Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 29, 2025
With a population of about six hundred thousand this province exported annually two million dollars' worth of raw silk, silkworm-raising being a specialty of the Lebanon. When autonomy was granted the Lebanon, French influence became predominant among the Maronites and other Christians of the province.
In 1864, when there was trouble in Syria and the Maronites were being molested by the Ottoman Government, France landed an army corps and secured autonomy for the Lebanon under a Christian governor. But French influence is not limited to the Lebanon province. All over Syria there are French clerical, secular, and Judaic schools.
There are pure-bred Arab nomads of the desert; there are Arabs who have settled in towns or on the land, some within the last generation, like the Muntefik in Mesopotamia, some a millennium or two ago, like the Meccan Koreish, but who still retain their tribal consciousness of race; there are Arabs in name who have nothing Arabic about them but their language most of the peasantry of Syria are such, and the inhabitants of ancient centres of population like Damascus or Bagdad; in Syria many of these "Arabs" are Christians, and some Christians, though they speak Arabic, have retained their separate sense of nationality notably the Roman Catholic Maronites of the Lebanon and would hardly be considered as Arabs either by themselves or by their neighbours.
Taking advantage of the circumstances and the alarm of all parties at the conjuncture and its yet unascertained consequences, he obtained for the Maronites a long-promised indemnity from the Porte for the ravages of the Druses in the civil war of 1841, which the Druses had been unable to pay, on condition that they should accept the geographical scheme of government; and, having signed, with other Emirs and Sheikhs, the ten articles of peace, he departed, as we have seen, on that visit to Jerusalem which exercised such control over the career of Lord Monta-cute, and led to such strange results and such singular adventures.
The Maronites are powerful; the French nation is interested in them; they are the link between France and Syria; and you, being a Christian prince as well as an emir of the most illustrious house, with your intelligence and such aid as we might give you, I think your prospects were, to say the least, fair.
He marched to the scene of action at the head of his troops, and, when he found that Kais had been outflanked and repulsed, that the Maronites were disheartened in proportion to their previous vanity and insolence, and that the Turkish forces had interfered, he assumed the character of mediator.
'That same priest of the Maronites of whom I told just now, in the first days of his married life was plagued by his companion to reveal to her the secrets people told him in confession. He refused, declaring that she would divulge them. "Nay, I can keep a secret if I swear to do so. Only try me!" she replied. "Well, we shall see," the priest made answer, in a teasing manner.
Abeih, now a missionary station, was inhabited by both Druzes and Maronites, and the conflict began there on the 9th of May. Our brethren were all along assured by both parties, that neither they nor their property would be molested, whichever was victorious.
The heads of the great houses of both nations accompanied the Emir of Canobia; their relatives and followers, by the exertions of Francis El Kazin and Young Syria, were in general so disturbed that the Maronites were under the command of the Emir Raslan, the Druse Caimacam, while the Druses followed the Emir Hai-dar.
The Maronites, the real inhabitants of these mountains, are strong people, gifted with a determined will; they cannot be easily brought under a foreign yoke, but are ready to defend their liberty to the death among the natural strongholds of their rocky passes. Their religion resembles that of the Christians, and their priests are permitted to marry.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking