Caesar Farah: Ottomans feared Mount Lebanon

By Fadi Shaker ---

The Department of History and Archaeology organized a lecture on May 17 entitled "Ottoman Lebanon in Turmoil: The External and Internal Dimensions" presented by Professor Caeser Farah. Professor Farah, a specialist in Ottoman-Arab relations focusing especially on Lebanon and Yemen, has been a professor of Middle East History at the University of Minnesota since 1969. The lecture was based on Farah's recently published comprehensive study entitled "The Politics of Interventionism in Ottoman Lebanon." The study is the fruit of forty years of research on an area that caused the Ottomans a lot of worry. In fact, Professor Farah said that there were two areas in the Ottoman Empire that constantly worried the Ottoman rulers: these were Mount Lebanon and Montenegro. The lecture focused on the bloody events that occurred during 1840 and 1860 and tried to show how foreign intervention, especially European, played an essential role in these events. The lecture also exposed the different systems used to manage the affairs of Mount Lebanon, among which were the Quaimaqameit system and later on the Mutasarifiah, again emphasizing the role of the European powers in designing those systems. More importantly, the effect of those systems reinforced sectarianism in Mount Lebanon. As Outlook went to press, Professor Farah delivered a lecture entitled "Abdulhamid II, the Much Maligned Sultan."