Harfush clan

The Harfush dynasty (or Harfouche dynasty) was a dynasty that originated from the Khuza'a tribe, which helped, under the reign of Muhammad, in the conquest of Syria. The Harfush dynasty was in control of the Baalbek District and several parts of the Bekaa Valley. The religion they praised was a huge factor to the rivalry between the Harfushes and the Lebanese Druze Ma'an clan.

The Shiite notables such as the Harfush emirs of Baalbek and Bekaa Valley were among the most sought-after local intermediaries of the Ottoman state. Later on was the rise of the Hamadas, who exercised control over multiple tax farms in the rural hinterland of Tripoli in the seventeenth century through a complex matrix of rapports with both the Ottoman state authorities and the local non-Shiite communities, they both belonged to Shia Islam in Lebanon, the Harfush emirate of the Bekaa Valley and the Hamadas of Mt Lebanon rivalled the territorial extension and power of the Druze emirate of the Shuf. Unlike the Druze, the Shiite emirs were regularly denounced for their religious identity and persecuted under Ebu's-Suud's definition of (Kızılbaş) heretics.

The Harfushes had been a regionally paramount dynasty since early Mamluk times and even served as patrons of local Shiite shrines and scholars. To the Ottomans they were therefore always leading candidates for local fiscal and gubernatorial offices, including for the military governorship of the sub-province of Homs, to which they were appointed partially to offset the influence of the increasingly hegemonic Druze emirate.

The Harfushes are doubtless the best-known Shiite group in Ottoman-period Lebanese history. As a result of their early rivalry with the Druze Ma‘n emirs, their constant interaction with Christian communities in the Bekaa and finally their subjugation to the Shihabi emirate, the Harfushes achieved a high profile in the narrative chronicles of the day by their rule over Baalbek and parts of the Bekaa and their demise, after the 1860 civil war.

The Harfushes were already well established in the Bekaa on the eve of the Ottoman conquest. The late-Mamluk popular historian Ibn Tawq identifies an Ibn Harfush as muqaddam of the Anti-Lebanon mountain village Jubbat ‘Assal as early as 1483; Ibn al-Himsi and Ibn Tulun mention one as deputy (na’ib) of Baalbek in 1498. Ibn Harfush appears in an Ottoman archival source as early as 1516, when he and several other local notables signed a letter offering their submission to Sultan Selim. The Harfushes’ initial relationship with their new masters seems to have been problematic, however.

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