INTRODUCTION. Considered from a historical standpoint ISKANDER IBN YA'QUB ABKARIUS's Book of the Marvels of the Time concerning the Massacres in the Arab Country imparts, within its limits, as already remarked, some extremely useful knowledge regarding the position of the Christian Church or, more properly speaking, Christian Churches in the Semitic Orient; especially regarding the activities of the different Christian sects, everlastingly engaged in mutual warfare or combined against Islām in its two great subdivisions with offshoots, which activities touched and continue to touch very nearly the difficult and delicate Eastern Question that always manages to stay with us notwithstanding the ingenious solutions periodically advanced, whose name is Legion and whose effect is Nil. The disturbances of 1860 which he describes, explosions of religious hatred in the service of ambitions foreign to the country's weal, were not isolated events but part and parcel of that Eastern Question, in itself only an episode in the long history of the relations between Asia and Europe: a chapter of the record of reciprocity between East and West as yet imperfectly written. There is no lack of works on the subject, but their authors, mostly biased by preconceived notions, prejudice or worse, rather strove to advocate the cause they had espoused than to explain how things really came about, after von Ranke's precept for the historian that he should aim at showing "wie es eigentlich dagewesen.". A narrative like the following, from the hand of an intelligent native, full of detail regarding the actors in the tragedy of Mount Lebanon, the "impregnable Lebanon," that venerable grave of a self-contained ancient1 and political powder-house of our modern world, may therefore be acceptable as a contribution to the attainment of the desideratum referred to. And to derive the greatest possible advantage from such a document, we have to pay attention, first of all, to the place of action no less than to the evolution of the Mount's condition from a stormy past and its relation to events that happened elsewhere, which influenced the international situation and reacted on the status and internal administration of the Ottoman Empire. To quote a much disputed observation of J. E. RENAN, Mission de Phénicie, p. 217. Inspiring horror on account of the sacrifices which attended their worship of the unseen in their high places, the earliest inhabitants of the fastnesses of Mount Lebanon we know of, seem to have been left conscientiously alone by the dwellers on the coast, the traders who profited by the central position of Syria for the extension of their mercantile business to Babylonia, Assyria, Arabia, Egypt and the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. Yet, they are heard from in the historical books of the Bible and in the chronicles of the armed conflict of Graecia Barbariae lento collisa duello. With Mecca as hub of the universe, Syria becomes for aggressive Islām ash-Shām, the land of the left hand in contradistinction to the Yaman. The crusades make it a focus of interest for western Christianity; poets de primo cartello, like Dante2 and Petrarca,3 popularise its name and with reason. As a French authors observes: No great religious, political or military movement that ever influenced the destiny of the human race, has come to a head without Syria being mixed up in it. And most of the great conquerors the world has seen and suffered, have had something to do with Syria's fortunes. . As regards the Syrians, Cicero calls them people born for servitude." The male Syrian in Martial is the litter-bearer par excellence; the female Syrian is in her younger years the courtesan and when the loss of her youthful charms disqualifies her for that profession, the go-between by inclination and natural disposition; male or female they cater to pleasure-seeking Rome as mimes, jugglers, musicians and dancers. In the comedies of Plautus and Terence they are the clever but rascally slaves exploiting the foibles of their masters. Juvenal and Petronius testify to their insinuating methods, their 2 Il Convito, IV, 5; La Vita Nuova, XXX. Trionfo della Fama, I, 76. 'XAVIER RAYMOND, La Syrie et la Question d'Orient, Revue des Deux Mondes, September 15 & October 1, 1860. "The military history of Syria may be pictured as the procession of nearly all the world's conquerors: Thothmes, Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon, Sennacherib and Nebuchadrezzar; Cambyses and Alexander; Pompey, Caesar, Augustus, Titus and Hadrian; Omar and Saladin; Tamerlane; Napoleon. And now again she is one of the fronts on which two ideals of civilisation and empire oppose their arms, but with issues more momentous for humanity than were ever fought on these same fields between Semite and Greek, Rome and the East, or Frank and Saracen." Sir GEORGE ADAM SMITH, Syria and the Holy Land, p. 7. 6 De Provinciis Consularibus Oratio. 8 vileness and depravity. When "the Orontes mingled its waters with those of the Tiber," the delicious fruit from the orchards on its banks together with the famous prunes of Damascus and the Syrian pear, extolled by Vergil,' appeared on tables manufactured from cedar of the Lebanon, to give higher relish to the sumptuous repasts of Roman gourmets, groomed by their Syrian valets, who used to scent them and oil their carefully arranged locks with Syrian perfumes and Syrian nard. Less effeminate and thoroughly practical in the government of their outlying provinces, the Romans tried to obliterate in Syria, as in Asia Minor, the racial differences which threatened trouble. Religious differences they found there harder to suppress than any other and more in particular Phoenicia, that region abounding in grace and beauty according to one of their historians,' was the scene, then and later, of disgraceful disturbances occasioned by the clash of new creeds with heathen superstition. Both Christians and Moslemin laid violent hands on what they esteemed idols and shrines of corruption for idolatric homage to false gods, demolishing magnificent temples, breaking glorious images, defacing noble works of art.10 The godliest men, saints of iconoclastic celebrity, were in the front ranks of the dilapidators.11 Rapidly overrun by the Arabs, who considered its conquest of higher importance than any yet made, 12 Syria became with Asia Minor a vast battlefield for the Khalifs and the Byzantine Emperors to measure their strength in, the country's conversion to Islam redounding meanwhile to its spiritual and material advantage.13 Even after the "Georgica, II, 90. HORACE, Oda II, 7, 7; TIBULLUS, III, 4, 28; 7, 31/2; PROPERTIUS, I, 2, 3. • “ .... acclinis Libano monti Phoenice, regio plena gratiarum et venustatis" AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, Res Gestae, XIV, 8. 10 RENAN, op. cit., Conclusions: "Le christianisme, qui se montra en Grèce si peu dévastateur, fut dans le Liban éminemment démoliseur. L'islamisme ne le fut pas moins, surtout pour les sculptures. La race du Liban, soit chrétienne, soit musulmane, est, si j'ose le dire, iconoclaste, inintelligente de l'art; elle a nul sens de l'image plastique; son premier mouvement est de la briser ou de la cacher." "1 Cf THEODORET, Historia Ecclesiastica, V, 21, and C. FLEURY, Histoire Ecclésiastique, IV, 18. 12 M. J. DE GOEJE, Mémoire de la Conquête de la Syrie, quotes from a letter, written, according to a tradition, by the Khalif Abu Bakr to Khalid, commanding him to hasten with 3000 horse to the assistance of 'Amr: " par Dieu, un village pris en Syrie m'est plus cher qu'un grand district dans l'Irac." 13 Never independent except during short spells between two invasions, Syria enjoyed her period of greatest prosperity and splendor under 'Umayyad rule with Damascus as the |