The Trial of ‘Greater Lebanon’

27/07/2026

By Hicham Bou Nassif | Weinberg Associate Professor of International Relations and the Middle East and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College-California

Those promoting the beatification of Patriarch Elias Hoyek may reinterpret history to fit their narrative. But they cannot change certain historical facts.

“Greater Lebanon” was a project imposed on its Muslim population by French military forces. The Shias rejected it at the Wadi al-Hujair Conference, and this rejection later turned into bloody violence against Christians in Jabal Amel. The Sunnis also opposed it at the Coastal Conferences. When Hoyek said, “It is better for us to die beneath our rocks than to join Damascus, and a small corner of Lebanon is better for us than the vast plains of Syria,” he was expressing a legitimate Maronite Lebanese sentiment. However, it became problematic when his Lebanon was imposed on communities that did not want it.

From its inception, Greater Lebanon was an impossible state because large segments of its Muslim population identified with movements that ultimately undermined it — from Nasserism and Arafatism to the rule of Iran’s mullah regime today. Even so, it is difficult to blame Muslims for their weak attachment to a project that was never theirs in the first place. After all, were the Maronites loyal to the Ottoman Sultan, the Caliph of the Muslims, before Greater Lebanon was established?

In reality, expanding the Mutasarrifate harmed its own inhabitants more than anyone else, as they have since lived through exhausting conflicts. The Mutasarrifate had achieved stability because Christians made up more than 80 percent of its population, while the Druze were its second-largest community, giving it a distinctly local identity. Expanding the Mutasarrifate entangled Lebanon in a structural dilemma. Attempting to build a state in a country whose borders extended beyond the identity of half its population, and later, two-thirds of it.

It is worth recalling that Chehabism was the Christian school of thought most open to understanding with Muslims, and Fouad Boutros was a distinguished Chehabist. Yet after the events of 1958, Boutros concluded that “Patriarch Hoyek and President Éddé made a mistake by expanding Lebanon’s territory to such an extent” (see Fouad Chehab’s Responsibility for the Cairo Agreement, p. 140).

The continual Maronite celebration of Hoyek as the man who “restored Lebanon to its historical borders” has become tiresome. Lebanon had no historical borders, nor did Lebanon itself exist before 1920. It is true that the Ma’an and Chehab dynasties controlled much of what later became Lebanon, but they were local rulers and tax collectors within the Ottoman Empire. Their rebellions against the empire should be understood within the political struggles of their time, not as a fully developed Lebanese state project predating Greater Lebanon.

Ali Bey al-Kabir, and later Muhammad Ali Pasha in Egypt, rebelled against their Ottoman overlords, so did Zahir al-Umar in Acre and Ali Pasha Janbulad in Aleppo. Likewise, the Ma’an family and Emir Bashir al-Chehab expanded their influence through alliances with regional and international powers. These were struggles among elites for power, not national state-building projects. To transform these events into a historical Lebanese trajectory culminating in Hoyek is nothing more than a selective reconstruction of the past.

Indeed, Fakhr al-Din’s authority extended as far as Latakia, Homs, Ajloun, and Safed, while Emir Bashir’s influence reached Hauran. If historical control is the criterion for defining borders, then why should Tripoli and Akkar be considered part of Lebanon’s “historical borders,” as some claim, while Latakia or Hauran are not?

This does not mean that Lebanon itself was a historical mistake. Christians and the Druze had every right to reject dhimmi status. For the people of Mount Lebanon, dignity was more precious than life itself. However, the decision to expand the borders of the Mutasarrifate in the manner that occurred proved disastrous. History’s judgment will be harsh, and it is indifferent to beatifications or to those who are beatified.

This article was originally published in Arabic by Nida al-Watan on 27 July 2026. The original can be found here.

The views expressed in this op-ed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of SyriacPress.