Emirate of Mount Lebanon

Common card · No. 284019

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. 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. 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. In Lebanese nationalist narratives, he is celebrated as establishing a sort of Druzes–Maronite...

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