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Updated: June 29, 2025
'There it is, said Fakredeen, speaking in an affected whisper, 'the greatest stroke of state that ever entered the mind of a king without a kingdom, for I am resolved that the mountain shall be a royalty I You remember when Ibrahim Pasha laid his plans for disarming the Lebanon, the Maronites, urged by their priests, fell into the snare, while the Druses wisely went with their muskets and scimitars, and lived awhile with the eagle and the antelope.
From thence they proceeded to the Maronite Convent of Mâr Antonius Khoshiah, situated on the brow of an almost perpendicular mountain, where was a printing-press. Nearly all the inhabitants of that part of Lebanon are Maronites, acknowledging allegiance to the Pope. Thence they visited the Cedars of Lebanon; and then crossed the rich plain of Coelo-Syria to Baalbek, at the foot of Anti-Lebanon.
This is the Christian region of Lebanon, inhabited almost wholly by Maronites, who still retain a portion of their former independence, and are the most thrifty, industrious, honest, and happy people in Syria.
The Maronites had been the chief movers in favor of the Sultan and the English, and the English agent in negotiating with them was a Roman Catholic.
An independent Syrian kingdom, framed and guarded by a hundred thousand sabres, rose up before him; an established Olympian religion, which the Druses, at his instigation, would embrace, and toleration for the Maronites till he could bribe Bishop Nicodemus to arrange a general conformity, and convert his great principal from the Patriarch into the Pontiff of Antioch.
But they had now seen them torn in pieces, trampled under foot, and burned by the enemies of their religion. Of the nineteen pupils in the seminary at Abeih in 1850, four were Druzes, three were Greeks, four Maronites, four Greek Catholics, two Protestants, one Syrian, and one Armenian; all on a level, eating at the same table, mingling in the same sports, and meeting at the same place of prayer.
We arranged that we would perform the journey from Beyrout to Jerusalem in company, if, indeed, we found it possible to penetrate among the savage tribes of Druses and Maronites. So now I no longer stood unprotected in the wide world. I had found a companion as far as Jerusalem, the goal of my journey, which I could now hope to reach. I was well satisfied with the arrangements on board.
'It is a great thing to have gained the Patriarch of Lebanon, said the lady; 'I always felt that, as long as that man was against you, the Maronites never could be depended on. And yet these arms; after all, they are of no use, for you would not think of insurrection!
If the monstrous scheme succeeds, there will be no more prayer in the villages of the devout Maronites, no more submission to God in the mountains of Armenia, no more simplicity of faith among the shepherds of Chaldea, no more purity of life among the wandering children of Asiatic deserts.
He instances the Copts of Egypt, the Maronites and Druses of Lebanon, the Parsees of India, the Armenians and Greeks of Asia as displaying, though in a less degree, the same phenomenon as the Jews. He attributes the long continuance of the Jews as a separate people mainly to two causes.
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