33

The Shihāb Amīrs of Lebanon

1109–1257/1697–1842

Lebanon

The Shihāb family of Sunnī Muslim notables rose to power as amīrs of Lebanon when the main line of the Ma‘ns (see above, no. 32) came to an end in 1109/1697, Bashīr I Shihāb being a maternal grandson of Aḥmad Ma‘n b. Mulḥim. The amirate which the Shihābs ruled was in fact largely controlled by Druze feudal lords, increasingly rent by rival factions, while from the later eighteenth century onwards the numbers and strength of the Maronites increased; a reflex of these processes was the adoption of Christianity by Mulḥim’s sons and the accession of Yūsuf b. Mulḥim as the first Maronite Shihāb amīr. The Shihābs managed to maintain themselves in Mount Lebanon against Aḥmad Jazzār Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Sidon and the coastal towns. Bashīr II operated within the increasingly complex politics of the Near East after the Napoleonic invasion and carefully conciliated Muḥammad ‘Alī Pasha (see below, no. 34), but became isolated in his own land by 1840 and fell from power when the Egyptian cause in Syria was lost; after a brief interlude, Ottoman direct rule in Lebanon was restored in 1257/1842.

Zambaur, 108 and Table K.

EI¹ ‘Bashīr Shihāb IF (A. J. Rustum).

P. M. Holt, Egypt and the Fertile Crescent 1516–1922: A Political History, with a genealogical table at p. 312.

K. S. Salibi, The Modern History of Lebanon, London 1965.