The Stance of the Maronite Church on Youssef Karam’s Movement in the Bkerke Documents (1860-1867)

Abstract

The Maronite Church in Mount Lebanon was not a  great importance for politicians and statesmen before the end of the eighteenth century, and its interest in religious affairs was limited , and that its first political appearance was in 1799 when Patriarch Yusuf El-Tian received a message from Napoleon Bonaparte during his siege of Akka. Increasingly, it had a role to solution and contract. Especially in the second half of the nineteenth century, coinciding with the political and religious strife that Mount Lebanon witnessed, such as the Yusuf Karam movement, and it became impossible to ignore it and not take into account its views.

     Although historians and researchers have addressed the study of the Maronite Church and its role in the developments that Mount Lebanon witnessed, it was devoid of a study that exposed the position of that church from the Yusuf Karam movement (1860-1867) and its opposition to the system that was established there in 1861, and for this the researcher saw the need to shed light On the position of the Maronite Church on this movement and the political fluctuations from supporters to opponents, and the results that this position led to.

The researcher employed the documents of the Maronite Church known as the Bkerke documents as well as the diplomatic and consular documents in the French language.