Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 30, 2025
If ever we should meet again I will destroy them. If thou shouldst travel south and eastward through the Belka, remember me, I beg, and seek our tents. There thou shalt find a welcome far more hospitable than the Druze will give thee. I shall never cease to pray for thee. My grief will be extreme until we meet again. I pray thee give me that revolver as a souvenir.
In the spring of this year war broke out afresh between the Druzes and Maronites, and Lebanon was again purged by fire. It was in no sense a religious war, but a desperate struggle for political ascendency. The Maronite clergy in the Druze part of the mountain had been rapidly recovering power, and were as rapidly rising in their opposition to the mission.
And, unless some deputation from the Druze community appeals to me, I should be ill-advised to interfere in its affairs. Our way of government is not identical with that which is pursued with such conspicuous success in highly civilised and settled countries like your own. We leave the various communities and tribes alone to settle their internal differences.
For the first three months of my life at Damascus I only indulged in short excursions, but Richard went away on longer expeditions, often for days, sometimes on business and sometimes to visit the Druze chiefs. I have said that our house was about a quarter of an hour from Damascus, and whilst Richard was away on one of these expeditions I broke through a stupid rule.
It is certain, at any rate, that the Druze sheiks confidently expected this. With such expectations, they made a definite agreement with the mission, that a school for the sons of the ruling class should be established at Deir el-Kamr, and other schools as fast as practicable in their villages, and that the missionaries should be welcomed as religious teachers among all their people.
Taken by surprise, no opposition was made. Both Druzes and Christians were at once disarmed, and officers were left to collect recruits. With the dreaded evil thus strongly upon them, there was a more general disposition to throw off the Druze religion. Applications came from individuals and from families in different and distant villages. Among them were some of the higher ranks.
The officer of the Emir Beshir, finding in his hands a testimonial from Mr. Smith, that he was a Christian, respected him in this character, while he was seizing all his Druze neighbors for soldiers; but he had not then been admitted to the church, for want of sufficient evidence of true conversion.
Even great men in the East rise early; so, when I arrived before the castle of the great Druze chief at six o'clock of a summer's morning, I was not surprised to find a crowd of black-cloaked and white-turbaned mountaineers already waiting for an audience of his grace; nor yet, when I had gained admittance as a favoured person, to find the chief himself afoot and wide awake.
The Patriarch then proclaimed a crusade against them, ordered his bishops to take arms, and marched his forces towards the Druze territory. But the Druzes seized the mountain passes, and defeated every attempt to enter. Though greatly inferior in numbers, they went desperately to work to exterminate or expel every Maronite from their part of the mountains.
The Patriarch now deemed himself strong enough to enter upon his project of crushing the Druzes. His power in the mountains being in the ascendant, he ordered the Druze sheiks to assemble at Deir el-Kamr. They came armed, and, as they approached Deir el-Kamr, were required to send away their followers and lay aside their arms. They refused. A battle ensued, and the Maronites were defeated.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking