Lebanese Shi'a Muslims - History - Under Mamluk and Ottoman Rule

Under Mamluk and Ottoman Rule

The growth of Shi'a Islam in Lebanon stopped around the late thirteenth century, and subsequently Shi'i communities decreased in size. This development may be traced to 1291, when the Sunni Mamluks sent numerous military expeditions to subdue the Shi'is of Keserwan, a mountain region overlooking the coastal area north of Beirut. The first two Mamluk expeditions were defeated by the Shi'a in Keserwan. The third expedition, on the other hand, was overwhelmingly large and was able to defeat the Shi'a in Keserwan; many were brutally slaughtered, some fled through the mountains to northern Beqaa while others fled moving through the Beqaa plain, to a new safe haven in Jezzine. Keserwan began to lose its Shi'i character under the Assaf Sunni Turkomans whom the Mamluks appointed as overlords of the area in 1306. The process intensified around 1545 when the Maronites started migrating to Keserwan and Jbeil, encouraged by the Assafs, who sought to use them as a counterweight to the Shi'i Himada sheikhs who reemerged in Kesrewan. When in 1605 the Druze emir Fakhr al-Din Ma'n II took over Kesrewan, he entrusted its management to the Khazin Maronite family. The Khazins gradually colonized Kesrewan, purchasing Shi'i lands and founding churches and monasteries. They emerged as the predominant authority in the region at the expense of the Shi'i Hamedeh clan. By the end of the eighteenth century, the Khazins owned Kesrewan and only a few Shi'i villages survived. During the time of the Ottoman Empire the Shi'as suffered religious persecution and were often forced to flee their homes in search of refuge in the South. One example is the Lebanese city of Tripoli, which had formerly had a Shi'a Muslim majority. Many Lebanese Shi'a are rumored to have concealed their religious sect and acted as Sunni Muslims in fear of persecution. It is also rumored that some of the Shi'a permanently adopted the Sunni Muslim sect. The Ottomans and Druze were well allied and a Druze family seized power of Tripoli. Maronites who were persecuted by the Ottoman's and the Druze, sought refuge amongst the newly relocated Shi'a population in the South. Jezzine, once famously known as a Shi'a capital in Lebanon, is now known as a major Christian city in the South. The Shi'is withdrew further south and eventually had to abandon even Jezzine, which until the mid-eighteenth century had functioned as a center of Shi'i learning in Lebanon.

Although the Jabal 'Amil enjoyed a degree of autonomy in the eighteenth century, this ended with the Ottoman appointment of Ahmad al-Jazzar as governor of Sidon province (1775–1804). Jazzar crushed the military power of the Shi'i clan leaders and burned the libraries of the religious scholars using the Druze tribes established in the Shouf, mainly the strong Nakad family, allied to the Maan. He established a centralized administration in the Shi'i areas and brought their revenues and cash crops under his domain. By the late eighteenth century, the Shi'is of the Jabal 'Amil lost their independent spirit and adopted an attitude of political defeat. Al-Jezzar was nicknamed "the butcher" and a big population of the Shi'a were killed under his rule in Lebanon.