The Ma'n dynasty, also known as the Ma'nids;, were a family of Druze chiefs of Arab stock based in the rugged Chouf area of southern Mount Lebanon who were politically prominent in the 15th–17th centuries. Traditional Lebanese histories date the family's arrival in the Chouf to the 12th century, when they were held to have struggled against the Crusader lords of Beirut and of Sidon alongside their Druze allies, the Tanukh Buhturids. They may have been part of a wider movement by the Muslim rulers of Damascus to settle militarized Arab tribesmen in Mount Lebanon as a buffer against the Crusader strongholds along the Levantine coast. Fakhr al-Din I, the first member of the family whose historicity is certain, was the "emir of the Chouf", according to contemporary sources and, despite the non-use of mosques by the Druze, founded the Fakhreddine Mosque in the family's stronghold of Deir al-Qamar.
The mountains of the Chouf where, according to traditional accounts, the Ma'nids established themselves as a bulwark against the Crusaders of Beirut in 1120
The mosque of Deir al-Qamar, which contained an inscription crediting the Ma'nid emir Fakhr al-Din Uthman for its construction in 1493
The village of Baruk (pictured in 2005) was the headquarters of Qurqumaz, the grandson of Fakhr al-Din I and ancestor of Fakhr al-Din II
The saray in Deir al-Qamar, seat of the Ma'n under Fakhr al-Din
The Druze, who call themselves al-Muwaḥḥidūn, are an Arab and Arabic-speaking esoteric ethnoreligious group from West Asia who adhere to the Druze faith, an Abrahamic, monotheistic, syncretic, and ethnic religion whose main tenets assert the unity of God, reincarnation, and the eternity of the soul.
The Shrine of Shu'ayb near Hittin in the Galilee, Israel
Sixth Fatimid caliph, al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah
Druze woman wearing a tantour during the 1870s in Chouf, Ottoman Lebanon
Meeting of Druze and Ottoman leaders in Damascus, about the control of Jebel Druze