The War of 1860: Roots and Ramifications

The idea of an independent Lebanon stretching back to early Ottoman times has more to do with the work of historians than with geographical or social givens of history. From the Maronite patriarch Istifan al-Duwayhi (1629–1704) to prominent scholar Kamal Salibi (1929– 2011), historians of Lebanon have focused on the Druze-Maronite rivalry as one of the primordial driving forces behind the crystallization of modern Lebanon. Two formative periods according to this narrative were the reign of Fakhr al-Din II al-Ma ‘ani (1572–1635) and the later Shihabi emirate (1789–1840). This approach wrote out of Lebanon’s history ruling families