The Shihab dynasty is an Arab family whose members served as the paramount tax farmers and local chiefs of Mount Lebanon from the early 18th to mid-19th century, during Ottoman rule. Their reign began in 1697 after the death of the last Ma'nid chief. The family centralized control over Mount Lebanon, destroying the feudal power of the mostly Druze lords and cultivating the Maronite clergy as an alternative power base of the emirate. The Shihab family 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.
The 12th-century Shihab Citadel in Hasbaya in Wadi al-Taym
Bashir Shihab II was the Emir of Mount Lebanon from 1789 until 1840.
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