Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate
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.
Painting of the Emir of Mount Lebanon Bashir II.
Muhammad Ali Pasha and Bashir II.
Emir of Lebanon, by József Borsos, 1843.
Omar Pasha – Lithograph
Maronites are a Syriac Christian ethnoreligious group native to the Eastern Mediterranean and Levant region of West Asia, whose members traditionally belong to the Maronite Church, with the largest concentration long residing near Mount Lebanon in modern Lebanon. The Maronite Church is an Eastern Catholic sui iuris particular church in full communion with the pope and the rest of the Catholic Church.
Maronite villagers building a church in the region of Mount Lebanon, 1920s.
Our Lady of Lebanon Cathedral Brooklyn in New York City.
Lebanon religious groups distribution.
An estimate of the area distribution of Lebanon's main religious groups.