Mount Lebanon and Greece: Mediterranean Crosscurrents, 1821–1841

This article uncovers the interactions between Greek War of Independence and Ottoman district Mount Lebanon. forces made corsairing raids on Syria-Lebanon coast, sometimes leading governors to retaliate against local Christians. A more substantial attempt was draw district’s quasi-autonomous ruler, Emir Bashir al-Shihabi, into an alliance with revolutionary Greeks, a major assault Beirut in 1826, but this unsuccessful. Underlying its failure, argues, persistence older pattern elite negotiation across religious boundaries, which resistant stark Christian-Muslim polarisation developed parts war. In decades following war, it then suggests, some sectarian Christian nationalist aspirations reminiscent Greece did emerge Lebanon, largely through Maronite Christians’ France. The goal monoreligious nation-state, however, never took root.