Buhturids
The Buhturids or the Tanukh were a dynasty whose chiefs were the emirs of the Gharb area southeast of Beirut in Mount Lebanon in the 12th–15th centuries. A family of the Tanukhid tribal confederation, they were established in the Gharb by the Muslim atabegs of Damascus after the capture of Beirut by the Crusaders in 1110. They were tasked with guarding the mountainous frontier between the Crusader coastlands and the Islamic interior of the Levant. They were granted over villages in the Gharb and command over its peasant warriors, who subscribed to the Druze religion, which the Buhturids followed. Their were successively confirmed, decreased or increased by the Burid, Zengid, Ayyubid and Mamluk rulers of Damascus in return for military service and intelligence gathering in the war with the Crusader lordships of Beirut and Sidon. In times of peace the Buhturids maintained working relations with the Crusaders.
The Buhturids' peak of power occurred under the Circassian Mamluk sultan Barquq, whom they supported during his seizure of power from his Turkic predecessors. During this period, the Buhturids grew their wealth through commercial enterprises, exporting silk, olive oil, and soap to Mamluk officials in Egypt from Beirut and attaining the governorship of Beirut twice, in the 1420s and 1490s–1500s. They were respected by the peasants of the Gharb for safeguarding their interests against government measures, promoting agriculture, and checking their local rivals, the Turkmen emirs of the Keserwan. During the closing years of Mamluk rule, Buhturid influence receded to the benefit of their old allies, the Druze Ma'n dynasty of the Chouf. They continued to control the Gharb through Ottoman rule until the family was massacred by the Druze chief Ali Alam al-Din in 1633.
Origins
The Buhturids were a clan of the Tanukh, an Arab tribal confederation whose presence in the Levant dated to at least the 4th century CE when they served as the first Arab foederati of the Byzantine Empire. At the time, the Tanukh were ardent Orthodox Christians, and remained in Byzantine service until the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the 630s. Although part of the confederation fled to Byzantine Anatolia, they primarily remained in their dwelling places around Aleppo and Qinnasrin in the northern Levant and eventually allied with the Levant-based Umayyad Caliphate while largely retaining their Christian faith. After the execution of their preeminent chieftain Layth ibn Mahatta by the Iraq-based Abbasid caliph al-Mahdi for refusing to embrace Islam, the tribe converted and their churches were destroyed. During the reign of al-Mahdi's son, Harun al-Rashid, the Tanukh's settlements were raided by rebels, forcing their flight from the Qinnasrin area to the northern Levantine coastal mountains, which were thenceforth called 'Jabal Tanukh' or 'Jabal Bahra' after the Tanukh and the tribe of Bahra.Establishment in the Gharb
The Tanukh's entry into the area of modern Lebanon, which was just south of Jabal Tanukh, was "the last stage of their historical role in Bilad al-Sham ", according to the historian Irfan Shahid. The states that the Tanukh began moving into Mount Lebanon under the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur, who ordered a number of the tribe's chiefs to secure the coast and lines of communication around Beirut from Byzantine attack. Epistle 50, one of the Epistles of Wisdom composed by Druze missionaries in the early 11th century, was explicitly directed to three Tanukhid emirs settled in the mountainous Gharb area southeast of Beirut, calling on them to continue the tradition of their ancestors in spreading Druze teachings. The Gharb was less rugged than the neighboring areas to the north and south, and its strategic value stemmed from its control of Beirut's southern harbor and the road connecting Beirut with Damascus. The warrior peasants who inhabited the Gharb subscribed to the Druze faith, an esoteric offshoot of Isma'ilism, the religion of the Fatimid caliphs of Egypt. Shahid holds that the Tanukh entered the Gharb as Sunni Muslims and afterward became Druze. Their leaders in the Gharb may have received and embraced the Fatimid Isma'ili as early as the late 10th century.When Beirut was captured by the Crusaders in 1110 after a three-month siege, its Muslim garrison and the Muslim tribal chiefs of the adjacent mountains who aided in its defense were massacred. The 19th-century history of Mount Lebanon's notable families by Tannus al-Shidyaq and the hold that the slain Tanukhids belonged to the tribe's Arslan line led by Adud al-Dawla Ali, who was killed alongside most of his family. An Arslan emir, Majd al-Dawla Muhammad, survived and abandoned Sidon to the Crusaders before retiring to the Gharb where he took over the lands of his deceased kinsmen, holding them until his death in battle in 1137.
The historian Kamal Salibi surmises that successive Muslim atabegs of Damascus resettled Mount Lebanon with Arab tribesmen to buttress the frontier with the Crusader states; the most prominent of the settler families were the branch of the Tanukh led by Ali ibn al-Husayn. The early 15th-century chronicler Salih ibn Yahya, a member of the Buhturids, noted that Ali's grandfather was Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Abi Abdallah, who was the commander of a place called 'al-Bira' in 1027. While Salibi identifies al-Bira with the fortified town of the same name on the Byzantine–Islamic frontier in Anatolia where Ibrahim's clansmen and descendants would have gained significant experience in frontier warfare, the historian Nejla Abu-Izzedin considers Salibi's theory incorrect and holds that al-Bira was the Gharb village of the same name mentioned in the Druzes' Epistle 48. Abu-Izzedin further notes that the 1061 entry of the records the name Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Abdallah as one of the three Tanukhid emirs addressed in Epistle 50 and places his death in 1029. The historian William Harris questions Salibi's theory of the Buhturids' origins and considers it more probable that the family was already established in the Gharb and was at least distantly related to the Arslan Tanukhids who were slain in 1110, though the family may have been reinforced by Druze settlers from the northern Levant.
The Buhturids had been known as the 'Banu Abi Abdallah' after Ali ibn al-Husayn's great-grandfather. They became known as the 'Banu Buhtur' after the ascent of Ali ibn al-Husayn's son, Nahid al-Dawla Buhtur. Clans independent of the Buhturids were settled in neighboring districts, including the Banu Ma'n, which was established in the Chouf immediately south of the Gharb in 1120 and established political and marital ties with the Buhturids, and the Banu Shihab, which was established in Wadi al-Taym between Mount Lebanon and the western countryside of Damascus in 1173.
Emirate of the Gharb
Burid and Zengid periods
Nahid al-Dawla Buhtur was recognized as the emir of the Gharb in June 1147 by the last Burid atabeg of Damascus, Mujir al-Din Abaq. The latter's written declaration, as recorded verbatim by Ibn Yahya, is the earliest known text about the Buhturids. It acknowledged Buhtur's command of the Gharb, control of its villages, ownership of their revenues, and protection of its and peasants. It is probable that Buhtur was among the frontier commanders called by Abaq to help repulse a Crusader raid against Damascus in 1148, and his Druze warriors a component of the "many archers" who had come "from the direction of the Biqa' and from elsewhere" to defend the city during that battle referenced by the Damascene historian Ibn al-Qalanisi.The Buhturids' principal local rival in the Gharb during the wars with the Crusaders were the Banu Sa'dan or Banu Abi al-Jaysh, a clan of the Bedouin Banu al-Hamra from the Beqaa Valley whose headquarters was in Aramoun. The Banu Abi al-Jaysh may have also been settled in the Gharb by the Burid atabegs or had entered the area on their own initiative, but in either case were also recognized as emirs of the area. The Buhturids were consistently the stronger clan, but their struggles with the Banu Abi al-Jaysh for supremacy in the Gharb recurred throughout the Crusader period and into the Mamluk era in Mount Lebanon. The Buhturids frequently maintained profitable accommodations with the Crusader lords of Beirut and the nearby coastal town of Sidon to the south, who "were always willing to pay well for Buhturid good will", according to Salibi. At the same time, the emirs were careful to demonstrate their protection of the frontier with religious zeal to maintain financial support and avoid attacks from the Muslim rulers of Damascus.
After the capture of Burid Damascus by Nur al-Din, the Zengid atabeg of Aleppo in 1154, and the resulting unification of the Islamic Levant under his leadership, the Buhturid emir Zahr al-Din Karama abandoned any arrangements that had possibly been made with the Crusaders and offered his services to Nur al-Din. The latter, in turn, recognized Karama as emir of the Gharb in 1157, and granted him control over most of its villages and other villages in southern Mount Lebanon, the Beqaa Valley, and Wadi al-Taym in the form of an, as well as the provision of forty horsemen from Damascus and whatever taxes he could levy in time of war. As a result of his support by Nur al-Din, Karama established headquarters in the Gharb fortress of Sarhammur, from which he harried the Crusaders along the coast. Karama's close proximity to Beirut disturbed its lords from the Brisebarre family and a series of raids and counter-raids between them and Karama lasted until 1166 following Gautier III of Brisebarre's sale of the fief of Beirut to the king of Jerusalem. Tensions between Beirut and the Buhturids continued until Karama's death and the subsequent killing of his three eldest sons, both occurring sometime before 1170. Ibn Yahya holds that the sons had been lured to a wedding by the lord of Beirut where they were executed.
The deaths of Karama, his sons and the subsequent assault on Sarhammur by the Crusaders nearly marked the end of the Buhturids. Karama's youngest son, Jamal al-Din Hajji, was a young boy and escaped Sarhammur with his mother, relocating to the Gharb village of Tirdala, where Nur al-Din bestowed on him a small in compensation for his father's and brothers' deaths. Hajji's paternal uncle, Sharaf al-Dawla Ali, also survived the Crusader assault and reestablished himself in Aramoun where he founded a cadet branch of the Buhturids.