Ma'n dynasty بَنُو مَعْن (Banū Maʿn) | |
---|---|
![]() Flag of the Ma'nid dynasty | |
Country | The Chouf in Mount Lebanon, part of the:
|
Founded |
|
Founder |
|
Final ruler | Ahmed ibn Mulhim ibn Yunus fl. 1658–1697 |
Members |
|
Dissolution | 1697 |
Historical Arab states and dynasties |
---|
![]() |
The Ma'n dynasty (Arabic: ٱلْأُسْرَةُ ٱلْمَعْنِيَّةُ, romanized: Banū Maʿn, alternatively spelled Ma'an), also known as the Ma'nids; (Arabic: ٱلْمَعْنِيُّونَ), were a family of Druze chiefs of Arab stock based in the rugged Chouf area of southern Mount Lebanon who were politically prominent in the 15th–17th centuries. Traditional Lebanese histories date the family's arrival in the Chouf to the 12th century, when they were held to have struggled against the Crusader lords of Beirut and of Sidon alongside their Druze allies, the Tanukh Buhturids. They may have been part of a wider movement by the Muslim rulers of Damascus to settle militarized Arab tribesmen in Mount Lebanon as a buffer against the Crusader strongholds along the Levantine coast. Fakhr al-Din I (d. 1506), the first member of the family whose historicity is certain, was the "emir of the Chouf", according to contemporary sources and, despite the non-use of mosques by the Druze, founded the Fakhreddine Mosque in the family's stronghold of Deir al-Qamar.
Two years following the advent of Ottoman rule in the Syrian region in 1516, three chiefs of the Ma'n dynasty were imprisoned for rebellion by the Damascus Eyalet governor Janbirdi al-Ghazali, but released by Sultan Selim I. The Ma'ns and their Druze coreligionists in the Chouf were continually targeted in punitive campaigns by the Ottomans related to their evasion and defiance of government tax collectors and their stockpiling of illegal firearms, which were often superior to those of the government troops. The particularly destructive 1585 Ottoman expedition against the Druze prompted the Ma'nid emir Qurqumaz ibn Yunis to go into hiding in the neighboring Kisrawan, where he died the following year.
His son, Fakhr al-Din II, emerged c. 1590 as the local chief and tax farmer of the Chouf and, in contrast to his Ma'nid predecessors, cultivated close ties with the authorities in Damascus and the imperial capital, Constantinople. In 1593, he was appointed the governor of the Sidon-Beirut Sanjak, spanning southern Mount Lebanon and the coastal towns of Beirut and Sidon, and in 1602 was additionally appointed to the Safed Sanjak, spanning the Jabal Amil, Galilee, and port of Acre. By 1613, he had amassed considerable power but lost his imperial patron, while his illicit takeover of strategic forts, hiring of outlawed musketeers, and government knowledge of his alliance with their Tuscan enemies prompted a major campaign against the Ma'ns. The dynasty lost its territories and forts and Fakhr al-Din escaped to Italy. Within two years, his brother Yunus and son Ali restored Ma'nid power in Sidon-Beirut and Safed, which was consolidated when Fakhr al-Din returned to lead the dynasty in 1618. After a few years, he defeated his major rival Yusuf Sayfa of Tripoli and extended Ma'nid dominion and tax farming rights to predominantly Maronite, northern Mount Lebanon. By 1630 he controlled much of Tripoli Eyalet and was poised against Damascus. The imperial government destroyed Ma'nid power in a second expedition in 1633, killing most of the dynasty's members and capturing and executing Fakhr al-Din in 1635.
A surviving son of Yunus, Mulhim Ma'n defeated the family's government-backed Druze rival, Ali Alam al-Din, in 1636 and regained the iltizam of the Druze Mountain in 1642. His sons Ahmad and Qurqumaz succeeded him as paramount emirs of the Druze in 1658, but were challenged by the Alam al-Dins and other Ottoman-backed Druze from the start. Qurqumaz was killed by the Ottomans in 1662. Ahmad defeated the Alam al-Dins in 1667 and assumed the iltizam of the Druze Mountain and neighboring, Maronite-populated Kisrawan. He maintained control of the region despite government dismissals and campaigns against him throughout the 1690s for backing Shia rebels. Ma'nid rule came to an end when Ahmad died without male progeny in 1697. The Druze chiefs selected Bashir Shihab, whose mother was Mulhim's daughter, to succeed Ahmad. He held the iltizam of Druze Mountain and Kisrawan until his death in 1706, after which Haydar Shihab, whose mother was a daughter of Ahmad, took his place. His descendants from the Shihab dynasty continued to hold the iltizam until the expulsion of Bashir II in 1841. The emirate and iltizam of the Ma'ns and Shihabs over much of Mount Lebanon is viewed by historians as an early precursor to present-day Lebanon.