Mount Lebanon - Mount Lebanon As A Political Name

Mount Lebanon As A Political Name

Mount Lebanon also lent its name to two political designations: a semi-autonomous province in Ottoman Syria that existed since A.D. 1516 and the central Governorate of modern Lebanon (see Mount Lebanon Governorate). The Mount Lebanon administrative region emerged in a time of rise of nationalism after the civil war of 1860: France intervened on behalf of the local Christian population and Britain on behalf of the Druze after the 1860 massacres, when 10,000 Christians were killed in clashes with the Druze. In 1861 the "Mount Lebanon" autonomous district was established within the Ottoman system, under an international guarantee. It was ruled by a non-Lebanese Christian subject of the Ottoman Empire known locally as the "Mutasarrıf", (one who rules the district Mutasarrifiyya). Christians formed the majority of the population of Mount Lebanon, with a significant number of Druze.

For decades the Christians pressured the European powers, to award them self determination by extending their small Lebanese territory to what they dubbed "Greater Lebanon", referring to a geographic unit comprising Mount Lebanon and its coast, and the Beqaa Valley to its east. After the First World War, France took hold of the formerly Ottoman holdings in the northern Levant, and expanded the borders of Mount Lebanon in 1920 to form Greater Lebanon which was to be populated by remnants of the Middle Eastern Christian community. While the Christians ended up gaining territorially the new borders merely ended the demographic dominance of Christians in the newly created territory of Lebanon.