Harfush dynasty

The Harfush dynasty (or Harfouche, Harfuch, Harfouch, or most commonly spelled Harfoush dynasty, all varying transcriptions of the same Arabic family name حرفوش) was a dynasty that descended from the Khuza'a tribe, which helped, during the reign of Muhammad, in the conquest of Syria. The Harfush are considered the best-known Shiite group in the history of Ottoman-period Lebanon, when they controlled the Baalbek District and several parts of the Bekaa Valley. Their being Shiaa was a major factor in the rivalry between the Harfushes and the Lebanese Druze Maan family.^{[citation needed]}

The Shia notables such as the Harfush emirs of Baalbek and Bekaa Valley were among the most sought-after local intermediaries of the Ottoman state. Later the Hamadas rose to power. They exercised control over multiple tax farms in the rural hinterland of Tripoli in the seventeenth century through complex relationships with both the Ottoman state authorities and the local non-Shiaa communities. The Harfush and Hamadas both belonged to Shia Islam in Lebanon, the Harfush emirate of the Bekaa Valley and the Hamadas of Mt Lebanon challenged the territorial extension and power of the Druze emirate of the Shuf. Unlike the Druze, the Shia emirs were regularly denounced for their religious identity and persecuted under Ebu's-Suud's definition of (Kızılbaş) heretics.

The Harfushes had been a regionally paramount dynasty since early Mamluk times and even served as patrons of local Shiaa shrines and scholars. To the Ottomans they were therefore always leading candidates for local fiscal and political offices, including for the military governorship of the sub-province of Homs, to which they were appointed to partially offset the influence of the increasingly hegemonic Druze emirate.

The late Mamluk historian Ibn Tawq identifies an Ibn Harfush as a muqaddam of the Anti-Lebanon mountain villages al-Jebbeh and Assal al-Ward as early as 1483. Later, Ibn al-Himsi and Ibn Tulun mention one as deputy (na'ib) of Baalbek in 1498. The unnamed Ibn Harfush appears in an Ottoman archival source as early as 1516, when he and several other local notables signed a letter offering their submission to Sultan Selim I, but was executed in 1518 by Janbirdi al-Ghazali as a rebel.

There is no further word on Musa Harfush's eventual participation in the Yemen campaign (which was in fact directed against the forces of the Zaydi Shiite imam), and in later years the Harfushes would be appointed sancak-beğs of Homs and Tadmur rather than of Sidon. If nothing else, his being selected to lead a tribal auxiliary division in return for an official governorship in 1568, more than twenty years before the Ma‘n family received their emiral title, points towards both the possibilities and the limits of Shiite enfranchisement under Ottoman rule: the progressive monetarization of provincial government and the privatization of military power in the later sixteenth century created a context in which non- Sunni tribal leaders constituted viable, even ideal, candidates for local tax and police concessions, accredited by the state and integrated into the imperial military administrative hierarchy. Yet their success would also depend on their ability to hold sway locally, to transcend their narrow parochial bases, raise revenues and capitalize on western Syria's changing economic situation. The Harfush emirs were among the first in the region to be co-opted by the Ottoman state, but would in the long run not stand up to the competition of other local forces.

As elsewhere in the empire, administrative units such as sancaks, eyalets and tax farms were not precisely delimited but could be reorganized according to the government's needs or the assignee's personal importance. The Ottomans briefly contemplated turning Sidon-Beirut into a beğlerbeğlik under ‘Ali Harfush in 1585; starting in 1590 Fakhr al-Din Ma‘n and his sons held Safad and then Sidon-Beirut for many years as sancak-beğs.

The Harfush leader Emir Yunus al-Harfush was in a conflict with the Lebanese Druze lord Fakhr al-Din in the early 1600s because of that conflict Fakhr al-Din decided to pull into the Bekaa valley. The Harfush dynasty wanted to take over the Ma'an family realm during Fakhr al-Din's exile. Yunus had an ally, Mustafa Pasha who was the governor of Damascus. Yunus and Pasha wanted to take the sanjak of Safad from Fakhr al-Din. Fakhr al-din returned from Italy, marched across the Bekaa. He captured Mustafa Pasha and defeated the Harfush's Emir.^{[citation needed][when?]}

Bekaa Valley before and after the battle of ‘Anjar can be obtained from a recently published register of iltizam appointments for the province of Damascus. Covering the years 1616 to 1635, the register among other things provides documentary evidence of the Harfushes’ growing marginalization as well as of the rise of the Shihabis of Wadi Taym as new contenders for government tax farms in the region. Beginning in 1618, for example, around the time of Fakhr al-Din's return from Tuscany, Yunus Harfush came under pressure to renounce the income normally due to the emin of Baalbek from the village of ‘Aytha, after the mufti of Damascus (a native of ‘Aytha) had petitioned for it to be set aside for himself in the supposed interest of reviving and repopulating the area. Even in later years, after the Harfushes had retaken control of the Bekaa from the Ma‘ns and the mufti was long dead, the village remained formally excluded from their holdings. The register also sheds light on the administrative context of the fitna (strife) between the Harfushes and Ma‘ns in 1623–24. It corroborates local chroniclers’ claims that Fakhr al-Din offered to send the sultan 100,000 gold coins for the Baalbek tax concession, but casts doubt on the notion that the governor of Damascus simply ‘paid no heed’ to the offer or ignored the Sublime Porte's orders to instate him. Fakhr al-Din's offer was matched by Yunus, and the iltizam was reconfirmed to his son ‘Ali Harfush by the kadıs of Damascus and Baalbek immediately after the battle of ‘Anjar.