1 Al-Ḍuḥā, 8 August 1972, 48; al-Ḥayat, 7 August 1972. All the heads of the Lebanese administration, especially President Franjīyah, participated in the cornerstone ceremony of the monument in Baʿqlīn.

2 See the report in al-Ṣayyad, no. 1615 (28 August–4 September 1975), 91–3; Kamāl Junblāṭ's statement, al-Ḥayat, 26 August 1975.

3 Salibi, Kamal, A House of Many Mansions (London: I. B. Tauris, 1988), 200Google Scholar; see also the report in al-Hudā, no. 74–5, October 1983–January 1984, 7.

4 In the sense in which the word is used in this paper, a myth does not indicate historical truthfulness or accuracy. Unlike history, myth represents a mode of explanation, a point of view with its own inner coherence and spiritual topography; or, as suggested by Peter Heehs, a “myth is a set of propositions often stated in narrative form that is accepted uncritically by a culture or speech community and that serves to found or affirm its self-conception”. Percy Cohen sets out five clear characteristics of myth: myth is based on a narrative of events; this narrative has a sacred quality; the sacredness is usually shaped within a symbolic form; some of the events and objects which originate the myth neither occur nor exist in the real world; finally, the narrative refers in a dramatic way to its origins or transformations. See Heehs, Peter, “Myth, history and theory”, History and Theory, 33/1, 1994, 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, Percy, “Theories of myth”, Man, 4, 1969, 337CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Salibi, A House, 200–01.

6 Salibi, A House, 200–15.

7 Beydoun, Ahmad, Identité confessionnelle et temps social chez les historiens libanais contemporains (Beirut: L'Université Libanaise, 1984), 574–80Google Scholar.

8 Kawtharānī explains how Lebanon's history during the Ottoman period is being narrated from different angles presented respectively by Maronite, Druze, Sunni and Shiite historians. See Kawtharānī, Wajīh, al-Dhakīrah wa al-Tārīkh fī al-Qarn al-ʿAshrīn al-Ṭawīl (Beirut: Dār al-Ṭalīʿah, 2000), 114–40Google Scholar.

9 In his innovative study, Kaufman shows that towards the end of the nineteenth century, Maronite historians began to discuss the Phoenician past. Yūsuf al-Dibs, the Maronite Archbishop of Beirut, was the first to write about the history and civilization of the Phoenicians, and his account was later adopted and expanded by the Lebanese national movement. For further details about the Phoenician myth, see Kaufman, Asher, Reviving Phoenicia: The Search for Identity in Lebanon (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004), especially pp. 36–40Google Scholar. Among the main Lebanese historical essays published in the twentieth century that refer to the Phoenician myth, see Hitti, Philip, Lebanon in History (London: Macmillan, 1957)Google Scholar; Jouplain, M., La question du Liban (Paris: A. Rousseau, 1908)Google Scholar; Corm, Charles, L'art phenicien (Beirut, 1940)Google Scholar; Yūsuf al-Sawdā, , Tārīkh Lubnān al-Ḥaḍārī (Beirut: Dār al-Nahār, 1972)Google Scholar; and Būlus, Jawād, Tārīkh Lubnān (Beirut: Dār al-Nahār, 1972)Google Scholar.

10 Bayhum, Jamīl, Lubnān Bayna Musharriq wa Mugharrib (Beirut, 1969)Google Scholar; Ḥallāq, Ḥassān, Lubnān Min al-Finīqīyah ilā al-ʿUrūbah (Beirut: al-Dār al-Jāmiʿyyah, 1993)Google Scholar.

11 Muḥammad Jābir al Ṣafā, Tārīkh Jabal ʿAmil (Beirut: n. d.); Aḥmad ʿArif al-Zayn, , Tārīkh Ṣaydā (Ṣaydā: Maṭbaʿat al-ʿIrfān, 1913)Google Scholar; ʿAlī al-Zayn, Lil-Baḥth ʿan Tārīkhunā fī Lubnān (Beirut, 1973).

12 Exceptions are Ḥasan Barakāt, Anīs Yaḥyā, ʿAfīf Farrāj, ʿAbbās Abū Ṣāliḥ and Salīm Abū Ismāʿīl, who might be classified as being of lower-class origin. These families themselves might be divided into two categories. The first is the high rank of feudal and notable families such as Junblāṭ, al-Nakadī, ʿImād, Abū Shaqrā, Taqī al-Dīn and Nāṣir al-Dīn; their inherited prestige is based on land ownership, notable descent or both. The others constitute a secondary rank of dignitary families which have social honour and prestige; this category includes the families of Abū Ḥamdān, Abū ʿIzz al-Dīn, ʿArīḍī, Dhubyān, Ghannām, Ḥamzah, Karamih, Makārim, Najjār, Nuwayhiḍ, Zahr al-Dīn and Zayn al-Dīn. For more biographical details on these families, see Aḥmad Abū Saʿd, , Muʿjam Asmā' al-Usar wa-al-Ashkhaṣ (Beirut: Dār al-ʿIlm Lil-Malāyīn, 1997), relevant pages, 30Google Scholar, 42–3, 48–9, 166–7, 265, 342–3, 402–3, 603–4, 632–4, 675, 768, 865–6, 892–3, 899, 918–20, 928–9; Hottinger, Arnold, “Zuama in historical perspective”, in Binder, Leonard (ed.), Politics in Lebanon (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1966), 103Google Scholar, n. 2; Alamuddin, Nura and Starr, Paul, Crucial Bonds: Marriage among the Lebanese Druze (Delmar: Caravan Books, 1980), 105Google Scholar.

13 Scheffler, Thomas, “Survival and leadership at an interface periphery: the Druzes in Lebanon”, Studies in the History of Religion, Vol. LXXVI (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 242–3Google Scholar; Beydoun, Identité confessionnelle et temps social, 578–9.

14 Junblāṭ, Kamāl, Ḥaqīqat al-Thawrah al-Lubnānīyah, fourth ed. (al-Mukhtārah: al-Dār al-Taqaddumīyah, 1987)Google Scholar, Junblāṭ, Kamāl, Fī Majrā al-Siyāsah al-Lubnānīyah, third ed. (al-Mukhtārah: al-Dār al-Taqaddumīyah, 1987)Google Scholar.

15 Scheffler, “Survival and leadership”, 242.

16 Among the important publications supported by this institution are the comprehensive book on Druze history written by ʿAbās Abū Ṣālīḥ and Sāmī Makārim (see foreword), and Ibn Sibāṭ's chronicle: Ṣidq al-Akhbār, edited and published by Nā’ilah Taqī al-Dīn Qā'idbayh in 1989.

17 Ṣāliḥ Zahr al-Dīn, , Tārīkh al-Muslimīn al-Muwaḥḥidīn “al-Durūz”, second ed. (Beirut: al-Markaz al-ʿArabī, 1994), 14Google Scholar; Ghannām, Riyāḍ, Muqāṭaʿāt Jabal Lubnān fī al-Qarn al-Tāsiʿ ʿAshar (Beirut: Bīsān, 2000), 269Google Scholar; ʿĀrif al-Nakadī's article, al-Mīthāq, no. 3 (March 1981), 192.

18 Abu-Izzeddin, Nejla, The Druzes: A New Study of their History, Faith and Society (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1984), 1–14Google Scholar; Firro, Kais, “The Druze in and between Syria, Lebanon and Israel”, in Esman, Milton and Rabinovich, Itamar (eds), Ethnicity, Pluralism and the State in the Middle East (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988), 190–91Google Scholar.

19 In fact, Ābaq was the last Būrid ruler of Damascus while power was in the hands of Muʿīn al-Dīn Unur, the Atabek of the city between the years 1138 and 1149. See Abu-Izzeddin, The Druzes, 149; Salibi, Kamal, “The Buhturids of Garb, medieval lords of Beirut and southern Lebanon”, Arabica VIII, 1961, 80–81Google Scholar, 97; Prawer, J., Histoire du Royaume Latin de Jerusalem (Paris: Éditions du centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1969–70)Google Scholar, Tome Premier, 380; Taef Kamal al-Azhari, , The Saljuqs of Syria (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1997), 252–67Google Scholar, 288–9, 361.

20 Salibi, Kamal, The Modern History of Lebanon (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1965), 3–17Google Scholar; Salibi, A House, 126–7; Firro, Kais, A History of the Druze (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992), 28Google Scholar; Harik, Iliya, Politics and Change in a Traditional Society: Lebanon, 1711–1845 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 20Google Scholar, 28–9; Van Leeuwen, Richard, “Fakhr al-Din and his place in Lebanese national history”, The Beirut Review 4, Fall 1992, 98Google Scholar.

21 Harik, Politics, 51–4; Dekmejian, Hrair, Patterns of Political Leadership (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1975), 13Google Scholar.

22 For further details on these developments, see Firro, A History, 55–126; Salibi, The Modern History, 40–105.

23 For further information on the 1861 settlement, see Fawaz, Leila, An Occasion for War: Civil Conflict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860 (London: Center for Lebanese Studies, 1994), 216–17Google Scholar; Salibi, The Modern History, 110; Firro, A History, 126.

24 Scheffler, “Survival and leadership”, 237–8.

25 Abu-Khalil, Asad, “Druze, Sunni and Shiʿite political leadership in present day-Lebanon”, Arab Studies Quarterly, 7/4, Fall 1985, 31Google Scholar.

26 Scheffler, “Survival and leadership” 237–8; Schenk, Bernadette, Tendenzen und Entwicklungen in der modernen Drusischen Gemeinschaft des Libanon (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 2002), 100Google Scholar.

27 For a summary biography of Kamāl Junblāṭ, see al-Khazen, Farid, “Kamal Jumblatt: the uncrowned prince of the left”, Middle Eastern Studies 24/2, April 1988, 178–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 The plural of Zaʿīm, this term designates feudal and traditional leaders in Lebanese politics. Normally, the Zaʿīm belongs to a notable family and his position of leadership is inheritable within his family. The Zaʿīm's political authority is commonly contingent on feudal ownership of land, or on social or religious prestige preserved from the Ottoman period. For a wide discussion of this institution, see Hottinger, “Zuama in historical perspective”, 85–105.

29 Abu-Khalil, “Druze, Sunni and Shiʿite”, 32. For further information on the social and political doctrine of the PSP and its role in Lebanese politics during the 1960s and 1970s, see Richani, Nazih, Dilemmas of Democracy and Political Parties in Sectarian Societies (London: Macmillan, 1998), 33–65Google Scholar.

30 ʿAfīf Farrāj, , Kamāl Junblāṭ: al-Mithālī al-Waqiʿī, third ed. (al-Mukhtārah: al-Dār al-Taqaddumīyah, 1987), 88Google Scholar, 101; Zahr al-Dīn, Tārīkh al-Muslimīn, 14; Ghannām, Muqāṭaʿāt Jabal, 269–70; the main editorial of al-Ḍuḥā, 3, March 1961, 80–82; Amīn Abū ʿIzz al-Dīn's article, al-Mīthāq 5, May 1981, 321–2; Salibi, A House, 200.

31 The Druze authors have not distinguished between Maronite and other Christian historians.

32 Druze writers distinguish between four different ideological paradigms among Christian and Maronite historians: environmental determinism (promoted by Būlus), the Phoenician Myth paradigm (mostly identified with Sawdā, Hitti and Būlus), the Maronite national home (promoted particularly by Ḍaw) and finally the paradigm of the Lebanese communities' social convention (elaborated on by Salibi). See: Sulaymān Taqī al-Dīn, , al-Mas'alah al-Ṭā'ifīyah fī Lubnān (Beirut: Dār Ibn Khaldūn), 12–31Google Scholar; Nuwayhiḍ, Walīd, Naqd al-Fikrah al-Lubnānīyah, second ed. (Beirut: Dār al-Kalimah, 1986), 43–89Google Scholar.

33 Junblāṭ, Ḥaqīqat, 9, 42; Junblāṭ, Fī Majrā, 9–10.

34 Interview with Walīd Junblāṭ, al-Wasaṭ, 130, July 1994, 28; Salibi, A House, 201; Schenk, Tendenzen und Entwicklungen, 334–36; Harik, Judith, “Change and continuity among the Lebanese Druze community: the civil administration of the mountains, 1983–1990”, Middle Eastern Studies 29/3, July 1993, 391–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. After Walīd Junblāṭ established the civil administration in 1983, the official state history textbooks were forbidden and new civic textbooks were set for the curriculum. The state textbooks were described as being crammed full of myths and falsehoods spun by the Maronites about the role of the Druzes in Lebanon's history.

35 The Druze sources indicate that during the events of 1943, when the President, the Premier and some cabinet members were arrested, humiliated and thrown unceremoniously into the jail of Rāshayya by the French authorities, Druze supporters of Emir Majīd Arslān gathered in Bshāmūn village to protect members of the government and challenged the French military forces. For further information, see Muḥammed Nāṣir al-Dīn's articles, al-Ḍuḥā, 12, December 1973, 14; no. 1, January 1972, 12; Bayān Nuwayhiḍ's article, al-Ṣayyād, no. 1001, November 1963, 22–9; Barakāt, Ḥasan, al-Dawr al-Qīyādī lil-Muwaḥḥidīn (al-Durūz) fī Lubnān (n.p., 1986), 87Google Scholar; speech of Emir Mājīd Arslān as quoted by Rondot, Pierre, Les Institutions Politiques du Liban (Paris: Institut d’Études de L'Orient Contemporain, 1947), 90Google Scholar; Salibi, A House, 201.

36 See Amīn Abū ʿIzz al-Dīn's article, al-Ḍuḥā, 9–10, September–October 1970, 29.

37 Taqī al-Dīn, al-Mas'alah al-Ṭā’ifīyah fī Lubnān, 16.

38 See Amīn Abū ʿIzz al-Dīn's article, al-Ḥawadith 1142, September 1978, 73.

39 See Amīn Abū ʿIzz al-Dīn's polemical article against the Lebanese historian Fu’ād al-Bustānī, al-Ṣayyād 1741, March 1978, 69.

40 Nuwayhiḍ, Naqd, 57.

41 Amīn Abū ʿIzz al-Dīn's article, al-Mīthāq 5, May 1981, 325.

42 Some Druze sources even claim that the Tanūkh's settlement in Lebanon began in the Umayyad period and accelerated during the Abbasid period. Ḥamzah, Nadīm, al-Tanūkhīyyūn: Ajdād al-Muwaḥḥidīn (al-Durūz) wa-Dawrihim fī Lubnān (Beirut: Dār al-Nahār, 1984), 37Google Scholar; Makārim, Samī, Lubnān fī ʿAhd al-Umarā' al-Tanūkhīyīn (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 2000), 37–40Google Scholar; ʿAbbās Abū Ṣālīḥ, and Makārim, Sāmī, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn al-Siyāsī fī al-Mashriq al-ʿArabī (Beirut: al-Majlis al-Durzī Lil-Buḥūth wa-al-Inma', 1981), 23–7Google Scholar; Makārim, Samī, Aḍwā' ʿalā Masālik al-Tawḥīd “al-Durzīyah” (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1966), 74Google Scholar; Abu-Izzeddin, The Druzes, 13–4; Qasim al-ʿImād's lecture, al-Ḍuḥā 8, August 1964, 36–7.

43 Makārim, Lubnān fī, 55–60.

44 Makārim, Lubnān fī, 310–11; Abū Ṣāliḥ and Makārim, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn, 109–22.

45 Abū Ṣāliḥ and Makārim, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn, 97; Zahr al-Dīn, Tārīkh al-Muslimīn, 111–12; Taysīr Abū Ḥamdān, , al-Durūz, Maslak wa-ʿAqīdah (Amman: Azminah, 1995), 179–88Google Scholar; interview with the Druze spiritual leader, Muḥammad Abū Shaqrā, al-Ḍuḥā 5, May 1974, 16–7.

46 Abū Ṣāliḥ and Makārim exaggerate the Tanūkhs' loyalty to Islam. Their neutral position during the Ayyubid–Mamluk conflict was based not only on Druze self-interest, but on their commitment to the unity of the Islamic world and especially their objection to intra-Muslim conflicts. Abū Ṣāliḥ and Makārim, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn, 105–06, 112–13; Makārim, Lubnān fī, 80, 90–92; Abū Ḥamdān, al-Durūz, 186.

47 Abū Ṣāliḥ and Makārim, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn, 130–34, 137–40; Zahr al-Dīn, Tārīkh al-Muslimīn, 130.

48 See Amīn Abū ʿIzz al-Dīn's articles: al-Ḥawadith 1142, January 1973, 73; al-Ṣayyād 1741, March 1978, 68; al-Mīthāq 7, July 1981, 479.

49 Abū Sālīḥ and Makārim, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn, 144–5; Jamīl Dhubyān, ʿAnjar (Beirut, n.d.), pp. b–c; Abū Ḥamdān, al-Durūz, 153–4; Muḥammad al-ʿArīḍī's article, al-Ḍuḥā 8, August 1966, 32; Karāmih, Bashīr, Ṣafaḥāt Muḍī'ah (n.p., 1993), 36Google Scholar.

50 The term “Bilād al-Shām” is usually translated as “Geographic Syria” or “the Syrian Land” and used to denote the region bordered in the east by the Syrian Desert, in the west by the Mediterranean Sea and stretching from the Taurus Mountains in the north to Aqaba and Sinai in the south. Although geographically “Bilād al-Shām” has always been distinguished from the surrounding regions such as Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt, it never constitutes one administrative or political entity. A recent study argues that beyond the term's geographical–territorial sense mentioned previously, the expression “Bilad al-Sham” has received new meaning since the Egyptian conquest (1831), indicating the emergence of Syria as a cultural and political entity which has been well integrated. See Philipp, Thomas, “Identities and loyalties in Bilad al-Sham at the beginning of the early modern period”, in Philipp, Thomas and Schumann, Christoph (eds), From the Syrian Land to the States of Syria and Lebanon (Beiruter Texte und Studien 96. Würzburg: Ergon, 2004), 9–26Google Scholar.

51 Abū Ṣālīḥ and Makārim, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn, 363; Amīn Abū ʿIzz al-Dīn's article, al-Mīthāq 6, June 1981, 380; Muḥammad Āl Nāṣir al-Dīn's article, al-Ḍuḥā 3, March 1972, 12; ʿImād's lecture, 37.

52 Muḥammad Āl Nāṣir al-Dīn's article, al-Ḍuḥā 2, February 1972, 8; interview with the spiritual leader, Abū Shaqrā, al-Ḍuḥā 5, May 1974, 16–7.

53 Abū Ṣāliḥ and Makārim, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn, 141–4; Zahr al-Dīn, Tārīkh al-Muslimīn, 130–31; al-ʿArīḍī's article, p. 32; Dhubyān, p. b.

54 On the transformation of the meaning of the term Wataniyya, see Haim, Silvia, “Islam and the theory of Arab nationalism”, Die Welt des Islams 4/2–3, 1955, 124–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Beydoun, Identité confessionnelle et temps social, 442–3.

56 The period after 1967 saw the rise of territorial nationalism at the expense of trans-state Pan-Arab nationalism. This theme has been addressed from different perspectives in many studies. See, for example, Dawisha, Adeed, Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Triumph to Despair (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Sela, Avraham, The Decline of the Arab–Israeli Conflict (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

57 Abū Ṣāliḥ and Makārim, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn, 141–4; Sāmī Abū Shaqrā, Manāqib al-Durūz fī al-ʿAqīdah wa-al-Tārīkh (n.p., n.d.), 71–2, 149; Zahr al-Dīn, Tārīkh al-Muslimīn, 142; Amīn Abū ‘Izz al-Dīn, al-Mīthāq 6, June 1981, 380; ʿAbbās Abū Ṣālīḥ, , al-Tārīkh al-Sīyāsī lil-ʿImārah al-Shihābīyah (Beirut, 1984), 342Google Scholar.

58 The Druze sources deal at length with the activity of the Emirate's leaders in this connection, recounting how these leaders were believed to have given land to Christian monasteries, made donations to church building, and some were even praised by the Pope. Abū Ṣāliḥ and Makārim, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn, 142–4, 159–60; Zahr al-Dīn, Tārīkh al-Muslimīn, 209–15; Ḥalīm Abū ʿIzz al-Dīn's article, al-Ḍuḥā 23, December 1994, 82; Abū Ṣāliḥ, al-Tārīkh, 333; Yaḥyā, Anīs, al-Shaykh Bashīr Junblāṭ (Beirut: Dār al-Funūn, 2001), 88–9Google Scholar; ʿArīf al-Nakadī's article, al-Mīthāq 12, December 1980, 618–21; ʿAbd Allāh al-Najjār, , Madhab al-Durūz wa-al-Tawḥīd (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1965), 31Google Scholar; see also Polk, William, The Opening of South Lebanon, 1788–1840 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 130–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Abū Ṣāliḥ and Makārim, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn, 145; Zahr al-Dīn, Tārīkh al-Muslimīn, 142; Abū Shaqrā, Manāqib al-Durūz, 71–2.

60 Beydoun, Identité confessionnelle et temps social, 442–3; Kawtharānī, al-Dhākirah, 129.

61 Amīn Abū ʿIzz al-Dīn's article, al-Ṣayyād, no. 1741 (March 1978), 68.

62 Kawtharānī, al-Dhākirah, 130.

63 Abū Ṣāliḥ and Makārim, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn, 133.

64 Barakāt, al-Dawr al-Qīyādī, 35; Amīn Abū ʿIzz al-Dīn's article, al-Mīthāq, no. 7 (July 1981), 476; Salīm Abū Ismāʿīl, al-Durūz (Beirut: Maṭābiʿ Faḍūl, n.d), 60.

65 Abū Ṣāliḥ and Makārim, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn, 151; Zahr al-Dīn, Tārīkh al-Muslimīn 155–6.

66 Abū Ṣāliḥ and Makārim, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn, 152; Beydoun, Identité confessionnelle et temps social, 430.

67 The early indications of this anti-Shihabī tendency appeared in a nineteenth-century Druze chronicle by Yūsuf Abū Shaqrā, who offers a first-hand testimony from the period of Emir Bashīr. Abū Shaqrā denied that the Emir was responsible for undermining the harmonious relationship between Druzes and Maronites, yet his policy of preferring the Maronites paved the way for the first civil war, in the second half of the nineteenth century. See Yūsuf Abū Shaqrā, al-Ḥarakāt fī Lubnān ilā ʿAhd al-Mutaṣarifīyah (n.p; n.d.), 26; see also Kisirwani, Maroun, “Foreign interference and religious animosity in Lebanon”, Journal of Contemporary History, 15/4, October 1980, 691–2Google Scholar.

68 Abū Ṣāliḥ and Makārim, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn, 177; Abū Ṣāliḥ, al-Tārīkh, 419–21.

69 Abū Ṣāliḥ and Makārim, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn, 177–84; Yaḥyā, al-Shaykh Bashīr Junblāṭ, 69–71, 130; Barakāt, al-Dawr al-Qīyādī, 36–7, 40–43; Zahr al-Dīn, Tārīkh al-Muslimīn 177–8.

70 Yaḥyā, al-Shaykh Bashīr Junblāṭ, 130; Ghannām, Riyāḍ, al-Muqāṭaʿāt al-Lubnānīyah fī Ẓill Ḥukm al-Amīr Bashīr al-Shihābī al-Thanī wa-Niẓām al-Qāi'mqāmītīn 1788–1861 (Beirut: Bīsān, 1998), 95Google Scholar; Sulaymān Abū ʿIzz al-Dīn, , Ibrāhīm Bāshā fī Sūrīyā (Beirut: 1929), 45–6Google Scholar.

71 Yaḥyā, al-Shaykh Bashīr Junblāṭ, 130, 151; Abū Ṣāliḥ and Makārim, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn, 186–8; Barakāt, al-Dawr al-Qīyādī, 42–3; Abū Ṣāliḥ, al-Tārīkh, 234–5, 326–7.

72 Abū Ṣāliḥ and Makārim, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn, 177, 239; Zahr al-Dīn, Tārīkh al-Muslimīn, 177–201; Amīn Abū ʿIzz al-Dīn's article, al-Mīthāq 7, July 1981, 478; Ghannām, al-Muqāṭaʿāt al-Lubnānīyah, 77–8; see also Beydoun, Identité confessionnelle et temps social, 435–7.

73 Abū Ṣāliḥ, al-Tārīkh, 420.

74 Ghannām, Riyāḍ, al-Muqāṭaʿāt al-Lubnānīyah fī Ẓill al-Ḥkum al-Maṣrī (al-Mukhtārah: al-Dār al-Taqaddumīyah, 1988), 115–6Google Scholar, 275; Abū ʿIzz al-Dīn, Ibrāhīm Bāshā, 214, 314, 321; Abū Ṣāliḥ and Makārim, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn, 221–2; Abū Ṣāliḥ, al-Tārīkh, 265–66, 419; see also Beydoun, Identité confessionnelle et temps social, 428–30.

75 Abū Ṣāliḥ, al-Tārīkh, 419–21; Abū Ṣāliḥ and Makārim, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn, 177.

76 Farrāj, Kamāl Junblāṭ, 88; Zahr al-Dīn, Tārīkh al-Muslimīn, 205–6; Abū Ṣāliḥ, al-Tārīkh, 290–91.

77 From the root w-q-a; also Kitman, from the root k-t-m. Varying meanings could be taken from these terms, such as prudence, fear, dissimulation, or concealment of one's true beliefs in times of adversity or of constraint. The practice of Taqiyya is mostly associated with Twelver Shiism. For further information, see R. Strothmann, “Takiyya”, EI², X, 134; Kohlberg, Etan, “Some Imami Shiʿi views on Taqiyya”, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 95/3, 1975, 395–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 Blanc, Haim, “Druze particularism: modern aspects of an old problem”, Middle Eastern Affairs, III/11, November 1952, 317–9Google Scholar; Hitti, Philip, The Origins of the Druze People and Religion (New York: Columbia University Press, 1928), 14Google Scholar, 47–8.

79 Firro, “The Druze in and between”, 190–91.

80 Layish, Aharon, “Taqiyya among the Druzes”, Asian and African Studies, 19, 1985, 275–7Google Scholar.

81 Ibid., 246.

82 Firro, “The Druze in and between”, 187–8.

83 Abū Ṣāliḥ and Makārim, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn, 9; Abū Ḥamdān, al-Durūz, 25; Junblāṭ, Kamāl, Aḥādīth ʿan al-Ḥurrīyah, second ed. (al-Mukhtārah: al-Dār al-Taqaddumīyah, 1987), 102Google Scholar.

84 Abu-Izzeddin, The Druzes, 10–11, Firro, “The Druze in and between”, 191.

85 Kawtharānī, al-Dhākirah, 128–9; Kawtharānī, Wajīh, al-Mas'alah al-Thaqāfīyah fī Lubnān (Beirut: Baḥsūn, 1984), 69–72Google Scholar.

86 Abū Ṣāliḥ and Makārim, Tārīkh al-Muwaḥḥdīn, 145; Kawtharānī, al-Dhākirah, 128.

87 This issue is beyond the scope of this article and will be examined separately and in depth in a forthcoming study.

88 For a concise biography of Ṭalī' Ḥamdān, see al-Qārī, Amīn, Rawā'i ʿal-Zajal al-Lubnānī (Tarābulus: Jarrūs Priss, 1998), 484Google Scholar.

89 Lammens, H., La Syrie: Précis Historique (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1921), vol. 2, 63Google Scholar; Salibi, Kamal, “The Lebanese identity”, Journal of Contemporary History 6/1, 1971, 85–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 Apart from Druze writers, this terminology was mentioned by many scholars as a historical fact; see Joumblat, Kamal, “Le Liban et le Monde Arabe”, Les Conférences du Cenacle, No. 3–4, 25 March 1949, 119Google Scholar; see also Hourani, Albert, The Emergence of the Modern Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 151CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harik, Politics, 32.

91 The crucial role of historiography in the process of nation building has long been recognized by scholars of nationalism; see for example Gordon, David C., Self-Determination and History in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971)Google Scholar.

92 On the meaning of unifying myth, see Ibid., 89–128.

93 For an in-depth discussion of the Mesopotamian myth, see Baram, Amatzia, Culture, History and Ideology in the Formation of Bathist Iraq, 1968–89 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, in association with St Antony's College, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

94 Baram, Culture, History, 21, 25–9, 138; Baram, Amatzia, “Territorial nationalism in the Middle East”, Middle Eastern Studies, 26/4, Oct. 1990, 425–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95 Gershoni, Israel and Jankowski, James, Egypt, Islam, and the Arabs, the Search for Egyptian Nationhood, 1900–1930 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 130–90Google Scholar.

96 Ibid., 274; Gershoni, Israel and Jankowsi, James, Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 35–142CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97 See Salim, Samah, “The new Pharaonism: nationalist thought and the Egyptian village novel, 1967–1977”, Arab Studies Journal, 8/2–9/1, 2000–2001, 10–24Google Scholar.

98 Gershoni and Jankowski, Egypt, Islam, 91; Gershoni and Jankowski, Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 77.

99 One might mention the works of Gershoni and Jankowski, above; Gershoni, Israel, Singer, Amy and Erdem, Hakan, Middle East Historiographies: Narrating the Twentieth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Choueiri, Youssef, Modern Arab Historiography: Historical Discourse and the Nation-State, second ed. (London: Routledge, 2003)Google Scholar; Le Gall, Michel and Perkins, Kenneth, The Maghrib in Question: Essays in History and Historiography (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

100 See, for example, Choueiri, Modern Arab Historiography.

101 See for example Gershoni and Jankowski, Egypt, Islam, and ibid., Redefining the Egyptian Nation.