Posts Tagged ‘Mutasarefiya consensus’
How Justice was served? Massacres of 1860 in Lebanon and Syria (Part 4)
Posted by: adonis49 on: November 30, 2013
How Justice was done? Massacres of 1860 in Lebanon and Syria (Part 4)
How Justice was done in Damascus?
You may read Part 3: https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2013/11/23/massacres-of-1860-in-syria-and-damascus-memoirs-of-a-french-diplomat-of-the-genocide-part-3/
Fuad Pasha, the Ottoman foreign affairs, was dispatched to head the team and the military contingent of 4,500 troops in order to restore order and security in Lebanon and Syria. He landed in Beirut on July 17, 1860 and detained the governors Ahmed and Khorshid Pasha, the officers of the garrisons in Rashaya, Hasbaya, Deir Kamar, Mekse, and the right hand of Khorshid, Vasfi Effendi, during the Beirut uprising where an innocent Christian was decapitated to appease the turmoil after the death of a Moslem.
He resumed his travel to Damascus, where the fresh massacre alerted the European nations on the fate of the Christians in the Near East.
Fuad Pasha showed zeal and unusual activities to convince the Europeans that it was not necessary of sending troops and meddling in the Ottoman affairs. He rounded up 800 from Damascus, restituted the loots and stopped two large caravans loaded with the loots to Baghdad and Aleppo.
On August 20, 1860, Fuad Pasha hanged 57 and executed by firing squads 110 officers and soldiers, particularly those who participated in the massacres in Hasbaya and Rashaya in Lebanon. More than 700 were sent to exile and forced labor.
Most importantly, the former governor Ahmet Pasha, Ali Bey and the commanders of the garrisons were executed. It was rumored that Ahmet Pasha, who had twice warned the Ottoman government of potential crisis in Syria, was quickly executed in order not to clarify the role of the Ottoman government in the planning of these massacres against the Christians.
(Parallel governments were at play in that period in Turkey?)
Ahmed Pasha had lived in Vienna and mastered several languages. It appears that he lacked the troops that he could rely on and the Majlis warned him that any intervention might turn the “insurgents” against the Ottoman troops.
The police chief Ali Ferhad Aga and 300 police sergeants were arrested.
Halim Pasha erased the town of Jeroud and brought to trial all its adult male inhabitants.
As Fuad pasha was speedily and actively restitution order and security, Europe got the fresh news of the massacres in Damascus. Napoleon III and Russia, pressured by public outcries, decided to dispatch a military expedition, though England was very reluctant of giving the French this opportunity to return to Near East.
The French general marquis Beaufort Hautpoul led an expedition of 4,500 troop. Beaufort had previously participated along side the French officer Seves (Sleiman Pasha) in the many victorious battles of Ibrahim Pasha.
How Justice was done in Lebanon?
After a lengthy delay, Fuad Pasha returned to Beirut from Damascus, after he established order and hanged scores of the perpetrators of the massacre, in order to meet with the European commissions. Fuad Pasha summoned 37 of the Druze leaders to Beirut to stand trial. Only 6 showed up. And he followed this order by destitution 37 feudal Druze lords (Mukata3tejis) from their privileges and properties
The Maronite clergy handed Fuad the list of 970 Druze that he requested and whom the Maronites claimed to have participated in the massacre.
Fuad Pasha reluctantly rounded up these 970 Druze and set up a military court in Mukhtara, just to render justice away from the intervention of the commissions staying in Beirut.
The verdicts were:
1. The Turkish former governor Khorshid Pasha, Tahir Pasha, Nourin Bey, Vasfi and Ahmet Effendi were to serve life confinement in fortresses in Cyprus and Rhodes
2. Twelve Druze sheikhs, including their leader Said Jumblat and Hussein Talhouk were condemned to death…
3. Over 33 fugitive Druze, including Hattar Amad and Ismail Atrash were condemned to death in absentia.
No public execution took place and the condemned people were exiled or sent to force labor.
Justice in Lebanon was a slap on the hands, thanks to the firm intervention of the British who didn’t want to alienate the Druze of Lebanon. And Fuad Pasha contemplated to be designated as the Vassal of the Ottoman Empire in Syria and Palestine.
Note 1: The British commissioner Lord Dufferin suggested that Syria (including current Lebanon) and Palestine be governed by a vassal to the Ottoman Empire, as was done in Egypt, and Fuad Pasha was the consensus name to be the new ruler.
This idea failed. Finally, a few weeks before the date of the retreat of the French expedition on June 5, 1861, the European commission met in Istanbul and decided to have Mount Lebanon governed by a outsider Christian, appointed by the Sultan. This was to be known as the Mutasarefiya consensus.
The first Moutasaref was the Armenian Christian Daoud Pasha and who was promoted to Mushir or Marechal, the first highest rank bestowed on a Christian in the Ottoman army.
Massacres of 1860 in Syria and Damascus: Memoirs of a French diplomat of the genocide. Part 3
Posted by: adonis49 on: November 23, 2013
Massacres of 1860 in Syria and Damascus: Memoirs of a French diplomat of the genocide. Part 3
French expedition of 1860 to Lebanon and Damascus...
During the decade long occupation of the Egyptian leader Ibrahim Pasha, the Christians in Syria and Lebanon enjoyed the same rights as the Moslems. The Christian Maronites in Lebanon learned to exhibit their short-lived power and kept reclaiming their acquired privileges after the Egyptian troops vacated Syria and Lebanon at the pressure of the western nations, a behavior that antagonized the Ottoman governors and the Druze.
However, the Christians in Damascus kept their traditional low profile, shunned external forms of ostentatious behavior, and the custom of respecting even the low ranked Moslem officials and refrained from mounting horses. The exterior of the houses looked decrepit, but the inside was fabulous and richly furnished.
Actually, the Christians in Damascus, mostly Orthodox who split into the Oriental faction (Shark) and the sect that pledged allegiance to Papal Rome (Gharb), were busy in their their internal political rivalry.
Most of the public accountants in the government were Christians and they delivered “clean” balance sheets while accumulating wealth.
After the genocide committed by the Druze on the Christian Maronites living in the Druze canton or Kaemmakam in 1860, the mass assassination spread in all of Syria, from Aleppo, to Hama, Homs and the Capital Damascus.
An insidious letter, having the format and bearing the look of an official document, was disseminated throughout Syria. The letter briefly said:
“With the beginning of the reign of Sultan Abdel Majid, the Christians in the Ottoman Empire got used to openly despise the sacred laws of Shariaa.
The Christians have transgressed the limits and obligations which were imposed on them since caliph Omar el Khattab.
Currently, the Christians have gone as far as downgrading the principles and belief system of the Moslems. They pretend that a Moslem must stand up to receive a Christian guest and give him priority in reunions and public gathering…
These exigencies are meant to establish equality among the minority sects… They ignore that the vizirs, ulemmas and fakihs have been meeting secretly to fine tune a plan for their total extermination, a plan based on the tenants of the Shariaa:
1. It is licit to shed the blood of the Christians, not to respect their properties and honor, to burn their churches, destroy their houses…since they started not to pay their due tax for being Christians under the protection of Islam…
2. Most of the fatwas issued in India and Boukhara absolutely forbid to allow the Christians from gaining power. The fatwas are demanding to annihilate their descendants and derange their businesses…
3. No regards should be given to the infidel Christians…
4. The testimonies of a Christians are null and void , and illegal. Even the testimony of an Alawit Ansari is preferred…
Let us remind you of the words in the Koran: Make no difference among the infidel nations…
Islam nations, wake up and destroy the race of these serving the Cross, in this sacred land that they spoiled…
The European nations are weak and enfeebled after the Crimea war. This is the time to take the opportunity to defeat them once and for all, before they recover their strength and come back to dispossess us from our wealth…
We are secretly meeting with the purposes of:
1. Assassinate sultan Abdel Magid who deviated from Islamic laws…
2. Since the Christians in our Empire are in complete accord with the western nations, and particularly the Christians in Mount Lebanon (numbering 200,000) who are known for their intrigues and conniving with the infidel nations to enter our Empire, the Christians will be exterminated in Mount Lebanon, Aleppo, Hama, Homs, Damascus and everywhere they exist in our midst…” End of letter
How the content of this letter matches the current Moslem extremist movements and organization and goal.
This letter smacks of a Wahhabi agenda, and totally inspired by England that backed the Druze in order to weaken the growing power of the Maronites who relied on France and papal Rome since the crusading periods in the 11th century.
Governor of Damascus, Ahmed Pasha ordered the garrisons of Rashaya and Hasbaya in Lebanon, which participated in the slaughter-hood in both towns, to converge to Damascus. The Christians there felt very apprehensive of the arrival of these recruited soldiers, more intent on looting than protecting properties.
Sheikh Abdallah Haleby of Damascus was the most vocal against the Christians.
The plague of the Druze chieftain of Huran, Ismail Atrash, who had massacred the Christians in Rashaya, Hasbaya and Zahleh, progressed toward the nun convent of Saidnaya, bordering with the desert. Women from all religions (Christians, Moslems and Druzes) made frequent pilgrimage to the Virgin Mary. It is reported that the head nun must have paid a substantial tribute to the Ismail before his hoard retreated.
On July 9, 1860, young Moslems insulted the cross, and the governor detained them and made them sweep the street in chains.
The amassing storm of hatred broke up. And by night fall, and within hours, the Christian quarters were ravaged, burned and looted.
No less than 4,000 victims were massacred, and this time around male, female and children. The looting lasted 4 days. The homes of the French, Russian, Dutch and USA consuls were burned down. The English and Prussia consuls were saved from invasion. (England had a policy of weakening the power of the Christians who supported France or Russia)
Both, the patriarchates of the Oriental and Occidental Orthodox Christian were looted from their century old treasures.
Abdel Kader, the famous Algerian resistance leader against the new colonial power of France, was the main protector of the fleeing Christians. The Citadel hosted about 10,000 refugees, living in open air and dying out of famine and thirst.
Five months later, skeletal and cranes were still dug out of the rubble. Many of the victims are of females and children who had fled from Hasbaya and Rashaya a few months ago to the safety of Damascus.
When the new governor arrived over 150 women were incarcerated in harems.
Ironically, the most fanatic of Moslems in the Meidan quarter protected the poorer Christians living in the quarter. It appears that the houses were so close and packed around that any burning house would spread to all the other houses.
The Jewish quarter was left untouched for two reasons:
1. The Jews were despised and not just hated
2. The looters knew that the Jews will buy back the stolen goods and relieve them from the spoil
The next post will describe “how justice was served” in Lebanon and Damascus
Note 1: Read part 2 https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2013/11/12/slaughterhood-of-1860-in-lebanon-part-2/
Note 2: Damascus is a city that always managed to rebuild after countless invasions and ransacking. The main reason is that this geographic strategic city is floating on fresh water sources and enjoy fertile lands.
Note 3: The British commissioner Lord Dufferin suggested that Syria (including current Lebanon) and Palestine be governed by a vassal to the Ottoman Empire, as was done in Egypt, and Fuad Pasha was the consensus name to be the new ruler. This idea failed. Finally, a few weeks before the date of the retreat of the French expedition on June 5, 1861, the European commission met in Istanbul and decided to have Mount Lebanon governed by a outsider Christian, appointed by the Sultan.
This was to be known as the Mutasarefiya consensus. The first Moutasaref was the Armenian Christian Daoud Pasha and who was promoted to Mushir or Marechal, the first highest rank bestowed on a Christian in the Ottoman army.
Adonis Diaries 