The Lebanese Druze are an ethnoreligious group constituting about 5.2 percent of the population of Lebanon. They follow the Druze faith, which is an esoteric Abrahamic religion originating from the Near East, and self identify as unitarians.
Christian Church and Druze Khalwa in Shuf Mountains.
Prophet Job shrine in Niha village.
Left to right: Christian mountain dweller from Zahlé, Christian mountain dweller of Zgharta, and a Lebanese Druze man in traditional attire (1873).
The Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate was one of the Ottoman Empire's subdivisions following the Tanzimat reform. After 1861, there existed an autonomous Mount Lebanon with a Christian Mutasarrif (governor), which had been created as a homeland for the Maronites under European diplomatic pressure following the 1860 Druze–Maronite conflict. The Maronite Catholics and the Druze founded modern Lebanon in the early eighteenth century, through the ruling and social system known as the "Maronite-Druze dualism" in Mount Lebanon.
Muhammad Ali Pasha and Bashir II.
Emir of Lebanon, by József Borsos, 1843.