Emir Fakhreddine II, Precursor of Lebanese Nationalism (Facts and Perceptions)
Date: Monday 10 November 2025
Time: 6:15 pm meeting begins and 7:00 pm talk starts
(Beirut Time GMT+3)
Speaker: Dr. Naila Kaidbey (English)
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Location: "Labyrinthe" . . . Gerji Zeidan Street (Off Rue du Liban), Beirut
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Profile of the Talk
After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in WWI many Lebanese
intellectuals began to seriously discuss the nature of the political entity to
be established. What is interesting and relevant to our talk today are not the
economic, social or political justifications but rather historical ones.
Bulus Nujaym, a Lebanese intellectual of the early 20th
century argued that a Greater Lebanon was simply a return to the Lebanon of
Fakhreddin Ma’n who “fashioned a well-organized state with Lebanon as its
center… a state with a life of its own… led by an Enlightened Despot
(Fakhreddin)…”
There is nothing unusual for Lebanese nationalists, seeking
historical precursors of a Nation State, to search their past for some ‘golden
age’ or local ‘heroes’.
In an effort to separate between historical facts and
perceptions, I will try to examine at this time, whether this ‘myth’ of
Fakhreddin’s ‘Lebanon’ or ‘Lebanese State’ has a more distant origin than the
mid-nineteenth or early twentieth centuries. Or whether it was an attempt by
local intellectuals to create this new ‘Lebanese nationalism’.
Unfortunately, the creation of this type, nationalism
accentuated divisions already inherent in this multi-ethnic and multi-faith
society and paved the way for the instability that plagued the country ever
since, and that are still frighteningly present today.
Dr. Naila Kaidbey
Naila Takieddine Kaidbey has a PhD in history. She is
a faculty member at Department of History and Archeology at the American
University of Beirut.
The Civil War of 1860 is entrenched in the memory of the
Lebanese people as the biggest sectarian turmoil in their history. Tales about
it have been handed down by families for generations.
October 2011 an international Symposium was held in Beirut
under the joint hospices of USJ, IFPO and the University of Balamand. The theme
of the symposium was: 1860: History and Memory of a Conflict. Naila was a
member of the organizing committee and presented a paper about Druze
Participants in the mayhem of 1860.
It took a great deal of heated debate before they finally
agreed on the title. Christians refer to these events as Massacres, the
Druze as hawadith, and the objective researchers as a civil war. In
light of the current events and the tendency to explain all events in terms of
sectarianism, we believed extreme caution should be exercised, hence the
non-committed title leaving it to the audience to draw their own conclusions.
Many works have been written about various aspects of the
subject. Naila chose to focus on a narrow aspect the heroes and villains on
both sides of the divide. As compatriots bear arms against each other, wanton
bloodshed is common to all, brutality rewarded with adulation and the very fabric
of a society’s humanity torn apart at the seams.
