The Reconstructed History of the Lebanese Shiʿa

Abstract

This chapter examines the ‘dispersed identity’ of the Lebanese Shiʿa in the period preceding the emergence of Hizbullah and explores earlier attempts to remodel their history and establish a collective sectarian consciousness. Although Shiʿi society in Lebanon was historically dominated by local and tribal elements, Arab nationalists and Shiʿi clerics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries began to reconstruct its history as a story of proto-national cohesion, and their Shiʿa-focused history laid the foundations for Hizbullah’s later historical narrative. This chapter argues that the main themes of Hizbullah’s reconstructed history—the historic symbols, the leadership of the ulama (the Shiʿi religious scholars), and the centrality of resistance to Shiʿi identity—can already be found scattered throughout the early histories (although there are various discrepancies between these versions). These earlier historical works, especially that of Mohamad Jaber Al Safa (1875–1945), were among the first attempts to establish a Shiʿi version of what Makdisi calls Lebanon’s ‘sectarian nationalism’. However, while it is true that certain practices specific to the Shiʿa did exist, and occasional clashes did take place, this chapter demonstrates they were not the predominant factors in Shiʿi history or sense of identity that Hizbullah’s later narrative claims.