 4, 2015,

p. 490–531. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1163/15685209-12341381. Accessed on: 01 sep. 2020.

HADDAD. Mahmoud. From Muslim Privilege to Christian & Foreign Privilege in Ottoman

Syria. In: DE CLERCK, Dima, EDDÉ, Carle; KAIDBEY, Naila; SLIM, Souad. (ed.) 1860, his-

toires et mémoires d’un conit. Beyrouth: Presses de l’Ifpo, 2015, p. 49-68.

HARRIS, William. Lebanon: a history, 600-2011. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

HEYBERGER, Bernard. La France etlaprotection deschrétiens maronites. Généalogie d’une

représentation. Relations internationales, v. 173, n. 1, p. 13-30, 2018. Available at: https://doi.

org/10.3917/ri.173.0013. Accessed on: 01 sep.2020.

HEYBERGER, Bernard. Un nouveau modèle de conscience individuelle et de comportement

social. Parole de l’Orient: revue semestrielle des études syriaques et arabes chrétiennes, v. 21,

p. 271-283, 1996.

HOBSBAWM, Eric J. Nations and nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth, reality. [S.l.]:

Cambridge university press, 2012.

HAKIM, Carol. The Origins of the Lebanese National Idea. Berkeley: University of California

Press, 2013.

Youssef Alvarenga Cherem, Danny Zahreddine Integraon, conict, and autonomy among religious minories in the late Ooman Empire:

the Greek-Catholic (Melkite) Church and sectarian turmoil in Mount Lebanon and Damascus

ISSAWI, Charles. The Transformation of the Economic Position of the Millets in the Nineteenth

Century. In: LEWIS, Bernard; BRAUDE, Benjamin (Ed.). Christians & Jews in the Ottoman Em-

pire: The Functioning of a Plural Society. New York: Holmes & Meier Pub, 1982. v. 1, p. 261-285.

KAUFMAN, Asher. Reviving Phoenicia: The Search for Identity in Lebanon. London: IB Tau-

ris, 2014.

KARAMAN, K. Kivanc; PAMUK, Sevket, Ottoman state nances in European perspective,

1500–1914. Journal of Economic History, v. 70, n. 3, p. 593-629, 2010.

KURAN, Timur. The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East. Prince-

ton: Princeton University Press, 2011.

LEVY, Avigdor. Military Reform and the Problem of Centralization in the Ottoman Empire in

the Eighteenth Century. Middle Eastern Studies, v. 18, n. 3, p. 227-249, 1982.

LITTLE, Donald P. Coptic Conversion to Islam under the Baḥrī Mamlūks, 692-755/1293-1354.

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Cambridge

University Press, v. 39, n. 3, p. 552–569, 1976. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/614714.

Accessed on: 01 sep. 2020.

LONGVA, Anh Nga. From the Dhimma to the Capitulations: Memory and Experience of Protection

in Lebanon. In: LONGVA, Anh Nga; ROALD, Anne Sojie (Ed.). Religious Minorities in the Mid-

dle East: Domination, Self-Empowerment, Accommodation. Leiden e Boston: Brill, 2012. p. 47–69.

MAKDISI, Ussama. After 1860: Debating Religion, Reform, and Nationalism in the Ottoman

Empire. International Journal of Middle East Studies, v. 34, n. 4, p. 601–617, 2002. Available at:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3879690. Accessed on: 01 sep. 2020.

MAKDISI, Ussama. The Culture of Sectarianism. First edition. Berkeley, Calif: University of

California Press, 2000.

MAKDISI, Ussama. Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of

the Middle East. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2011.

MASTERS, Bruce. Christians Jews Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of Sectarianism. Revised

ed. edition. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

MASTERS, Bruce. Jizya. In: Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Facts on File, 2009.

MASTERS, Bruce. The Establishment of the Melkite Catholic Millet in 1848 and the Politics of

Identity in Tanzimat Syria. In: In: SLUGLETT, Peter; WEBER, Stefan. Syria and Bilad al-Sham

under Ottoman Rule. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Leiden: Brill, 2010. p. 455–473.

O’SULLIVAN, Shaun. Coptic Conversion and the Islamization of Egypt. Mamluk Studies Re-

view, v. 10, n. 2, 2006. Available at: http://mamluk.uchicago.edu/MSR_X-2_2006-OSullivan.

pdf. Accessed on: 01 sep. 2020.

PEIRCE, Leslie P. The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. New

York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

POLLEY, Gabriel. ‘Down with the Bell!’ The Nāblus Uprising of April 1856. Romance, Revolu-

tion and Reform, n. 2, p. 12-35, 2020.

ROGAN, Eugene L. Sectarianism and Social Conict in Damascus: The 1860 Events Reconsid-

ered. Arabica, v. 51, n. 4, p. 493-511, 2004. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27667683.

Accessed on: 01 sep. 2020.

ROY, Olivier. Holy Ignorance: When Religion and Culture Part Ways. Oxford: Oxford Univer-

sity Press, 2014.

SALIBI, Kamal. A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered. London:

IB Tauris, 1988.

SHARKEY, Heather J. A History of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Middle East. Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

SHAW, Stanford J. The Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Tax Reforms and Revenue System. Inter-

national Journal of Middle East Studies, v. 6, n. 4, p. 421-459, 1975. Available at: www.jstor.org/

stable/162752. Accessed on: 31 Aug. 2020.

TRABOULSI, Fawwaz. A History of Modern Lebanon. London: Pluto Press, 2012.

WALBINER, Carten-Michael. The split of the Greek Orthodox patriarchate of Antioch (1724)

and the emergence of a new identity in Bilad al-Sham as reected by some Melkite historians of

the eighteenth and early 20th centuries. Chronos, v. 7, p. 9–36, 2003.

ZUCKERMAN, Phil. Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us

About Contentment. New York: New York University Press, 2008.