Citation:
Thesis Type:
PhD dissertationAbstract:
At the end of the First World War, the Shi`i community of Jabal `Amil, along with other communities of the Arab Ottoman provinces, found themselves without a clearly defined political allegiance. Challenged by the breakdown of the Ottoman state and the rise of contending power dynamics between the colonial powers and emerging local players such as Amir Faysal, the `Amilis needed to establish a new identity to represent themselves. By 1943, this identity had developed within a newly formed Lebanese state.
This dissertation examines the evolution of the Shi`i `Amili identity in the period of the formation of the “new” Lebanon. It underlines the impact of local and regional politics as well as the cultural influences, Muslim as well as Christian, for the formation of this identity. This study is one component in a growing effort towards addressing the current shortcomings of scholarship on Lebanon and Arab Shi`ism respectively. It both analyzes the historical narrative and provides a methodological model. At the historical level, it surveys and provides an account of the evolution of the Shi`i `Amili community politically and culturally in the course of the Mandate period, and discusses its most salient events. Methodologically, it presents a model for the transformation of this community from a marginal to an active, politically participating one, through its use of matlabiyya , a politics of demand.
This study also highlights the transformation of Arab nationalism from an ideology of opposition, protest, and empowerment of marginal communities (whether Arab Muslim, Christian or rural) into a tool for the assertion of political domination by the majority. This dissertation also provides an examination of an Arab Shi`i community without the common assumptions of Irano-centrism and the primordial importance of the religious institution. It approaches the `Amili community as an independent subject with relations to neighboring communities, while avoiding the pitfall of viewing this history solely in relation to the Iran or Najaf connection which has been emphasized in previous studies.
An additional result of this dissertation is to underline the limitations and short-comings of a unitary nationalist history, as has been the case in Lebanon.