CHURCH HISTORIANS AND MARONITE COMMUNAL CONSCIOUSNESS: Agency and Creativity ...

301 Pages·2011·0.98 MB·English

by  Mouannes Hojairi

CHURCH HISTORIANS AND MARONITE COMMUNAL
CONSCIOUSNESS:
Agency and Creativity in Writing the History of Mount Lebanon

Mouannes Mohamad Hojairi

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the
Requirements for the degree
Of Doctor of Philosophy
In the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
2011
© 2011
Mouannes Mohamad Hojairi
All rights reserved
ABSTRACT

CHURCH HISTORIANS AND MARONITE COMMUNAL CONSCIOUSNESS:
Agency and Creativity in Writing the History of Mount Lebanon
Mouannes Mohamad Hojairi

The intent of this dissertation is to trace the genealogy of Maronite identity through an
examination of the development of the historical tradition that shaped its contemporary
manifestation. It examines how the current identity of the Lebanese Maronite community was
formed and how its content is claimed by those interpellated by it as a stable and fixed essence,
and what the claims of the contemporary nationalists regarding its formation would be. What this
study aims to reveal, is how early Maronite historiography’s plea for inclusion, as a part of
Catholic orthodoxy, was transformed and recast in subsequent centuries into a demand for
exclusion and exclusivity. The metahistorical task of Maronite ecclesiastical historiography, the
claim of perpetual orthodoxy was recast through emplotment in different narratives that perform
oppositional tasks relevant to each era and each political project. Those include an exclusivist
and exclusionary political history with the nineteenth century rise of sectarian politics, as well as
a nationalist narrative in the twentieth century that attempted to preserve Maronite privilege and
political ascendency. This study brings evidence to bear on a particular aspect of history writing
in Lebanon by presenting a reassessment and re-examination of an existing historiographical
debate. It will demonstrate how history writing is one of the main instruments in generating and
perpetuating nationalist myths and ideologies and that historians are central agents of nationality.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction....................................................................................................................................1

Part I.............................................................................................................................................41
The Quest for Orthodoxy: Istifan Al­Duwayhi and the Origins of an
Ecclesiastical History...................................................................................................................41
Contested Claims About the History of the Maronite Church................................................52
The Roots of Authority................................................................................................................57
Chain of Transmission.................................................................................................................59
The Mardaites: Al-Duwayhi’s Adopted Myth of Origin..........................................................66
The Mardaites in History and Historiography.........................................................................73
Roots of the Mardaite Myth........................................................................................................78
The Debate Among Clerical Historians.....................................................................................88
Lebanon the Mountain Refuge...................................................................................................92
Duwayhi’s influence on Maronite Church Historians: Origins and Development
of Clerical Historiography..........................................................................................................98
i
Part II..........................................................................................................................................105
Moments of Change in History and Historiography..............................................................105
Rome Reaching Out...................................................................................................................106
Political Order in the Time of the Imarah...............................................................................109
The Maronite Church as a New Source of Leadership..........................................................115
Regional Politics and Foreign Intervention.............................................................................126
The Tanzimat Reforms and Integration Into the World Economy......................................130
1860 The Moment of Change....................................................................................................133
The Mutasarrifiyyah..................................................................................................................135
The Emerging Historiography..................................................................................................137
The Refuge of the Mutasarrifiyyah..........................................................................................149
Yusuf al-Dibs..............................................................................................................................153
HenriLammen............................................................................................................................160
Redeployment and Regeneration of Authoritativeness..........................................................164
The Modern Debate About the Mardaites...............................................................................168
Clerical Resistance.....................................................................................................................183
ii
Metahistorical Task and Changing Narratives.......................................................................190

Part III........................................................................................................................................192
Lay and Clerical Historiography in the State of Greater Lebanon......................................192
The Emergence of the Modern Lebanese State.......................................................................192
The Persistent Question of Orthodoxy: Facticity Within a Self-Sufficient
Tradition.....................................................................................................................................197
Selectiveness and Interpretation in Defending Orthodoxy....................................................207
The Mountain Refuge in the Lebanese Republic....................................................................213
Histories of Syria and Lebanon: Lay Historiography and the Persistence of a
Tradition.....................................................................................................................................218
Revisionist Historiography: The Debate Over the Mountain Refuge Theory.....................227
From Idea to Hypothesis, the “Mountain Refuge” in the Histories of Today......................232
The Reemergence of the Mardaites..........................................................................................235
The Phoenician Hypothesis: Secular Historiography and the Pre-Christian Past of
Greater Lebanon........................................................................................................................241
Ancient Phoenicia: the People, the Geography and the History...........................................245
iii
Archaeology and the Discovery of Phoenicia..........................................................................250
Historical Evolution and Variations on the Hypothesis.........................................................258
Golden Age and National Rebirth............................................................................................263
Phoenicia in Early Twentieth Century Historiography.........................................................265
Relation Between Lay and Clerical Historiographies............................................................268
Phoenicia in Contemporary Historiography...........................................................................272

Conclusion..................................................................................................................................276
Epilogue......................................................................................................................................281
Topography and Geographic Conditions................................................................................289
Bibliography...............................................................................................................................290

iv
1

Introduction
Two men are of the same nation if and only if they share
the same culture, where culture in turn means a system of
ideas and signs and associations and ways of behaving and
communicating. Two men are of the same nation if and
only if they recognize each other as belonging to the same
nation. In other words, nations maketh man; nations are
the artifacts of men’s convictions and loyalties and
solidarities1

When addressing the ever evolving conflict over identity in Lebanon one has to remain
vigilant in observing the quickly shifting sands of the political field in the country. The one
stable fact about the political alignments in Lebanon is their inherent instability. The nebulous
and unstable realm of political alliances often force sectarian groups, led by their chief political
party, to redefine their communal identity as well as their renewed delineation of the self and the
other with the rise of every new crisis. This feature of the system has left its mark on the
communal identity of every confessional group in Lebanon as well as on the national identity (or
identities) of these groups combined. The natures and definitions of the self, as well as the
nation, are both contested territory in Lebanese political culture and in Lebanese political
discourse. More often than not, this situation either leads to, or simply justifies, confrontations
and violence that almost always take place along sectarian lines that have divided the country
since its earliest inception.

1 Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 7.
2

The main questions concerning identity in Lebanon have morphed and changed in the
years following the end of the civil war (1975-1991), and especially recently. In recent times, the
debate, which would be better described as discord, no longer revolves on the issue of belonging
to Lebanon the nation state or not. The finality of the Lebanese state as well as the sense of
belonging to it seem more solid today than they ever did in the decades since the French granted
independence to Lebanon in 1943. What has remained in flux, in principle, however, revolves on
what being Lebanese entails. What the various Lebanese political factions and ideological
currents are in contest over is precisely this ontological question. Their diverse definitions of
Lebanese identity emanate from their alignments within every crisis, a situation that renders a
unified vision concerning identity untenable.
What I hope to examine is how the current identity of the Lebanese Maronite community
was formed and how its content is claimed by those interpellated by it as a stable and fixed
essence, and what the claims of the contemporary nationalists regarding its formation would be.
Further light will be shed on where the debate among these nationalists is at present. In this
dissertation, I intend to trace the genealogy of Maronite identity through an examination of the
development of the historical tradition that shaped its contemporary manifestation.
As a frequently contested territory, Mount Lebanon has an equally contested history, one that is
produced, shaped, and revised by as many players as those who molded the Lebanese State since
its inception in 1920. The parties who influenced the birth and evolution of this diverse and
fragmented political entity made claims on the writing of its history as significant as the claims
they advanced on its territory.
3

The Lebanese Maronite Church has had more at stake in the process of the writing of
history than any other group or institution. It is arguably one of the most influential institutions
in Lebanese history and definitely the most influential institution in the country at the moment of
the state’s birth. At the time of the rise of nationalist ideas in Europe, the Maronite Church in
Lebanon was the one party that owned a considerable part of the land and had the allegiance of
much of the population; it was also the party that had the most well-established relations with
European states and power brokers. Thus, the Church played a pivotal role in the spread of
nationalist ideas by promulgating the nation-ness of the Maronites of Mount Lebanon. The
Church aimed at bringing about a transformation that would render a nation out of its followers,
and a nation state out of the lands it controlled. The ultimate objective was a Maronite Christian
country with the Maronite Church as the dominant political power.
As the center of a religious community and the main—and for a period of time the sole—
educator in the territory that was to become the state of Lebanon, the Maronite Church played an
hegemonic role in the process of identity formation. By writing their own history and producing
their own myth of origin, certain historians of the Church at a certain point attempted to
transform that myth into a national one. The identity produced was one that separated the Church
and its followers from their surroundings and isolated the Maronite-inhabited parts of Mount
Lebanon from the religious, cultural, and political environments of which they were part.
Dissociation from the Arab-Islamic milieu was essential in order to assert a separate identity for
the Maronite inhabitants of the Mountain; a process that was meant to insure the emergence of a
Lebanese national identity that identified with Christian Europe and produced the Muslim world
as its “Other.”