Adonis Diaries

Appendix of the fiction story “Rainbow over the Levant (Near East)

Historical background

A short summary of the history of this region, starting two centuries preceding the events of this novel, can shed a satisfactory understanding for the setting of this historical fiction around the last quarter of the 14^th century AD.

The Mameluke Sultan Baybars of Egypt had dislodged the Christian Crusaders from the last remaining city in the Near East in 1291. The chased out Crusaders forces were just holding on to the island of Cyprus.

The Caliphates of the Islamic empire, who were virtual rulers in Baghdad since the 10^th century, were restored to their virtual religious polarization in Cairo under the Mameluke hegemony.

The Crusaders from Christian Europe had been defeated previously in 1187 in a critical battle at Hittine in Palestine by Saladin who managed that feat after reigning as Sultan in both capitals of Cairo and Damascus.

To better comprehend the Levant history we need to stress on the facts that the whole region that composes the present States of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan and even Iraq (from the 12^th century onward) has been throughout its long history under the direct or indirect domination of empires in Iran, Turkey or Egypt.

The local Emirs or appointed governors paid tributes to one of these powerful centers in return to governing their internal affairs, participating in military campaigns and defending the political dominions and interests of the regional Great Sultans.  The reigning Sultan of Egypt had the upper hand in the period of the novel in the Near East region.

In the 10^th century, two dynasties ruled part of the Middle East.

In Egypt, the Shiite Moslem Fatimid dynasty, coming from Northern Africa established their Caliphate in Cairo and stretched its influence to Aleppo in Syria; their successor the Ayyubid Sunni Moslem dynasty, from Kurdish descent, displaced the Fatimid and then the Mameluke (the serfs who came to hold high political and military powers in the Ayyubid dynasty) rose to power and defeated the Mogul invasion in two crucial battles in Palestine in 1260 at Elbostan.

In Iran, the Seljuk dynasty stretched their empire to Samarqand, Bukhara, Khorassan, Afghanistan, part of Turkey, Syria and part of Lebanon. They fought the Crusaders in the Near East during most of their reign through the intermediary of their appointed “Atabeks” in Turkey and Syria.

The Seljuk dynasty was taken over by the Khowarasmi dynasty whose Sultans were at odd with the Caliphate of Baghdad and helped the hordes of Genghis Khan the Mogul, led by his son Holako, to enter and devastate Baghdad in 1258 which ended the “Arabic/Islamic” Empire.

The Moguls established two Viceroys in Iraq, one at Mosul in the Northern part and the second in Baghdad for the Southern part of Iraq.  The Arabic Era that lasted for 5 centuries ended as a cultural and organizational influence. The Emirs in Palestine were generally affiliated to the Sultan of Egypt.  .

The societies in the Levant region have experienced a different level of organizational skills and the beginning of the application of the rudiment written rules of Laws from their interaction with the European Crusaders. (Note that Lebanon and particularly Beirut was the center of law studies during the Roman Empire from 100 to 600 AC)

We don’t have much information about the status of Mount Lebanon in that period or about its Emirs, its social structure, its allegiances, its demographic constituency or its economic development.

We assume that the Crusaders left a strong impact on the inhabitants in Mount Lebanon which forced the Arab Emirs to start relocating many Arabic tribes from Southern Iraq into the Mount Lebanon regions to counterbalance the Christian population (Mostly the Maronite and the Christian Orthodox affiliated to Byzantium empire).

Even before the advent of the Arabic Empire, Christian monasteries were numerous and spread out throughout the Near East and Iraq and occupied the top of mountains and hills and the best areas near fresh water sources in the same fashion you notice them currently in Mount Lebanon.

The monks had their special chambers/grotto (kelayye) for retreats and prayers.  Monasteries were very prosperous, mainly producing and selling beer, and maintained exquisite gardens of fruit trees, flowers and vegetables and were well stocked in provisions from their land and donations of the faithful.

During the Arabic Empire, monasteries were required to set up annexes of hostels in order to receive wary travelers and to lodge and feed them.  Usually, the relatives of monks maintained these hostels; Caliphates, Emirs, and well to do noblemen used to patronize the monasteries and spent days in these quiet domains to eat, drink local wine and beer and have great time away from the scrutiny of city dwellers.

The monasteries in the Levant suffered during the Crusaders’ period because of the bad manners of the European invaders, their robbery and plunder, but the monasteries in Iraq and Eastern Turkey were as prosperous as ever because the crusaders did not venture deep in the Arabic Empire, beyond Antaquia.

Many castles were demolished during that bloody period, a few were partially rehabilitated but a lot of reconstruction of war infrastructure was needed.  What is important to note is that wars were no longer waged using chars with spiked wheels that harvest feet or employed exotic animals such as elephants as during the Antiquity.

Canons of wars were not invented yet, except may be in remote China where they were used during the main ceremonies related to their standing emperors.

Wars were still waged with infantry, cavalry and archers in the conventional ways. Newly designed catapults for throwing rocks at castle walls and entrances were in use by rich nations with well equipped and sophisticated armies. The full metal armor used by the crusaders was replaced by the noblemen to a vest of meshed chains and a metal helmet: The climate may not have been suitable to European fashion since we do enjoy at least 7 months of hot and dry seasons.

Before the Arabic/Islamic Empire, the region paid its tribute to the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople.  During the Arabic hegemony, the Christian people paid their tribute to the Caliphates in one of the successive capitals in Mecca, Damascus, Baghdad or Cairo and later they paid it to the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul.

In modern times they were under the colonial powers of either France (in Lebanon and Syria) or Great Britain (in Iraq, Palestine, Jordan and Egypt).  Nowadays, the whole region is mostly under the control of the USA with Israel playing the role of a lesser junior partner.

Indeed, a Zionist State was created as a standing mercenary army to keep the region under close control and divided.

In the period of our novel, the Mameluke dynasty had conquered all of Syria, Lebanon and Palestine with the exclusion of Iraq which was under the Mogul and later the Tatar invaders.

The Mameluke established 6 Viceroys in Damascus, Aleppo and Hama (in current Syria), Tripoli in Lebanon, Safad and Karak in Palestine.

Most of the coastal cities in Lebanon were ruined because of the successive attacks to dislodge the remaining Crusaders and also because the trading caravans stopped passing through them. The Mameluke did not invade Mount Lebanon militarily at this stage but made sure to collect the requisite tribute and set up special coastal guards from Turkmen and Kurdish origins to prevent any recurring European invasions.

While the feudal nobleman outside Mount Lebanon was an appointed Mameluke military officer whose sole interest in the land was to collect his due profit because it was temporarily allocated to him, the feudal landlord in Mount Lebanon was a native and actually resided in his property and was the authority in organizing the life of the residents who usually were of the same religious denomination.

The current borders of the Republic of Lebanon were drawn by the French General Gouro in 1920 after he militarily entered Damascus at the end of the First World War.  What was formerly known as Lebanon encompassed only Mount Lebanon.

The northern regions of Tripoli and Akkar were part of the “Wilayat” of Tripoli; the city of Tripoli was the capital of the “Wilayat” of the Viceroy of Tripoli and it extended in Syria to include the towns of Homs and Tartus and the Lebanese littoral including Beirut.

The Bekaa Valley was part of the “Wilayat” of Damascus, and the southern regions, including the cities of Sidon and Tyr were part of the “Wilayat” of Acre in northern Palestine.

The Viceroys of Tripoli, Damascus, Safad and Acre paid allegiance to either the Sultan of Egypt in Cairo, Istanbul in Turkey, or the Shah of Iran depending on which empire was the master of the Middle East at different periods in history.

In the sixteen century, at the start of the push of the Ottoman’s empire to expand toward Syria, there have been attempts for a self-determination status in Mount Lebanon.  The Druze chieftain of the Maan tribe in the Chouf county, Emir Maan the First, managed to unite all the counties in Mount Lebanon and then expanded toward Syria in the north and Palestine in the south.

The Ottoman Sultan became suspicious of his intentions, militarily quelled his ambitions and decapitated him in Istanbul. His grandson Fakhr El Dine succeeded to reunite Mount Lebanon and expanded his authority even further to include the Bekaa Valley after crushing the army of the Viceroy of Damascus in Anjar.

Emir Maan the Second opened negotiations with Florence to supply him with modern weapons and expanded trade to Europe and Egypt.  Again he overshot his potentials and was defeated by the Ottoman Sultan, was exiled to Istanbul and put to death within three years of his captivity.

A century later, Emir Bechir Chehab the Second in the Chouf district reunited Mount Lebanon, expanded his authority, and allied himself with General Napoleon Bonaparte and Mohamed Ali in Egypt against the Ottoman and the British Empires.  His ambition was foiled and was exiled to Malta for the remaining of his life.

These Emirs extended the dominion of Mount Lebanon to parts of Syria and Palestine once they secured the unity of Mount Lebanon but they failed to go beyond maintaining law and order during their reign and no viable administrative structures or solid social and public institutions were established toward building a stable and lasting state nation.

In the Antiquity, the Phoenicians/Canaanite city-states of Byblos, Sidon, and Tyr expanded their dominions to Syria and Palestine at different periods in their separate ascendancies. While wealth was amassed from integrated maritime enterprising complexes such as warehousing, ship repairing and trade transports by sea and land, the real source of power of these city-states resided in trained skilled workers, inland bread basket plains, timber from the adjacent mountain forests and ready stones for constructing magnificent temples and for fortifying almost impregnable maritime castles.

In the mid nineteenth century, a local reformist by the name of Tanios Chahine lead a commune of peasants at the town of Antelias against the feudal and clerical privileges in the Metn. His movement resisted two years against the onslaught of the powerful enemies of the people until the latter forces of both denominations, Christians and Druze, masterminded a civil war in Mount Lebanon in order to strengthen confessionalism and their hold on power.

The civil war started in 1860 in Mount Lebanon between the Maronite and Druze and was localized in the Chouf and part of the Bekaa Valley including the town of Zahle; it lasted two years and opened the doors for the European interventions in our internal affairs that secured and maintained the old system.

The Levant was called by various names throughout history; the Arab Empire called it either the Fertile Crescent starting with the Euphrates and Tiger Rivers and ending with the Al Assy river, Litany and Jordan Rivers encompassing Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine or Al Sham (currently referring to the environ of Damascus) because the region was on the left of Mecca so that the region on its right was labeled Yemen.  The European colonialists called it Levant because it is where the sun dawned on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea.

The first wave of Levantine immigrants to the United States and Latin America was identified as “Turks” because they were citizen of the Ottoman Empire, then the second wave of Levantine immigrants that spread to Africa and Egypt was identified as Syrians, regardless of their present nationalities after the defeat of Turkey in the First World War.

There were many Syrian luminaries at the end of the 19^th century, immigrants and locals, who wrote extensively of the need for reforms and the rejuvenation of the nation among them Jubran Khalil Jubran, Kawakibi, Youssef El Azam, Boutros Boustany, Shebly Chmayel, and Ibrahim Yaziji.

However, there were few leaders for organizing the people into political parties.

In the late 19^th century two overseas organizations from Levantine descendants proclaimed that the Syrian Nation is constituted of Lebanon, the actual Syrian State, Palestine and Jordan and published their reforms and ideologies in newspapers.

The first group, located in New York (1899) and calling itself “The Young Syrian Party“, was lead by Emir Youssef Shadid Abi Lameh and based on the following principles:

1)                     Striving toward an independent Syria with natural borders from Ras Aqaba to El Arish;

2)                     Working for a comprehensive agreement to unify the Arabic Nations;

3)                     Instituting a total separation between the religious and civil authorities;

4)                     Nationalizing the riches and properties of the religious clergy and assigning for them the necessary funds for their subsistence;

5)                     Unifying the schooling programs throughout the Nation;

6)                     Imposing mandatory military enlistments to reflect the will of the citizens for holding on to a Nation.

The second group was formed in Sao Paolo, Brazil, in 1922 and was lead by Jamil Maaluf and Asaad Bechara and later Khalil Saadi (the father of Antoun Saadi who created the Syria national Social party in 1933 in Lebanon).  They named their political association the “Syrian National Party” which adopted the basic principles of the former party but added more principles with detailed exposition.

For example, the “Syrian National Party” specifically advocated the requisite of civil marriages among the different religious sects, adopting the Arabic language as the national language in all the private and public schools, giving Lebanon and Palestine self administrative autonomy and prohibiting the religious clergy from interfering in the civil status laws and executive decisions.

Unfortunately, these two political parties were never transplanted in their original homeland and did not take roots as formal political organization in Lebanon, Palestine or Syria.

This section will raise controversies among both the isolationists and greater Pan Arab nationalists save that live and current facts should not be sacrificed at the alter of the whimsical confessional minds:  we have a disposition of fabricating our history on flimsy emotional exigencies.

The only political party that is disciplined and grounded on solid ideological principles that proclaims Syria as a complete Nation and One People and survived today is called the “Syrian National Social Party”.

This political party was founded in 1932 by Antoun Saadi, a native Lebanese of Dhour Chouweir in the Metn, during the French mandate of Lebanon as an underground party.  He was an immigrant in Latin America from Brazil, relocated to Lebanon and taught at the American University of Beirut and founded his party.  He was then forced to exile in 1937 by the French colonial authority and settled in Argentina during the Second World War.

Saadi returned to Lebanon in 1947 to an unprecedented mass welcome at the airport (50,000 from all parts of the Syrian States) to reorganize his party and affirm its ideology after a few discrepancies in views among its leaders emanating from the independence of Lebanon during his exile.

The members of this party celebrate in July 8 the martyrdom of its founder, Antoun Saadi, who was summarily executed in 1949 in an extra-judicial trial of 2 days when he was 45 years old (a kangaroo trial that forbade a defense lawyer).  He represented a serious danger as an organized force that exposed the forces of the defeatist isolationists and sectarianisms in our communities against the existential Zionist enemy of Israel.

While the Communist party in Syria was the first truly secular organization established in the first quarter of the 20^th century, Antoun Saadi was the first leader to create a secular political party affirming that Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan and Iraq form one nation and one society.

The ideology of the latter political party was based on a whole project, politically, socially, philosophically, culturally and economically. This party believes that the Syrian Nation is one of the four Arabic nations; the three other Arabic nations being: the Arabic Peninsula Nation constituted of current Saudi Monarchy, Yemen, Oman and the Arab Emirate Union of States, then the Nile Arabic Nation of Egypt and Sudan, and then the North African Arabic Nation of Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania.

The party was and still is secular in its ideology and practice, and even during Lebanon civil war of (1975-1990) it did not participate in the killing on confessional basis.

The Syrian National Social Party exists officially in Lebanon and lately in Syria with substantial Palestinian adherents. Antoun Saadi was less successful politically to share responsibilities in any government or to unite our nation against Zionism and the colonial exploitation to our main national resources in oil with no significant strategic political and economic returns.

One characteristic that stand out in the concept of secular nationalism in the Levant, especially in Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, is that almost all the nationalist political party leaders or founders were minority Christians.

For example, Michel Aflak the founder of the Baath Party, still in power in Syria and for three decades in Iraq, George Habache the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Naef Hawatmeh the founder of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Antoun Saadi the founder of the Syrian National Social Party.

It appears that the Muslims could not shed out the notion that their allegiance might be to any power that did not wrap itself up with the mantle of the Caliphate of Islam. Even during the First World War the British had to seek support from the so-called House of the descended of the Prophet Mohammad in the tribe of El-Hashemite in Mecca.

It is no surprise that the cornerstone of the doctrines of the salafi Sunni Moslem political parties is the reinstitution of the Caliphate in the Muslim world.