MARONITE HISTORIOGRAPHY AND IDEOLOGY HARALD SUERMANN* The identity of a people is based on the perception of its own history. This is also the case of the Maronites, a relatively small community living in the mountains of Lebanon largely isolated and criticised by other churches due to their union with Rome. While as a confessional group they are firmly rooted in Lebanon, they take their identity not so much from the history and narratives of Lebanon or the Lebanese nation as a whole, as from their own history. In fact, there does not really exist a national history of Lebanon. This is one of the major problems of Lebanon as a state. Each major confessional group has its own history and these histories in many respects lack a com- mon ground. The confessional proportional representation in politics and in society is one of the consequences. The shaping power of the dhimmi status of the Christians and the millet system of the Ottoman Empire led to the self-conception of the confessional groups as nations. Also the Maronites per- ceive themselves as a Nation. Their history is above all the history of an eccle- siastical group, though it includes also other aspects of Near Eastern history.1 We do not know much about Maronite historiography before the fifteenth century. We have to presume that Maronites recorded their history during and before the time of the Crusades, but nearly nothing has come down to us. Many scholars think that the Maronite Church has destroyed older lit- erature after the union with Rome.2 * Harald Suermann is researcher at Missio (Aachen). This article is based on the intro- duction of his recent book: Die Gründungsgeschichte der Maronitischen Kirche, Orientalia Biblica et Christiana, 10 (Wiesbaden, 1998), pp. 1-39. 1 Cf. the recent publication by P. L. Münch-Heuber, Zwischen Konflikt und Koexistenz: Christentum und Islam im Libanon (München, 2002), pp. 11-32 (http:// www.hss.de/downloads/aktuelle_analysen_28.pdf 06.01.2003) 2 G. Graf, Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, Studi e testi, 118.133.146.147.172 (Città del Vaticano, 1944-1953), I, pp. 94-102; K. S. Salibi, ‘The Traditional Historiogra- phy of the Maronites', in Historians of the Middle East, eds. B. Lewis, P.M. Holt, Historical Writing on the Peoples of Asia, 4 (London, 1962), pp. 212-225, here p. 213. 130 HARALD SUERMANN The historiography of the Maronites that is documented starts in the fif- teenth century. It can be understood as an expression of national pride. The Maronite Church wrote its own history in order to retell its greatness and bravery. One major element of this historiography is political: the resistance against the Muslim dominance; and one is religious: a defense against the accusations of other churches. In the recent past, Maronite historiography has added an apolo- getic function: to ward off pan-Arabic claims by stressing the Phoenician ori- gins of Lebanese history as well as the unity of feudal Mount Lebanon. This defensive character can be found in nearly all the historiographical works written after the union with Rome. Against the charges and imputations of other churches the Maronites claimed ‘Eternal Orthodoxy'. The time of the foundation of the Maronite Church constitutes an essential part of this apolo- getic historiography. Many non-Maronite Church historians point out that the reason for the foundation of the Maronite Church was its Monothelite confession by which it separated itself from the Melkite Byzantine Church which was dyothelite. In reply, Maronite historians try to prove that Maronites had always been dyothelite. At most they admit that the Maronites, due to their isolation from the major churches (Constantinople and Rome) under Muslim rule, accepted the official doctrine only some years later. This apologetic task often prevented Maronite historians from consulting the sources in an objective way. They combed the sources in support for what they believed was true instead of being concerned about interpreting these sources in an objective way. Kamal Salibi, in his ground-breaking work on Maronite History, gives a fur- ther characteristic of Maronite historiography. As a rule, historians have been assiduously copying their predecessors, consciously eschewing any criticism. Thus many publications are mainly a repetition of older works, even though several of these historians were educated in the West (Rome). At the same time, we must keep in mind that most of these chronicles and histories were written for an exclusively into Maronite audience. Until today only a few Western scholars have investigated Maronite history. Non-Maronite scholars from Eastern churches have likewise been uncritical in their polemics and crit- icism of Maronite history and theology. Thus, Kamal Salibi accuses Maronite historiography of often naively replacing an interest in the facts with dogmatical suppositions.3 With these characteristics in mind we can now turn to a sur- vey of Maronite historiography. 3 Salibi, Historiography (see n. 2), pp. 215-217; id., Maronite Historians of Mediaeval Lebanon, Publications of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Oriental series, 34 (Beyruth, 1959), p. 15. MARONITE HISTORIOGRAPHY AND IDEOLOGY 131 During the period of the Crusades the Maronites came into contact with Latin Christianity. A formal union between the two churches was probably first concluded in the twelfth century, though some argue that it was only a reconfirmation of the union.4 This union had no major consequences until the Council of Florence in1439 when Rome again tried to conclude a union with all the Eastern churches. This intiative was a failure. The Maronite Church became the only Eastern church fully to be united with Rome. This special relationship was the reason for Rome to send a special counsellor to the Maronite patriarch immediately after the council. It was a Franciscan with the name Gryphon. His mission was quite successful: three young Maronites joined the Franciscan Order and one of them became quite famous later. Gibra'il Ibn al-Qula‘i, who died in 1515, can be called the founder of the new Maronite historiography. He first studied in Rome. After returning to Lebanon he became the counsellor to the Maronite patriarch before being elected to the bishopric of the Maronite diocese of Cyprus. During his stay in Lebanon he witnessed the Jacobites attempting to proselytise Maronites, which had some success among lay people. Against this background Ibn al- Qula‘i wrote a number of works, two of which are significant for our pur- pose: Marun a†-†ubani (The blessed Maron) and In Praise of Mount Lebanon. These works had three aims: (1) to strengthen the union with Rome; (2) to refute the suspicion that the Maronites are Monothelites; and (3) to glorify Maronite history.5 In Marun a†-†ubani Ibn al-Qula‘i presents for the first time the theory of ‘eternal orthodoxy'. His arguments are largely based on testimonies of the church fathers in favour of Dyophysitism that were known to him in Syriac translation. As a matter of fact, however, these excerpts do not solve the ques- tion whether the Maronites had ever been Monothelites. He also cites Syr- iac church fathers who seemed to conform with Roman doctrine, but with- out admitting that these authors were not Maronites. As a third set of witnesses he refers to papal bulls from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries, texts that can hardly be used to document the earlier history. 4 K. S. Salibi, ‘The Maronite Church in the Middle Ages and Its Union with Rome', Oriens Christianus, 42 (1958), pp. 92-104. 5 Graf, Geschichte (see n. 3), III, pp. 309-333; H. Douaihy, Un théologien maronite Gibra'il ibn al-Qula‘i. Évêque et moine franciscain, Bibliothèque de l'Université Saint- Esprit, 31 (Kaslik, 1993), pp. 167-192 and passim; H. Lammens, ‘Frère Gryphon et le Liban au XVIe siècle', Revue de l'Orient Chrétien, 4 (1899), pp. 68-104, here pp. 87-89. 132 HARALD SUERMANN In In Praise of Mount Lebanon Ibn al-Qula‘i pays particular attention to John Maron, the first patriarch. He relates the attack of the emir of Baskinta on the Plain of Bekaa and his fight against the troops of the caliphe ‘Abdalma- lik ibn Marwan (685-705). According to this account the emir's nephew was a friend of Gregorius al-Îalati who became Patriarch in 1130. There are more historical anachronisms, many of which seem to originate from the author's imagination. In Salibi's opinion Ibn al-Qula‘i occasionally makes use of historical sources from different periods, but he did not write history.6 J.-B. Chabot has done research on the origin of the transmission of the Vita of John Maron. He came to the conclusion that there are no reliable traces of John Maron in Syria before the Middle Ages. The Vita of John Maron is a legend. It must have been writ- ten in Cyprus and was circulated by Ibn al-Qula‘i in 1495, though I do not think he created the Vita out of nothing.7 The next influential author to be mentioned is Ibrahim al-Îaqilani, bet- ter known under his Latin name Abraham Ecchellensis. He was born in 1600 in Îaqil, or Ecchel (hence his surname), a village in Mount Lebanon, and died 1664 in Rome. He was a contemporary of the famous emir FaÌr ad- Din II. Ma‘n (1572-1635), who governed the region during a period of rel- ative independence and in close cooperation with the Maronites. Abraham Ecchelensis began his career as a politician, but soon gave this up in order to study at the Maronite College in Rome. He published a grammar of Syr- iac (1628) and taught Syriac and Arabic at the College of the Propaganda.