Talk:Lebanon

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On the wikipage for Judea, it says:

"When the Ottomans conquered the Middle East and much of the Balkans, the Fourth Commonwealth allied itself with the mostly Druze nation of Lebanon and successfully repelled the Turks from most of the Levant. This lasted until the mid-1800s, when the Ottoman Empire conquered Judea and Lebanon. Armed resistance was fierce, but neither nation resorted to protracted guerrilla warfare when in the years after the conquest they saw that the Ottoman Turks weren't interested in religious persecution or ethnic assimilation, just empire-building. This lasted until a few years after the First Great War, around 1922, as the separatist movements in the Ottoman Empire spread southeastwards from the Balkans into the Mideast."

I'm most interested in the Ottoman Empire conquering Lebanon in the mid-1800's. *Here* there was a series of rather bloody conflicts between the Maronites and the Druze during that time (see [1] for a quick overview), with the strife coming to a head in 1860. This conflict was echoed over 100 years later by the Lebanese Civil War in the mid-70's (though this latter war was very complicated). If IB Lebanon is supposed to have been under Druze rule from the 1500's to the mid-1800's, when the Ottomans took over, what happens to the Maronite community at that time?

A broader question is, what position do the Maronites have at all? *Here* the indigenous Maronite Christians of Lebanon supported the Crusaders. *There*, however, the Crusades were much longer, with European Christians in control of the Levant until the 1500's. Did the Maronites *there* continue supporting the Crusaders throughout this time? Did they get fed up with the Crusader presence and help kick them out? I'm guessing that if they did, they would have a say in the running of independent Lebanon. If not, they might be kicked out or just heavily oppressed.

Basically, I'd like to raise the question of the Maronites and other non-Druze minorities in IB Lebanon: to what extent they are represented in government, what role they play in society, where their enclaves may be, etc.

Hello! I would think it would be very IB for unique religious minorities to play an even stronger role than *here*. Just my 2 dinar, though; I don't know much about the Maronites and Druze in particular. Benkarnell 14:46, 10 January 2008 (PST)