Kisrawan

The Kisrawan or Keserwan is a region between Mount Lebanon and the Mediterranean coast, north of the Lebanese capital Beirut and south of the Ibrahim River. It is administered by the eponymous Keserwan District, part of the Keserwan-Jbeil Governorate.

In the 12th–13th centuries it was a borderland between the Crusader states along the coast and the Muslim governments in Damascus. Its inhabitants at that time were Twelver Shia Muslims, Alawites, Druze and Maronite Christians. While the Kisrawanis acted independent of any outside authority, they often cooperated with the Crusader lords of Tripoli and Byblos. Soon after the Sunni Muslim Mamluks conquered the Crusader realms, they launched a series of punitive expeditions in 1292–1305 against the mountaineers of the Kisrawan. The assaults caused wide scale destruction and displacement, with Maronites from northern Mount Lebanon gradually migrating to depopulated villages in the region.

The Mamluks established Turkmen settlements in the coastal part of the Kisrawan to keep guard over the region. Their chiefs from the Assaf dynasty continued to rule the Kisrawan with the onset of Ottoman rule in 1517. In alliance with the Maronite Hubaysh family, whose members served as their stewards and agents, the Assafs patronized Maronite settlement and prosperity in the region. The last Assaf emir was killed in 1591 by Yusuf Sayfa, the governor of Tripoli, who proceeded to take over the Kisrawan and kill the Hubayshes. After a number of struggles with the Druze Ma'ns over control of the Kisrawan, the Sayfas permanently lost their hold over the region to them in 1616. Under the patronage of the Ma'nid emir Fakhr al-Din II, the Maronite Khazen family gradually came to dominate the area, purchasing large tracts of land from Shia Muslim villagers. Their activities fostered the overwhelming Maronite majority of the region that persists until the present day.

The Khazens lost their grip over the region during a peasants' revolt led by Tanyus Shahin, who declared a republic over the Kisrawan in 1859. Although the Kisrawani militia played a key role sparking the 1860 Mount Lebanon civil war, the area largely avoided the bloodshed and destruction of that conflict. Shahin was defeated and disbanded the republic after his defeat by Youssef Karam in 1861. During the Lebanese Civil War of 1975–1990, the Kisrawan was a stronghold of the Maronite-dominated Lebanese Forces militia.