The 1858 Tanios Shahin Revolt and its implications on Lebanon’s pluralistic society
In 1858–1860, a man named Tanios Shahin led a peasant revolt in Kisrawan, forever transforming Mount Lebanon’s society. The scope of the post is to provide a historical account of the underlying causes of the 1858–1860 uprising as well as its implications on the political order of Mount Lebanon in the period that followed the revolt.
What makes the rebellion of Kisrawan peculiar to the Middle East is the fact that it was motivated primarily by class factors. Tanios Shahin came from a Maronite family and organized a rebellion against a strong Maronite feudal family, the Khazin clan, with support of the peasant class. The rebellion of the peasantry against feudal overlords contributed to a shift in the understanding of politics in Mount Lebanon from that of elite control to a more communally controlled power structure.
The integration of Lebanon into the world economy during the 1840s and 1850s, due to export of Lebanese silk, undermined the influence of the feudal emirs. In Kisrawan, the Khazin family ruled over a growingly restless peasantry who viewed the family’s control over them as unjust. A series of events led to the formation of a rebellion. The rebels elected Tanios Shahin as their leader and won the support and sympathy of the Maronite clergy and Christian merchants in Beirut. The rebellion eventually led to the expulsion of the entire Khazin family from the province over which they traditionally ruled. A civil war ensued almost immediately following the Shahin revolt — a war which pitted Maronite Catholics and Druze against each other in Mount Lebanon.
A Brief History Mount Lebanon:
From the sixteenth century until the beginning of the nineteenth century, Mount Lebanon’s history centered around two communities: Maronite Catholics and the Druze. The Druze, an offshoot sect of Islam that came into existence in the eleventh century, sought refuge from the valley of Anti-Lebanon in the mountains to avoid persecution. Many of the Druzes participated in wars against the crusaders, which led to the rise of a warrior aristocracy; among them were the renowned Ma’an emirs. In the seventeenth century, the Druze leader Fakhr Al Din II succeeded in establishing a thriving economy in Mount Lebanon, attracting immigrants from other regions. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries marked a gradual decline in Druze power due to inter-clan conflicts and thus a marked rise in Maronite power. The Maronite sect originated from the Orontes River valley of Syria. During the crusades, the Maronites of the mountain allied themselves with the Europeans. Three main attributes shaped the Maronite community. First, the Maronites’ monopoly of the silk industry facilitated the development of a Maronite upper class and provided an income for peasants and merchants. This resulted in a growing Maronite population, which moved southwards and became numerically dominant in Druze areas. Second, due to land donations by notables, the Maronite church became, by the end of the eighteenth century, the wealthiest and largest organization in Mount Lebanon. The strength it acquired allowed it to free itself from dependence of feudal lords. As Catholics, Maronites enjoyed French consular protection and employment in French companies. Third, the Maronite community was located exclusively in the Mountain and acquired a geographic and religious identity. This gave rise to a national identity, which eventually grew stronger than kinship and feudal ties. The Emirate of Mount Lebanon marked the beginning of Lebanon as a distinctive body when Lebanon was declared an autonomous region in the Ottoman Empire. Particular to the emirate were a number of features that would greatly impact Lebanon’s political developments up to the modern day: a Christian numerical majority, early participation in international market production through silk manufacturing, and close contacts with Europe and European meddling within its affairs.
In April 1845, responding to a Druze rally at Mukhtara, a massive Maronite attack was launched against the Druze — resulting in the destruction of a number of Druze villages. The Ottomans intervened to stop the Maronite attack. Benefiting from the Ottoman intervention in their favor, the Druzes regained the upper hand and destroyed many more Christians villages where many civilians were killed. Istanbul sent Shekib Efendi to Mount Lebanon in order to reinforce order and to disarm the civilians. As a result, the qa’im maqam system was reorganized. This was the dual qa’im maqamate, which administratively divided the Mountain between a Druze and a Maronite qa’im maqam each ruling over his own community. Druze Emir Ahmad Arsalan was appointed qa’im maqam of the religiously mixed southern district and Christian Emir Haidar Abi al-Lama qa’im maqam of the predominantly Christian northern district. The partition strengthened sectarian cleavages, which lead in 1845 to a revision of its terms. This revision gave birth to a process through which religious communities’ institutions partially replaced feudal institutions. The crumbling of the muqata’ji (feudal) system marked the transition of Mount Lebanon into a capitalist system and gave birth to Lebanon’s modern multi-confessional system of political representation.
Each qa’im makamya was bestowed with a council, which was responsible for tax collection and justice administration. Each council, headed by a qa’im maqam, consisted of twelve members: a counselor and a judge representing each of the six religious communities: “Maronite, Druze, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Sunni Muslim and Shi’a Muslim”.
The Kisrawan Uprising of 1858–1860:
During the 1850s, the Arab East was prospering with commercial production albeit dependent on the external market through its main economic activity, sericulture, or silk farming. Its Sheikhs, falling into debt, imposed higher taxation and rent on the peasants. The peasants themselves were indebted to the silk merchants and moneylenders who lent them money at usurious rates reaching fifty percent.
In 1858, Maronite villagers pressed for a reform of the social order. The tanzimat, the abundant amounts of weaponry available since the 1840s, and an atmosphere of economic hardship and scarcity of land incited the rebels. Their initial protests were formulated against what they perceived to be unjust and excessive taxes and the “humiliating” gifts they were traditionally coerced to present to the Khazin feudal sheikhs.
The Maronite peasants of Kisrawan rose in commune-like organization. In December of 1858, a blacksmith from Rayfoun, by the name of Tanios Shahin was elected “first delegate” and assumed the leadership of the rebellion. Under the leadership of Shahin, peasants appointed responsible leaders in all Christian villages to recruit a peasant liberation army. In February 1859, Ottoman troops entered Kisrawan and the emissaries of Khurshid Pasha tried to convince him to seek Ottoman military help. Ottoman troops, however, withdrew as a result of the intervention of the French consul who, a few weeks earlier, had visited the Lebanese town of Ghazir and was met by a huge crowd chanting in support of France. Each village met secretly and elected a leader called sheikh al shabab (leader of the youth), who was delegated to organize the village against the Khazin feudal lords. The army forced the sheikhs out, burned their homes, confiscated their crops and established self-governing communes, some of which endured until 1861.
Shahin’s popularity spread to neighboring districts as he presented himself as the savior of the common Christian inhabitants of Mount Lebanon, especially after a Druze-Maronite clash in 1859 in the village of Bayt Miri. By the summer of 1859, Shahin was elevated to the position of general delegate and moved the headquarters of the revolt from Zuk Mkayel on the coast to Rayfoun in the highlands. Kisrwan, liberated from both the sheikhs and the qa’im maqam, was under the control of rebel authority for more than two years. A council elected directly by the villagers under the presidency of Shahin, ruled by “the force of popular government,” imposed new taxes, purchased weapons, installed common property, intervened in local conflict and controlled a militia of about 1000 men.
The Khazins consistently referred to the rebellion as an “excitement” rather than a rational movement. Their mounting debts during their exile from their lands and their inability to control the commoners strengthened their view that they were robbed of what was rightfully theirs. The Maronite patriarch repeatedly urged the commoners as he did in a letter addressed to the Maronite residents of Biskanta in May of 1860, “to adhere to the spirit of peace and tranquility and to avoid all contrary causes, and to remain in the good graces of the emirs”.
The revolt of Kisrawan was more than a simple struggle over land control; there was a contest to redefine the term ahali — or “commoners.” For the Khazins and the Ottoman state, the term ahali implied the ideal of a politically dormant population; it represented a passive community whose needs were represented by others. Shahin, on the other hand, pushed for an alternative way of understanding the term ahali. For Shahin and the rebels, the term ahali meant an active, unified, discerning, and mobilized population willing and able to represent itself.
In order to legitimize himself further to appeal to the Maronite church, and the residents of Kisrawan, Shahin appealed to popular love for religion. By representing the betrayal of the Christian elites, who backed the Khazins, in religious terms, and equating it with sin, Shahin justified his course of actions.
As the movement spread, Druze sheikhs as well as Maronite feudal emirs “incited sectarian fear and antipathy which duly stopped any form of contagion to Druze areas.” Thus, class conflict was transformed into an inter-communal war. Massacres of Christians postulated the pretext of European intervention: a French military mission was sent to Beirut in August 1860.
The transformation of a class uprising into an inter-communal war shows that in a demographically diverse society like Lebanon, a class conflict can be easily transformed into a communal one. In other words, the Druze peasants were more willing to associate with the Druze emirs than they were with the Maronite peasants. This shows that communal ties could be stronger than class ties in divided societies particularly in times of conflict. Although the uprising helped eliminate the power of feudal emirs and shifted political power into the hands of commoners, it did not succeed in spreading among different communal factions and immediately changed its form into an inter-communal conflict.
