Answer:In the past, some have attributed this human movement to persecution of Christians, who made up a large percentage of the emigrants and mostly came from the central district of Lebanon, called Mount Lebanon. The story first then (and still told by some now) went something like this: oppression by the Ottoman government (which controlled the region), and attacks by neighboring Druzes (a heterodox sect of Islam) and Muslims made life untenable for these peasants and town folks and drove them from their homes. This story was developed originally by some of the newcomers themselves to elicit the sympathies of immigration officials at Ellis Island and facilitate entry to the US. Yusuf Bey, the Ottoman consul in Barcelona, remarked in an 1889 report to his government in Istanbul: “When questioned why they had to leave their homes in such large numbers, they invent …stories about the massacre of their wives and children … all to increase the compassion and thus the alms they can elicit.” Early immigrant writers like Abraham Rihbany, George Haddad and Philip Hitti further portrayed Christians in Mount Lebanon as defenseless victims of persecution oppressed by ruthless “Turks,” in order to garner support for their vision of an independent Syria and Lebanon. In resorting to this exaggerated narrative, they were feeding into Orientalist notions current at the time in America, which portrayed Islam and “Turks” (the term used for Muslims) as nefarious, violent, and repressive.
While we can certainly find incidents of violence and repression (neither of which was one-sided), the fact remains that the period between 1861 and 1914 was one of “long peace,” when, as the historian Engin Akarli argues, the inhabitants of Mount Lebanon—from where came the great majority of immigrants—enjoyed many advantages that nearby districts did not have. Amongst these were an elected governing council of Christians, Druzes and Muslims cooperating and feuding, a local gendarmerie (police force) that kept the peace, a rapidly growing infrastructure of roads, schools, waterworks, etc., thriving tourism, French political and military protection, lower taxes and exemption from conscription for Christians into the Ottoman army. The Russian consul to Beirut, Constantin Dimitrievich Petkovich, summarized this advantageous state of affairs in an 1885 report: “The current Lebanese administration has guaranteed for the Lebanese a greater measure of tranquility and social security, and it has guaranteed individual rights…With this it has superseded that which the Ottoman administration provides for the populations of neighboring wilayat [Ottoman districts].” An 1890 petition by Shi’a villagers from Jabal ‘Amil (in South Lebanon today), addressed to the British consul in Beirut, Mr. Eldridge, supports these contentions. In their letter the peasants requested Eldridge’s help in annexing their lands to the Mountain because “people there enjoy greater security, freedom and smaller taxes.” What corroborates these and many similar contemporary observations is that not
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