Introduction: 

Levantine, and Middle Eastern history in general, is fraught with incidents both major and minor that have shaped the collective consciousness of the inhabitants of this part of the world, and whose echoes reverberate far into the four corners of the planet. Oddly enough, it is a peculiarity of the region to always minimize the greater occurrences and maximize the most insignificant ones; as such, it must not be odd to the reader of 19^th century Middle Eastern history to discover that the 1860 massacres in both Lebanon and Damascus are mostly referred to simply as incidents, or events. Similarly, it must be of no surprise that the intercommunal strife of 1841 started as a squabble between a Christian hunting in the surroundings of the Druze village of B’aklin. More on this incident will be said later.

Mikhayil Mishaqa was born on March 20, 1800, in the Mount Lebanon village of Rishmayya. His father was fiscal manager to the Shihabi emirs, rulers of Mount Lebanon, as was common in that time and place he went on to occupy the same position. Mishaqa was born and raised a Greek Catholic, a Melkite[1], although he subsequently converted to Protestantism. Mishaqa later moved on to Damascus where he practiced medicine, and where his connections and acute intellect brought upon him the title and responsibilities of vice-consul of the United States in Damascus attached to the American Consul in Beirut, Mr. Johnson.

Mishaqa was to be a chief witness of the events that were to characterize the year 1860, primarily the massacres perpetrated by the Druze inhabitants of Mount Lebanon against their fellow Maronites, and more importantly, as resident of Damascus at that time, of the riots and ensuing massacres of the local Damascene Christian population by some of its Muslim inhabitants. Mishaqa would come to produce a series of regular dispatches as the events unfolded during the months of June and July 1860 to his superiors in the consulate in Beirut. As time progressed, he acquiesced to the request of one his relatives to write down some kind of general history of the area, as he had witnessed it. The answer came in 1873 as the book commonly known as “Murder, Mayhem, Pillage and Plunder, the History of the Lebanon in the 18^th and 19^th Centuries”, or as it is known by its Arabic title “al-Jawab ‘ila Iqtirah al-Ahbab”[2].

It is worth noting the difference in general ambience between his dispatches and his memoirs written some thirteen years later is quite striking, with the former filled with sectarian tensions and a generally angry ethos, while the latter showing a more harmonious multiconfessional tendency to which he seemingly ascribed as he looked back unto his own and his region’s past, especially after the retaliations and general consequences of the 1860 massacres unfolded over the course of the coming years.

Going back to the events of 1860 (to use the diminutive word), it is of vital importance to our study to offer a glimpse of whatever antecedents there was in the area to these brutal occurrences, and to place them in a wider context by alluding to similar events in the future (late 19^th and 20^th century), and by providing some views by other witnesses of the events.

Sectarianism in the Levant:

It is hard to dissociate the divine from the material and the daily in a region largely considered as the birthplace of the three major monotheistic religions, and as an arena where the level of interaction between them has historically been highest. Charles Malik, one of the foremost Lebanese scholars, has said of this region “where God himself is the problem”[3], alluding to the sectarian dimension of its conflicts. It is worth noting that sectarianism cannot and should not be considered as the sole vector of strife in the larger Levant, although it has continued in areas with large minorities, most notably the modern day Lebanese Republic. The roots of sectarianism lie, most probably, somewhere within the sands of the desert of time, suffice to say in our study that during several instances of the history of the Levant, the popular divisions were along sectarian or confessional lines, and caused the attack of a community by another, or, at the very least, some form of enmity.

It has oft been said that sectarianism was encouraged by occupying powers as a result of the, not so untrue, saying “divide and conquer”. It is also important to note the large wealth and influence amassed by the local Christian minorities in both Lebanon and Syria during the 19^th century as a result of political interventionism dating all the way back to the Capitulations between the Ottoman Empire and the Christian European nations. Social changes were enacted by the reformed Ottoman laws or Tanzimat of 1836, whereby Muslim and non-Muslim became equal in the eye of the law. These changes in both material and social status rendered the Christians, as biggest minority in Damascus (and majority in the small geographical parcel known as Mount Lebanon), prey to the envy of some of their Muslim neighbors.

Precedents to the 1860 Massacres:

Without going back too distantly in time, either to Islamic conquest or the Crusades, the most important antecedents to these occurrences occurred at an interval of almost a decade starting in 1841 in Mount Lebanon, after the effective end of the Shihabi emirate. Mishaqa himself tells of us of that incident (to which I alluded in the introduction), where:

A Christian from Dayr Al-Qamar[4] was hunting on B’aqlin land, and a Druze from there objected. Bad blood surfaced between them, and helpers came to both sides, the fray ending in discharge of weapons. [5]

He goes on with the incident telling us how the local Sheykhs of Dayr Al-Qamar[6] arrived, and how they find slain men at the site and more men arrived from both sides. Retaliations ensued, and a fierce battle engaged which ended in a killing of the Druze party of the conflict in their own village of B’aqlin. This incident proved to be a starting point for a cycle of vendettas between the two local populations both Druze and Christian.

  Similar incidents went on to continue, especially in 1843 as the Druze sought their revenge on Dayr Al-Qamar, where they succeeded at a great cost of men,  as they pillaged and burned all Christian property they could put their hands on, after killing or causing their owners to flee. The events culminated in a Druze assault on the Christian stronghold of Zahleh, who was reputed never to have fallen, this time the Druze were aided by the government appointed troops of Shibli Al-‘Aryan. The assault ultimately failed as Zahleh, in contrast to Dayr Al-Qamar, was a purely Christian town while the Dayr had a mixed population.

These events led to the creation of a new system for the governing of Mount Lebanon, the Ka’im-makamiyateyn, or two provinces, as per the behest of European interference, a northern Christian province, or ka’im-makamiyya, ruled by a Christian emir, and a southern Druze province ruled a by a Druze emir. It is worth noting the ironic fact that the Christians who suffered most from the Druze insurrection were those that remained in the southern province and that Christians still outnumbered Druze three to one there. Dayr Al-Qamar was granted special status as a mixed city, per the behest of its inhabitants, and was ruled by a representative of the provincial government.

Another major antecedent to the massacres of 1860, were the 1850 events in Aleppo[7]. On October 17, 1850, the second day of the Muslim feast of ‘Eid Al-Adha, rioting spread through the streets of Aleppo and was focused on the small Melkite Christian minority of the Judaydah area. The rioting would last for two days and cause considerable damage to the Christians and their properties. Masters renders the causes of these events to be mostly economic, due to the accumulated wealth and power of the local Christian minorities as a result of European favoritism.

The Aleppo rioting ended in the demands by the Muslim population of the barring of church bell ringing, and public display of crosses by Christians, they had to be prohibited from owning slaves…  these demands initially were met by the governor of the city, Mustafa Zarif Pasha. Mustafa was later to retaliate and to seek out all perpetrators of the rioting and to recover any property and return to Christians. In the end these measures were not fully enacted, but permitted the keeping of “Muslim honor” and was meant to give the Christians a renewed sense of security and law.

The 1860 massacres proper:

The 1860 massacres happened on two primary fronts, Mount Lebanon and Damascus, in chronological succession over a period of weeks during the months of June and July 1860.  We will start with a brief account of the massacres in Lebanon, by Mishaqa himself, and later move on to focus more on the events as they unfolded in Damascus, which is our chief concern.

The 1860 “events” of Mount Lebanon started out as isolated skirmishes and individual criminal acts in the months that preceded the late May outbreak. The acts tended to grow in magnitude as they went unchecked by local ottoman authorities until they started to become fully sectarian in nature. According to Mishaqa in his dispatches[8], major troubles initially started in the towns of Rashayya and Hasbayya, where Druze demanded a Christian surrender of weapons. Appeals to the Maronite patriarchate, which itself appealed twice to Ottoman leaderships proved futile. The first Druze attempt was thwarted under the leadership of Sa’d El-Din Shihab. 

Osman Bey, commander of the Ottoman troops in Hasbayya, went to one of the principal Druze leaders, Sitt Nayifa Jumblat, and took here terms for stopping the massacres; these included a total surrender of the Christians. Osman conveyed the message to the Christians and told them to surrender weapons to him and come under his protection to the Serai. All attempts to exercise pressure on the Ottoman governor proved useless, as whatever measures he undertook were most always half-hearted and biased towards the Druze. This last point was clearest when troops were dispatched to quell the affair, under the leadership of Kanj Al-‘Imad, a zealous man most notably know for his massacres of Christians during various past occasions.

The Christians, now imprisoned in the Serai at Rashayya with a group of Shihabi emirs, were eventually almost all slaughtered. Mishaqa sees in the coordination and number of Shihabi emir’s killed proof of coordination between the Druze and Ottoman leadership in a conspiracy against Lebanese Christians. Mishaqa complained and greatly blamed the Ottoman governor for his ineptitude and inefficiency, and saw in him on of the prime reasons of the events in not so distant Lebanon.  In a famous June 17^th missive, Mishaqa clearly expounds his view of government and Druze coordination against Christians.

In Hasbayya the massacre was no less terrible, where the dead numbered in the hundreds, where cold and calculated murders took place in response to age old grudges that were held amongst the local populations. Some Christians managed to survive by means of the aforementioned Sitt Nayifa Jumblat who saved a fraction of the population, and via Mukhtara[9] and Sidon sent them to Beirut where they would be in relative safety. [10]

During that time, refugee Christians, who managed to survive the arduous road to Damascus and the marauding Druze, were starting to look for a haven there and started to bring tales of civil strife to the damascenes. At that same moment, tensions in Damascus were starting to mount as a result of the events in Lebanon, the influx of refugees, the rumors being spread about vengeful reprises of either party (Christian, Druze or Muslim) against the others in Damascus, and various conspiracy theories among others.

The greatest Christian defeat was to befall the stronghold of Zahleh, once considered inviolable.  Zahleh is attacked by Druze forces and to the surprise of all, taken, plundered, ransacked and leveled to the ground. This event, once unconceivable in the minds of all, greatly demoralized the Christians and further emboldened the Druze in undertaking further action against Christians, whether by assaulting Baalbeck, Dayr Al-Qamar again, or by mounting general attacks against anything Christian they could identify.

Mishaqa also went on about the escalation of events in Damascus as Muslims threw stones at his house for the sole reason he was a Christian, but greatly praised the Muslim notable Sharif Mahmud Efendi al-Hamzawi” for going against the Muslim rioters and calling for peace.

Mishaqa initially blamed the Druze and Muslim, and defined clear points of concordance between the Lebanon and Damascus massacres within his dispatches, but changed his point of view in his subsequent book.  It is easy to imagine an angry Christian writing against Druze and Muslims who were pillaging him, thus his reversal of opinion is far more important in the course of this study, as he reminisced and looked back to the past. It is worth noting that by the time he had written his book, Ottoman control over Damascus had been reasserted and almost all sectarian qualms calmed down and virtually annihilated, as opposed to Mount Lebanon and its tumultuous history and future with sectarianism which was fast turning into a modality of political life, up to being incorporated into the constitutional makeup the nascent Lebanese Republic in 1926[11].

In Murder, Mayhem, Pillage and Plunder, Mishaqa states that the:

Damascus incident had no connection with the incidents in the Lebanon, but had special causes that grew out of the conduct of ignorant Christians when the intelligent among them no longer had the power to curb them

Thus the major blame lies on the Christians who pushed too far the idea of equality under the reforms of the Tanzimat and incurred the enmity of their fellow countrymen.

Mishaqa then went to describe the societal causes, primarily residing in the Christian refusal to pay the tax imposed upon them in counterpart of their refusal of conscription in the army. Taxes started to mass, and culminate in awesome quantities on the poor, who upon insistence found they could not pay for more than a year, much less the years past. A letter circulated by metropolitan Joseph, Orthodox Bishop of Akkar did nothing to alleviate the situation, especially since it could easily be read to call for a Christian rebellion against the taxes of the unjust Muslim oppressors.

Surprisingly, Mishaqa then goes on to blame the empire for inciting damascene Muslims, towards which it had little like, against their fellow Christian countrymen, who had also fallen out of favor, in an attempt to strike two birds with one stone, as the common Lebanese saying goes.

Ahmad Pasha, the governor, then tried to show that he was attempting to protect Muslim population from Christian reprisal during Friday prayer, and as such incited the Muslims towards more hatred. He did this by placing a canon at an Umayyad mosque in guise of protections, given the nearby clashes in Lebanon. Mishaqa then goes on speaking about Monsieur Yorgaki, the Greek vice consul’s exasperation with Ahmad Pasha’s ineptitude. A few days later, news of the fall of Zahleh reached Damascus to a mixed reaction of great joy among Muslims and great fear among Christians.

The Christians barricaded themselves in their homes, bringing the Damascene government to a standstill being that the majority of clerks were Christian, while Muslim anger escalated day by day against the infidels who were seeking retaliation. Things quieted down during the 7^th and 8^th of July, and Muslim rioters were captured and paraded with the implicit goal of creating more Muslim animosity towards Christians. The plot succeeded and riots broke out very violently on the 9^th of July in the market place, as Muslim rioters left virtually no house unscathed, and killed all the men they could reach and looted all Christian property.[12]

Mishaqa then praises the actions of several Muslim notables mot precisely Emir Abdul Qadir, Salih Agha Al-Chorbagi Al-Mahayini, Said Agha Al-Nuri, and Umar Agha Al-Abid, for protecting and zealously defending the Christian population against the rioters who had broken many a tenet of Islamic law by succumbing to these acts of unjustified violence.

A day of relative quiet followed, but violence resumed the next day, a Wednesday, as more and more Christians were massacred, and pious Muslims who hid some Christians were threatened to surrender over the Christians they were protecting. Some Christians fled and made a brave stand at the monastery of Sayd Naya, where Muslims could not break the barricades and defeat the strong and fierce Christians.

As per the request of Emir Abdul Qadir, the Christians he rescued were transferred to the citadel to be protected, and his men went on to search for any survivors amongst the ruins. Salih Agha Al-Chorbagi Al-Mahayini knew of a band of Druze coming towards his protectorate of the Maydan to massacre the Christians under his protection, and he went on and confronted them, and managed to talk them out of the attacks by dissuading them given the futility of their attacks against his troops.

The massacres lasted 8 days overall, and were to prove extremely terrifying to the Christians of whom many lost relatives, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, not to mention great amounts of material property. Mu’ammar Pasha arrives into the city with prerogatives of governorate and he quells the insurrection, but the slayings did not wholly stop in and out of Damascus until several days later.

It is worth noting that during the insurrection, Mishaqa’s house itself was attacked, and that he was wounded, along with several members of his family, but all managed to survive thanks to the help of Emir Abdul Qadir and Sayyid Muhammad Al-Sawtari, who took them in to his house until Mikhayil’s wounds were healed.

The story ends with Ottoman reassertion of power in Damascus, the coming of the foreign minister Fuad Pasha and a subsequent trial. The trial ended in a series of executions, and a string of arrests throughout Lebanon and Damascus. A commission was set to evaluate property losses and indemnify the Christians, but as usual the indemnities rarely covered a decent percentage of loss.

A new system was brokered by the European powers for mount Lebanon, the age of the moutasarifyah started, whereas Lebanon would be ruled by a non Lebanese Christian, that the European powers would approve but that would be appointed by Istanbul, and the whole country divided into districts with a district officer from the majority sect within. Thus Lebanon was well on the road of full blown sectarian politics, but Damascus was pacified in Ottoman fashion and reentered the Ottoman system.

Conclusion:

In the end it is worth to contrast Mishaqa’s two different accounts of the 1860 massacres, either in his dispatches or book, where it becomes quite clear that after looking back at the events he realizes, at least on a personal level, the inherent Christian mistakes, and the major grievances caused by the local political system, Ottoman in nature, to the entire population regardless of sect. throughout his book there is always a sentiment of intercommunal harmony that is not characteristic of the actual events that occurred whether in 1841, 1850 or 1860. To him, these particular dates, as terrible as they were, were aberrations and not the norm and he inflicted his blame upon the two extrema, the upper government, and the ignorant masses.

It has oft been said that the Christians could never hope to effectively rule any autonomous region, due to their minoritarian status in the Middle East, but as proven by the Maronite experimentation in 20^th century Mount Lebanon, later to become the Lebanese Republic, some form of autonomy could be gained, but there were always concessions to be paid. The Christians managed to keep a clear popular majority within geographical Mount Lebanon which they share with some Druze and Shiite groupings (and this majority is kept until the present day) but whatever majority they had in the whole of geographical Lebanon at the turn of the century they clearly lost as a result of demographic trends and successive migration waves.

Sectarianism in Lebanon survived, as a result of European interference, and was consecrated in the constitution as a form of rule, and is still the present norm, and was one of the leading causes of 1975 civil war, due to unjust and unfair representation of sects within government, and an unfair economic divide between regions. It has to be noted that Kamal Salibi said of the Christians of Lebanon during the 1860 massacres what can be considered a near immutable truth : “although the Christians were the greater in numbers and individual ferocity, hardly maintained any order, and had little trust in their selfish and inept leaders, that ever warred against each other, and who were ever ready to compromise on all matters of public interest for their own personal gain.”[13]

The causes of the 1860 massacres will probably never be fully explained in a satisfactory manner. Leila Fawaz attributes them to the breakdown of central authority, primary the Shihabi dynasty in Lebanon[14], whilst others such as Masters implicate the entering of the region into a new world economy that gave unfair advantages to the Christian population. It is important to note that sectarianism, not as an ideology, rather a modality of Levantine life, is an acquired fact. Modern day examples arise from the last American war over Iraq, which was completely unified under the rule of a dictator, but broke down in civil strife along sectarian tensions at the very first moment the old system fell.

The events that continue to happen in modern day Lebanon also do point out to a resurgence of political sectarianism, primarily during the historical periods of 1920 (creation of the state), 1926 (drafting of constitution), 1943 (independence), 1952 (revolution against president Bishara  Al-Khuri), 1958 (revolution against policies of president Camille Chamoun), 1969 (Cairo Accords), and 1975 at the outbreak f the civil war.