Marada

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Marada was a group of independent communities in Lebanon and the surrounding highlands after the conquest of Syria by the Arab caliphs in the 630s .

While some historians argue that the Marada formed "states" led by a Maronite Aramaic- speaking Christian warrior elite, the Mardaites , other historians tend to downplay their importance and describe a more complex scenario. Splinters of Christian-Aramaic tribal groups managed to maintain a relative autonomy in the rugged hinterland of the coastal chain of the Lebanon Mountains, which at that time was the borderline between the Umayyads and the Byzantines . The Byzantine expansion between 985 and 1025 caused the immigration of the Maronites from the Orontes valley to the northern parts of the Lebanon Mountains, mainly in the area of ​​the Wadi Qadischa . The Maronite groups settled here as an association of tribal clans with the patriarch as their head.

During the Lebanese civil war , one of the Maronite militias called itself the " Marada Brigade ".

swell

  • Phares, Walid. Lebanese Christian Nationalism: The Rise and Fall of an Ethnic Resistance . Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1995.
  • Salibi, Kamal. A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered , London: IB Tauris, 1988.
  • Salibi, Kamal. Maronite Historians of Medieval Lebanon , Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1959.
  • Salibi, Kamal. The Modern History of Lebanon , Delmar: Caravan Books, 1977.