著者

田中 雅人

出版者

東洋文庫

雑誌

東洋学報 = The Toyo Gakuho (ISSN:03869067)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.102, no.4, pp.01-032, 2021-03-15

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In 1861, the Ottoman Government established a special district in Mount Lebanon, which embodied the principle of proportionate-sectarian representation as opposed to the conventional mode of rule by the local Druze lords. However, the details of the complex process of reintegrating the autonomous local ruler into the new regime remain uncertain, and need to be closely reexamined. Overdue discussion of the sectarian land survey of 1862 to 1869 thus offers excellent insights into this question. The communal conflict of 1841–60, being the crucial background for the new administration in Mount Lebanon, broke out as the tension between the local Druze lords and the Maronite clergy-led peasants peaked following a proclamation to abolish tax-farming in the Ottoman State. The debates of the representatives of the Ottoman Government and the Five European Powers who interfered in the conflict reveals that they saw the establishing of a new order in Mount Lebanon as entailing the separation of the Druze and Maronite sects. To achieve this, the Government and the European Powers deemed the individualization of land ownership as a prerequisite since they understood that the existing unequal share of land revenue between the two sects was the main reason for the unrest. Analysis of the locally preserved land records of the sectarian mixed village in the Shūf sub-district shows that although the calculation and assessment of the land revenue relied on native methods, every land plot and its revenues in the village are listed by sect (Druze, Maronite, and Greek-Catholic), and are recorded under the names of the proprietors. However, the fact that the land tax remained to be collected in each village en bloc indicates the incomplete individualization of property rights. Nevertheless, the unification of tax collection to each village signifies that they became independent administrative units, and it was a pragmatic measure to retract the hereditary rights of powerful local lords as tax-farmers. This point is particularly evident in the successive failures of the earlier efforts of land surveys in the 1840s, which attempted to register each property individually. Therefore, by designating each village a sole collector of the land tax, and allocating the burden by sect, the sectarian land survey dismantled the established rule of the local lords under the tax-farming system and envisaged an independent sectarian entity in return for taxation. It was at this point that even the Druze notables, who had claimed their ancestral right during the conflict of 1841–60, readily applied sectarian language to their political discourse.