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. The Shehab, as I have already mentioned, were
formerly members of the true Mussulman faith, and they never have had
among them any followers of the doctrines of the Druses. They still
affect publicly to observe the Mohammedan rites, they profess to fast
during the Ramadhan, and the Pashas still treat them as Turks; but it is
no longer matter of doubt, that the greater part of the Shehab, with
[p.198] the Emir Beshir at their head, have really embraced that branch
only of the family which governs at Rasheya and Hasbeya continue in the
religion of their ancestors.
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