[245] J. Garstang: The Land of the Hittites, London, 1910, pp. 15, 16.
[246] About forty towns and villages are held by the Druzes in the southern Lebanon. In the Anti-Lebanon districts they people eighty villages and share possession of about two hundred with their Christian kinsmen, the Maronites.
[247] Hakem was a Fatimite caliph of Egypt, who ruled in the early eleventh century. He incurred the hatred of his subjects by causing the incarnation of God in himself to be preached in Cairo by Darasi, his chaplain. Both became so unpopular that they were forced to escape from the capital to the Lebanon, where they succeeded in imposing their doctrines on the mountaineers. The name Druze is believed to be derived from Darasi.
[248] In recent years the Maronites have submitted to the authority of the Vatican. In return certain privileges, such as that of retention of Syriac liturgy, have been accorded to them. They constitute a veritable theocracy, all tribal and community affairs being handled by the clergy.
[249] The French military expedition to the Lebanon, undertaken in 1860, was caused by the massacre of over 12,000 Maronites by the Druzes in that year.
[250] This group comprises about 90,000 souls in Syria and 40,000 in Mesopotamia.
[251] E. Aubin: La Perse d’aujourd’hui, Paris, 1908, p. 418.
[252] The Elephantine papyri discovered on the island of Elephantine in southern Egypt between 1903 and 1906 contain Aramaic texts of great historical value.
[253] O. Procksch: Die Völker Altpalästinas, Leipzig, 1914, p. 30.
[254] At the end of the pre-Islamic period the region west of the Euphrates to the eastern slopes of the Lebanon mountains was known to the Arabs as “Beit Aramyeh,” or the land of the Arameans.