Great Famine of Mount Lebanon

Great Famine of Mount Lebanon
مجاعة جبل لبنان

Starving man and children in Mount Lebanon
Country Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, Ottoman Empire, modern day Lebanon
Location Mount Lebanon
Period 1915-1918
Total deaths Est. 200,000
Impact on demographics population of 400,000 declined by 50%

The Great Famine of Mount Lebanon (1915–1918) was a period of mass starvation during World War I. The famine was caused by a confluence of political and environmental factors that lead to the death of half of the population of Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, a semi-autonomous subdivision of the Ottoman Empire and the precursor of modern day Lebanon.

Background

The Mutasarrifate of Mount Lebanon was created in 1861 as a semi-autonomous subdivision of the Ottoman Empire following the 1860 Lebanon conflict that affronted the Maronite Christians and the Druze of the mountain.[1][2] Mount Lebanon's economy relied heavily on the production of raw silk, which was woven by women in mills and exported to Europe.[3]

Causes

Ottoman alignment with the Central Powers during World War I caused the Entente Powers to cut off international trade routes in an effort to stop the supplies to the Ottomans. The blockade damaged Mount Lebanon's silk trade, a backbone of the economy. Growing crops was already a challenge in the mountainous range and the inhabitants heavily relied on food imports from the adjacent Bekaa Valley and Syria. To counter the Allied blockade, the Ottomans adopted a severe policy of acquisition by which all foodstuffs were prioritized for the Ottoman soldiers engaged in the war.[3] The Allies blockade was made worse by another introduced by Jamal Pasha, commander in chief of the Turkish forces in Greater Syria, where cereals and wheat were prevented from entering Mount Lebanon from the neighboring Syrian hinterland,[4] and by the arrival of a swarm of locusts to the region in 1915 that, for three continuous months, devoured the few remaining crops.[3][4] The crisis further exacerbated a black market run by well-connected usurers.[5]

Impact

Around 200,000 men, women and children starved to death at a time when the population of Mount Lebanon was estimated at 400,000.[3][6] It was the highest death toll by population of the First World War.[4] Bloated bodies lined the streets, and there were reports of people eating cats, dogs and rats, even cannibalism.[4][3]

Some tried to help and soup-kitchens started to open to little effect.[3] The Lebanese community in Egypt funded the shipping of food supplies to the Lebanese mainland through the Island of Arwad facing the Syrian littoral to the north of Tripoli. This assistance was delivered to the Maronite patriartchate who distributed it to the populace through its convents.[5]

Literary references

In a letter to Mary Haskell, dated May 26, 1916, Gibran Khalil Gibran wrote: “The famine in Mount Lebanon has been planned and instigated by the Turkish government. Already 80,000 have succumbed to starvation and thousands are dying every single day. The same process happened with the Christian Armenians and applied to the Christians in Mount Lebanon.”[4]

Gibran dedicated a poem entitled "Dead are my people" to the fallen of the great famine.[7]

References

  1. ↑ Lutsky, Vladimir Borisovich (1969). "Modern History of the Arab Countries". Progress Publishers. Retrieved 2009-11-12.
  2. ↑ United States Library of Congress - Federal Research Division (2004). Lebanon A Country Study. Kessinger Publishing. p. 264. ISBN 978-1-4191-2943-8.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 BBC staff (26 November 2014). "Six unexpected WW1 battlegrounds". BBC News (BBC). BBC News Services. Retrieved 24 January 2016.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Ghazal, Rym (14 April 2015). "Lebanon’s dark days of hunger: The Great Famine of 1915-18". The National. Retrieved 24 January 2016.
  5. 1 2 Tawk, Rania (18 April 2015). "Le centenaire de la Grande famine au Liban : pour ne jamais oublier (The Centenary of Lebanon's great famine: so that we don't forget)". L'Orient Le Jour (in French) (Beirut: L'Orient - Le Jour). Retrieved 26 January 2016.
  6. ↑ Harris 2012, p.174
  7. ↑ Gibran, Khalil Gibran. "Dead Are My People". Poem hunter. Poem Hunter. Retrieved 24 January 2016.

Bibliography

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