Emirate of Mount Lebanon

Emirate of Mount Lebanon إِمَارَة جَبَل لُبْنَان (Arabic)
1516–1842
Flag
The Emirate of Mount Lebanon at its greatest extent under Fakhr al-Din II, circa 1630
Status	Vassal of the Ottoman Empire
Capital	Baakleen (1516–c. 1600) Deir al-Qamar (c. 1600–1811) Beit ed-Dine (1811–1840)
Common languages	Arabic Ottoman Turkish
Religion	Christianity, Druze faith, Islam
Government	Emirate
History
• Ottoman–Mamluk War	1516
• Convention of London	1842
Currency	Ottoman Lira
Preceded by Succeeded by Mamluk Sultanate Double Qaim-Maqamate of Mount Lebanon
Today part of	Lebanon

The Emirate of Mount Lebanon (Arabic: إِمَارَة جَبَل لُبْنَان) was a part of Mount Lebanon that enjoyed variable degrees of partial autonomy under the stable suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire between the mid-16th and the early-19th century.^[1]

The town of Baakleen was the seat of local power during the Ma'an period until Fakhr-al-Din II chose to live in Deir el Qamar due to a water shortage in Baakleen. Deir el Qamar remained the seat until Bashir Shihab II ascended to the throne and moved its court to the Beiteddine palace. Beiteddine remains the capital of the Chouf District today.^[2]

Fakhr-al-Din II, the most prominent Druze tribal leader at the end of the 16th century, was given leeway by the Ottomans to subdue other provincial leaderships in Ottoman Syria on their behalf, and was himself subdued in the end, to make way for a firmer control by the Ottoman central administration over the Syrian eyalets.^[1][3] In Lebanese historiography, he is, along with Bashir II, celebrated as establishing a sort of Druzes–Maronite condominium that is often portrayed as the embryo of Lebanese statehood and national identity.

The Maan and Shihab government of different parts of Mount Lebanon, between 1667 and 1841, was an Ottoman iltizam, or tax farm for the Ottoman government, but in practice it was a dynastic principality, and it Emirs were reigning princes.^[1] The relations between the Porte and the Shihab emirs revolved around the payment of taxes, and the official legitimation of their position as Emirs of the Mount Lebanon.^[4] Unlike local polities elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire, Emirate of Mount Lebanon produced strong and influential Emirs (1516–1840) such as Fakhr-Al-Din I (1516–1544) and his grandson Fakhr al-Din II (1591–1635), Haydar Shihab, Mulhim al Shihab and Yusuf Shihab. Bashir Shihab II (1788–1840) followed in the footsteps of Fakhr-Al-Din II in modernizing the Emirate, creating a bureaucracy and facilitating a centralized rule around himself in his quest to dismantle dysfunctional feudal system. That led to the 1840 revolution against Bashir and his Egyptian allies with the support of the crumbling Ottoman Empire and its protector the British Empire.^[5]

Lebanese historiographies, along with the material and oral culture in Levant portray the Emirate as a historical precursor independent Lebanese Republic, along with the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate established in 1861. Later historians and intellectuals such as Kamal Salibi and Ahmad Beydoun tried to deconstruct the traditional historiography due to their left-wing, anti-Maronite and pan-Arabist ideological leanings, and argued that the devolution of functions to local rulers was nothing exceptional in the framework of indirect administration in Ottoman Syria.^[1] Yet both historians of the Lebanese new-left, did not manage to articulate the persistence and lengthy existence of this unique statelet in Mount Lebanon and Wadi al Taym. Emirate of Mount Lebanon also had other names (including "Shuf Emirate", "Emirate of Jabal Druze", as well as "Ma'an Emirate" and "Shihabi Emirate"),^[2] whose boundaries were centered around Mount Lebanon and Wadi al Taym, often expanding into Galilee, Latakia and Houran.