The Maronite leader Bashir Shihab II surrenders to the Ottoman Empire and later is sent to Malta in exile.
Emir Bashir Shihab II (Arabic: ) (also spelled "Bachir Chehab II"; 2 January 17671850) was a Lebanese emir who ruled Ottoman Lebanon in the first half of the 19th century. Born to a branch of the Shihab family which had converted from Sunni Islam, the religion of previous Shihabi Emirs, he was the only Maronite ruler of the Emirate of Mount Lebanon.
The Maronites (Arabic: الموارنة; Syriac: ܡܖ̈ܘܢܝܐ) are an ethnoreligious Christian group native to the Levant region of the Middle East, whose members adhere to the Syriac Maronite Church. The largest population of Maronites resides around Mount Lebanon in Lebanon. The Maronite Church is an Eastern Catholic sui iuris particular church in full communion with the Pope and the Catholic Church, with the right of self-governance under the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, one of more than a dozen churches in full communion with the Holy See.
The Maronites derive their name from the Syriac Christian saint Maron, some of whose followers migrated to the area of Mount Lebanon from their previous place of residence around the area of Antioch, and established the nucleus of the Syriac Maronite Church. Christianity in Lebanon has a long and continuous history. Biblical scriptures purport that Peter and Paul evangelized the Phoenicians, whom they affiliated to the ancient patriarchate of Antioch. The spread of Christianity in Lebanon was very slow where paganism persisted, especially in the mountaintop strongholds of Mount Lebanon. Saint Maron sent Abraham of Cyrrhus, often referred to as the Apostle of Lebanon, to convert the still significant pagan population of Lebanon to Christianity. The area's inhabitants renamed the Adonis River the Abraham River after Saint Abraham preached there.
The early Maronites were Hellenized Semites, natives of Byzantine Syria who spoke Greek and Syriac, yet identified with the Greek-speaking populace of Constantinople and Antioch. They were able to maintain an independent status in Mount Lebanon and its coastline after the Muslim conquest of the Levant, keeping their Christian religion, and even the distinctive Western Aramaic language as late as the 19th century. Some Maronites argue that they are of Mardaite ancestry, though most historians reject this claim.Mass emigration to the Americas at the outset of the 20th century, famine during World War I that killed an estimated one third to one half of the population, the 1860 Mount Lebanon civil war and the Lebanese Civil War between 1975-90 greatly decreased their numbers in the Levant; however Maronites today form more than one quarter of the total population of modern-day Lebanon. Though concentrated in Lebanon, Maronites also show presence in the neighboring Levant, as well as a significant part in the Lebanese diaspora in the Americas, Europe, Australia, and Africa.
The Syriac Maronite Church, under the Patriarch of Antioch, has branches in nearly all countries where Maronite Christian communities live, in both the Levant and the Lebanese diaspora.
The Maronite Catholics and the Druze founded modern Lebanon in the early eighteenth century, through the ruling and social system known as the "Maronite-Druze dualism" in Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate. All Lebanese presidents have been Maronites as part of a tradition that persists as part of the National Pact, by which the Prime Minister has historically been a Sunni Muslim and the Speaker of the National Assembly has historically been a Shi'i Muslim.