¹ The term Melkite refers to Middle Eastern Christians who accepted the teachings of the Council of Chalcedon in 451. The word comes from the Syriac word malk, meaning imperial or “king's men,” and it was coined by non-Chalcedonians (Jacobites and Nestorians). The Melkite Church was organized into three historic patriarchates—Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem—in union with the patriarch of Constantinople. In 1724, after the death of Antiochan Patriarch Cyril V (who had submitted to the authority of the Holy See in 1718), the community splintered into two parts. In Damascus, one group elected Seraphim Tanas as patriarch; he took the name Cyril and ultimately had to flee to Mount Lebanon because of his affiliation with the Vatican. The second patriarch was the Greek candidate, Silvester the Cypriot. For details about the split, see Robert Haddad, “The Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and the Origins of the Melkite Schism” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1965). The focus of this article will be on the Greek Catholic wing of the Melkite church.

² Letter from Maria Qari to Bishop Athnasius Dahhan, 10 June 1738, al-Sijill al-Shuwayri, Vol. I, Notebook XVI, 254. Conflict between nuns and other branches of the church were certainly common enough. For instance, Hildegard of Bingen wrote a fierce letter to the abbot of the monks of Disiboden, who was standing in the way of Hildergrad's design to move the women's community that she led to Bingen. She writes, “Their alms do not belong to you or to your brothers . . . and you are determined to go on with your perverse proposals, raging against us, you will be like the Amalekites . . . justice will destroy you.” Quoted in Jantzen, Grace M., Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 161Google Scholar.

³ Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, The Meaning and End of Religion (San Francisco, Calif.: Harper & Row, 1978), 38Google Scholar.

⁴ My narrative of this affair relies heavily on the Melkite archives of the monastery of Mar Shuwayr (al-Sijill al-Shuwayri). Other scholars have used this archive to narrate this episode. The most notable include Jock, Timothée, Jésuites et Chouéirites (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1936)Google Scholar, and Hajj, Athnasius, al-Rahbaniya al-Basiliya al-Shuwayriya fi Tarikh al-Kanisa wa-l-Bild (The Basilian Shuwayrite Order in the History of the Church and the Country) (Lebanon: Matabiʿ al-Karim al-Haditha, 1973)Google Scholar. However, their work primarily aims to shed positive light on the Melkite monks in this affair.

⁵ Bruce Masters explores the reasons behind the very limited scholarship on Christians in Ottoman Arab lands in the introduction to his study Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of Sectarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). The rare studies looking at the history of women, gender, and religion include Heyberger, Bernard, Hindiyya: Mystique et criminelle (Paris: Aubier, 2001)Google Scholar. By any measure, Heyberger can be considered the premier historian of Christianity in Bilad al-Sham. His opus includes Les chrétiens du Proche-Orient au temps de la réforme catholique: Syrie, Liban, Palestine (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1995) and a long list of articles. In addition, some work is beginning to appear about gender and Protestant missionaries. See, for example, the work of Heather Sharkey, Ellen Fleischmann, Nancy Stockdale, and Christine Linder.

⁶ I borrow this term from Scott, Joan, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 4Google Scholar.

⁷ Kostroun, Daniella, “A Formula for Disobedience: Jansenism, Gender, and the Feminist Paradox,” Journal of Modern History 75 (September 2003): 486CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ See Eisenstadt, Shmuel N.'s essay “Multiple Modernities,” in Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities, ed. Eisenstadt, S. N. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2002)Google Scholar. He sees Westernization as a failed hegemonic project, whereas modernization is “continual constitution and reconstitution of a multiplicity of [localized] cultural programs.”

⁹ For a good discussion of the idea and ideation of modernity, see the introduction in Watenpaugh, Keith's Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ See the special issue of History and Theory (December 2006) that is dedicated to exploring the tension between religion and history.

¹¹ A similar theme runs through studies of early modern Western nuns. For an effective critique of this approach see, for example, Strasser, Ulrike, “Early Modern Nuns and the Feminist Politics of Religion,” Journal of Religion 84 (2004): 529–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² I use the term “early modern” in the same manner that Grehan, James does in his article “Smoking and ‘Early Modern’ Sociability: The Great Tobacco Debate in the Ottoman Middle East (Seventeenth to Eighteenth Centuries),” American Historical Review 111 (2006): 1352–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³ Between 1672 and 1695 the number of adult Jews in Aleppo rose from 450 to 875, with most coming from the migration of Sephardic Jews into the city in pursuit of economic opportunities. Masters, Bruce, “Aleppo: The Ottoman Empire's Caravan City,” in The Ottoman City Between East and West: Aleppo, Izmir, and Istanbul, ed. Eldem, Edhem, Goffman, Daniel, and Masters, Bruce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 39Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Teixeira, Piedro, The History of Persia (London: Printed for Jonas Brown, 1715), 47Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Livre is the French word for the English pound and Venetian ducat. The market for these various currencies was not the same, and it changed over time, but it was close enough to provide a good comparative basis. Ismail, Adel, Documents diplomatiques et consulaires relatifs à l'histoire du Liban et pays du Proche Orient du XVIIe siècle à nos jours, vol. III (Beirut: Editions des oeuvres politiques et historiques, 1975), 203Google Scholar.

¹⁶ I use the term Mount Lebanon as shorthand for the area covering three historically separate districts: Jabal Lubnan, Jabal Kisrawan, and Jabal al-Shuf. These range respectively from the northern to the central mountains of modern Lebanon.

¹⁷ Marcus, Abraham, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity: Aleppo in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 319–21Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Russell, Alexander, The Natural History of Aleppo, (London: Printed for G. G. and J. Robinson, 1794) 1:33Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Ibid., 1:45.

²⁰ Ferdinand Tawtal, S. J., Wathaʾiq Tarikhiyya ʿan Halab: Akhbar al-Mawarina wa-ma ilayhim min 1606 ila Yawmina (1606–1827) (Beirut: al-Matabaʿa al-Kathulikiyya, 1958), 110–111Google Scholar.

²¹ Bulus Qarʾali, “Manshur Batryarki Qadim,” al-Majalla al-Surriya, nos. 5 and 6 (1929): 376–77.

²² Ibid., 44.

²³ Elyse Semerdjian notes that during the 17th and 18th centuries some Christian, Jewish, and Muslim men and women were publicly involved in prostitution and pimping as well as distilling and selling alcohol. Semerdjian, Elyse, “Sinful Professions: Illegal Occupations of Women in Ottoman Aleppo, Syria,” Hawwa: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World 1 (2003): 60–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Heyberger, Bernard, “Morale et confession chez les melkites d'Alep d'après une liste de péchés (fin XVIIe s.),” in L'Orient chrétien dans l'empire musulman. Hommage au professeur Troupeau, ed. Gobillot, Geneviève (Paris: Éditions de Paris, 2005), 283–306Google Scholar.

²⁵ Peri, Oded, Christianity under Islam in Jerusalem: The Question of the Holy Sites in Early Ottoman Times (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001), 58–60Google Scholar.

²⁶ Rabbath, Fr. Antoine, ed., Documents inédits pour servir à l'histoire du Christianisme en Orient, 2 vols. (New York: AMS Press, 1973), 2:87–88Google Scholar.

²⁷ Heyberger, Bernard, “Les chrétiens d'Alep (Syrie) à travers les récits des conversions des Missionnaires Carmes Déchaux (1657–1681),” Mélanges de l'Ecole Françaises de Rome 100 (1988): 461–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ Masters, “Aleppo,” 54.

²⁹ Russell, Natural History of Aleppo, 2:29.

³⁰ Rabbath, Documents inédits, 2, 60.

³¹ Of course there were as many missionaries who could not acclimate to the language, culture, and environment and who proved most ineffective in reaching out to local Christians. For example, in 1635 Pére Manilier wrote his Jesuit superior, M. Vitelleschi, from Aleppo to tell him that after ten years in Aleppo he still had not mastered Arabic, that his eyes were failing, and that he would be happy to be replaced. Manilier to M. Vitelleschi, 20 January 1635, in Rabbath, Documents inédits 2:505–6.

³² Besson, Joseph, La Syrie et la terre sainte, (Paris: V. Palmé, 1862), 106Google Scholar.

³³ Ibid., 105. For examples of 19th-century arguments, see Pollard, Lisa, Nurturing the Nation: The Family Politics of Modernizing, Colonizing, and Liberating Egypt, 1805–1923 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Khater, Akram, Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870–1920 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Abu-Lughod, Lila, ed., Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

³⁴ R. Père Alexandre de Saint Sylvestre, “Brève relation des missions des révérends pères Carmes déchaussés,” in Rabbath, Documents inédits, 2:435.

³⁵ Père Jean Amieu, Relation de Syrie pour l'an 1650, in ibid. 2:402.

³⁶ Febvre, Michel, Théâtre de la Turquie (Paris: J. le Febure, 1688), 467Google Scholar.

³⁷ See Marcus, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity, 157–58.

³⁸ For a listing of these publications, see Gdourah, Wahid, Le Début de l'imprimerie Arabe à Istanbul et en Syrie: évolution de l'environment culturel (1706–1787) (Tunis: Publication de l'Institut Supérieur de Documentation, 1985)Google Scholar. See also Raymond, Jean, Essai de bibliographie Maronite (Jounieh, Lebanon: Université Saint-Esprit, Kaslik, 1980)Google Scholar. Refer also to Nasrallah, Joseph, Histoire de movement littéraire dans l'Église Melchite du ve au XXe siècle (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 1979)Google Scholar.

³⁹ Louis de Gonzague, “Les anciens missionnaires capucins de Syrie et leur écrits apostolique de langue arabe,” Collectanea Franciscana (Manchester, U.K.: University Press, 1922), 39.

⁴⁰ Gérard Troupeau, Catalogue des manuscrits Arabes de la Bibliothèque Nationale, Première partie, Manuscrits Chrétiens, 1, Paris 1972, 89. See also Sbath, Paul, Bibliothèque de manuscrits (Cairo: H. Friedrich et Co., 1928), 1, 59, no. 95Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Booth, Marilyn fully explores this idea in “The Egyptian Life of Jeanne D'Arc,” in Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East, ed. Lughod, Lila Abu (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998), 171–212Google Scholar.

⁴² Heyberger, Les Chrétiens du Proche-Orient, 359–60.

⁴³ ARSI, Gallia, 96, I, f. 603v. Published in Nasser Gemayel, Les échanges culturels entre les Maronites et l'Europe (Beirut: n.p., 1984), 2, 944–45.

⁴⁴ Although I realize that this term is reserved for the 19th-century literary and cultural renaissance, I make use of it here as a way to contest the periodization of “modernity” in the Middle East and to suggest that this as well as other periods were not only precursors but also significant movements in their own rights. However, I do not mean to imply that this was “the” starting point of the nahḍa; rather I am contending that there were multiple diffuse points, of which this was one and the 19th-century movement was another. Carsten-Michael Walbiner remarks on this phenomenon of Arab Christian revival during the 17th and 18th centuries in “Monastic Reading and Learning in Eighteenth-Century Bilad al-Sham: Some Evidence from the Monastery of al-Shuwayr (Mount Lebanon),” Arabica 51 (2004): 462–77.

⁴⁵ This and most of the other information about Farhat has been adapted from Kristen Brusted's unpublished article on him, which she generously shared with this author. Melkite religious writers had used Arabic since the 8th century as a tool of self-expression and identification as a Christian community and church. See Griffith, Sidney, “From Aramaic to Arabic: The Languages of the Monasteries of Palestine in the Byzantine and Early Islamic Periods,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 51 (1997): 11–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁶ Before the end of the 17th century there was no monastic movement in Aleppo, and even thereafter Ottoman restriction meant that no convents or monasteries could be established or built. Moreover, monastic life in Mount Lebanon was limited mostly to reclusive hermits loosely living together without rule. After 1642 about thirty religious women led a life “more angelic than human” in the convent of Dayr Mar Hrash. Rabbath, Documents inédits, 2:197, 241.

⁴⁷ For example, in 1735 Aleppo's pasha ordered the city's Christians to wear particular colors to distinguish them from Muslims; he prohibited Christians from frequenting the surrounding gardens and denied Christian women the right to visit tombs and churches. In 1738 Janissary troops ransacked Christian churches, and the pasha ordered the demolition of some wealthy homes that had had risen above surrounding Muslim ones. The lot of Aleppo's Christians was not constant persecution, of course, but these episodes created a sense of insecurity and uncertainty that made Lebanon appear a safe haven (Rabbath, Documents inédits, 2:33–34.)

⁴⁸ Heghnar Zeitlian Wattenpaugh remarks on a very similar division between Aleppo and its environ. In her superb article about the majdhūb (those enraptured by God) of Aleppo, she writes, “The hagiographies [of mystical Muslim saints] indicate a conceptual demarcation between the built environment and the wilderness, each endowed with opposite social meaning yet dependent on each other. The wilderness was the domain of the antinomian saint, while the built environment was the domain of conventional Islam.” Wattenpaugh, Heghnar Zeitlian, “Deviant Dervishes: Space, Gender, and the Construction of Antinomian Piety in Ottoman Aleppo,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 37 (2005): 535–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁹ Farhat, Jermanous, Diwan Jermanous Farhat maʿ Taʿalaq ʿalayhi li-Musahhihuhu Saʿid al-Khuri al-Shartuni al-Lubnani (Collection of Jermanous Farhat with commentary by his editor Saʿid al-Khuri al-Shartuni al-Lubnani) (Beirut: al-Matbaʿa al-Kathulukiyya li-l-Abaʾ al-Yasuʿiyyin, 1894), 131, 329Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ Heyberger, Bernard and Verdeil, Chantal observe a similar trope for other parts of the Middle East in “Spirituality and Scholarship—The Holy Land in Jesuit Eyes (Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries),” in New Faith in Ancient Lands: Western Missions in the Middle East in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, ed. Murre-van den Berg, Heleen (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2006), 21–23Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Saint-Aignan, Sylvestre, Description abrégée de la Sainte Montagne du Liban et des Maronites qui l'habitent (Paris: Jean-Baptiste Coignard, 1671), 16–17Google Scholar.

⁵² Ibid., 30.

⁵³ Besson, La Syrie et la terre sainte, 104

⁵⁴ Ibid., 101–2.

⁵⁵ For example, see José de Acosta's Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590) and Matteo Ricci's The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven (1603), about China, as well as fellow Jesuit François-Joseph Lafitau's Mœurs des sauvages Américains: comparées aux murs des premiers temps (1724). Goddard, Peter A., “Augustine and the Amerindian in Seventeenth-Century New France,” Church History 67 (1998): 663CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁶ Besson, La Syrie et la terre sainte, 103–4.

⁵⁷ See The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610–1791: The Original French, Latin, and Italian Texts, with English translations and notes, ed. Kenton, Edna (New York: Vanguard Press, 1954)Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Besson, La Syrie et la terre sainte, 107

⁵⁹ Père Fromage, “Lettre du Père Fromage . . . au Père Le Camus . . . le 30 Septembre, 1736,” in Actes des Apôtres modernes ou missions Catholiques, 1, 137. Not all European observers had such a sanguine notion of the people residing in Mount Lebanon. A year before Père Fromage wrote his letter, Monsieur De Grangé—an inspector of French consulates in the East—wrote a report to the minister of the Navy describing the region. Although allowing that Kisrawan is the refuge of all persecuted Catholics in the “East,” he had less than salutary words for the Maronites. He notes, for instance, that “the Maronites are all Catholics, but most [of them] only in name. Generally you find them leaning toward vices and abominations, and on top of that they are ungrateful . . . All their religion is made up of fasting and some works.” A little later in his report he mentions a visit to the same Qadisha Valley as Père Petitqueux but without the spiritual panegyrics. Rather, he describes an illiterate Maronite patriarch welcoming him to a very austere table, where they drank “good vinegar” and held a “mute conversation” for an hour. Adel Ismail, Documents diplomatiques, 583–87.

⁶⁰ Scott, David, Refashioning Futures: Criticism after Postcoloniality (Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1999), 55Google Scholar.

⁶¹ Sommerville, C. John, The Secularization of Early Modern England: From Religious Culture to Religious Faith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 9Google Scholar.

⁶² Between 1714 and 1716 the Jesuits were embroiled in a bitter conflict with the Maronite clergy in Aleppo over ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Specifically, the Jesuits argued that Maronite priests had no authority, training, and knowledge to hear the confession of non-Maronite Catholics or to absolve them from their sins. From the Jesuits' point of view, only they had the ecclesiastical authority (conferred by the Vatican) to roam across religious boundaries; the local clerics were constrained to attend to only their co-religionists. For a detailed report of this argument, see ARSI, Gal. 96, Missio Constantinopolis I Syriensis, 1651–1770, 601–6.

⁶³ Besson, La Syrie et la terre sainte, 107

⁶⁴ Ibid., 106.

⁶⁵ Farhat, Jermanous, Bulugh al-ʿArab fi ʿIlm al-Adab (Beirut: Dar al-Mashriq, 1990), 37Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ There had been monks, nuns, monasteries, and convents in Mount Lebanon long before. Dayr Mar ʿAbda al-Mushammar, Dayr Mar Shallita, Dayr Mar Sarkis, and Dayr Mart Mora were among the various monasteries that had been established or renovated in Mount Lebanon by 1690. However, these were all independent institutions where monks and nuns (and often both because they occupied the same buildings) loosely followed one rule or another. More critically, none was dedicated to learning, scholarship, or developing a normative theology, culture, or knowledge. Rather, their whole purpose was the introverted life of a hermit, seeking God by completely renouncing the world. In contrast, Hawwa, Tibn, and especially Qaraʿali and Jermanous Farhat (who joined them two years later) undertook to establish a new rule that would be rigorously followed; a proselytizing, expanding, and centrally organized monastic order; and a group of monks dedicated to learning and teaching.

⁶⁷ Aghustin Zanadah, al-Tarikh al-Lubnani, 1714–1728 (Rome: Archives of the Mariamite Order, Ms. 29), f. 10. Reprinted with preface by Joseph Qazzi (Kaslik, Lebanon: Jamiʿat al-Ruh al-Qudus, 1988).

⁶⁸ See al-Sijill al-Shuwayri, vol. I, notebook XVI. Also, see Saint Albert's letter to the Propaganda Fide, Mansi, XLVI, col. 353, 1745.

⁶⁹ Letter from Shammas Theodore-Jean Qari to Abdallah Zakher, al-Sijill al-Shuwayri, vol. I, notebook VII, 96–97.

⁷⁰ These two were Sulayman Kusri and Jirjis al-Samman, and in 1710 they established the monastery of Dayr Yuhanna al-Shuwayr, which grew fairly quickly to include to about twenty-five monks and priests by 1720. Its financial fortunes grew as well. See Hajj, al-Rahbaniya al-Basiliya al-Shuwayriya, 88–97.

⁷¹ In comparison, the income of the Melkite monastery in the village of Shuwayr amounted to 480 piasters in 1724 and double that in 1725. Purchasing a piece of land in Mount Lebanon cost anywhere (depending on size and location obviously) from fifteen to a few hundred piasters. This makes the total of 5,000-6,000 piasters a rather sizeable outlay of capital.

⁷² See, for example, letters from the ʿabidāt to Abdallah Zakher, 15 August 1730, al-Sijill al-Shuwayri, vol. I, notebook VI, 96–97.

⁷³ Al-Sijill al-Shuwayri, vol. I, notebook VI, 96–97.

⁷⁴ Letter from Abdallah Zakher to the ʿabidāt, 26 August 1730, al-Sijill al-Shuwayri, vol. I, notebook VI, 102.

⁷⁵ Letter from Maria Qari, Sofia Shukri Qari, Nouria Jarbouʿ, Zarife ʿAjjouri, and Helena ʿAbdo to Father Niqula al-Sayigh, 20 January 1732, al-Sijill al-Shuwayri, vol. I, notebook VII, 111.

⁷⁶ Letter from the ʿabidāt to the Sacred Council for the Propagation of the Faith, al-Sijill al-Shuwayri, vol. I, notebook IV, 201–23.

⁷⁷ Al-Sijill al-Shuwayri, vol. I, notebook XVI, 205–8.

⁷⁸ Al-Sijill al-Shuwayri, vol. I, notebook XV, 203–4.

⁷⁹ Al-Sijill al-Shuwayri, vol. I, notebook XVI, 117.

⁸⁰ de Sales, François, Oeuvres de Saint François de Sales, évêque et prince de Genève et docteur de l'église, 27 vols. (Annecy, France: Niérat, 1892–1932), 25:214Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Letter from Maria Qari to Bishop Dahhan, 10 June 1738. al-Sijill al-Shuwayri, vol. I, notebook XVII, 233.

⁸² See Hajj, al-Rahbaniya al-Basiliya al-Shuwayriya, chap. 4.

⁸³ Letter from Bishop Dahhan to Maria Qari, 13 June, 1738, al-Sijill al-Shuwayri, vol. I, notebook XVII, 234.

⁸⁴ Letter from Bishop Dahhan to Maria Qari, 5 September 1738, al-Sijill al-Shuwayri, vol. I, notebook XVII, 245–46.

⁸⁵ Each of the newly established Maronite and Melkite monastic orders split into two separate sections within a few decades of their establishment over financial issues, tensions between monks from Aleppo and those from Mount Lebanon, and the strictness of the rules. See Hajj, al-Rahbaniya al-Basiliya al-Shuwayriya, and Fahd, Butrus, Tarikh al-Rahbaniyya al-Lubnaniya (Jounieh, Lebanon: Maṭbaʿat al-Karim, 1963)Google Scholar.

⁸⁶ Mansi, XLVI, col. 283, no. 12, and cols. 280, 310–20, 330, 419–25, and 430.

⁸⁷ Al-Sijill al-Shuwayri, vol. I, notebook XXII, 364–65.

⁸⁸ ASCPF, CP Maroniti, vol. 113, 154.

⁸⁹ See Akram Khater, “A Deluded Woman: The Politics of Gender and Christianity in 18th Century Bilād al-Shām,” AHL Review 41 (Spring 2006). See also Bernard Heyberger's work on Hindiyya cited earlier.