Mardaites
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The Mardaites (Arabic,المردة) were a cluster of Aramaic tribal groups[citation needed], inhabiting the highland regions of southern Anatolia, Isauria, Syria, and Lebanon, whose origins are unknown. Some sources say they were Persian Zoroastrians who converted to Christianity, others claim Armenian heritage. However, most agree that they were Syriac-Aramaeans[citation needed]who became Maronite Christians.
According to some historians, after the conquest of the Levant by the Arab caliphate, the Mardaites around Mount Lebanon obtained control of their areas of settlement in the rugged hinterland of Mount Lebanon and were used by Byzantine rulers used as proxies to wage guerrilla warfare on Caliphate territories, on occasion raiding sites as important as Damascus. After the Battle of Yarmuk, the Caliph Umar appointed Muawiyah ibn Abu Sufyan, (later the first Caliph of the Umayyad dynasty) governor of Syria, and charged him with the subjugation of the Mardaites. Later, as Caliph, Muawiyah negotiated an agreement in 667 CE with the Byzantine Emperor Constantine IV, in exchange for an annual tribute. In the 690's, Justinian II relocated a large number of them in Macedonia as part of a peace treaty with the Caliphate. One of the relocated "Isaurians", as they were called, would eventually become Emperor Leo III. Some historians view the Mardaites as the ancestors of the present-day Vlachs.
Other historians, however, downplay the importance of the Mardaites in the context of Byzantine-Omayyad relations and doubt that they achieved a level of independence beyond a form of tribal self-rule in mountainous areas of limited strategic and symbolic relevance. These scholars remember that, at a later stage, the Byzantines even persecuted the Maronites because they accused the latter of supporting the Monothelite doctrine, which the Byzantine viewed as heretical.
Some Maronites' claim of a Mardaite ancestry, for example with the creation of a Marada Brigade during the Lebanese Civil War, derive from the same attempt as those of Phoenicianists to stress the non-Arab origin of Maronites in order to preserve their separate ethnic identity.
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[edit] References
- 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: I B 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.
