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Mutawila

Mutawila or Metoualis (Arabic: متاولة) are the historical denominations for Lebanese Shia Muslims.

Shia islam or Shi'ism can be considered one of the two main divisions of Islam.

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism is a book by Benedict Anderson. It introduces a popular concept in political sciences and sociology, that of imagined communities named after it. It was first published in 1983, and reissued with additional chapters in 1991 and a further revised version in 2006.

Eric G.E. Zuelow described this book as "perhaps the most read book about nationalism".

Nationalism and imagined communities

According to Anderson's theory of imagined communities, the main causes of nationalism are the increasing importance of mass vernacular literacy (and the declining importance of privileged access to particular script languages such as Latin); the movement to abolish the ideas of rule by divine right and hereditary monarchy ("the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm ... nations dream of being free ... The gage and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state", 1991, 7); and the emergence of printing press capitalism ("the convergence of capitalism and print technology... standardization of national calendars, clocks and language was embodied in books and the publication of daily newspapers")—all phenomena occurring with the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Nation as an imagined community

According to Anderson, nations are socially constructed. For Anderson, the idea of the "nation" is relatively new and is a product of various socio-material forces. He defined a nation as "an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign". As Anderson puts it, a nation "is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion". While members of the community probably will never know each of the other members face to face, they may have similar interests or identify as part of the same nation. Members hold in their minds a mental image of their affinity: for example, the nationhood felt with other members of your nation when your "imagined community" participates in a larger event such as the Olympic Games.

Nations are "limited" in that they have "finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations". They are "sovereign" since no dynastic monarchy can claim authority over them, in the modern period:

[T]he concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm. Coming to maturity at a stage of human history when even the most devout adherents of any universal religion were inescapably confronted with the living pluralism of such religions, and the allomorphism [incongruence, divide] between each faith's ontological claims and territorial stretch, nations dream of being free, and, if under God, directly so. The gauge and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state.

Even though we may never see anyone in our imagined community, we still know they are there through communication.

Finally, a nation is a community because,

regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings.

History

Lebanon religious groups distribution

An estimate of the area distribution of Lebanon's main religious groups

Origins

The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Lebanese people is a blend of both indigenous Phoenician elements and the foreign cultures that have come to rule the land and its people over the course of thousands of years. In a 2013 interview the lead investigator, Pierre Zalloua, pointed out that genetic variation preceded religious variation and divisions: "Lebanon already had well-differentiated communities with their own genetic peculiarities, but not significant differences, and religions came as layers of paint on top. There is no distinct pattern that shows that one community carries significantly more Phoenician than another."

Haplogroup J2 is also a significant marker in throughout Lebanon (~30%). This marker found in many inhabitants of Lebanon, regardless of religion, signals pre-Arab descendants, including the Phoenicians and Aramaens. These genetic studies demonstrate that there are no significant differences between the Muslims and non-Muslims of Lebanon. Genealogical DNA testing has shown that 21.3% of Lebanese Muslims (non-Druze) belong to the Y-DNA haplogroup J1 compared with non-Muslims at 17%. Although Haplogroup J1 finds its putative origins in the Arabian peninsula, studies show that it has been present in the Levant since the times of the Canaanites and does not necessarily indicate Arab descent. Other haplogroups present among Lebanese Shia include E1b1b (19%), and others such as, G-M201, R1b, and T-M70 occurring at smaller, but significant rates.

Genetics aside, the population of pre-Islamic Lebanon was mainly Canaanite who began to speak Aramaic. Under Byzantine rule, this Aramaen population was Hellenized and adopted the Greek language alongside their native Aramaic. It is important to note that most villages and towns in Lebanon today have Aramaic names, reflecting this heritage. Alongside the natives, small pockets of Greeks, Arabs, and others from around the Mediterranean world moved in and assimilated into the population. Among these pre-Islamic Arabs, Banu Amela has importance for the Lebanese Shia for adopting and nurturing Shi'ism in the southern population. As the Islamic expansion reached Lebanon, these Arab tribes received the most power which encouraged the rest of the population to adopt Arabic as the main language.

Under Mamluk and Ottoman rule

See also: Harfush clan

See also: Nasif al-Nassar

The growth of Shia Islam in Lebanon stopped around the late thirteenth century, and subsequently Shia communities decreased in size. This development may be traced to 1291, when the Sunni Mamluks sent numerous military expeditions to subdue the Shias of Keserwan, a mountain region overlooking the coastal area north of Beirut. The first two Mamluk expeditions were defeated by the Shia in Keserwan. The third expedition, on the other hand, was overwhelmingly large and was able to defeat the Shia in Keserwan; many were brutally slaughtered, some fled through the mountains to northern Beqaa while others fled moving through the Beqaa plain, to a new safe haven in Jezzine. Keserwan began to lose its Shia character under the Assaf Sunni Turkomans whom the Mamluks appointed as overlords of the area in 1306. The process intensified around 1545 when the Maronites started migrating to Keserwan and Byblos, encouraged by the Assafs, who sought to use them as a counterweight to the Shia Hamade sheikhs who reemerged in Keserwan in the 16th century. When in 1605 the Druze emir Fakhr al-Din Ma'n II took over Keserwan, he entrusted its management to the Khazin Maronite family. The Khazins gradually colonized Keserwan, purchasing Shia lands and founding churches and monasteries. They emerged as the predominant authority in the region at the expense of the Shia Hamedeh clan. By the end of the eighteenth century, the Khazins owned Keserwan and only a few Shia villages survived. Tradition tells us that many Shia of Keserwan also adopted Christianity after heavy persecution and many Maronites of the region today are their descendants.

During the time of the Ottoman Empire, the Shias suffered religious persecution and were often forced to flee their homes in search of refuge in the South. In response to the growth of Shia Islam, the Ottoman Empire put Shias to the sword in Anatolia. Hundreds of thousands of Shias were massacred in the Ottoman Empire, including the Alevis in Turkey, the Alawis in Syria and the Shia of Lebanon. One example is the Lebanese city of Tripoli, which had formerly had a Shia Muslim majority. Many Lebanese Shia are rumored to have concealed their religious sect and acted as Sunni Muslims in fear of persecution. It is also rumored that some of the Shia permanently adopted the Sunni Muslim sect. The Ottomans and Druze were well allied and a Druze family seized power of Tripoli. Maronites who were persecuted by the Ottomans and the Druze, sought refuge amongst the newly relocated Shia population in the South. Jezzine, once famously known as a Shia capital in Lebanon, is now known as a majority Maronite and Melkite Christian city in the South. The Shias withdrew further south and eventually had to abandon even Jezzine, which until the mid-eighteenth century had functioned as a center of Shia learning in Lebanon. The traditional accounts of Shia "persecution" in Lebanon, however, which are largely based on family legends, are seriously called into question by the Ottoman documentation available in the state archives in Istanbul or local sharia archives in Tripoli. According to these, leading Shia families such as the Hamadas in Tripoli, the Harfushes in the Beqaa or the Ali al-Saghirs in Jabal 'Amil were co-opted into the Ottoman system of government, serving as tax farmers (multezim) over huge areas and enjoying other government offices (sancak-beylik governorships, etc.) in the region.

Although the Jabal 'Amil enjoyed a degree of autonomy in the eighteenth century under the leader of the Ali al-Saghirs, Nasif al-Nassar, and the Arab leader of northern Palestine, Zahir al-Umar, this ended with the Ottoman appointment of Ahmad al-Jazzar as governor of Sidon province (1775–1804). Jazzar crushed the military power of the Shia clan leaders and burned the libraries of the religious scholars using the Druze tribes established in the Shouf, mainly the strong Nakad family, allied to the Maan. He established a centralized administration in the Shia areas and brought their revenues and cash crops under his domain. By the late eighteenth century, the Shias of the Jabal 'Amil lost their independent spirit and adopted an attitude of political defeat. Al-Jezzar was nicknamed "the butcher" and a big population of the Shia were killed under his rule in Lebanon.

Relations with Iranian Shias

During most of the Ottoman period, the Shia largely maintained themselves as 'a state apart', although they found common ground with their fellow Lebanese, the Maronites; this may have been due to the persecutions both sects faced. They maintained contact with the Safavid dynasty of Persia, where they helped establish Shia Islam as the state religion of Persia during the Safavid conversion of Iran from Sunni to Shia Islam. Since most of the population embraced Sunni Islam and since an educated version of Shia Islam was scarce in Iran at the time, Isma'il imported a new Shia Ulema corps from traditional Shiite centers of the Arabic speaking lands, such as Jabal Amil (of Southern Lebanon), Bahrain and Southern Iraq in order to create a state clergy. Isma'il offered them land and money in return for their loyalty. These scholars taught the doctrine of Twelver Shia Islam and made it accessible to the population and energetically encouraged conversion to Shia Islam. To emphasize how scarce Twelver Shia Islam was then to be found in Iran, a chronicler tells us that only one Shia text could be found in Isma'il's capital Tabriz. Thus it is questionable whether Isma'il and his followers could have succeeded in forcing a whole people to adopt a new faith without the support of the Arab Shia scholars.

These contacts further angered the Ottoman Sultan, who had already viewed them as religious heretics. The Sultan was frequently at war with the Persians, as well as being, in the role of Caliph, the leader of the majority Sunni community. Shia Lebanon, when not subject to political repression, was generally neglected, sinking further and further into the economic background. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the Comte de Volmy was to describe the Shia as a distinct society.

French mandate period

Following the official declaration of the French Mandate of Greater Lebanon (Le Grand Liban) in September 1920, anti-French riots broke out in the predominantly Shia areas of Jabil ‘Amil and the Beqaa Valley. In 1920 and 1921, rebels from these areas, led by by Adham Khanjar and Sadiq Hamzeh, attacked French military bases in Southern Lebanon. During this period of chaos, also several predominantly Christian villages in the region were attacked due to their perceived acceptance of French mandatory rule, including Ain Ebel. Eventually, an unsuccessful assassination attempt on French High Commissioner Henri Gouraud led to the execution of Adham Khanjar. At the end of 1921, this period of unrest ended with a political amnesty offered by the French mandate authorities for all Shi’is who had joined the riots, with the intention to bind the Shia community in the South of Lebanon to the new Mandate state.

Education

During the 1920’s and 1930’s, educational institutions became places for different religious communities to construct nationalist and sectarian modes of identification. Shia leaders and religious clergy supported educational reforms in order to improve the social and political marginalization of the Shia community and increase their involvement in the newly born nation-state of Lebanon. This led to the establishment of several private Shia schools in Lebanon, among them The Charitable Islamic ʿĀmili Society (al-Jamʿiyya al-Khayriyya al-Islāmiyya al-ʿĀmiliyya) in Beirut and The Charitable Jaʿfari Society (al-Jamʿiyya al-Khayriyya al-Jaʿfariyya) in Tyre. While several Shia educational institutions were established before and at the beginning of the mandate period, they often ran out of support and funding which resulted in their abolishment.

The primary outlet for discussions concerning educational reforms among Shia scholars was the monthly Shiite journal al-‘Irfan. In order to bring their demands (muṭālabiyya) to the attention of the French authorities, petitions were signed and presented to the French High Commissioner and the Service de l’Instruction Publique. This institution – since 1920 headquartered in Beirut- oversaw every educational policy regarding public and private school in the mandate territories. According to historian Elizabeth Thompson, private schools were part of “constant negotiations” between citizen and the French authorities in Lebanon, specifically regarding the hierarchical distribution of social capital along religious communal lines. During these negotiations, petitions were often used by different sects to demand support for reforms. For example, the middle-class of predominantly urban Sunni areas expressed their demands for educational reforms through petitions directed towards the French High Commissioner and the League of Nations.

Ja’fari shar’ia courts

In January 1926, the French High Commissioner officially recognized the Shia community as an “independent religious community,” which was permitted to judge matters of personal status “according to the principles of the rite known by the name of Ja’fari.” This meant that the Shiite Ja'fari jurisprudence or madhhab was legally recognized as a an official madhhab, and held judicial and political power on multiple levels. The institutionalization of Shia Islam during this period provoked discussions between Shiite scholars and clergy about how Shiite orthodoxy should be defined. For example, discussions about the mourning of the martyrdom of Imam Husain during Ashura, which was a clandestine affair before the 1920’s and 1930’s, led to its transformation into a public ceremony.

On the other hand, the official recognition of legal and religious Shiite institutions by the French authorities strengthened a sectarian awareness within the Shia community. Historian Max Weiss underlines how “sectarian claims were increasingly bound up with the institutionalization of Shi’i difference." With the Ja’fari shar’ia courts in practice, the Shia community was deliberately encouraged to "practice sectarianism" on a daily basis.