Jamal al-Din Hamdan

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Jamal al-Din Hamdan was a Lebanese Druze Sheikh living in the nineteenth century in Mount Lebanon.

Following the Lebanese civil war of 1859-1860, Hamdan was sentenced to death by the Ottoman Turkish authorities alongside ten other Druze sheikhs : Sa'id Jumblat, Hussein Talhuq, As'ad Talhuq, Qasim Abu Nakad, As'ad 'Imad, Amir Muhammad Qasim Arslan, Salim Jumblat, Muhyi al-Din Shibli, 'Ali Sa'id, and Bashir Miri Sa'id.

The Ottoman government's extraordinary envoy to the region, Fuad Pacha, had ordered that these men be executed for their participation in the atrocities of the Lebanese civil war of 1859-1860 against the Maronite Christians. According to C.H. Churchill's 1862 The Druses and the Maronites, "none of these sentences have carried into execution, whether of death or of penal imprisonment".

The Hamdan family had been banished from Mount Lebanon following the battle of Ain Dara in 1711. This battle was fought against two Druze factions : the Yemeni and the Kaysi. The Kaysi were represented by the Jumblat and Arslan families and the Yemeni by the Hamdan and Al-Atrash families.

Following their dramatic defeat, the Yemeni faction migrated to Syria in the Jebel-Druze region and its capital, Soueida.

There are presently numerous Hamdan family members, both Druze and Shi'i Muslim, living in Lebanon.

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