1
Unveiling the Legend behind the Rock
Understanding Amin Maalouf’s “The Rock of Tanios”
as a Modern, Literary, National Myth
Master Thesis Author: Alexander C. el-Jbeily Student Number: 1608746
Primary Supervisor: dr. R. Nikolsky
2
Table of Contents
Introduction ... 3
A History of Mount Lebanon in the Early to Mid-Nineteenth Century ... 5
Theoretical Framework ... 9
Gavins ... 10
Anderson ... 11
Guibernau ... 12
Campbell ... 14
Analysis of “The Rock of Tanios” ... 16
Prologue ... 16
First Passage: The Temptation of Lamia ... 18
Second Passage: The Summer of Locusts ... 19
Third Passage: Destiny from the Lips of a Fool ... 21
Fourth Passage: The English Clergyman’s School ... 23
Fifth Passage: ‘Old Head’ ... 25
Sixth Passage: A Strange Mediatorship ... 26
Seventh Passage: Oranges on the Stairs ... 28
Eighth Passage: On his Knees for Fame ... 30
Final Passage: Guilty of Compassion ... 31
Conclusion ... 34
3
Introduction
The Lebanese Mountains have a long and distressing history when it comes to the whims of foreign powers and their complex relationships to the peoples living in this small stretch of land. The different historical narratives within this region are well documented; by many different actors large and small. However, the stories of the common-person are often left out. This is where the role of historical fiction can easily swoop in and present an alternative story to many of the events taking place in historically contested narratives; often taking the form of myths and legends.
Amin Maalouf is a well-known French-Lebanese1 author, who has written, and continues to write, a plethora
of books within the historical fiction genre. He has also written a handful of books on the questions of identity and multiculturalism. His oeuvre has primarily been written in French, and has been translated into many languages.2 Maalouf has taken it upon himself to describe the unheard stories that might have been,
whether fiction or non-fiction. His most notable pieces of work are “The Crusades through Arab Eyes”, “Leo the African”, “Samarkand”, and “The Rock of Tanios”. His first work, “The Crusade through Arab Eyes”, is, as the name suggests, a retelling of the crusades as detailed by Arab chronicles and sources. It is not a novel, but rather an attempt at showing a new narrative on the Crusades. In “Leo the African” and “Samarkand”, Maalouf depicts the lives of historical figures of which very little is known. He fills in many details using a memoir-like style; putting these historical characters in novels with which to ‘humanize’ them.
In “The Rock of Tanios”3, Maalouf tells the fictitious story of a young boy’s coming of age, and his status
as a legend to the descendants of his community. By combining intrigue at different levels of society, Maalouf is able to weave an interesting, well-thought-out and historically accurate yet fictitious story of a youth growing up in a rural mountain village under the Ottoman Empire and Egyptian occupiers of the early to mid-nineteenth century. He uses multiple ‘memoirs’ and ‘chronicles’ to depict the life of Tanios, building up the character through others. Many of the themes he touches upon in his story tend to have something to do with personal and national identities, and the mythical status of certain individuals. It is for this reason that I have attempted to use certain concepts that can be connected to these ideas in order to expand the discussion concerning the themes and ideas that the book brings up; concerning mixed loyalties and the mythifying of persons of interest.
This thesis is intended to give a perspective on Amin Maalouf’s “The Rock of Tanios”4, and the fictitious
mythology born from it, based on a conceptual framework collated from Joanna Gavin’s explanation of Text World Theory, Benedict Anderson’s concept of Imagined Communities, Montserrat Guibernau’s different dimensions of identity and nationalism and Joseph Campbell’s concept of the Monomyth. However, before dealing with the theoretical framework and the book’s analysis, I will look into a history of Mount Lebanon during the early to mid-nineteenth century, wherein many different great-powers attempted to tame the people of these lands to do their bidding, and fall in line. By applying these distinct
1 He is also well known for disliking being categorized as such. "So am I half French and half Lebanese? Of course
not. Identity can't be compartmentalized.” Amin Maalouf, On Identity (London: Random House UK, 2000), 3.
2 “About the Author « with Amin Maalouf,” accessed September 5, 2015, http://www.aminmaalouf.net/en/about/. 3 Originally in French; by Amin Maalouf, Le rocher de Tanios (Grasset, 1993).
4 I will use the English translation of the book by Dorothy S. Blair. She has translated dozens of works from French
4 angles of inquiry to the analysis of the book, I intend to give an interpretation of the story surrounding Tanios as a modern national myth, within a literary format.
5
A History of Mount Lebanon in the Early to Mid-Nineteenth Century
Throughout “The Rock of Tanios”, Amin Maalouf has chosen to keep a veil of vagueness covering many of the specificities of the (inter-)personal events, and dates, depicted in the book, when it comes to the main character and the village in general. However, the events he cannot obscure from us are the ones which played out on a different level; those of national and international repute. To place the story within a proper context, it is important to look at the “dated” events5 within their historical setting. To do this, I will lookinto the history of Mount Lebanon during the early to mid-nineteenth century, wherein a diverse set of actors, at the national and international level, took part in changing the loyalties and political direction that the region would follow.
For centuries, Ottoman rulers viewed the Lebanon Mountains with a certain amount of disdain. To them, “the mountains were ‘the refuge of villains’” while to their inhabitants “they were a refuge from Ottomans.”6
However, the Ottomans tended to allow a certain amount of autonomy to the people of the region, acknowledging the familial hierarchies and “the authority of the notables over the local population that it entailed.”7 Due to the relative isolation of the mountain range and the difficulty associated with accessing
many of its remote villages, the Ottomans preferred to allow this arrangement to continue, seen as the area was deemed too costly, or irrelevant, to directly rule over. They relied on these notable families “for the collection of taxes and maintenance of order and security.” The Ottomans still had the option of intervening militarily, or playing out the locals against each other, to prevent any serious political competition to their rule.8 This was something that was regularly done and enforced.
Living under the Ottoman umbrella through indirect rule allowed the sects living in the mountain range certain freedoms. The Maronites, especially,
“enjoyed greater security of life and property than the people of the plains, under direct Ottoman rule, whom Richard Wood9 … called ‘wretches in a state of starvation and
nakedness’.”10
The political laxity with which the Ottomans had ruled over the area did not properly reflect the state of affairs between the rival religious sects, which were entwined in “a mating game of seduction and exploitation still being played today.” By using emotional and religious language in order to mask their own interest, each group did its best in seducing foreign great-powers to aid in their local political problems, while “each foreign power searched for suitable local protégés. Outside interference was matched by inside desire for more of it.”11
The clearest signs of great-power influence could be observed alongside the revival of Beirut as a center for commerce in the Eastern Mediterranean.
“Protestant missionaries from the United States and Britain began to arrive; and from Beirut, these missionaries subsequently extended their activities into the mountains. There, they were
5 Often termed: historical facts.
6 Philip Mansel, Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean (Hachette UK, 2010), 92. 7 Ibid.
8 Carol Hakim, The Origins of the Lebanese National Idea: 1840–1920 (University of California Press, 2013), 17. 9 Richard Wood was the British dragoman, and later consul, to the region. He had studied Arabic in a Maronite
monastery
6 met by stiff resistance from the Maronites and the older established Roman Catholic missionaries who worked among them – groups such as the Jesuits and the Lazarists who, in reaction, began to reinforce their presence in Beirut.”12
The Protestant missionaries failed to make any headway amongst the Maronites within Mount Lebanon, seen as most Eastern Christians were warned against allowing their children to be influenced by Protestant schools and teaching. However, Protestant missionaries were made welcome in Druze controlled areas allowing for direct instances of European schooling and influence. “Thus, while western influence had long been reaching the Maronite parts of the mountain through intermediary of the Maronite church and its Roman connections, the same influence now began to touch the Druze areas through the intermediary of the Protestant missions.”13 The American and British Protestant missionaries failed to make any gains in
converting the Druze, but their influence was nevertheless existent. “At a time when the Maronites boasted of their relationship with Roman Catholic France, the Druzes turned to Protestant Britain for friendship.”14
It is also during the beginning of the nineteenth century, from 1820 onwards roughly, that the formerly very united, and of no political import, peasantry began to show certain deviations from the old hierarchies and loyalties. The majority of Maronite peasants began to increasingly look to their community as a binding factor; politically and religiously; rather than following certain muqata’jis.15 This trend was also followed
by the Druze communities, however, this communal awareness did not come at the cost of their loyalty to the Druze muqata’jis, which they still followed.16
It is also during this time period that Muhammad Ali Pasha, the Ottoman governor-general of Egypt, managed to gain the upper hand in the Levantine region; having grabbed the reins of power from the Sultan in the area. By attempting to equalize taxation amongst all of the peoples living within the Lebanon Mountains, and modernizing many aspects of the economy and administration, Muhammad Ali “earned the admiration of foreigners and merchants, but the abhorrence of the people [he] administered.” His rule, however, brought with it newly enforced laws; wherein “forced labor, conscription, higher taxes, state monopolies, and the confiscation of wheat and silk crops” were common place. Uprisings and rebellions became a standard part of the status-quo in response.17
Even with the direct influence of the British, for instance through the bribing of muqata’jis, the insurrections remained a domestic affair for all intents and purposes.18 The symbiosis between muqata’jis and the
peasantry further deteriorated due to the failure of the rebellions in changing the situation. Discontent grew amongst the peasants as the heavy handed reaction from the Egyptian occupiers introduced director methods of control over the once semi-autonomous region; all the while British and French influences interfered with the domestic issues at different levels.19 The muqata’jis power declined rapidly in lieu of these situations,
but they still held positions with which they could wreak considerable havoc if they felt cornered.20
The combination of foreign occupation and forced modernization, at many levels, shattered the fragile sectarian balance that had allowed the different groups in Mount Lebanon to live in relative peace with each
12 Kamal S. Salibi, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered, New Ed edition (London: I B
Tauris & Co Ltd, 2003), 161–162.
13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 162.
15 Feudal notables; such as the emirs and sheikhs of the old landed elite families. 16 Salibi, A House of Many Mansions, 162.
17 Mansel, Levant, 95.
18 William Harris, Lebanon: A History, 600-2011 (OUP USA, 2012), 139.
7 other. After the Egyptian use of Maronites21 to counter a Druze rebellion, sectarianism took hold of the
regions political agenda, as it remains to this day. “The old Druze-Maronite entente began to break down, [they were] neighbors to be regarded as traitors.”22 After having been forced to fight their Druze neighbors,
the instigators of the counter-rebellion attempted to disarm the Christians because they feared a possible collusion between the Maronites and the Druze. This backfired enormously, pushing the Maronites onto the path of revolt.23
By 1840, the European great-powers had through “an extreme example of consular interference in local politics” organized a combined Lebanese revolt. The rebellion had been largely orchestrated by, none other than, Richard Wood.24 As a servant of the Ottoman and the British governments, he had managed to
persuade the major Maronite and Druze communities to rise against their Egyptian occupiers.25 With the aid
of the British and Austrian navies, the Ottomans managed to regain a foothold in the Levant and forced the withdrawal of the Egyptian troops to Acre. The Emir of Mount Lebanon, Bashir, was forced into exile to Malta.26 With the removal of the Egyptian occupying forces, things did not revert back to the way they were
two decades earlier. Richard Wood is known to have remarked that the different sects were “particularly remarkable for the great hatred they bore to each other.”27
By the middle of the nineteenth century, many of the communities along the Lebanon Mountain range had gained knowledge of foreign cultures and languages. Acquiring these skills through European schools often came with other perks, such as a form of foreign protection, “by an extension of the right of embassies and consulates to appoint a number of local subjects as agents or translators”, or even with a foreign nationality.28
“In Lebanon alone, the impact of the modern world arrived with grace, stage by stage, and often upon local invitation; and the accommodations to it also came gradually, and with equal grace.”29
The metamorphosis of hierarchical loyalties to collective identities in the early nineteenth century produced a demand for representation and for sects to be viewed as political collectives within Mount Lebanon. This is fore-mostly evident amongst the Maronite and Druze communities, as they fought for self-determination under Egyptian occupation and Ottoman rule, and managed to use, and be used by, foreign powers to further their own (national) goals.30 The rise of proto-nationalistic ideologies forced a rethinking and reevaluation
of traditional loyalties amongst all levels of society at the time.
21 “To counter [the Druze rebellion], Ibrahim Pasha [Muhammad Ali’s son] distributed arms to the Christians and
asked Bashir [The Emir of Mount Lebanon] to send his son Khalil to lead 4,000 armed Christians in fighting the [Druze] rebellion. It was the first time that the inhabitants of the Lebanese territories had confronted each other on a sectarian basis.”; Fawwaz Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon, 2 edition (London : New York: Pluto Press, 2012), 12. This is one of the few historical facts that has been meddled with in the book in order to allow the story to flow better.
22 Mansel, Levant, 95.
23 Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon, 13.
24 Richard Wood’s role in the Lebanese revolt was arguably more vital than T.E. Lawrence’s would be eighty years
later in the Arab Revolt. An American missionary wrote of Wood, ‘His word was law throughout the land.’; Mansel, Levant, 95.
25 Ibid.
26 Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon, 13. 27 Mansel, Levant, 98.
8 Even though the first signs of a Lebanese polity could be seen during the sixteenth century with the constitution of the semi-autonomous region of the Emirate of Mount Lebanon31, it was only during the
mid-nineteenth century that the slow yet steady stagnation and collapse of the Ottoman Empire led to political fractures emerging in the Levantine Ottoman provinces. The relationship between the Druze and Maronite communities was never fully repaired, and eventually led to the bloody massacres in 1860-61, sparking a “civil war” within Mount Lebanon. Conflicts from the mid-nineteenth century onwards were of an increasingly sectarian nature, up to this day.
9
Theoretical Framework
In this section, I will look into the concepts that will be used within the theoretical framework with which to analyze the novel. I intend to do this by combining elements from Joanna Gavins’, Benedict Anderson’s, Montserrat Guibernau’s and Joseph Campbell’s works.32 Joanna Gavins has worked extensively on the
understanding and use of “Text World Theory”33 in identifying and deconstructing narratives while giving
a practical set of tools with which to do this, while Benedict Anderson’s work on “Imagined Communities”34
has opened the door on the methods with which to understand the group dynamic when relating to nationalism as a group phenomenon. Montserrat Guibernau’s work has focused more on the multi-dimensionality of nationalism and collective identities35, proposing that there are five distinct facets, with a
secondary aspect based on a multi-faceted conception of loyalty. Joseph Campbell’s work is preoccupied with the centrality of certain themes throughout myths and legends all over the world; new and old.36
I will separate this chapter into four distinct sections. The first section will be based on Joanna Gavin’s work, as mentioned earlier, whereby I will describe and elucidate to the reader the grammars and concepts that she introduces for use within Text World Theory, and thereby allow for a method to look at the different narratives playing out. I will go into great detail concerning the different concepts and definitions of the terminology used as well. The second and third sections will contain a short explanation of the ideas and concepts brought forth by Anderson and Guibernau respectively. Seen as these play a secondary role in this thesis, I will not delve too deeply into them, but will rather skim certain ideas useful for understanding the background of nationalism and collective-identity. The final section will deal with Campbell’s idea of the monomyth, and the steps involved in recognizing and describing it, as a narrative progresses.
Text World Theory will take the front and center seat in our journey, providing the toolkit with which I will look at “The Rock of Tanios”. Most of the analysis will be based off of the world-switching that takes place between the different textual and oral sources used to portray the story, as presented by the narrator. Anderson’s and Guibernau’s concepts attend to the work with more of a background functionality, performing the role of the conceptual framework. The concepts of imagined communities and (national) loyalties are important aspects and conceptions that I will point out regularly during my analysis. Campbell’s template of the Monomyth will grant me a path to tread during my analysis, by giving an easily distinguishable route with regular intervals at which something can be deduced or analyzed. Thus, with Gavin’s Text World Theory as the analytical toolkit, Campbell’s Monomyth as the proposed mapping route, and Anderson and Guibernau’s concepts as the framework, I believe that a story pertaining to a fictitious narrative based around a proper historical context can be properly analyzed. Nevertheless, I will take due diligence in explaining the aspects that will be of use to the analysis of the story in the following sub-sections.
32 Parts of this framework were first developed, and used in a proof-of-concept, for use in analyzing movies in a
course paper. I’ve adapted the necessary parts in order to use it in my quest of analyzing “The Rock of Tanios”.
33 Joanna Gavins, Text World Theory: An Introduction, 1st ed. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007). 34 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, 2006). 35 Montserrat Guibernau, The Identity of Nations (John Wiley & Sons, 2013); Montserrat Guibernau and John
Hutchinson, Understanding Nationalism (Wiley, 2001); Montserrat Guibernau and Maria Berdún, Belonging: Solidarity and Division in Modern Societies (Polity, 2013).
10
Gavins
When looking at the manner in which human beings interact with each other, discourse plays an immensely important role. The ways in which people interpret each other’s narratives creates an interesting dynamic when, and where, intentions and the broadcasting of ideas intersect. Text World Theory can be used to illuminate the mental representations created and shared within discourse, explaining certain hard-to-come-by notions or redirecting the focus of a reader or listener to aspects of a narrative which tend to be implicit or out of common sight.
The way Text World Theory does this is by looking at the immediate level of discourse production. It attributes primacy to the face-to-face interactions between sentient humans, and sees this as the basis of all forms of communication and cognition.37 It stems from the idea that all participation must be “entirely
willful”, and that by partaking in this, a discourse-world comes into being. Communication is based on a purpose, and it is necessarily driven by human volition. “This volition not only determines our own behavior and influences our conceptualization of a discourse, but it is also what we expect from our co-communicators. We shape our human choice as a default assumption.”38
Based on the willfulness of the communicators (or participants), interpretations must be made by either side. The basis tends to be built on cooperation, and therefore when the language or message seems to make no immediate sense, extra effort is necessary to attempt to understand what is going on. Participants have to deal with their own interpretation and the message being given out by the other.
“The discourse-world, then, can be seen as an act of negotiation in process. And what is being negotiated between the participants in that discourse-world is the precise nature of the text-world they are constructing in their minds in order to process and understand the language at hand. The perspective Text World Theory takes on communication is thus a highly dynamic one. Meaning and understanding are not pre-determined or fixed in any way, they are continually evolving concept, negotiated on-line by all those involved in the discourse-world.”39
By aiming to provide a framework from which to inspect things in a fully context-sensitive method, both the “physical surroundings and the participants’ background knowledge … affect the discourse process” in Text World Theory.40 When the “ownership of knowledge” starts to move around amongst the participants,
first being private and then becoming (semi-) public, it is known as incrementation. By communicating and exchanging “facts, specify[ing] goals or, more broadly, express[ing] emotional states, argue[ing] opinions, or simply offer[ing] a point of view” a form of knowledge incrementation is taking place.41 This kind of
shared experiential knowledge allows participants to negotiate, expand and adjust their personal knowledge stores.42 Text-worlds created amongst participants are said to be participant-accessible by the ability of
individual participants in verifying each other’s ontological and existential references. It is through this “verification” process that the other participants can, and will, “accept the contents of those text-worlds as reliable and true, and a corresponding degree of responsibility for them is assigned.”43
11 Participants (and readers/listeners) are able to “verify” information that has been incrementally passed on to them by others “based on [their] experiences of real people in the real world, and [they] expect [them] to have the same emotions, reactions, abilities, and general behavior” that they can recognize.44 Based on the
use of epistemic modality, covering “a wide spectrum of belief, from absolute certainty at one end of the scale to complete lack of confidence at the other,” allows for the establishment of a different form of text-world, an epistemic modal-text-world, separate from the time and place where it was created.45 This means that
participants are able to imagine new situations by interpreting old ones, with incrementally added information. This is often done through the medium of a world-switch. World-switches can come in three flavors; Deictic46, Attitudinal47 and Epistemic48. Throughout the novel, world-switching gives us our mental
palette a taste of each of the sources the narrator uses to tell, and verify, the story. They are an important tool by which to show a line of progression through a narrative, whereby a small summary of past events or the character’s desires or understandings are incrementally fed to the observer when necessary to repair a discourse-world.
However, sometimes no amount of world-switching can prevent bad predictions, fraught with mistakes; “the incrementation of new information into a text-world can misfire, with erroneous components being added to (or missed out of) a particular world as a result.” Mistakes like this can happen for an array of reasons, but even after one has been detected, it is still possible to repair or salvage a text-world with enough effort and attention on the part of the observant participant. “[Sometimes] the damage caused to the reader’s mental representation of the novel [or text] may be so extensive, in fact, that world-replacement may be necessary before the discourse process can continue.”49
The reparation of text-worlds, and world-replacements, could be classified as a traumatic event, wherein an entire discourse-world has to be (re-)adapted. As we will see in the analysis of the novel, the narrator is faced with incrementally, via different sources, figuring out what the story is behind the infamous “Rock of Tanios”. As he builds a better understanding of the history, or even legend, of Tanios, we, the readers, are indulged with the witnessing the reassessing our primary predictions concerning the way the story will end up.
Anderson
Benedict Anderson suggests perceiving nations and states as imagined communities. Anderson ascribes himself to the line of thought wherein the decline of traditional authorities, a privileged scriptural language and the split between cosmology and history, led to the search for a new way to combine a sense of community, the upheavals of power and temporal justifications for redemption and continuation, explaining the way in which the nation and its accompanying nationalism came into existence.50
According to Anderson, imagined communities can be inherently limited by the added dimension of ethnification; he sees this as a manner of self-limitation. Ethnifying the nation not only becomes a way with which “to propagate a myth of common origin”, but also a way with which to politicize the present and
44 Ibid., 78. 45 Ibid., 110.
46 A Deictic world-switch is based on changes in time and location. (Flashbacks are an example.) 47 An Attitudinal world-switch is based on desires and beliefs. (Dreams and wishes are an example.)
48 An Epistemic world-switch is based on hypothetical situations. (Evaluations and reasoning are an example.) 49 Gavins, Text World Theory, 141–142.
12 future using that myth. This is relevant to the literary material at hand due to the sectarian nature of Lebanese culture and nationalism. I will discuss the formation and function of the myth in a later section.
Aside from the ethnification of nations, Anderson sees sacrifice as an inherent problem posed by nationalism. “What makes the shrunken imaginings of recent history generate such colossal sacrifices?”51
He lays the question of death for an imagined greater good at the feet of the cultural roots of nationalism. Anderson links these roots with the concept of death, claiming that nations are obsessed with the sacrifice of the one for the many. Anderson also states that it is not only with the dead that nationalistic endeavors are focused on, but also with the yet-unborn, so as to create a continuation. He sees nations as the “secular transformation of fatality into continuation” and of “contingency into meaning”52; death and rebirth through
a national narrative.
Guibernau
Montserrat Guibernau broadly defines the phenomena of national identity as follows:
“National identity is a modern phenomenon of a fluid and dynamic nature. […] Collective memories of a time when the nation was independent, endured oppression, or attained international leadership tend to strengthen a sense of common identity among those who belong to the nation, even if it lacks a state of its own.”53
She identifies five major aspects of which national identities are constituted. These aspects are the psychological (sentient or felt history), cultural (based on communication, language and sometimes ethnicity), historical (collective memory of transcendental moments), political (legitimization of ideas by an elite) and territorial dimensions (physical link to ancestors).54 All five of these dimensions merit some
explaining, however, I will look briefly into the aspects so as to give an all-round feel for her ideas. The main facet of the psychological aspect is that the sentient history that is shared amongst the people of the nation need not be completely factual to be believed, and can be felt as structurally important to the nationalism in question.55 This is relevant to the mystification, or mythification, of certain stories and ideas
surrounding issues that are important for the nation.
Within the cultural dimension, Guibernau describes certain sub-aspects that are important in understanding the legitimizing process behind nationalism. One of these sub-aspects is the “Mass or Elite phenomenon”, whereby the instigation of nationalism is brought into question. She states that “elites have sought to offer generalizations concerning the existence of national consciousness within their countries, when ‘until quite recent times it is doubtful whether ostensibly nationalistic elites even considered the masses to be part of their nations.’”56 As we shall see in the novel, the masses are used at the whim of local and international
leaders as simple pawns regularly.
51 Ibid., 7. 52 Ibid., 11.
53 Guibernau, The Identity of Nations, 11. 54 Ibid., 23.
13 Nations tend to remember awe-inspiring events in a similar fashion to dreadful events. By selectively remembering parts of their own history, nations can pick and choose the ideas and events that best suit the cohesiveness of the community. This is the essence of Guibernau’s historical aspect.57
In the political dimension, Guibernau illuminates an interesting twist when she explains that there is also an “intrinsic complexity” associated with national identities put forward by a specific elite when an “alternative national elite” attempts to put forward another idea or culture.58 This is shown clearly in the book with the
implementation of different schools; by different religious groups, along the Lebanese mountains.
On the importance of territory, Guibernau elaborates that the dislocation with one’s national territory is considered a tragedy, “as is the case with refugees and those displaced by means of war or natural or man-made disasters.” Complementing this, Guibernau speaks of the idea that the landscape is “embodying the traditions, history and culture of the nation they share with their ancestors.”59 The opening of the novel is a
great example of this, whereby the rocks in the mountains surrounding the village are given titles and names based off of folkloric characters and events.
Understanding these aspects of nationalism as put forward by Guibernau allows for a basic set of filters with which to look at the ways through which nations, or in our case a budding nation, chooses, and is forced by its own designs, the ways in which it remembers it’s heroes and enemies. By accessing the wealth of events it has witnessed over a temporal span, a community can form itself as it wishes really. However, an interesting point to be made is conjunction with the dimensions of nationalism is the ways through which loyalty is seen and experienced by those believing, or rejecting the ideas presented by the community. The political mobilization of groups of people is based on the recognition of their shared collective identity. Guibernau states that pressure is exerted on members of the community once a communal idea has settled, and a deviance from that idea can be severely punished.60 Being part of a community implies an explicit
loyalty to the ideas shared by the group, and the actions of group members are often looked at favorably compared to those of outsiders.61
According to Guibernau, there are three distinct types of loyalty to a nation or state; the first is based on coercion (authoritarian loyalty), the second on a free personal decision (loyalty-by-choice) and the third on a strategic investment (instrumental loyalty).62 Loyalty remains a fluid concept, as one can move from one
category to the other within moments. However, Guibernau stresses the emotional catalyst required for being in any of the three categories to start with; and any possible switches that may happen;
“Loyalty to the nation involves a strong emotional engagement; so much so that the individual feels as a part of the community and identifies with its aims, rejoices in its achievements and suffers its losses and defeats.”63
These three types of loyalty do come up during the novel, whereby different characters have an immensely different vision of what it means to be loyal to the nation or state, and what that loyalty should entail. This plays off at the scale of European Great-powers, but also at the level of local tribes and villages.
57 Ibid., 20. 58 Ibid., 19. 59 Ibid., 22–23.
60 Guibernau and Berdún, Belonging, 44. 61 Ibid., 145.
14
Campbell
“Throughout the inhabited world, in all times and under every circumstance, the myths of man have flourished; and they have been living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and mind.”64
Joseph Campbell’s book, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, starts with this sentence. It is exactly this sentiment; the universality of the appearance of mythology, that sets us down the path of understanding what the novel, “The Rock of Tanios”, has to offer in myth forming when looking at the budding nationalism in Mount Lebanon. Even though it is a work of fiction, it fulfills the ideas of a common group living and enduring under harsh times, and the strength of one amongst them; Tanios’ plight and adventure.
Campbell identifies and suggests a common template with which to broadly categorize the tales of a hero; be they real or imagined. This template is the monomyth. There are many criticisms to be heard against Campbell’s idea, but it remains a reasonably good, and basic, overview of the centrality of certain motifs in myths. There are seventeen stages, grouped under three main acts, which most (if not all) heroes and protagonists of grand stories and myths undergo.
The first act is that of the departure; the adventure begins. An individual is drawn, usually unsuspectingly, into the destiny that awaits him.65 Often, the call is unheard or rejected outright66, but those that do follow
through are usually helped through some form of Deus-Ex-Machina; maybe not a literal god, but often something so out of the known reality or alien to the community that it constitutes a “heaven-sent” situation.67 It is with this help that the hero is able to cross over the thresholds preventing them from going
out and continuing along their destined path.68 They are now beyond the help of their community, and must
now trod upon unknown ground to continue. The hero is thus swallowed into this unknown, appearing to have disappeared or even died to his community.69
The second act is that of the initiation. The hero crosses the threshold and traverses a new zone where they must pass a series of trials.70 It is along this path that the hero comes to terms with the centrality of their
crisis, be it love or death.71 It is with this recognition of their situation that allows the hero to put themselves
in the place of their forbearers; and with it realize the cyclical and human nature of their being.72 This
realization pushes the hero to reconcile with their forbearers, be it their father or caregiver. By accepting this, the hero can atone for his mistakes and accept the mantle that destiny has thrust upon him.73 The hero
can rest in this moment of fulfillment, the center-point of the adventure has been reached.74 The hero can
64 Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 3. 65 “The Call to Adventure”; Ibid., 49.
66 “Refusal of the Call”; Ibid., 59. 67 “Supernatural Aid”; Ibid., 69. 68 “Crossing the Threshold”; Ibid., 77. 69 “Belly of the Whale”; Ibid., 90. 70 “The Road of Trials”; Ibid., 97.
15 then go on to complete the destined task with a certain amount of ease, knowing now that the role they play is part a greater whole; all the previous steps led to this moment.75
The adventure must now come to a close. The third and final act is that of the return. The hero feels the pull back to his home, yet he does not know whether his community can accept the new reality that he brings with him.76 Their travels leading back to their old abode could in themselves contain other trials, but the
new knowledge gained help tremendously.77 Sometimes the community must reach out to help the hero
return, if not in body maybe in mind. They must be brought back to the old reality.78 Once they have
returned, the hero faces the problem of reconciling two realities. The new and the old clash, and it is their task to manage this difference.79 Once this difference has been assuaged, and the hero has learnt to accept
both worlds; sometimes in conjunction with each other; they can be comforted into their own balancing act between and in both worlds.80 The realization has a chance to sink in. It allows for a total calm to come over
the hero, or allows the hero to realize the futility of it all. The hero exists and is. They are free to choose; they live in the moment.81
75 “The Ultimate Boon”; Ibid., 172. 76 “Refusal of the Return”; Ibid., 193. 77 “The Magic Flight”; Ibid., 196. 78 “Rescue from Without”; Ibid., 207.
79 “The Crossing of the Return Threshold”; Ibid., 217. 80 “Master of Two Worlds”; Ibid., 229.
16
Analysis of “The Rock of Tanios”
There is a note at the end of the book, a disclaimer of sorts, wherein the author describes the nature of the book. He explains that it is “freely inspired” by certain events that happened in reality, but that “the rest – the narrator, his village, his sources, his characters – all the rest is nothing but impure fiction.”82
Amin Maalouf has chosen to split his novel containing his “impure fiction” into nine different chapters83;
or passages as the author calls them. Early on in the book, the author distinguishes the proper meaning behind his usage of the word passage:
“So passage is both a manifest sign of fate – an intrusion which can be cruel, or ironic, or providential – and also a milestone, a stage in an exceptional existence. In this sense, the temptation of Lamia84 was, in the destiny of Tanios, the preliminary passage; one from which
all the others were to stem.”85
It is with this statement made by the author himself that we set upon our own journey of interpreting the story as a modern myth, set within the historical context of a collapsing empire and a nascent nation. I will deal with each passage in its own right. This will aid in understanding the flow of the novel due to changing historical and personal context, and the themes used by the author. I will attempt to weave the historical context and theoretical framework parallel to the story to illuminate these to the reader. The prologue will be dealt with prior to looking into the other parts, due to its importance as a reference to how the narrator has gone about finding out the things he learns in his search for answers concerning Tanios. As the narrator is incrementally introduced to new information through a selection of sources, we too as the readership are entertained to a similarly incremental increase of information with which to infer characteristics and relationships.
Prologue
The book begins with a short introduction of a village called Kfaryabda, of which the narrator is a native. He doesn’t speak of people or buildings at first, but of the rocks at the edge of the village which bear the names of animals and events. However, he distinguishes a sole rock jutting out of the side of the mountain as the only one bearing the name of a man, known as the rock of Tanios86. The narrator remembers the
warning he received as a child from his grandfather concerning that rock: “Any of the rocks, but never that one. … They nicknamed him Tanios-kishk87. He came and sat on that rock. He was never seen again.”88
82 Amin Maalouf, The Rock of Tanios (G. Braziller, 1994), 275. 83 And an introductory prologue.
84 The first chapter/passage of the book is called ‘The Temptation of Lamia’. Lamia was the wife of the sheikh’s
majordomo, Gerios.
85 Maalouf, The Rock of Tanios, 35.
86 Tanios is the Arabized version of Anthony/Antoine.
87 Kishk is a sort of food prepared in the Levantine region. Maalouf uses kishk (and other food sorts) in his novel to
portray people born as (probable) bastards of the sheikh in the story. The food refers to the recipes for which the mothers (which the sheikh seduces) are well known for.
17 The narrator recalls more of what his grandfather had said regarding this Tanios figure, launching us straight into the events of the novel:
“Tanios was the son of Lamia. You have surely heard of her. It was a very long time ago, long before I was born even, or before my own father’s birth. In those days the Pasha of Egypt was making war on the Turks and our ancestors suffered. Especially after the murder of the Patriarch. He was shot right here, on the outskirts of the village, with the English Consul’s gun...”89
The narrator informs us that Lamia, Tanios’ mother, was a beautiful woman in her time, and that even to this day people cat-call beautiful women in the area, not with whistles and sneers, but by murmuring “Lamia, Lamia…”. Her beauty is legendary, enough so that the narrator expresses his wish in having seen her go about her daily duties.
However, the narrator explains to his readership that the person which was able to tell him a great deal about Lamia and her son Tanios was his grandfather’s cousin, Gebrayel:
“It was owing to Gebrayel that I soon acquired the deep conviction that Tanios, over and above the myth, had been a creature of flesh and blood. The proofs came later, many years later. When, with the help of chance, I was finally able to lay my hands on authentic documents.”90
Analysis
It is here, so soon after being introduced to the first (and only oral) source of information regarding Tanios; Gebrayel, that we come into contact with the three written sources the narrator has managed to chance upon. Authors of two of the sources knew Tanios intimately; Nader the muleteer and Reverend Jeremy Stolton. Nader had kept a journal of sorts with philosophical conversations91 he had held with Tanios during his
short stays in the village of Kfaryabda. Reverend Stolton had kept yearbooks and journals from his time as a missionary and teacher in the Druze village of Sahlain, neighboring the Christian village of Kfaryabda where most of the story will take place; there he was a teacher and mentor to Tanios for his formative years as a young adult. Another one of the works was written a short time after the period in question, by a monk recording the “recent” history of the village of Kfaryabda around the turning of the 19th and 20th century;
“A Mountain Chronicle92”. This source is a mix of prosaic historical writings but includes the occasional
injection of lyricism and poetry by the monk.
Each time the narrator, from here on out, uses a different source in describing Tanios’ life, he will be jumping from one text-world to the next. Often it is solely a different characters experience, but there are also a few leaps in situational levels. With this I mean that some of the sources deal with the events as having happened at the personal, local/national or international levels. These world-switches are necessary because,
89 Ibid., 2. 90 Ibid., 3.
91 Nader’s book is called “Wisdom on Muleback”.
92 I will use “A Mountain Chronicle” as a name for this source by the Monk Elias, but the actual title given is much
18 obviously, Tanios’ life cannot be separated from the historical and contemporary context surrounding him, his parents, the sheikh, the villagers, other villages, European great-powers and so on.
The prologue ends with a confirmation from the narrator that his journey of discovery is only just beginning, and you as the reader are granted a front-seat in his endeavor in figuring out what is actually historical and what is myth.
First Passage: The Temptation of Lamia
“May the Almighty grant me His pardon for the hours and days that I am about to steal from the blessed time of prayer and reading the Holy Scriptures in order to write this imperfect history of the people of my region, my excuse being that not one of the minutes we live would have existed without the thousands of years which have preceded it since the Creation, and not one of our heart-beats would have been possible had it not been for the successive generations of ancestors, with their encounters, their promises, their hallowed unions, or even their temptation.”93
This is the preamble to “A Mountain Chronicle” by the monk Elias, one of the main sources used by the narrator. In between the religious symbolism, so clearly present, there are hints and foreshadowing of the events that will take place in the first passage, for it is in this chapter (prior to Tanios’ birth) that we are introduced properly to the village of Kfaryabda, and its inhabitants. The whole village falls under the command of the muqata’ji, Sheikh Francis, who we learn is a noble and just leader, but does have his own vices (concerning women). His dominion of roughly 300 households places him under the authority of the Emir of the Mountain, who in turn is watched with scrutiny by the Sublime Porte. In the following two decades, the Egyptians, under leadership of Mohammad Ali Pasha would invade (and annex) the region and place the Emir of the Mountain under their rule.
“No other hand had so much importance. The Hand of God and that of the Sultan dispensed only global calamities; it was the Sheikh’s hand which distributed daily misfortunes. And also occasional crumbs of happiness.”94
Communal loyalty was an important part of day to day life. The Sheikh had tremendous power at the local level. The monk Elias refers to the visits that town’s women were asked to make to the sheikh; and it is strongly hinted that these visits were of a sexual nature. The villagers accepted this behavior due to him being known to be a fair, good, and brave leader of the community; and often arranged for lighter taxations to be held over his village and even was allowed to lead his own men under their own banner in times of war, but they still looked down upon the obvious sexually-deviant vice. Children born of these affairs were often granted a nickname; which was based off of the foods the mother had cooked while “on duty” at the sheikh’s castle.
To return to the mythicized story behind Lamia’s 1001-nights-esque night with the sheikh; the sheikh had managed to lure her into his bedroom requesting fruits, and she obliged. Gebrayel describes the gown she wore and the platter of fruits she bore. The narrator, who is being told the story by Gebrayel, casts this whole recollection into doubt by irritating Gebrayel with constant questions:
19 - Narrator: “How can you know so many things? You never saw her!”
- Gebrayel: “If you don’t want to believe me, why are you questioning me?”95
The story progresses once more with great detail. Gebrayel notes the way the sheikh had tempted Lamia, but also the way that Lamia was displeased with Gerios, her husband, at the time. Either way, it is unclear whether any sexual acts were actually perpetrated between Lamia and the sheikh. Gebrayel leaves much to the imagination, which the narrator is clearly unhappy with, due to him wanting to learn more about Tanios’ beginnings.
Analysis
It is in this passage that we are introduced to the relationships present between many of the supporting characters, and of the way the village head’s96 complex leadership role, and local ambitions, are espoused
by the generation to follow. It is through these, sometimes extremely complex, loyalties that we come into contact with the villagers and their loyalty to Sheikh Francis. However, it is Lamia’s relationship with the sheikh that sets entire parts of the story in motion for us, prior to even knowing Tanios (-kishk). It shows the strange balancing act that takes place in this village, where the villagers are loyal to a good leader, but who also have to tolerate a certain amount of strange activity from him. “…the people of Kfaryabda considered their sheikh as the lesser of evils.”97
The narrator recounts the things Gebrayel has mentioned about the sheikh, concerning these extramarital visits performed by the towns-women. However, Gebrayel had focused on the event surrounding Lamia in an extremely positive manner, flaunting her dignity after having spoken of the other women in an ill manner. The relationship between Lamia and the Sheikh are told in a semi-mythical fashion. She was the only woman in the village that was able to cool the sheikh’s hot-headed nature while keeping her own dignity and calm in the process as well. Lamia, it is important to note, was married to the Sheikh’s majordomo Gerios, who was seen as a very timid yet honest and diligent servant to the sheikh. It is exactly this personality which allows some vagueness in the coming events, due to his characteristic mediocrity and tolerance, or even acceptation, of certain events to unfold; knowingly and unknowingly.
Gebrayel’s retelling of events sounds increasingly like a myth being retold, as he had undoubtedly heard it before in ages past by his own seniors. It also echoes certain tropes regarding the Virgin Mary; regarding her beauty, religious piety and other characteristics still cherished by Eastern Catholic communities. All of these aspects combined allow for the setting up of a foundational myth; concerning the community and Tanios himself.
Second Passage: The Summer of Locusts
The monk Elias describes the gravitas the birth, and naming, of Tanios had had on the village:
95 Ibid., 29.
20 “That day … the fate of everyone was inscribed and sealed; like a parchment that it only remained to unroll.”98
The narrator comments on the matter of naming the child that we would later know as Tanios, referring to the naming of sheikh Francis years prior to that. The sheikh had been named Francis (an uncharacteristic name for the Lebanon Mountains at the time), because of the French that had helped the sheikh’s family gain power in the early 16th century.99 We are told throughout the book that names are important factor in
recognizing someone’s origins, and that naming someone contrary to their cultural roots was seen as a bad omen. The reason I mention this is due to the situation the sheikh had put Gerios in upon hearing of the birth of Tanios. Sheikh Francis had suggested a name more accustomed to his family’s heritage, rather than the local village’s customs, when addressing his majordomo. Gerios, having been utterly confused by this, had at first accepted this, but later retracted his acceptance of the name. This was all done rather uneasily. The sheikh’s wife100 is, unsurprisingly, unabashedly opposed to these extramarital affairs Sheikh Francis
kept having, and with the allegations that Tanios is his son, she decides to break off the political marriage she’s part of. She leaves back to her own village where she gets her father, a sheikh of a small town; Great Jord, to intervene on her behalf when dealing with her husband. The sheikha demanded that Lamia and Tanios be removed from Sheikh Francis’ castle. This leads to a complicated discussion and arrangement between Sheikh Francis and the sheikh of the Great Jord, wherein Sheikh Francis finally convinces the Great Jord’s leader that Tanios is not his son.
After returning to his own village, Sheikh Francis is confronted by the wife of the priest101, who the sheikh
owed a favor, to truthfully answer the question of whether Tanios was or was not his son. The sheikh dared not be dishonest with the Khouriyya, and when the Khouriyya was asked later on what his answer had been, she adamantly replied stating that Tanios was not his son.
This chapter/passage borrows its name, “The Summer of Locusts”, from the events that were to follow. The sheikh of the Great Jord had brought a great host of his men to Kfaryabda, with the intention of abusing Sheikh Francis’ hospitality; seen as great hospitality was the norm between befriended, and loyal, sheikhs. The sheikh of the Great Jord had no intention of leaving the village unmolested, but without the standard destruction and pillaging that usually ensued with such feats. Treated as guests at first, his host of men drained most of the supplies from all of the houses during their prolonged stay, thereby incurring the anger of the villagers; who called them locusts. The villagers of Kfaryabda began to ridicule the locusts on anything that can generally be attributed to their, ever-so-slightly different, culture. This defiance had caused a great surge in loyalty to the sheikh and his majordomo, and de facto his son Tanios as well. It had also caused some great bad blood with one of Kfaryabda’s nearest Christian neighboring towns, the Great Jord.
98 Ibid., 39.
99 The name Francis is, naturally, derived from the country France. “If the explanations I have just given seem
necessary today, the villagers at that time would not have needed them.” Ibid., 40.
100 Who I have left out of the story till now due to her only having been a supporting character thus far.
101 It is not unheard of priests not being celibate in Mount Lebanon during those times. To this day it is a situation
21 Analysis
At the start pf this passage, it is just as unclear to the reader as it was to the villagers who the biological father of Tanios was from this moment on. Due to Gerios’ diligent loyalty he never had brought up the issue with his master the sheikh, and Lamia had always denied the allegations that the child was the sheikh’s. In addition to Gebrayel’s testimony, mostly story-telling if we are to believe the narrator, “A Mountain Chronicle” is used much more frequently to bring Tanios’ life into synchrony with events taking place at the local and international level. And even though the chronicle had been written nearly a century later, it contained (post-) prophetic statements, much like the citation given earlier, throughout its entirety. However, Gebrayel’s story and words are, as per usual, brought into question by the narrator; such as can be seen in this citation:
“Could the sheikh have lied, with his hand on the Holy Scriptures? I don’t think so. On the other hand, we have no way of confirming that the Khouriyya reported his words faithfully. She had promised to tell the village-folk only what she deemed necessary to tell them. Did they believe her? Perhaps not. But no one of them would have wished to doubt her word. Because of the Locusts…”102
According to the monk Elias;
“The villagers had set up this crime for which they were being punished, out of bravado, as an act of defiance, for which each of the protagonists was henceforth absolved and must be defended, be he the impudent lover, unfaithful wife or cuckold husband.”103
They had re-appropriated the negative things said about the newly born Tanios by the locusts, and pledged ever more loyalty to their own sheikh through the hardships. The elites of both towns ensured that the common villagers of Kfaryabda had to endure quite some suffering. However, the arrival and eventual departure of the Locusts had created quite a setting for Tanios to be born into. His birth was seen as an omen, and yet at the same time, promised so much more to come. If the ambiguous nature of his mother’s pregnancy was the actual start of the myth, his actual birth was only the second passage as Amin Maalouf ingeniously states.
Third Passage: Destiny from the Lips of a Fool
According to Nader’s writings, “Wisdom on Muleback”, Tanios only becomes aware of the dark history surrounding his birth and possible status as a bastard when he is taunted by the (literal) village idiot during some fooling around in the village square. The “fool” refers to Tanios as Tanios-kishk.104 It takes Tanios
some time to realize the gravity of the name-calling, and it is when he understands what it truly meant that he starts to distance himself from his family, and the villagers. In a bout of anger, Tanios walks out of town to deliberate on his own. He meets the outcast Roukoz, Sheikh Francis’ former majordomo, who had returned from a self-imposed exile after having had a falling out with the sheikh. Roukoz had managed to secure some holdings in the surrounding area due to his connection with the Emir of the Mountain and the
102 Maalouf, The Rock of Tanios, 52. 103 Ibid., 56.
22 Catholic Patriarch, both of which he was indebted to. The discussions the two had are paraphrased in “Wisdom on Muleback” after Tanios had discussed some of the ideas shared with Nader; such as abolishing the feudal system.
Shortly hereafter, Sheikh Francis’ wife died while living with her kin in the Great Jord105. Her death came
unexpectedly, yet many of the villagers felt little to no remorse for her due to the entire Locusts debacle, caused by her father and kin, years earlier. However, with her death the sheikh became the caretaker of his own son, Raad. Raad was of a similar age as Tanios, and had lived with his grandfather’s kin for years, and reminded the villagers of Kfaryabda of the locusts of the Great Jord daily with his slightly deviant customs and accent. “A Mountain Chronicle” cites some of the things said in disdain of Raad when he arrived:
“God only knows what is hidden behind that accent … and what ideas his mother has put into his head about the village.”106
Soon after the death of the sheikha, Said Beyk, a sheikh of the neighboring Druze village of Sahlain, came to give his condolences, and is accompanied by a British missionary. We learn through his interactions with Sheikh Francis that the two are good friends, in contrast to the sheikh’s other relations:
- Said Beyk: “Know that you have brothers at your side in your ordeal.”
- Sheikh Francis: “Since I have known you, Said Beyk, the word ‘neighbor’ has been more agreeable to my ears than the word ‘brother’.”
“Formulas, but not just formulas: the Sheikh had had nothing but trouble with his own kin, whereas there had been no cloud on his relations with his neighbor for twenty years.”107
It is with Said Beyk’s arrival that we also meet the British missionary, reverend Stolton. The reverend had been allowed to settle in the Druze village of Sahlain in order to start a school. We find out that Said Beyk’s visit had a two-fold reason; to give his condolences concerning the sheikha but also to ask whether Sheikh Francis would like to send his own son, Raad, and any others willing or wanting to the new school. Due to the Sheikh’s troubled relationship with the Patriarch, who openly supported Roukoz, the Sheikh’s opponent, an ultimatum was drawn and presented to the priest. If the Patriarch would come by Kfaryabda, and repair the social wounds created when the loyalties had been split, Sheikh Francis would not send his son to this “heretical” school.
Analysis
According to Campbell, we could perceive the start of this passage as Tanios’ “call to adventure”, even though it is more plausible to see it as a “withdrawal” to adventure. Tanios’ incidental attempts to forge a bond with Roukoz show the problems of what loyalty at the personal level can bring when confronted with the loyalties at a national level. Roukoz was considered an outlaw by the sheikh, however, due to Roukoz’s political stature, Sheikh Francis had become unable to inflict any harm or extract any reparations from him. This is the second time we notice the sheikh being shoehorned into an undesirable situation due to his loyalties to the same authorities; on a political and religious level.
105 She had never returned to Kfaryabda after the summer of locusts. 106 Maalouf, The Rock of Tanios, 76.
23 Due to the sheikh’s old age, many of the villagers were uneasy about Raad’s presence in their village due to him possibly being able to take over the leadership of the village if anything happened to Francis. Sheikh Francis was also taking the possibility into account because he began to train him in the matters of village-affairs and local-politics. Raad’s role in the Tanios storyline begins to form as a clear antagonist during Tanios’ formative years; and is often the driving force for Tanios’ retreat from his own community. The entry of the British reverend into the story mirrors historically accurate events that took place along Mount Lebanon during the 1820s and 30s, as mentioned earlier. In addition, and something that is also historically accurate, the priest of Kfaryabda protests to the reverend being in the village and attempts to dissuade the sheikh from sending his some to a “heretic”. It is through connective features such as these that we can incrementally be led to the setting completely, in a believable fashion.
The sheikh’s attempt to push the patriarch into correcting his earlier hierarchical faux-pas shows that it is through these small political games and bluffs being played between the Christian communities that we come to recognize the problems of the communal loyalties developing in Mount Lebanon. Not all village leaders were able to show complete, unwavering, loyalty to religious authorities, due to the deterioration of their own power.
Fourth Passage: The English Clergyman’s School
As Sheikh Francis had expected with his bluff, the priest’s request to the Patriarch was not heard, and thus Sheikh Francis had reason enough to put the blame on his political opponent the Patriarch so as to send his son to the school. Accompanying his son would be Tanios, who since meeting Roukoz, and having regular conversations with Nader, both being outcasts in their own way, had greatly looked forward to learning more from a proper teacher. After having heard the reverend promise that no proselytization would take place at the school, the sheikh gave the go-ahead and both boys were sent off to the neighboring village daily.
The narrator switches sources to discuss the situation at the school. He refers to the yearbooks and journals left behind by reverend Stolton, who we find out is not only a missionary but also an agent for the British crown. He had been tasked to influence the Druze population through simple acts of goodwill and setting up a school. It is also through his correspondence with the British consuls that we find out that he has enormous respect for Tanios as a student, but that Raad does not seem to be a valuable student. However, Stolton would not dare expel Raad because of his status as the son of a sheikh, who the British are hoping to influence as well. The narrator slowly comes to a better understanding of this situation through some searching:
24 which was to stretch from the Balkan to the sources of the Nile, thus controlling the route to India.”108
The narrator refers to a statement made in “A Mountain Chronicle” concerning the interest in the region at the time:
“The Mountain folk were flattered. And when they understood, a little later, that the French and English were waging war on their land, so as not to have to fight each other directly, they were more flattered than ever. A destructive privilege, but a privilege all the same.”109
According to the narrator, “A Mountain Chronicle” speaks of a visit by the English Consul, Richard Wood110, where he brought gifts for Sheikh Francis and his son Raad, in order to woo them into British
embrace. According to reverend Stolton’s correspondence, amongst the gifts was an ornate hunting rifle and a lump sum of money with which to pay the newly raised Egyptian taxes. The rifle becomes a literal Chekov’s gun while the money aids in delaying the problems between the sheikh and his direct superior, the Emir of the Mountain. Later, when the priest refused to allow “the Englishman” into the church for mass, we find out that the British had actually sent a Catholic Irishman. This granted the British much praise and the Mountain folk’s admiration.
With the French becoming aware of the situation, and the Patriarch choosing to ally himself with the Emir even further, action was deemed necessary to break the bonds between Sheikh Francis and the British Consul. The Patriarch had devised a plan with which to encourage the sheikh’s son Raad, through the use of religious metaphors, to “destroy the house of Satan” or in other words, the English school. “They do not know that in you is concealed the knight who is the instrument of their punishment,” said the patriarch when discussing the future with Raad. It becomes apparent from reverend Stolton’s journals that he had a troubled time making sure that Raad did not shame him and his wife in the process of “destroying the house of Satan”, whereby Raad went about destroying the garden and irritating Stolton’s wife. The reverend questions his approach on the situation, and writes: “So to betray his mission as a teacher, so as not to betray the interests of the Crown?” It is clear that there were plans being made around the total immersion of Raad into the British grasp so as to aid in the future rebellion.
After the situation concerning Raad had flared up, Sheikh Francis had chosen to retract his son from the school, and by proxy remove Tanios as well. This was done so that the sheikh and the patriarch could reconcile their differences, whereby the patriarch promised support to Kfaryabda once again. The friendship with the English was becoming burdensome for the sheikh, as he was losing credibility amongst the other leaders at the regional level, except naturally with his Druze neighbors. With his forced return to Kfaryabda, Tanios went into a self-induced state of stupor, refusing to drink, eat or talk anymore. When all hope was lost by Lamia and Gerios, the Khouriyya took Tanios back to reverend Stolton and dropped him off there to be taken care of once again.
108 Ibid., 95. 109 Ibid., 96–97.
25 Analysis
The narrator is confused with the situation concerning the schooling of the boys, and the interest this poses for the European great powers at first, as he speaks to the reader directly questioning the situation. These rhetorical situations do bring up a regular world-switch; in which the readership is plausibly engaged. Due to the Mountain’s location, between Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, it became a very important piece of territory to control. Britain could not, and would not, see a strong Egypt taking over the region due to its control over India, while the French were all too happy to aid Mohammad Ali Pasha in furthering their own goals in the region, and countering those of Britain. We learn that the Emir of the Mountain had sided with the Egyptian Viceroy because he was unable to pose any resistance to the Pasha’s forces, and had thus turned his back on his superior, the Sultan. Meanwhile, the British were drawing up plans for instigating rebellions in the mountainous region. The Druze, who had already as a community been slighted by the Pasha and the Emir, were easily roused, but they required the aid of the Christians, who were the clear majority in the region. It is for this reason that the presence of two Catholic pupils at a British school in a Druze village became such important actors on the international stage all of a sudden. If we are to believe the story, this shows a rare, and supremely beautiful, move on the part of the British in their attempts to woo the (majority) catholic mountain folk along Mount Lebanon.
The renewal of the sheikh’s and patriarch’s allegiance to the Emir of the Mountain, and de facto to the Egyptian occupiers as well, show an important switch. This mirrors the historical situation wherein the balance of power had tilted completely to the Egyptian side at the time. However, this historical situation leads up nicely to Tanios’ myth-in-the-making. Tanios is still within the stage of departure here according to Campbell, because he has yet to actually start on the quest which will come. He is busy crossing the threshold of his world, while all around him local and international powers scheme and ignore his agency as a person among the mountain-folk.
Fifth Passage: ‘Old Head’
The strength of the myth starting to crystalize around Tanios becomes ever more apparent physically when his hair starts turning white while living with the Stoltons. Reverend Stolton recalls the situation in the yearbook of 1836:
“In less than a month, the head of this fifteen-year-old youth was as white as that of an old man. I do not know if this extraordinary event can be explained by the ordeal of starvation that he had inflicted on himself, or by some other natural cause. But the local people saw in this a sign, for Tanios himself and possibly for the whole region. A good or bad omen? There was no agreement on this point.”111
He went as far as to refer to local myths, and foreshadows the coming events along the Lebanon Mountains: “This superstitious belief had, it seems, quite contradictory interpretations, to which I prefer to lend but half an ear. However, I thought I understood that there existed in this corner of the Mountains a legend concerning persons whose hair is prematurely white, namely that such
