Shihab dynasty

The Shihab dynasty (alternatively spelled Chehab; Arabic: الشهابيون, ALA-LC: al-Shihābiyūn) is an Arab family whose members served as the paramount tax farmers and Emirs of Mount Lebanon from the early 18th to mid-19th century, during Ottoman rule (1517–1918). Before then, the family had been in control of the Wadi al-Taym region, purportedly as early as the 12th century. During early Ottoman rule, they maintained an alliance and marital ties with the Ma'n dynasty, the Chouf-based, paramount Druze emirs and tax farmers of Mount Lebanon. When the last Ma'nid emir died without male progeny in 1697, the chiefs of the Druze in Mount Lebanon appointed the Shihab emir, Bashir, whose mother belonged to the Ma'n, as his successor. Bashir was succeeded by another Shihab emir with a Ma'nid mother, Haydar, after his death.

Under Haydar, the Shihabs crushed their main rivals for paramountcy amongst the Druze at the Battle of Ain Dara in 1711, consolidating their dominance of Mount Lebanon through the mid-19th century. The family's most prominent emir, Bashir II, centralized control in the region, destroying the feudal power of the mostly Druze lords and cultivating the Maronite clergy as an alternative power base in their emirate. In 1831, he allied with Muhammad Ali of Egypt during his occupation of Syria, but was deposed in 1840 when the Egyptians were driven out by an Ottoman-European alliance, leading soon after to the dissolution of the Shihab emirate. Despite losing territorial control, the family remains influential in modern Lebanon, with some members having reached high political office.

History

Origins

The Banu Shihab were purportedly an Arab tribe originally from the Hejaz.