The Origins of the Lebanese State in Peripheral Governance and the Communal Social Contract
The Architecture of Marginal Power
In the historical landscapes of the steppe and mountainous regions, social organization, often tribal, functioned largely in the absence of a visible state apparatus. For communities such as the Kurds, Alawites, Maronites, Shia, and Jews, the central authority—symbolized by the Ottoman military garrisons in cities like Damascus or Istanbul—was distant and abstract. Instead, governance was defined by a system of delegation. The wālī (provincial governor), driven by economic efficiency, outsourced the management of these marginal areas to local notables, such as emirs or sheikhs, who could effectively maintain order.
To the local population, these intermediaries held far greater political significance than the distant Sultan. This is reflected in historical memory, where local figures remain prominent while the names of most Ottoman rulers have faded from collective knowledge. The primary function of these notables was the extraction of tribute: a portion was retained for personal use, while the remainder was paid to the wālī, who maintained the power to remove or execute subordinates who violated the established rules.
The Zaʿīm and External Threats
In these regions, communal organization is understood as a historical product rather than a manifestation of deep religious doctrine. Central to this sociopolitical structure is the figure of the zaʿīm. The zaʿīm occupies the “horizon” of the community’s political world and is charged with the existential burden of mediating with a “dangerous” external world.
These notables operated within a system in which authority was both delegated and precarious. Their primary responsibility was to collect whatever they could in tribute, retaining a portion for themselves while remitting the remainder to the provincial governor (wālī). Their position was never secure: Whenever one of them played outside the rules, the wālī could eject him or even kill him. This arrangement persisted in Lebanon until 100 years ago and shaped enduring patterns of political organization and social imagination.
Present-day Situation
Today, awareness of the Ottoman period remains remarkably thin among the general public. Students do not even know the names of the Ottoman sultans apart from Selim II and Abdel Hamid, although the region formed an integral part of the Ottoman polity for 400 or 600 years.[1] Instead of remembering imperial structures or central institutions, collective memory tends to focus on local intermediaries—certain emirs or shaykhs, who were small notables to whom the wālī delegated a certain function.
This relationship continues to form a tangible social contract based on mutual fidelity. The community provides the zaʿīm with unwavering support—often expressed through modern electoral processes—to empower them to navigate threats from external powers. In this framework, politics is defined by the zaʿīm’s faithfulness to the community and the community’s reciprocal loyalty to the leader, rather than an allegiance to a formal state.
The State as an External Imposition
In this region, there have been periods where a strange object called the state was imposed from the outside. In the late Ottoman period, modernization efforts tried to impose a state but it did not really work, leading to the massacres of 1860. Similarly, the administrative tools implemented during the French Mandate did not put down deep roots. The state was an external construct that often struggled to integrate with indigenous communal structures. This friction suggests that the state did not emerge organically from the society but was instead a byproduct of external geopolitical intervention.
1970 as a Watershed
The Shihabist experiment of state institutions ended, and a slide towards violence began. Due to the state-building project of one person, who is Fouad Shihab, state-building actions were put into place. But Shihab was not able to have his proposals voted in parliament. They (public schools, etc.) had to be implemented by decree. Ironically, this led to the opposite result: the migration from the provinces to Beirut. The young people from the provinces who entered the Lebanese University still had their lineage, and they wanted to make their mark.
The Kata’ib (Pierre Gumayyil) and the Socialist Party (Druze, Kamal Junblat) saw Druze and Maronite leaders recognize what they took to be the arrival of a new Za’eem – and they positioned themselves as militia leaders, abandoning the Shihabi state-building project … (Around minute 39)
[1] Thus in the text of the interview. In actual fact, Selim II is relatively unknown, and Charbel Nahas probably meant to refer to Selim I (1470-1520), who conquered Egypt and the Levant for the Ottoman Empire, and to Abdülhamid II (1842-1918), the last of the Ottomans to actually exert political power (J.K.).