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“House” to “Goddess of the House”: Gender, Class, and Silk in 19th-century Mount Lebanon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Akram Fouad Khater
Akram Fouad Khater
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor in the Department of History, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, N.C. 27695-8108, USA
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“Are you going to behave like a factory girl?!” With this phrase, an 1880s peasant in Mount Lebanon not only admonished a daughter, but also encapsulated the social and economic transformations which were altering the notions of family and society, and the gender roles underlying both. Typically enough, these transformations came about between 1843 and 1914 as a result of the interaction between the local peasant economy and European capitalism. Modernization and dependency narratives of such an encounter follow the line of “tradition” versus “modernity,” with Europe ultimately dictating an inevitable outcome to its absolute benefit. Yet closer examination reveals the story in Mount Lebanon to be far more complicated. In particular, gender replaces this artificial bipolarity with a triangular struggle among peasant men, peasant women, and European capitalists. Furthermore, rather than being historical victims, women and men in Mount Lebanon—with intersecting and diverging interests—worked to contour the outcome of their encounter with Europe and to take control over their individual and collective lives. While the equation of power was most definitely in favor of European merchants and capitalists, the struggles of these peasants were not for naught. Rather, as I will argue in this paper, their travails made the outcome multifaceted and less predictable than European capitalists would have liked it to be.

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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , August 1996 , pp. 325 - 348
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

NOTES

1 See, for example, Labaki, Boutros, whose work includes “La filature de la soie dans le sandjak du Mont-Liban: une expérience de croissance industrielle dépendante (1840–1914),” in Economie et sociétés dans l'empire ottomane: fin du XVllléme (Paris: C.N.R.S., 1983)Google Scholar, and La soie dans l'économie du Mont Liban et dans son environment arabe: 1840–1914 (Beirut: Publications de l'Université Libanaise, 1979)Google Scholar. Chevallier, Dominique was among the first historians to attempt a social history of Mount Lebanon that centers around sericulture with his book, La Société du Mont Liban à l'époque de la révolution industrielle en Europe (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1971)Google Scholar.

2 Some of the historians who have recorded this history are Labaki and Chevallier, both mentioned in note 1. More recently, Firro, Kais published an article entitled “Silk and Agrarian Changes in Lebanon, 1860–1914,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 22 (02 1990): 151–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also, see Khater, Akram F., “She Married Silk: A Rewriting of Peasant History in 19th Century Mount Lebanon”(Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1993)Google Scholar.

3 Labaki, , “La filature de la soie,” 126Google Scholar.

4 Ibid.

5 Chevallier, , La Société du Mont Liban, 196, 226Google Scholar.

6 Owen, Roger, The Middle East in the World Economy 1800–1914 (New York: Methuen & Co., 1981), 161Google Scholar.

7 Labaki, , La soie dans l'economie du Mont Liban, 129Google Scholar.

8 Mughārasa translates literally as “co-planting.” Under such contracts, a peasant would terrace and plant a particular plot of land with mulberry trees and tend to it for about eight years, until the trees finally matured. In the meantime, the peasant was allowed to plant around the trees crops for his own use, as long as they did not harm the development of the trees. The landlord would supply all the necessary equipment and seeds for the planting process. When the trees matured, the peasant would own one-quarter of the land and the landlord would acquire the other three-quarters.

9 Ministère des affaires étrangères, A. E. Correspondence Commerciale, Beyrouth, vol. 7, dispatch no. 15 (27 08 1862)Google Scholar.

10 It is important to note that in the early stages of these developments, the French and British factory owners attempted to entice Druze peasants to work for them in the factories. However, these attempts were frustrated early on by the reluctance of the Druze community, manifested either by outright rejection of any offers for employment or by simply accepting the advance payment and then leaving for the Hawran region in Syria.

11 Ducousso, Gaston, L'Industrie de la soie en Syrie (Paris, 1913), 107Google Scholar.

12 City merchants and courtiers, who lent peasants money, would have normally obtained it from French trading houses for 5 or 6 percent, thus making a large profit off the peasantry. Guys, Henri, Relation d'un séjour de plusieurs années à Beyrout et dans le Liban, 2 vols. (Paris: Comptoir des Imprimeurs, 1850), 2:209Google Scholar. Also, A. E. Correspondance, vol. 10 (29 07 1890)Google Scholar.

13 List of Mar Yuhanna accounts for the year 1874 shows that practically every peasant who leased a plot of land from the monastery was in debt by the end of that year for an amount that varied from a few piasters to a few hundred piasters. Slim, Souad Abou el-Rousse, Le Métayage et l'impôt au Mont Liban, XVIIIe et XIXe siècles (Beirut: Dar El-Machreq, 1987), 250–51Google Scholar.

14 A. E. Correspondance, vol. 9, no. 70, 20 01 1862Google Scholar.

15 el-Shihābī, Muḥammad Fuʾād, “Tarbiyat dūd al-ḥarīr,” Al-Mashriq, 9, 4 (04 1868): 432–67Google Scholar.

16 A. E. Correspondance, vol. 10, 29 07 1890Google Scholar.

17 A. E. Correspondance, vol. 9, 10 09 1879Google Scholar.

18 Firro, , “Silk and Agrarian Changes in Lebanon,” 151–69Google Scholar, divides the years between 1836 and 1911 into five phases of price changes. One could indeed subdivide these years in a multitude of ways depending on the issue presented. In my case, I am simply trying to show the gross trends in price fluctuations.

19 Ducousso, , L'Industrie de la soie, 108, 110–11Google Scholar; Chevallier, , La Société du Mont Liban, 30Google Scholar.

20 In a comparative study—done in 1914—of the cost effectiveness of a “typical” Lebanese silk factory and an Italian factory, it becomes obvious that the more modern techniques of European factories gave them greater profits. For a Lebanese factory with eighty basins for dissolving silk cocoons, the gross profit per kilogram of (medium-quality) silk produced was in 1914 about 14.50 French francs. After deducting the cost of operations and interest on loans, the owner of a factory was left with 3 francs per kilogram. The net profit, then, was calculated to be about 6.8 percent of the total investment. If the price of silk dipped only 5 francs (out of 52 francs) per kilogram in any given year, then the silkfactory owner would lose 2 francs per kilogram. Bak, Ismāʿil Ḥaqqī, Lubnān: mabāḥith ʿilmiyya waijtimāʿiyya wa-siyāsiyya, 2 vols. (Baʿabdā: Al-Maṭbaʿ al-ʿuthmāniyya, 1913), 2:599–613Google Scholar.

21 For a Lebanese peasant, time was never made up of concrete and invariable blocks that could be measured and controlled in a linear progression from past to future. Such a concept would seem presumptuous in its attempt to forecast the future, and alien in its abstraction of time from the physical and emotional experiences that make up the passage of life. Instead, time was seen as cyclical in its progression, tied closely to the variation of seasons, agricultural work, and crops. Each block of time would be associated with subjective experiences that are not necessarily equal in duration or uniform in their nature. Rather than being linked in a linear continuum, these experiences were seen as independent units that did not require other points of reference in time. In other words, organization of events in sequential order was not necessarily done according to which came first in time, but according to the purpose behind the intended structure.

22 Complaints about the scarcity of manual laborers was continuously and irritably noted by French observers, even as late as the 1890s. See, for example, “Situation de l'industrie et du commerce de Beyrouth en 1892,” in A. E. Correspondance, vol. 10.Google Scholar

23 Ministère des affaires étrangères, ACG, carton no. 45, 1851.

24 Ibid. The 1 piaster per day that a Lebanese woman worker earned in a silk factory was also much lower than the wages earned by a French silk spinner, which amounted to 4 piasters.

25 To speak of a patriarchal structure in general would be a truism that serves little in illuminating gender relations before 1860 in Mount Lebanon. This is particularly true because change in these relations varied according to class and time. However, there is no doubt that in general women occupied a lower rung in the social order than men. In social matters, this discrepancy was manifested in customs such as Christian women praying at the back of the church, with the men in front; women eating after men finished their meals; women being expected to keep silent in the presence of men. From birth, when the arrival of a baby girl was received with the comment, “The house's doorstep will be in mourning for forty days” (Freyha, Anis, Ḥaḍāra fi ṭarīq al-zawāl: al-qarya al-lubnāniyya [Beirut, 1957], 181)Google Scholar, until death, at which time a man waited no longer than forty days to remarry, while a woman rarely if ever remarried (Feghali, M., “Mœurs et usages au Liban, la mort et funérailles,” Anthropos IV [1909]: 43Google Scholar), women were consciously relegated an inferior position in daily life. Linguistically, a woman's name was rarely uttered, and when it had to be, it was accompanied by the term ajallak, or “excuse the bad expression.”.

26 As Afif Tannous points out for the case of the village of Bishmizzine, filatures were started as “kinship group enterprises.” Members of the larger kinship group were proud of the factory owned by one of their compound units and were always eager to see it succeed. They also were willing to help the owners in time of need. On the other hand, it was understood in the community that owners of the factory were expected to give preference in employment to the members of their kinship group. Tannous, Afif, “Social Change in an Arab Village,” American Sociological Review 6 (1941): 655CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Ibid.

28 The sheer number of women workers—12,000 by 1880—makes it obvious that the factory owners had to resort to hiring women outside the family.

29 Des Essards, the French Consul General, sarcastically chastised two representatives of the Maronite church for their lack of action against Yusuf Bey Karam, who was rebelling against the Mutasarrif of Mount Lebanon, in the following manner: “Comment! vous menacez des foudres spirituelles, de l'excommunication les filles qui travaillent dans nos filatures, parcequ'elles ne sont pas assex séparées des garçons, et vois ne trouvez rien à faire contre un individu qui, abusant de votre nom, marche en armes sur le gouvernment de votre pays.” A. E. Correspondance, vol. 8, no. 43 (21 03 1866)Google Scholar.

30 In a typical Lebanese silk factory, there would have been about ninety women workers, with five male overseers and three “errand boys.” For a description of such a factory and the work process, see Ḥaqqī, , Lubnān, 2:491–503Google Scholar.

31 These figures were calculated as follows: The total population around 1800 was about 300,000, half of which—or 150,000—was female. Of the total female population, the age group of 15–25 year olds constituted approximately 35 percent or 52,500. Therefore, 12,000 female workers represented 22.8 percent of that population. Moreover, assuming an average size of six per family, then we can estimate that there were about 50,000 families in Mount Lebanon. Out of these—again estimating an average—12,000 supplied one young woman to the silk factories.

32 Tannous, , “Social Change in an Arab Village,” 655Google Scholar.

33 Urquhart, David, The Lebanon (Mount Souria): A History and a Diary (London: T. C. Newby, 1860), 1:390Google Scholar. In 1848, Urquhart noted the income of a middling peasant family as being about 1,575 piasters per annum. Extrapolating from his other comments, it becomes clear that those families who were poorer did not bring in more than 1,000 per year. The wages for a young female worker are calculated at 1 piaster per day, and they worked an average nine-month stint at a factory.

34 Davis, J., People of the Mediterranean (London: Routledge & Kegan Ltd., 1977), 101Google ScholarPubMed.

35 Ibid., 90.

36 Similarly, in Egypt and Syria peasant women went about their daily lives with only a head cover because working in a veil was not practical, and because it was much more crucial to have women labor in the fields than to veil and cloister them at home. It was the elite Circassian women of Cairo who wore veils and who lived in closed harem houses. It was strictly required of them to do so to show that their husband was wealthy enough not to require their physical labor, and—as a corollary—among the upper classes a woman's body was her main commodity and as such had to be safeguarded to keep its prized value intact.

37 Tannous recounts an incident in which a young man had sexual intercourse with a woman in Bishmizzine: “The young man's family had to submit to the mores of the group—have their son marry the girl and cover up the scandal.” However, a village leader who was opposed to the girl's family convinced the young man to emigrate to Argentina. Tannous, Afif, “Trends of Social and Cultural Change in Bishmizzine, an Arab Village of North Lebanon” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1939), 216Google Scholar. Although, we have little else in the way of evidence about the frequency and consequences of extramarital sex in Mount Lebanon, in comparatively similar areas—Vila Velha in southern Portugal and Pisticci in southern Italy—we find current examples of wives of peasants (those of “inferior” honor) copulating with their “honor superiors” in exchange for money, and without further detracting from their families' honor. Davis, , People of the Mediterranean, 92Google Scholar.

38 Tannous, , “Trends of Social and Cultural Change,” 656Google Scholar.

39 Chehab, Maurice, Dawr lubnān fī taʾrīkh al-ḥarīr (Beirut: Publications de l'Université Libanaise, 1967), 48–49Google Scholar.

40 In January 1866, the French Consul General Bernard des Essards sarcastically chided two Maronite clergymen about their lack of action against Yusuf Karam by saying, “How [is it that you can't control Karam, a Maronite rebel]! You threaten the girls who work in our factories with excommunication because they are not separated enough from the boys, and you find yourself incapable of doing anything against one individual who is abusing your name, and marching with an army against the government of your country!!” A. E. Correspondance, vol. 7 (1864–1867)Google Scholar.

41 As most Lebanese-owned silk factories were, at least in the beginning, family operations that required the financial support of the extended kinship group, members of that lineage naturally expected to be given preference in employment. As the factories prospered and the financial status of the extended family improved, the members of the lineage came to deem factory work beneath them, and the owners of the factories looked to neighboring villages to hire female spinners. Tannous, describes this process in the case of Bishmizzine, “Trends of Social and Cultural Change,” 156Google Scholar.

42 Spinning silk thread with fairly “primitive” machinery meant that the quality of product depended heavily on the skill of the ʿāmila. The level of skill becomes most apparent when a cocoon is completely unspun and a new cocoon thread has to be connected. If the worker “throws” too long a thread length at too high an angle, a shalta occurs, or a “bump” appears in the thread. This makes the thread less appealing from a commercial point of view and hence reduces its price on the market.

43 ACG Beyrouth, Carton 45. A letter from de Figon in which he states that Scott, an English factory owner in the Matn region, took away all of his workers by paying them 4 piasters instead of the 3 piasters per day that de Figon was paying. An attempt was made to counteract this tactic by establishing a system of contracts and cash advances that committed workers—through indebtedness–to a certain factory.

44 In an analysis of the woes of the silk industry in Mount Lebanon, a contemporary observer discusses the “waste of time” of the ʿāmilāt. Specifically, he states that they spend 25 percent of their time—unnecessarily—in boiling the cocoons, and another 15 percent in tying threads that had broken during the spinning process. Ḥaqqī, , Lubnān, 505Google Scholar.

45 Ducousso, argues in L'Industrie de la soie (p. 162)Google Scholar that the increase in strikes during these times was due to “emigrants returning from the American republics where questions of labor result in frequent conflicts, or to vagrant Europeans who travel throughout Syria fomenting such ideas.”.

46 Villettes, Jacqueline de, La Vie des femmes dans un village Maronite libanais: Ayn el-Kharoube (Tunis: Imp. N. Bascone & S. Muscat, 1964), 105Google Scholar.

47 Feghali, Michel, Proverbes et dictons Syro–Libanais: Texte arabe, transcription, traduction, commentaire et index analytique (Paris: Institut d'Ethnologie, 1938), 237Google Scholar. Also, de Villettes discusses how women spent their income on buying gold.

48 See also Villettes, de, La Vie des femmes, 105Google Scholar.

49 Ducousso, , L'Industrie de la soie, 162Google Scholar.

50 Villermé, Louis René, Tableau de l'état physique et moral des ouvriers employés dans les manufactures de soie, coton, et lain, 2 vols. (Lyons, 1825), 1:67Google Scholar.

51 Ducousso, , L'Industrie de la soie, 155Google Scholar. Emphasis mine.

52 Safi, M., “Mariage au nord du Liban,” Anthropos, 12–13:34Google Scholar.

53 A. E. Correspondance, vol. 7 (22 07 1868), and vol. 10 (23 January 1888 and February 1890).Google Scholar

54 A. E. Correspondance, vol. 10 (02 1890)Google Scholar and no. 135 (1892).

55 A. E. Correspondance, vol. 10 (7 04 1888)Google Scholar.

56 A. E. Correspondance, vol. 5 (29 05 1854)Google Scholar, vol. 10 (1894).

57 In the first half of the 19th century, watches and clocks were almost nonexistent in Mount Lebanon. In a letter sent in 1832 to the Father General of the Society of Jesus, Father Riccadonna, the head of the Jesuit mission in Lebanon, writes of “the great need for a pocket watch, and if possible with an alarm. Otherwise, we regulate our [prayers] by the sky.” Khuri, Sami, S.J., Une Histoire du Liban à travers les archives des jésuites: 1816–1845 (Beirut: Dar Al-Machreq, 1985), 555Google Scholar. We begin to see mention of imported watches and clocks in the early 1880s, but it is only in the first decade of the 20th century that we find large numbers of watches being imported. Weakly, Earnest, “Report upon the Condition and Prospects of British Trade in Syria,” British Parliament Accounts and Papers, LXXXVII (1911), 603–817Google Scholar. Watchmakers were even more difficult to find. For example, in 1858 Father Bonacina asked the Father General if he might invite his brother, a watchmaker, to spend some time in Lebanon. He assured the Father General his brother would without doubt be greatly appreciated as a repairer and maker of watches. Khuri, , Histoire du Liban, 555Google Scholar. It is not till the 1880s that we find a mention of a watchmaker in Mount Lebanon, specifically in Dlepta. Al-'Indarri, , Al-Muṭrān Yuḥannā Ḥabīb, 264Google Scholar.

58 Volney, C. F., Voyage en Égypte et en Syrie (Paris: Librairie Parmantier, 1825), 11:418Google Scholar.

59 See Chevallier's essay, “Densité Optimale et Heurt des Communautés,” in La Société du Mont Liban, for an excellent discussion of the different estimates given respectively by Henri Guys, Prosper Bouré, Tannous Shidyaq, and Achilles Laurent, of the population of Mount Lebanon. Except for Guys, who seems to have exaggerated his estimates, each of the authors gave a figure that corresponded more or less to 200,000.

60 The statistics for 1906 were obtained from Al-Aswad, Ibrāhīm Bayk, Dalīl Lubnān (Baʿabdā: Al-Maṭbaʿ al-ʿUthmāniyya, 1906), 705Google Scholar. The population figures for Mount Lebanon include emigrants who paid taxes, but those numbers were underreported by the local population, who sought to avoid paying taxes and to avoid legal problems during the periods when the Ottoman authorities prohibited emigration. For example, the population figure of 414,800 that was gathered through the census of 1913 included 124,400 emigrants, whereas other more reliable statistics show that in 1913 there were about 280,000 emigrants from Mount Lebanon. Issawi, Charles, An Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 86Google Scholar; Karpat, Kemal H., “Ottoman Emigration to America,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 17 (08 1984): 202–4Google Scholar. Thus it seems that fewer than half of the emigrants were counted in the official census of Mount Lebanon. It follows that 175,600 emigrants were uncounted, and they are the ones mentioned in the text above.

61 U.S. Congress, Senate, Reports of the Immigration Commission: Statistical Review of Immigration 1820–1910 and Distribution of Immigrants 1850–1900, vol. 3, table 35, 357Google Scholar.

62 In Al-Mashriq magazine of 1902, a story appeared recounting that a number of married men were leaving “a village” in Lebanon for “Amrika.” At one point in the story, a peasant by the name of ʿAbdallah Qazma visits the village priest to ask him to take care of his family during his absence. The priest asks ʿAbdallah whether he will take his family; when ʿAbdallah answers in the negative, the priest states, “[T]his is an action not worthy of Christians. How can you leave your wife and children without any help or someone to take care of them?” In response, ʿAbdallah states that he will be gone for only one or two years, to which the priest scoffs, [T]his talk we have heard from many others, and they still have not returned.” “Al-Mashriq, vol. 5, no. 12 (1902), 570Google Scholar.

63 Freyha, , Ḥaḍāra fi ṭarīq al-zawāl, 128Google Scholar.

64 One of the most famous of these cases is the flight of Jibran Khalil Jibran's mother to Boston away from an abusive and drunkard husband. Also, see my article “Assaf: A Peasant from Mount Lebanon,” in Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East, ed. Burke, Edmund III (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 31–43Google Scholar.

65 Deniz Kandiyoti defines the “patriarchal bargain” as a term that indicates the “existence of set rules and scripts regulating gender relations, to which both genders accommodate and acquiesce, yet which may nevertheless be contested, redefined and renegotiated.” Kandiyoti, Deniz, “Bargaining with Patriarchy,” Gender and Society 2, 3 (1988): 274–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 Kandiyoti, Deniz, “Islam and Patriarchy,” in Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender, ed. Keddie, Nikki and Baron, Beth (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991), 34Google Scholar.

67 Quoted in Lughod, Lila Abu, “Migdim: Egyptian Bedouin Matriarch,” Struggle and Survival, 288Google Scholar. Mernissi's, FatimaBeyond the Veil (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988)Google Scholar provides a very critical look at the contemporary manifestation of the mother–son relationship in urban Morocco. Compare this and other works with Wolf's, Margery excellent work on Chinese women, Women and Family in Rural Taiwan (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1972)Google Scholar.

68 Kandiyoti, , “Islam and Patriarchy,” 35Google Scholar.

69 Wikan, Unni, Behind the Veil in Arabia: Women in Oman (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 184Google Scholar.

70 Safi, , “Mariage au nord du Liban,” 134Google Scholar.

71 Ibid.

72 Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1980), 130Google Scholar.

73 See Barony, Trevor, “The Lebanese in Australia, 1880–1989”Google Scholar; Knowlton, Clark S., “The Social and Spatial Mobility of the Syrian and Lebanese Community in Sāo Paulo, Brazil”Google Scholar; and Kilch, Ignacio, “Criollos and Arabic Speakers in Argentina: An Uneasy Pas de Deux, 1888–1914,” in The Lebanese in the World: A Century of Emigration, ed. Hourani, Albert and Shehadi, Nadim (London: Center for Lebanese Studies and I. B. Tauris, 1992)Google Scholar.

74 Ibid. See also the Annual Report of the General Commissioner of Immigration for a breakdown of the number of single versus married women who came to the United States. Tannous, , in “Trends of Social and Cultural Change,” includes examples that substantiate this claim (pp. 210–17)Google Scholar.

75 There are no records whatsoever that show employment of Druze women in the silk factories. In fact, many contemporary observers noted the refusal of that community to be engaged in the nascent industrial sector. See, for example, Guys, , Relation d'un séjour, 67Google Scholar. As for emigration, Alexa Naff—among other scholars—notes that the Druze men constituted a very small number of Lebanese emigrants, no more than 1 or 2 percent as late as 1914 Naff, Alexa, Becoming American: The Early Arab Immigrant Experience (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985), 84–85Google Scholar.

76 For examples of such letters, see Tannous, , “Trends of Social and Cultural Change,” appendix.Google Scholar

77 For stories of individual women's contribution to the family's economic welfare, see Naff, , Becoming American, 274–75Google Scholar.

78 Ibid., 275.

79 Al-Hoda, 5 03 1899, 15–17Google Scholar.

80 Syrian World, 3 (10 1928), 51Google Scholar.

81 Naff, , Becoming American, 286Google Scholar.

82 As with the rest of numbers relating to Lebanese emigrants, we really do not know for certain how many stayed in the Americas and how many returned. But from the few figures that we have, it is quite plausible to assume that about one-third of all emigrants ultimately went back to Mount Lebanon after a brief or long stay abroad. See Hashimoto, Kohei, “Lebanese Population Movement 1920–1939: Towards a Study,” in The Lebanese in the World, 65–108Google Scholar, for a good analysis of the data available and the problems inherent in reaching any definitive conclusions.

83 Although it is very difficult to calculate exactly how many immigrants made the return trip to Mount Lebanon and remained there, Naff estimates that about 25 percent returned permanently to the mountain. Naff, , Becoming American, 114Google Scholar. In “Lebanese Population Movement 1920–1939,” Hashimoto estimates that a little more than a third of the emigrant population went back to settle in Lebanon.

84 Such a display of wealth became popular and common enough that, in 1887, 1 million red tiles were imported from France; by 1892, this figure had doubled; see A. E. Correspondance, vol. 10 (7 04 1888)Google Scholar and a report entitled, Situation de l'industrie et du commerce de Beyrouth en 1892. Although many of these tiles were destined for houses being built in Beirut, a large proportion made their way to the villages of Mount Lebanon. For example, in 1888 the French Consul General in Beirut reported that houses were being built in Beirut at the rate of one per day. Using some rough estimation, even if all of these houses were designed with red-tiled roofs, Mount Lebanon would have required no more than 600,000 of the 1 million tiles imported that year. This estimate is based on the assumption that the average size of a flat house's roof was 50 square meters, or 10 meters in width and 5 in breadth. Also, the usual slant of the root was a 7 percent grade, or an angle of 25 degrees. Given these measurements, the total surface area of a typical slanted roof would be 90 square meters. Imported tiles measured about 42 by 26 centimeters (Weakley, , “Report on the Condition and Prospects of British Trade in Syria,” 157Google Scholar) and were laid down on the roof so that one tile covered about a third of the following one, meaning that one tile covered an area of 0.072 square meters. Therefore, it took an average 1,270 tiles to roof a house. A final multiplication of the average number of houses being built by the number of tiles per house gives a total figure of 463,550 tiles. Even if another 100 houses were being roofed in red tiles, Beirut's total consumption would have been no more than 590,550. This left about 400,000 tiles that were used in 1887 to build about 315 red-tiled houses in the villages of the mountain. Further statistics about the yearly import of red tiles into the port of Beirut between 1887 and 1911 allow us to estimate that about 2,700 houses were constructed in the villages during that period. The number of total imported tiles was obtained from the A. E. Correspondance Commerciale of the French Consulate General in Beirut during the years listed. It does not take into account the importing of red tiles in previous years, for lack of information. The calculations of tiles used in Mount Lebanon, and consequently the number of houses built there, are extrapolated from the ratio of tiles calculated for the year 1887.

85 At the same time that red tiles were gaining popularity, the two-level house was evolving into a more intricate abode. A further increase in the size of the house of a typical wealthy peasant to 50 square meters allowed for a greater diversification of the internal space of such a house. The large multipurpose space gave way to a number of smaller rooms, each of which had a specific use. Although there were some differences from one house to the next, in general the floor plan remained the same. The main door opened into an entry hall that led straight ahead to a central hall. This central hall was the main living room and reception area for guests; except for the central hall, this layout was much the same as that of “traditional” homes. However, there were an additional two or three rooms branching off to the side of the entry way, and this dramatically altered the layout of the house. One of these was the kitchen; the others were the bedrooms. Each of the bedrooms had a door that, when closed, effectively isolated the happenings in that room from the rest of the family. Even the terrace underwent some changes. Whereas the terrace was previously at the same level as the road that it faced, by 1890, terraces were being constructed above ground as the roof of the lower level, and were oriented toward the back of the house. This elevation necessitated a construction of a border around the terrace to keep people, particularly children, from falling. Also, at the end of the 19th century, concrete instead of packed dirt was used to surface the terraces of wealthier peasants' homes. Finally, according to many observers, the floors inside these new houses were being tiled by the 1890s.

86 al-Khūrī, ShākirMajmaʿ al-Masarrāt (Beirut: Al-Ijtihad Press, 1908), 11Google Scholar.

87 In one story about Habib al-Doumani, who made his wealth from silk, his wife is quoted as complaining about “the tens of shurakāʾ [peasant partners] entering the house and muddying the white and red smooth tile with their boots.” Although her husband responded by reminding her that she would not have that tile if it were not for the shurakāʾ the separation between peasant-work and middle class–home remains intact. al-Bustānī, Shukrī, Dayr al-Qamar fī Ākhir al-qarn al-tāsiʿ ʿashar (Beirut, 1969), 66Google Scholar.

88 The term comes from jurd, or barren back country, and it is meant as pejorative reference to peasants.

89 Al-Aswad, , Dalīl Lubnān, 31–32Google Scholar.

90 Ibid., 357.

91 Speech by Butrus al-Bustani, originally delivered to a literary club in Beirut in 1849, and subsequently reprinted in Al-Jinān magazine in 1882 and 1883, and finally in the al-Rawaiʾ magazine in 1929. In this speech, Butrus al-Bustani was far ahead of his contemporaries by arguing that women were not meant to be “an idol worshipped, or a decorative tool preserved at home for show.” He went on to argue that if the status of woman or wife was not considered higher than that of a servant or slave, then the progress of families and in consequence the world, would be retarded.

92 Traditionally, and as late as the first quarter of the 19th century, girls' education was considered inappropriate and even immoral by peasants and shuyūkh alike, for it was thought to promote licentious behavior. Even Maronite nuns remained uneducated. For instance, the mother superior of the Heart of Jesus order, the famous Hindiyya Ujaimi, was illiterate and had to dictate all of her writings to the Maronite bishop, Germanos Diyab. Another testimony to this state of affairs is provided by Dr. Louis Charles Lortet, a Frenchman who visited Mount Lebanon around 1875. In describing the nuns of the Sahel ʿAlma convent, he said, “[C]es malheureuses femmes, recluses pendant la plus grand partie de Panne'e, sont absolument cloîtrées” and illiterate.

Protestant missions were the first to set up schools for girls in Beirut and nearby villages. The American Presbyterians led the way as early as 1826 by providing some basic education, mostly in subjects such as knitting and sewing, for about thirty girls who were in “occasional attendance” at six schools. Most of these ”schools” were located in the residences of the missionaries, and the wives of the missionaries carried out the instruction. It was not until 1835 that a separate room on the mission's grounds was set aside for girls' education. This came to be known as 'The Female School,” and it was headed by an American schoolmistress and a Lebanese assistant, who taught on average about twenty-five girls. However, this and other girls' schools established by the American missionaries remained limited to a few well-off Christian girls. Then, in 1846, the missionaries established a boarding school for girls in Beirut, and another in Suq al-Gharb in 1858, both of which offered subsidized liberal education in the arts and sciences. The popularity of both schools induced the British missionaries to set up the Girls Training School in Shimlan.

Although credit must be given to the American missionaries for their early dedication to the concept of female education, the lead in that matter soon passed to the Catholic and Maronite nuns. The Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, who arrived in Lebanon in 1849, were the first Catholic missionaries to set up schools for girls. By 1869, the sisters, twenty-eight from France and twenty-eight from Lebanon, had built a hospital in Beirut and an orphanage that took in young girls who were deprived of their parents by the civil war in 1860. A. E. Correspondence, vol. 8, annex to no. 39 (22 03 1870)Google Scholar. In addition, the sisters established a school for young girls in 1863 that had 43 boarding students. The high cost of the school—400 francs, or 1,600 piasters, per year—made it accessible to only the daughters of well-off families from Beirut and the surrounding mountains. At the same time, the sisters established eight schools in Mount Lebanon, mostly concentrated within twenty miles of Beirut (except for two that were established in the Kisrawan region). All of the schools taught the same curriculum— French, Arabic, arithmetic, history, geography and religious instruction-and education in the eight institutions outside Beirut was free for all 569 students. Indigenously, two associations of Lebanese nuns, in cooperation with the Jesuits, were established in 1853 to further female education in Lebanon in the “proper”—that is, Catholic—direction. One of these was the Association of Mariamiyyat established in Bekfaya; the other was the Association of the Heart of Jesus in Zahlé The first association opened schools in the areas of Kisrawan, Matn, Futuh, Jubayl, and Batroun; the second opened schools in the Biqaʿ valley and Damascus region. After twenty years, in 1873 both associations merged into a single entity, known as the Association of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. By 1914, the association was undertaking the education of 6,000 girls distributed over thirty schools (Ḥaqqī, Lubnān, 2:572Google Scholar).

93 Peasants used the term “The House” to refer to their wives, rather than calling them by their proper names.

94 It is to the first quarter of the 20th century that we can trace the rise of a new generation of women writers, such as May Ziyadeh, who brought some women“s voices into the new public arena of print journalism.