Travels in Syria and the Holy Land

by John Lewis Burckhardt

The Djonbelat now carry every thing with a high hand; their chief, El Sheikh Beshir is the richest and the shrewdest man in the mountain; besides his personal property, which is very considerable, no affair of consequence is concluded without his interest being courted, and dearly paid for. His annual income amounts to about two thousand purses, or fifty thousand pounds sterling. The whole province of Shouf is under his command, and he is in partnership

[p.197] with almost all the Druses who possess landed property there. The greater part of the district of Djesn [Arabic] is his own property, and he permits no one to obtain possesions in that quarter, while he increases his own estates yearly, and thus continually augments his power. The Emir Beshir can do nothing important without the consent of the Sheikh Beshir, with whom he is obliged to share all the contributions which he extorts from the mountaineers. It is from this cause that while some parts of the mountain are very heavily taxed, in others little is paid. The Druses form the richest portion of the population, but they supply little to the public contributions, being protected by the Sheikh Beshir. It will be asked, perhaps, why the Sheikh does not set aside the Emir Beshir and take the ostensible power into his own hands? Many persons believe that he entertains some such design, while others, better informed perhaps, assert that the Sheikh will never make the attempt, because he knows that the mountaineers would never submit to a Druse chief. The Druses are certainly in a better condition at present than they would be under the absolute sway of the Sheikh, who would soon begin to oppress instead of protecting them, as he now does; and the Christians, who are a warlike people, detest the name of Druse too much ever to yield quietly to a chief of that community. It is, probably, in the view of attaching the Christians more closely to him, and to oppose them in some measure to the Druses, that the Emir Beshir, with his whole family, has secretly embraced the christian religion. The Shehab, as I have already mentioned, were formerly members of the true Mussulman faith, and they never have had among them any followers of the doctrines of the Druses. They still affect publicly to observe the Mohammedan rites, they profess to fast during the Ramadhan, and the Pashas still treat them as Turks; but it is no longer matter of doubt, that the greater part of the Shehab, with

[p.198] the Emir Beshir at their head, have really embraced that branch only of the family which governs at Rasheya and Hasbeya continue in the religion of their ancestors.

Although the Christians of the mountain have thus become more attached to their prince, their condition, on the whole, is not bettered, as the Emir scarcely dares do justice to a Christian against a Druse; still, however, the Christians rejoice in having a prince of their own faith, and whose counsellors and household are with few exceptions of the same religion. There are not more than forty or fifty persons about him who are not Christians. One of the prince's daughters lately married a Druse of an Emir family, who was not permitted to celebrate the nuptials till he had been instructed in the doctrines of Christianity, had been baptized, and had received the sacrament. How far the Shehab may be sincere in their professions, I am unable to decide; it is probable that if their interests should require it, they would again embrace the religion of their ancestors.

In order to strengthen his authority the Emir Beshir has formed a close alliance with Soleiman Pasha of Acre, thus abandoning the policy of his predecessors, who were generally the determined enemies of the Turkish governors; this alliance is very expensive to the Prince, though it serves in some degree to counterbalance the influence of the Sheikh Beshir. The Emir and the Sheikh are apparently on the best terms; the latter visits the Emir almost every week, attended by a small retinue of horsemen, and is always received with the greatest apparent cordiality. I saw him at Beteddein during my stay there. His usual residence is at the village of Mokhtar [Arabic], three hours distant from Beteddein, where he has built a good house, and keeps an establishment of about two hundred men. His confidential attendants, and even the porters of his harem, are Christians; but his bosom friend

[p.199] is Sheikh el Nedjem [Arabic], a fanatical Druse, and one of the most respected of their Akals. The Sheikh Beshir has the reputation of being generous, and of faithfully defending those who have put themselves under his protection. The Emir Beshir, on the contrary, is said to be avaricious; but this may be a necessary consequence of the smallness of his income. He is an amiable man, and if any Levantine can be called the friend of an European nation, he certainly is the friend of the English. He dwells on no topic with so much satisfaction as upon that of his alliance with Sir Sidney Smith, during that officer's command upon this coast. His income amounts, at most, to four hundred purses, or about £10.000. sterling, after deducting from the revenue of the mountain the sums paid to the Pashas, to the Sheikh Beshir, and to the numerous branches of his family. His favourite expenditure seems to be in building. He keeps about fifty horses, of which a dozen are of prime quality; his only amusement is sporting with the hawk and the pointer. He lives on very bad terms with his family, who complain of his neglecting them; for the greater part of them are poor, and will become still poorer, till they are reduced to the state of Fellahs, because it is the custom with the sons, as soon as they attain the age of fifteen or sixteen, to demand the share of the family property, which is thus divided among them, the father retaining but one share for himself. Several princes of the family are thus reduced to an income of about one hundred and fifty pounds a year. It has constantly been the secret endeavour of the Emir Beshir to make himself directly dependent upon the Porte, and to throw off his allegiance to the Pasha; but he has never been able to succeed. The conduct of Djezzar Pasha was the cause of this policy. Djezzar, for reasons which have already been explained, was continually changing the governors of the mountain, and each new governor was obliged to promise him large sums for his investiture. Of these sums few

[p.200]were paid at the time of Djezzar's death, and bills to the amount of sixteen thousand purses were found in his treasury, secured upon the revenue of the mountain. At the intercession of Soleiman Pasha,who succeeded Djezzar at Akka, and of Gharib Effendi, the Porte's commissioner (now Pasha of Aleppo), this sum was reduced to four thousand purses, of which the Emir Beshir is now obliged to pay off a part annually.

By opposing the Druse parties to each other, and taking advantage of the Christian population, a man of genius and energy of the Shehab family might perhaps succeed in making himself the independent master of the mountain. Such an event would render this the most important government in Syria, and no military force the Turks could send would be able to overthrow it. But at present the Shehab appear to have no man of enterprise among them.

The Shehab marry only among themselves, or with two Druse families, the Merad [Arabic], and Kaszbeya [Arabic]. These and the Reslan [Arabic], are the only Emir families, or descendants of the Prophet, among the Druses. These Emirs inhabit the province called El Meten. Emir Manzour, the chief of the Merads, is a man of influence, with a private annual income of about one hundred and twenty purses.

I shall now subjoin such few notes on the Druses as I was able to collect during my short stay in the mountain; I believe them to be authentic, because I was very careful in selecting my authourities.