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The Shihabi Amirs of Lebanon
AD 1697 - 1842
The Golden Age of Lebanon (former Phoenicia) is considered by many to have come in the reign of the Amir Bashir II Shihabi. The
Shihabis were originally Sunni Moslems, but they came to rule an area dominated by the
Druzes, practioners of a religious off-shoot of Islam and
regarded by many Moslems as apostates from Islam. When the Amirs themselves converted to
Maronite Christianity, this created an alliance, which was sometimes uneasy, between the largest
communities in Lebanon, the Maronites, and the Druzes. In 1697 they became
semi-independent from the
Ottoman Empire. |
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