Druze The Druze ( ; , ' or ', , '), who Endonym and exonym, call themselves al-Muwaḥḥidūn (), are an Arabs, Arab Eastern esotericism, esoteric Religious denomination, religious group from West Asia who adhere to the Druze faith, an Abrahamic ...

emir Emir (; ' (), also Romanization of Arabic, transliterated as amir, is a word of Arabic language, Arabic origin that can refer to a male monarch, aristocratic, aristocrat, holder of high-ranking military or political office, or other person po ...

Chouf Chouf (also spelled Shouf, Shuf or Chuf; ) is a historic region of Lebanon, as well as an administrative district in the governorate ( muhafazat) of Mount Lebanon. Geography Located south-east of Beirut, the region comprises a narrow coastal stri ...

Mount Lebanon Mount Lebanon (, ; , ; ) is a mountain range in Lebanon. It is about long and averages above in elevation, with its peak at . The range provides a typical alpine climate year-round. Mount Lebanon is well-known for its snow-covered mountains, ...

Mamluk Mamluk or Mamaluk (; (singular), , ''mamālīk'' (plural); translated as "one who is owned", meaning "slave") were non-Arab, ethnically diverse (mostly Turkic, Caucasian, Eastern and Southeastern European) enslaved mercenaries, slave-so ...

Ma'n family The Ma'n dynasty (, alternatively spelled ''Ma'an''), also known as the Ma'nids; (), were a family of Druze chiefs of Arab stock based in the rugged Chouf area of southern Mount Lebanon who were politically prominent in the 15th–17th centuries ...

mosque A mosque ( ), also called a masjid ( ), is a place of worship for Muslims. The term usually refers to a covered building, but can be any place where Salah, Islamic prayers are performed; such as an outdoor courtyard. Originally, mosques were si ...

Deir al-Qamar Deir al-Qamar () is a city south-east of Beirut in south-central Lebanon. It is located five kilometres outside of Beit ed-Dine in the Chouf District of the Mount Lebanon Governorate at 800 m of average altitude. History Crusader period The ol ...

Mamluk Mamluk or Mamaluk (; (singular), , ''mamālīk'' (plural); translated as "one who is owned", meaning "slave") were non-Arab, ethnically diverse (mostly Turkic, Caucasian, Eastern and Southeastern European) enslaved mercenaries, slave-so ...

Bedouin The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu ( ; , singular ) are pastorally nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia (Iraq). The Bedouin originated in the Sy ...

Beirut Beirut ( ; ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, just under half of Lebanon's population, which makes it the List of largest cities in the Levant region by populatio ...

Kamal Salibi Kamal Suleiman Salibi () (2 May 19291 September 2011) The

Ma'n family The Ma'n dynasty (, alternatively spelled ''Ma'an''), also known as the Ma'nids; (), were a family of Druze chiefs of Arab stock based in the rugged Chouf area of southern Mount Lebanon who were politically prominent in the 15th–17th centuries ...

, to which Fakhr al-Din belonged, established itself in the

Chouf Chouf (also spelled Shouf, Shuf or Chuf; ) is a historic region of Lebanon, as well as an administrative district in the governorate ( muhafazat) of Mount Lebanon. Geography Located south-east of Beirut, the region comprises a narrow coastal stri ...

(Shuf) area in southern

Mount Lebanon Mount Lebanon (, ; , ; ) is a mountain range in Lebanon. It is about long and averages above in elevation, with its peak at . The range provides a typical alpine climate year-round. Mount Lebanon is well-known for its snow-covered mountains, ...

, where they founded their headquarters at

Baaqlin Baakleen, also spelled Baaqlîne or Baakline (), is a prominent Druze town located in the Chouf District of Mount Lebanon, about 45 kilometers southeast of Beirut, Lebanon. Situated at an elevation of 850 to 920 meters, it has a population of ar ...

, in 1120.Harris 2012, pp. 59, 78. The progenitor of the family had fought against the

Crusaders The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and at times directed by the Papacy during the Middle Ages. The most prominent of these were the campaigns to the Holy Land aimed at reclaiming Jerusalem and its surrounding ...

near

Antioch Antioch on the Orontes (; , ) "Antioch on Daphne"; or "Antioch the Great"; ; ; ; ; ; ; . was a Hellenistic Greek city founded by Seleucus I Nicator in 300 BC. One of the most important Greek cities of the Hellenistic period, it served as ...

and was sent to Mount Lebanon by the Muslim Burid emirs of Damascus to reinforce the position of the

Tanukhids The Tanukh (, sometimes referred to as the Tanukhids (, ), was an Arab tribal group whose history in the Arabian Peninsula and the Fertile Crescent spanned the 2nd century CE to the 17th century. The group began as a confederation of Arab tribes ...

in the Gharb area (around

Aley Aley () is a major city in Lebanon. It is the capital of the Aley District and fourth largest city in Lebanon. The city is located on Mount Lebanon, 15km uphill from Beirut on the freeway to Damascus. Aley has the nickname "Bride of the Summ ...

) against the Crusaders in

Beirut Beirut ( ; ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, just under half of Lebanon's population, which makes it the List of largest cities in the Levant region by populatio ...

. They formed marital ties with the Tanukhids and were assisted by the Tanukhid emir Buhtur in building permanent dwellings.

Sources and identification

Modern sources largely derive information about the Ma'nid period in Mount Lebanon preceding the rule of Fakhr al-Din ibn Qurqumaz (Fakhr al-Din II) from the 19th-century works of Haydar al-Shihabi (d. 1835) and

Tannus al-Shidyaq Tannus ibn Yusuf al-Shidyaq ( – 1861), also transliterated ''Tannous el-Chidiac'', was a Maronite clerk and emissary of the Shihab emirs, the feudal chiefs and tax farmers of Ottoman Mount Lebanon, and a chronicler best known for his work on th ...

(d. 1861).Salibi 1973, p. 273 Al-Shihabi and al-Shidyaq chronicle a Ma'nid emir named Fakhr al-Din ibn Uthman, who was also referred to by historians as Fakhr al-Din I to distinguish him from his better-known descendant, Fakhr al-Din II. According to al-Shihabi, the emir was recognized as the preeminent Druze

emir Emir (; ' (), also Romanization of Arabic, transliterated as amir, is a word of Arabic language, Arabic origin that can refer to a male monarch, aristocratic, aristocrat, holder of high-ranking military or political office, or other person po ...

(prince or commander) of Mount Lebanon by the Ottoman sultan

Selim I Selim I (; ; 10 October 1470 – 22 September 1520), known as Selim the Grim or Selim the Resolute (), was the List of sultans of the Ottoman Empire, sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1512 to 1520. Despite lasting only eight years, his reign is ...

upon his conquest of Damascus in 1517 and that he died in 1544. According to research by the modern historian

Kamal Salibi Kamal Suleiman Salibi () (2 May 19291 September 2011)Peter Malcolm Holt Peter Malcolm Holt, FBA (28 November 1918 – 2 November 2006) was a historian of the Middle East and Sudan., British Academy, 2008 He was generally known as P. M. Holt. Biography The son of a Unitarian minister, Holt attended Lord Williams ...

,

Phillip Hitti Philip Khuri Hitti (; 22 June 1886 – 24 December 1978) was a Lebanese-American professor and scholar at Princeton and Harvard University, and authority on Arab and Middle Eastern history, Islam, and Semitic languages. He almost single-handedly ...

,

Henri Lammens Henri Lammens (1 July 1862 – 23 April 1937) was a Belgian Orientalist historian and Jesuit, who wrote (in French) on the early history of Islam. Education and career as a Jesuit Born in Ghent, Belgium of Catholic Flemish stock, Henri Lammens ...

, Ferdinand Wustenfeld, and Salibi himself in his article on "Fakhr al-Din" in the ''Encyclopedia of Islam'', acknowledged was actually Emir Qurqumaz, who died in 1586. Salibi attributes the historical mistake to al-Shihabi's work. The historian

Clifford Edmund Bosworth Clifford Edmund Bosworth FBA (29 December 1928 – 28 February 2015) was an English historian and Orientalist, specialising in Arabic and Iranian studies. Life Bosworth was born on 29 December 1928 in Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire (now ...

writes that Salibi "convincingly argues that the Fakhr al-Din I (b.) Uthman who is supposed to have submitted to the Ottoman Sultan Selim the Grim in 1517 at Damascus and to have been confirmed in the chieftainship of the Jebel Druze ount Lebanon cannot have been reigning at that time".

Biography

Fakhredine mosque - Deir al-Qamar - Lebanon

According to Salibi, Fakhr al-Din was the first Ma'nid "whose historicity is beyond question". He ruled the Chouf in the late

Mamluk Mamluk or Mamaluk (; (singular), , ''mamālīk'' (plural); translated as "one who is owned", meaning "slave") were non-Arab, ethnically diverse (mostly Turkic, Caucasian, Eastern and Southeastern European) enslaved mercenaries, slave-so ...

period (1260–1517) until his death in August/September 1506, a decade before the Ottoman conquest. The local Druze chronicler

Ibn Sibat Ḥamza ibn Aḥmad ibn Sibāṭ al-Faqīh al-ʿĀlayhī () (died 1520) was a Druze historian and a scribe of the Buhturid emirs of Mount Lebanon. Life and work Hamza was based in Aley in the Gharb area southeast of Beirut in Mount Lebanon. His ...

(d. 1520) indicated that Fakhr al-Din's given name was Uthman, while "Fakhr al-Din" was a ''

laqab Arabic names have historically been based on a long naming system. Many people from Arabic-speaking and also non-Arab Muslim countries have not had given name, given, middle name, middle, and family names but rather a chain of names. This system ...

'' (honorific) meaning "pride of the faith".Salibi, 1973, p. 277. Ibn Sibat referred to him as the "emir of the Chouf in the region of

Sidon Sidon ( ) or better known as Saida ( ; ) is the third-largest city in Lebanon. It is located on the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean coast in the South Governorate, Lebanon, South Governorate, of which it is the capital. Tyre, Lebanon, Tyre, t ...

" who died in 1506. A 1493 inscription on a

mosque A mosque ( ), also called a masjid ( ), is a place of worship for Muslims. The term usually refers to a covered building, but can be any place where Salah, Islamic prayers are performed; such as an outdoor courtyard. Originally, mosques were si ...

in

Deir al-Qamar Deir al-Qamar () is a city south-east of Beirut in south-central Lebanon. It is located five kilometres outside of Beit ed-Dine in the Chouf District of the Mount Lebanon Governorate at 800 m of average altitude. History Crusader period The ol ...

credits "''al-Maqarr al-Fakhri'' he Fakhrid SeatEmir Fakhr al-Din Uthman" as its builder and further notes that he was the "son of al-Hajj Yunis ibn Ma'n". Both Fakhr al-Din and his father lived during the era of the prominent Druze reformer Jamal al-Din Abdullah al-Tanukhi (d. 1479), who urged his coreligionists to engage in Muslim religious practices, hence the usage of the honorary title ''al-Hajj'' (one who has completed the

Hajj Hajj (; ; also spelled Hadj, Haj or Haji) is an annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest city for Muslims. Hajj is a mandatory religious duty for capable Muslims that must be carried out at least once in their lifetim ...

pilgrimage to Mecca) by Yunis and the construction of a mosque, which were not used by the Druze, by Fakhr al-Din. According to the historian William Harris, in the 1490s Fakhr al-Din entered into an alliance with the Bani al-Hansh, a

Sunni Muslim Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam and the largest religious denomination in the world. It holds that Muhammad did not appoint any successor and that his closest companion Abu Bakr () rightfully succeeded him as the caliph of the Musli ...

clan that controlled most of the

Beqaa Valley The Beqaa Valley (, ; Bekaa, Biqâ, Becaa) is a fertile valley in eastern Lebanon and its most important farming region. Industry, especially the country's agricultural industry, also flourishes in Beqaa. The region broadly corresponds to th ...

at the time. The Bani al-Hansh were at war with the

Buhturids The Buhturids () or the Tanukh () were a dynasty whose chiefs were the emirs (princes or commanders) of the Gharb area southeast of Beirut in Mount Lebanon in the 12th–15th centuries. A family of the Tanukhid tribal confederation, they were es ...

(descendants of Jumayhur Buhtur) led by Jamal al-Din Hajji, the Mamluk-appointed governor of Beirut between the 1490s and 1512.Harris 2012, p. 78. In July 1496 he was summoned with other Syrian chieftains to Damascus by its viceroy Qansuh al-Yahyawi, according to the Damascene chronicler al-Busrawi (d. 1500), for unclear reasons. The Damascene chroniclers Ibn al-Himsi (d. 1527) and Ibn Tulun (d. 1546) hold that in the following year, he joined the rebellion of the Mamluk officer Akbirdi when the latter besieged Damascus; Akbirdi died of natural causes in 1498 and Fakhr al-Din was imprisoned in the

Citadel of Damascus The Citadel of Damascus () is a large medieval fortified palace and citadel in Damascus, Syria. It is part of the Old city of Damascus, Ancient City of Damascus, which was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979. The location of the curr ...

with other Syrian chieftains on 17 April 1499 for their participation in the rebellion.Hourani 2010, p. 918. Fakhr al-Din was imprisoned by the Mamluk authorities in 1505, the year the Bani al-Hansh raided Jamal al-Din's soap stockpiles in Beirut. The Mamluks nonetheless held him in high esteem and he was released shortly after "covered with honor", according to al-Shidyaq. The latter remarked on Fakhr al-Din's emergence as "the sun setting on the Tanukh uhturidemirate and rising on the Ma'n emirate".

Succession

Fakhr al-Din was succeeded by his son Yunis, who according to Ibn Sibat died "a young man of reverence, power, and dignity" in 1511-12.Salibi, 1973, p. 278. Although Shihabi claimed that a certain "Fakhr al-Din ibn Uthman" was summoned by Sultan Selim I upon his conquest of Mamluk Syria in 1517, the 17th-century

Maronite Maronites (; ) are a Syriac Christianity, Syriac Christian ethnoreligious group native to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant (particularly Lebanon) whose members belong to the Maronite Church. The largest concentration has traditionally re ...

patriarch and historian

Istifan al-Duwayhi Istifan al-Duwayhi or Estephan El Douaihy ( / ALA-LC: ''Isṭifānūs al-thānī Buṭrus al-Duwayhī''; ; ; ; 2 August 1630 – 3 May 1704) was the 57th Patriarch of the Maronite Church, serving from 1670 until his death. He was born in Ehden, L ...

wrote that it was "Emir Qurqumaz son of Emir Yunis ibn Ma'n" who was actually summoned. Salibi considers it plausible that Yunis, the father of Qurqumaz, was the son of Fakhr al-Din Uthman as it conformed with a widespread Arab tradition in which the eldest son names his eldest son after his father. The chronicle of Duwayhi indicates that Qurqumaz succeeded Yunis and continued to hold the emirate of the Chouf in 1528, though it contains no information about the Chouf emirate between then and 1586, when Shihabi and Shidyaq hold Qurqumaz died (Duwayhi places his death in 1584). In the assessment of Salibi, Shihabi likely erred in the reconstruction of the Ma'nid family due to the exceptionally long reign of Qurqumaz (1511–1586). Salibi surmises that Qurqumaz succeeded his father while a young child and must have been assisted in ruling the emirate by his close Ma'nid kinsman Alam al-Din Sulayman (likely an uncle or cousin), who was mentioned by Ibn Sibat as having been imprisoned relatively briefly with Qurqumaz by

Janbirdi al-Ghazali Janbirdi al-Ghazali (; died 1521) was the first governor of Damascus Province under the Ottoman Empire from February 1519 until his death in February 1521. Career Viceroy of Hama and Governor of Damascus Al-Ghazali was originally the '' na'ib'' ...

, the Ottoman governor of Damascus, in 1518.Salibi 1973, pp. 280–281.

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * *{{cite book , last1=Sluglett , first1=Peter , editor1-last=Sluglett , editor1-first=Peter , editor2-last=Weber , editor2-first=Stefan , title=Syria and Bilad Al-Sham Under Ottoman Rule: Essays in Honour of Abdul Karim Rafeq , date=2010 , publisher=Brill , location=Leiden , isbn=978-90-04-18193-9 , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aY46oohf9LEC , chapter=Introduction 15th-century births 1506 deaths Chouf District Druze people Druze in Lebanon Emirs of Mount Lebanon Ma'n dynasty 15th-century Lebanese people 15th-century people from the Mamluk Sultanate Year of birth unknown 16th-century people from the Mamluk Sultanate