The Shiites of Lebanon Under Ottoman Rule, 1516-1788

The Shiites of Lebanon under Ottoman Rule, published in 2010, provides an original perspective on the history of the Shiites as a constituent of Lebanese society. Winter presents a history of the community before the 19th century, based primarily on Ottoman Turkish documents. From these, he examines how local Shiites were well integrated in the Ottoman system of rule, and that Lebanon as an autonomous entity only developed in the course of the 18th century through the marginalization and then violent elimination of the indigenous Shiite leaderships by an increasingly powerful Druze-Maronite emirate. As such the book recovers the Ottoman-era history of a group which has always been neglected in chronicle-based works, and in doing so, fundamentally calls into question the historic place within 'Lebanon' of what has today become the country's largest and most activist sectarian community.Introduction; 1. Shiism in the Ottoman empire: between confessional ambiguity and administrative pragmatism; 2. The invention of Lebanon: Ottoman governance in the coastal highlands, 1568-1636; 3. Mount Lebanon under Shiite rule: the Hamada 'Emirate,' 1641-85; 4. The reshaping of authority: the Shiites and the state in crisis, 1685-99; 5. Jabal 'Amil in the Ottoman period: the origins of 'South Lebanon', 1666-1781; 6. From dependence to redundancy: the decline of Shiite rule in Tripoli and the Bekaa, 1699-1788; 7. Conclusion; Bibliography.