They Are An Old And Noble
Family, And, In The Seventeenth Century, One Of Their Ancestors Was
Pasha Of Aleppo; It Forms At Present The Richest And Most Numerous
Family, And The Strongest Party In The Mountain.
The Yezbeky [Arabic], or as they are also called, El Aemad [Arabic], are
few in number, but are reputed men of great courage and enterprize.
Their principal residence is in the district of El Barouk, between Deir
el Kammar and Zahle.
The Neked, whose principal Sheikh is at present named Soleiman, inhabit,
for the greater part, Deir el Kammar; seven of their principal chiefs
were put to death thirteen years ago in the serai of the Emir Beshir,
and a few only of their children escaped the massacre; these have now
attained to years of manhood, and remain at Deir el Kammar, watched by
the Djonbelaty and the Aemad, who are united against them.
The Djonbelat now carry every thing with a high hand; their chief, El
Sheikh Beshir is the richest and the shrewdest man in the mountain;
besides his personal property, which is very considerable, no affair of
consequence is concluded without his interest being courted, and dearly
paid for. His annual income amounts to about two thousand purses, or
fifty thousand pounds sterling. The whole province of Shouf is under his
command, and he is in partnership
[p.197] with almost all the Druses who possess landed property there.
The greater part of the district of Djesn [Arabic] is his own property,
and he permits no one to obtain possesions in that quarter, while he
increases his own estates yearly, and thus continually augments his
power. The Emir Beshir can do nothing important without the consent of
the Sheikh Beshir, with whom he is obliged to share all the
contributions which he extorts from the mountaineers. It is from this
cause that while some parts of the mountain are very heavily taxed, in
others little is paid. The Druses form the richest portion of the
population, but they supply little to the public contributions, being
protected by the Sheikh Beshir. It will be asked, perhaps, why the
Sheikh does not set aside the Emir Beshir and take the ostensible power
into his own hands? Many persons believe that he entertains some such
design, while others, better informed perhaps, assert that the Sheikh
will never make the attempt, because he knows that the mountaineers
would never submit to a Druse chief. The Druses are certainly in a
better condition at present than they would be under the absolute sway
of the Sheikh, who would soon begin to oppress instead of protecting
them, as he now does; and the Christians, who are a warlike people,
detest the name of Druse too much ever to yield quietly to a chief of
that community. It is, probably, in the view of attaching the Christians
more closely to him, and to oppose them in some measure to the Druses,
that the Emir Beshir, with his whole family, has secretly embraced the
christian religion.
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