the Sublime Porte and they were made to enter the soldier-family236 [army]. And Fu'ād Pasha had issued in Damascus a notice concerning the restitution of the plunder [carried away] from (P. 220) the houses of the Christians. And some did make restitution of their own accord and he had their names written down for a time. So when they [the others] became aware of this, they threw the plunder they wanted to get rid of, into the streets of the town. And Fu'ad Pasha had it collected but it was for the most part rubbish and he found scarcely anything among it in the shape of valuable household effects. And to the Christians that remained in Damascus he had assigned fifty paras per head and per day, and this was supplemented with some personal effects [especially] bedding and clothing. And he allowed them also to take what they needed of the restored plunder. And everything any one took, was charged against him at a fixed price in the end to be deducted from what was due to him of the indemnity (P. 221). And most of those who had gone to Bayrūt were able to subsist on this [their rations, etc., as described] comfortably enough, but those who inhabited [had obtained shelter in] the citadel [of Damascus] did not cease to complain of their being terribly crowded and the lack of dwelling room. So dwellings of Moslemin in

the quarter al-Qanawat237 and its neighborhood were cleared for them and he [Fuad Pasha] transferred them thither and there they stayed. Yet, the evil suggestions of Satan did not cease their play with them. So they asked [that they should be allowed] to move to Bayrūt without receiving an answer to their request. And some miscreants, when they could not manage to kill them with the sword as they had done at the time of the massacre, stealthily began to put poison in the food they [the Christians] bought of them. And several persons among them [the Christians] died [in that way], which gave a new impulse to their wish to seek safety. (P. 222) So they insisted [on their demand] with Fu'ad Pasha adducing many excuses [reasons for its being granted]. And at last he assented, ordering the travelling expenses [to be paid out]. And they began to migrate, one party of them after the other. And as regards Fu'ad Pasha, he condemned those who had plotted to poison them, to be hanged. Then he returned to Bayrut, leaving his army behind in Damascus. And after his arrival he sent a message request

236 Ujāq, another word borrowed from Turkish military parlance; cf BARBIER DE MEYNARD.

237 With the Jamayly quarter nearest to al-Maydān.

ing the 'Amirs of the Druzes and the chiefs of the Mount [to report]. And the 'Amir Muḥammad Raslan, their governor [i. e. governor of the Druzes] presented himself without delay, but the others excused themselves from attending for fear of the consequences of the business [they had engaged in] and they proposed to him that they should send agents to represent them. Nothing however would satisfy him but their presence in person and he appointed to them a definite time and if they let it pass, he would punish them. So the 'Amir (P. 223) Muḥammad son of the 'Amir Qāsim Raslān attended; and his kinsman, the 'Amir Malḥam; and the Sheikh Sa'yd Janblat; and his kinsman, the Sheikh Salim; and the Sheikh 'Uthman Abū 'Alwān; and the Sheikh Asa'ad al-'Amad; and the Sheikh Yusuf 'Abd'al-Malik; and his kinsman, the Sheikh Fa'ur; and the Sheikh Qasim Nakad; and the Sheikh Qāsim Ḥaṣan ad-Din; and the Sheikh Husayn Talḥūq; and his kinsman, the Sheikh Asa'ad.238 And they foregathered with the 'Amir Muḥammad Raslan in Burj Aby Haydar. And all together went to meet him [Fu'ād Pasha] at the barracks of the army where he ordered their arrest, no one being allowed to communicate with them. So their minds were troubled and their souls confused, and fear and terror entered them [their hearts], and they gave up [all] hope of being saved [from impending doom]. And some of them began to blame (P. 224) for their having come those who had persuaded them with delusive representations [to go] where they had no means at their disposal to escape from participation in the trapping [to avoid being trapped] since they had become like birds in a cage. And they relied for their own disculpation upon their laying the [whole] guilt at the door of Khurshid Pasha239 because they had [simply] done as they had been commanded and they thought that, because they had acted according to his will, they could not be held responsible for their

238 According to a letter from Lord Dufferin to Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, dated September 23, 1860, Sheikh Sa'yd Janblat arrived a day later than the other chiefs, while instead of the Sheikh Asa'ad Talḥuq, he mentions the Sheikh Tamal [Jamāl] ad-Din Hamdan.

239 The commission appointed to try Khurshid Pasha and the other officials implicated in the disturbances throughout Syria, consisted of his successor, Aḥmad Pasha al-Qayṣarly, as president; Admiral Mustafa Pasha; Fu'ād Pasha's secretary, Abro Effendy; the mufty of Bayrūt; a general receiver of finance and several officers of the army. Cf the London Times of October 5, 1860. "In his defence, Khoorshid Pasha [pleaded] that he had sent an agent to disperse the Christians of the Kesrouan, and despatched troops to the spot, Hazmieh, which divides the territory of the respective belligerents, by which means he prevented the Christians from outstepping the boundary and protected their

actions.240 And as regards the other persons of rank and dignity who had shown disobedience [with respect to Fu'ad Pasha's summons] and had evinced [a tendency to] opposition and rebellion, and had been present at those affrays, and had engaged in those riots, and had killed and murdered and shed blood and made it flow [in streams], and had not dared to present themselves with that company [of 'amirs and sheikhs mentioned above] because they were commanders of troops [bands] (P. 225) and heads of nations [tribes] and families [sub-divisions of tribes], a number of them fled to Ḥauran. And some hid themselves in the border-lands of the Lebanon, moving from place to place.241 And the imprisonment of the above-mentioned men of mark took place on Friday the twenty-first of the month of September of the year eighteen hundred and sixty-one.242 This is what we have wished to set forth now, in the most trustworthy manner attainable, after examination and minute investigation. And as regards what [the events which] took place after this [afterwards], we have set aside for [decided to devote to] it a second part in which we will continue our narrative in the same fashion. And with God [is] succour [May God help us]! side against invasion; that owing to the paucity of the troops at his disposal on the one hand, and the large numerical strength of the Druses on the other, he could not, without exposing Beyrout and all the other places to risings and disorders which might have resulted in a universal catastrophe, both march against the Druses, whose bands were carrying fire and sword to all points of the Mountain, and look to the safety of Beyrout and the other places at the same time. This justification of Khoorshid Pasha [was] not deemed sufficient to clear him of his shortcomings in not suppressing the disorders, whether at their first appearance or after their outbreak; but it had not appeared that he did anything to cause them and he [was] found to have endeavoured, though imperfectly, to do his duty. Under these circumstances [the commission acting as an extraordinary tribunal. were] of opinion that sentence of death [could not] be legally passed upon Khoorshid Pasha, and that his punishment should be one degree less than capital." Correspondence relating to the Affairs of Syria, 1860–61, pp. 300/1. Like Ţahir Pasha, in command of the troops in his pashalic, Khurshid Pasha was therefore condemned to imprisonment for life in a fortress. To undergo that punishment he was sent to Rhodes

240 The special tribunal that tried them was of a different opinion: like Sa'yd Bey Janblāt, the 'Amir Muḥammad Qāsim Raslan and the Sheikhs Salim Janblāt, Asa'ad al-'Amād, ̧ Qāsim Nakad, Husayn Talḥuq, Asa'ad Talḥūq and Jamāl ad-Dīn Ḥamdān were condemned to death; some of the others to temporary confinement in a fortress with permanent forfeiture of their rank and offices.

241 A list of the leaders of the bands that played a prominent part in the disturbances of 1860 and escaped to Ḥauran, in all thirty-three persons, to be punished with death when captured, is given on page 308 of the Correspondence relating to the Affairs of Syria, 1860–61 242 From the letter quoted in Note 238, it would appear that the "men of mark" referred to, arrived in Bayrūt on September 22, 1860, and, after reporting, were at first "merely kept under a kind of surveillance."

CONCLUSION

We do not know whether Iskander Ibn Ya'qūb Abkāriūs has redeemed his promise to "continue [his] narrative in the same fashion.' However this may be, the second part, which he proposed to devote to the events that took place after the official inquiry into the causes of the disturbances of 1860 in Mount Lebanon and the attitude towards them of the local authorities, has never reached us. So we are obliged to conclude his task ourselves with a short survey of those events, beginning at the point where he, somewhat abruptly, left off.

Fuad Pasha's excellent measures remind one of a quotation from Busbeckius, made à contre-coeur by the good Father Abraham a Santa Clara: "Die Türcken lassen kein Unrecht ungestrafft." As the Sultan's High Commissioner he carried out his instructions with fearless energy although greatly hampered in his work of repression, reparation and reorganisation by both the French army of occupation and his co-delegates to the International Commission, who had begun their labors at Bayrūt in a manner not at all calculated to show that they attached great importance to the observation of one of them "that it would be unsafe to allow [themselves] to be guided in the adjustment of the degree of chastisement to be exacted, by any political consideration." "Que justice se fasse sans arrière-pensée," that member added but, remarking almost in one breath, what otherwise was true enough, that "the Druzes [had] only carried out to an excessive degree that policy of extermination with which at the commencement of the quarrel they had been threatened by their victims,' he pleaded for a lenient treatment of those British protégés as the French delegate did for the Maronites, the Russian delegate for the Orthodox Greeks, and so on. Fuad Pasha was expected to punish the guilty without touching the several favorites, who-and this applies especially to the Maronites heaped accusation on accusation 1 Op. cit.:

1

also schreibt Busbeckius ein ansähnlicher Kayserlicher Gesandter nach der Ottomanischen Porten, fol. 440."

Lord Dufferin, at the eighth meeting of the International Commission, November 2, 1860.

to have their enemies shot, hanged or banished in droves, irrespective of guilt.

The delegates to the International Commission were, besides Fu'ād Pasha for Turkey and Lord Dufferin and Claneboye for Great Britain, Mr P. von Weckbecker, Austrian consul-general at Bayrūt, for Austria; Mr L. Béclard, late French consul-general in Wallachia, for France; Mr von Rehfues, secretary of the Prussian Legation at Constantinople, for Prussia; and Mr E. Novikoff, councilor of the Russian Legation at Constantinople, for Russia. The object of the Commission, as defined by M. E. Thouvenel, French Minister for Foreign Affairs and agreed to by Lord Russell, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and the heads of the other governments concerned, "devait consister à rechercher les circonstances qui ont amené les derniers conflits, à déterminer la part de responsabilité des chefs de l'insurrection et des agents de l'administration locale, ainsi que les réparations dues aux victimes, et enfin à étudier, pour les soumettre à l'approbation des Gouvernements et de la Porte, les dispositions qui pourraient être adoptées pour conjurer de nouveaux malheurs."3 Its labors extended in twenty-nine official sittings over seven months." At the ninth meeting, November 10, 1860, Lord Dufferin drew attention to the fact that so far nothing or next to nothing had been accomplished. Save one notable exception, the question of indemnity, to be spoken of later on, the following meetings, too, tended more to demonstrate the differences of opinion that divided the Great Powers into hostile camps with respect to the phase of the Eastern Question under discussion, than to reach a permanent agreement for the prevention in the future of horrors like those reported from Ḥāṣbayyā, Rashayya, Dayr al-Qamar and Damascus. The Commission's bickerings on the usual base of mutual distrust made it a perfect mirror of the European situation. According to the habit of such diplomatic bodies, the reasonings of its members, though infinitely produced,

5

3 Letter of August 9, 1860, from Lord Russell to Earl Cowley.

October 5, 1860, to May 4, 1861, a few days after which date the European delegates repaired to Constantinople for further argument under the auspices of their countries' embassies to the Porte.

5 "Il nous est pénible de penser qu'après deux mois de séjour dans ce pays, nous nous trouvons encore occupés de la partie la plus odieuse de notre tâche. Il tarde à la Commission d'entrer en possession d'un devoir plus privilégié, d'inaugurer une époque de conciliation et de paix."