Writing the History of Mount Lebanon: Church Historians and Maronite Identity by Mouannes Hojairi (review)

Reviewed by: Writing the History of Mount Lebanon: Church Historians and Maronite Identity by Mouannes Hojairi Asher Kaufman Writing the History of Mount Lebanon: Church Historians and Maronite Identity. By Mouannes Hojairi. ( Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2021. Pp. xiii, 232. $59.95. ISBN 978-1-649-03125-9.) This book traces the origins and development of Maronite identity in Mount Lebanon and its impact on the creation of modern Lebanese national identity. Mouannes Hojairi does so by investigating four critical authors, spanning over 300 years, who have served as the historiographical foundations of Maronite exclusive identity in Mount Lebanon: Istifan al-Duwayhi, the so-called father of Maronite historiography (1630–1704), Nicolas Murad (1796–1862), Yusuf al-Dibs (1833–1907), and, lastly, Pierre Dib (1881–1965). Scholars who studied the development of Maronite identity in the past relied heavily on these four authors. Hojairi's contribution to this field of study is mainly marked by putting the spotlight on their writings and regarding them as a genealogical chain, or an unbroken tradition, that shaped twentieth-century Maronite identity that in turn contributed to the creation of a separate Lebanese national identity. The book also analyzes contemporary scholarly debates on the contributions of these four authors to both Maronite and Lebanese identities. Hojairi highlights the hegemonic role of the Maronite Church in developing this unique identity, regarding it as one of the most influential institutions in Lebanese history. The Church, according to him, diligently worked to [End Page 400] transform Maronite myths of origins and exclusiveness into the formal national narrative of Lebanon, presenting the Lebanese as a separate national-political community from the Arab-Islamic milieu on historical and cultural grounds. The book is divided into five chapters, each addressing a Maronite myth of origin, the ways in which it was presented in these four foundational texts, contemporary historiographical debates on these myths, and their impact on modern Lebanese national identity. Chapter 1 addresses the myth of Mount Lebanon as a refuge for Maronites from Islamic domination (L'asile du Liban in Maronite-Francophone parlance). Chapter 2 analyzes Maronite claims of origin to the early Christian Mardaite tribe and the historiographical debates surrounding this myth. Chapter 3 addresses Maronite claims for unbroken Christian Orthodoxy and the origins of their association with the Latin Church in Rome. This myth helped establish Maronite claims for religious and cultural connections to Europe. Chapter 4 takes a slight detour from exploring Maronite historical myths, by addressing the political changes that took place in Mount Lebanon leading to Maronite ascension to power and their eventual push for the creation of a Lebanese state founded on Maronite communal myths. Chapter 5 returns to analysis of Maronite myths by dissecting the Phoenician myth of origin (and juxtaposing it with the Mardaite myth of origin) that argued that Maronite roots as a national community go back to ancient biblical Phoenicians, thereby disassociating Maronites—and by extension all Lebanese—from their Arab-Muslim surroundings. Hojairi is critical of the historical process he analyzes in his book, regarding it as one of the reasons for the contemporary challenges Lebanon has been facing as a weak national community from the 1920s to the present. By focusing on these four Maronite authors, his book adds to the historiography of the emergence of the contested Lebanese identity and of Lebanon as an independent state. If I have one critical reflection on this book it is that while Hojairi cautions us from writing and reading history backwards, at times I felt he was falling into this trap himself by presenting this more than 300 years of Maronite historiographical tradition (even if founded on myths and historical inaccuracies, as he convincingly shows) as one unbroken chain. By doing so, his book could be interpreted as a teleological narrative that, from a Maronite-nationalist standpoint, inevitably led to the establishment of Modern Lebanon.