From the Dhimma to the Capitulations: Memory and Experience of Protection in Lebanon
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CHAPTER TWO FROM THE DHIMMA TO THE CAPITULATIONS: MEMORY AND EXPERIENCE OF PROTECTION IN LEBANON Anh Nga Longva Introduction In November 2007, the mandate of Lebanon’s president Emile Lahoud came to an end, and the National Assembly was scheduled to elect a new president. As political disagreement worsened and the election kept being postponed, the Lebanese capital witnessed a constant flow of foreign dignitaries who came to express their support to the pro-Western Siniora government. The then French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, flew in from Paris no less than five times between May and November 2007. Several of his European and Arab counterparts followed suit, albeit at a slower pace. These diplomatic activities were meant as warning signals to the Iranian and Syrian allies of the Hizbollah-led opposition. The rival Lebanese parties have once again mobilized powerful external allies in their internal struggles. Much has been written about the complexity of Lebanon’s political life and its capacity to weather the most violent crises. Observers have occasionally remarked on the Lebanese’s resort to foreign intervention in their domestic disputes, but there are few in-depth analyses of the phe- nomenon. And yet foreign intervention with the aim of protecting one of the contending parties runs like a red thread through the narratives on Lebanon’s political and social life, in particular as regards some Christian communities. The first overt European intervention in Lebanon took place in 1860 after a series of severe clashes between Druzes and Maronites, when the European Powers pressured the Ottoman authorities to turn Mount Lebanon into an autonomous district under international supervision. Half a century later, at the end of World War I, intervention took the form of a decision by the League of Nations to give the mandate of Greater Syria to France. This intervention culminated when France severed Lebanon from Syria and placed political power in the new republic in the hands of the Maronite Catholics. The above processes were all part and parcel of a wider European policy of pro-Christian intervention in the Ottoman © Anh Nga Longva, 2012 | doi:10.1163/9789004216846_004 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. Anh Nga Longva - 9789004216846 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 01:06:15PM via free access 48 anh nga longva Empire, starting from the seventeenth century. A blend of religious solidar- ity and political imperialism, this policy must be viewed in relation to a practice which had prevailed in the region for more than a thousand years: from the seventh to the early twentieth century, Christians, Jews, and to a certain extent, Zoroastrians, known collectively as the Peoples of the Book (ahl al-kitāb) lived under a particular regime of Islamic protection arising from the dhimma, a ‘contract’ between the Muslim rulers and their non- Muslim populations. European intervention took place toward the end of this period, in the last 150 years or so before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. During that period, the Christians experienced another form of protection, arising this time from the capitulations, bilateral treaties signed between the European Powers and the Porte. Over the centuries the condition of being protected had become not only a way of life but also a social characteristic of the ‘protected’ popu- lations. Protection, with all its ambiguities and complexities, not only shaped ways of being in daily encounters; it also defined the existential horizon of those to which it applied. Today a thing of the past, protec- tion or memory of it, still plays a role in the construction of Christians’ collective identity. But we must beware of generalizations. The Christian communities in the Middle East are a highly diverse world. Regarding memory of protection, there are perceptible differences between the two largest Christian communities in Lebanon, the Maronites and the Greek Orthodox. While it is a well-known fact that memory is always subjective and that the memory of an experience is not the same as the experience in itself (see i.a. Ricoeur 2004), I argue in this chapter that the discrepancy between the Maronites’ experience of Muslim protection and their memory of it is particularly striking, much more so than in the case of the Greek Orthodox. The Maronites were the Christian community which had the least direct experience with the status of protected people, yet they are also the community whose recollection of it is most vivid and bitter. In comparison, the Orthodox, whose forebears had a greater experience of the dhimmi status, seem to recall Muslim protection in a more nuanced fashion, if at all. And while present-day Maronite political and religious leaders are often preoccupied with securing the support or protection, of Western countries, this does not seem to be a matter of particular concern for most Greek Orthodox.1 To understand this state of affairs, we need to 1 No social groups are homogeneous, and both the Maronite and the Greek Orthodox communities are internally diversified, also regarding views on protection. I am fully aware Anh Nga Longva - 9789004216846 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 01:06:15PM via free access from the dhimma to the capitulations 49 compare the workings of the dhimma and the capitulations, and their impact on two Christian communities whose original historical differences were significantly sharpened by events in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the results of which are still visible today. The Dhimma ‘Dhimma’ is an Arabic word denoting a covenant of protection modeled on the way the Prophet Mohammed dealt with non-Muslims in his early conquests in the Arabian Peninsula. Through the dhimma, Muslim rulers grant hospitality and protection to members of other revealed religions, on condition that the latter acknowledged the domination of Islam.2 The dhimma grants non-Muslims the public right to live in Muslim ter- ritories, and the private rights to buy, sell, and own; to marry, have children, and inherit; and to have access to courts of law. Through the dhimma, Muslims promised not to harm the protected non-Muslims, not to infringe on their properties, and to protect them when they were attacked. In return, the dhimmis must meet a number of obligations, such as the payment of the poll-tax ( jizya) and the land tax (kharāj), and loyalty to the Muslim commonwealth (umma) and its leaders. They also had to submit to a series of legally, politically and socially discriminating rules; they could not, for example, testify in court against Muslims, and they were excluded from high public offices. There were also rules about clothing and transportation (they were not allowed to use the green colour and to ride horses). Besides, dhimmis were not allowed to carry weapons, and they were exempted from serving in the Muslim army. Freedom to publicly perform their religious rituals was limited to certain occasions, and display of Christian or Jewish religious symbols was restricted. Finally there were regulations about reli- gious buildings: repair and maintenance of existing churches/synagogues was allowed, but it was forbidden to build new ones. of the problem of using ‘Maronites’ and ‘Greek Orthodox’ as collective terms of reference, as they inevitably suggest uniformity of views and consensus. When I nonetheless do so, it is because comparative social analysis requires a degree of generalization about the objects of the comparison, as long as what is being generalized is treated as context-related trends and patterns and not as primordial traits. 2 As Rabbath (1986) reminds us, the dhimma regime is not so much an expression of religious tolerance towards the ahl al-kitāb as a legal mechanism to justify their existence within a state which is exclusively Muslim. Anh Nga Longva - 9789004216846 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 01:06:15PM via free access 50 anh nga longva In theory these legal restrictions were universal, but in practice their implementation varied considerably (Joseph 1983). It depended on the prevailing socio-economic and political circumstances as well as on the leaders’ interpretation of the rules and their personal inclinations. Historical evidence shows that only a handful of the regulations, such as those about taxes, the prohibition to carry weapons, and exemption from conscription, were strictly and consistently observed; others were observed on and off; yet others were deliberately overlooked, for example the law against employ- ing dhimmis in high state positions.3 Likewise, the prohibition against the construction of new churches was frequently waived (Ma ͗oz 1968, Faroqhi 1994, Fattal 1995, Masters 2004). Of particular interest is the implementa- tion of the dress code imposed on dhimmis. This is a major theme in most studies on the dhimma, and much has been written about the humiliating effect this had had on the dhimmi population. The existence of such a code is beyond doubt,4 but there are indications that its implementation was often lax. According to Masters “the fact that the dress code was frequently invoked by governors eager to extract bribes from wealthy non-Muslims suggests [that] even in their daily costume Muslims and non-Muslims were not always easily identifiable to the outside observer” (2004: 43). In support of his claim, Masters cites the reaction typical for most European visitors to the region: “Whether Christians or Jews, [they] frequently noted with a degree of disgust