Lebanon’s eternal Tuscany: Ottoman enough to survive, Western enough to thrive

Lebanon has always been at its most creative when cornered by empires. In the 1600s, Emir Fakhr al-Din kept one foot in Istanbul and another in Tuscany, dreaming of a mountain principality just autonomous enough to flirt with the West while still nominally Ottoman. Two centuries later, Emir Bashir Shihab perfected the balancing act: formally the Sultan’s loyal servant, privately leaning on European envoys and, eventually, tilting decisively toward his Maronite allies. Both men understood the Lebanese formula: Ottoman enough to survive, Western enough to thrive.

That formula never disappeared. It simply adapted to the hegemon of the day. Where Din dodged the Ottomans, Kamal Joumblatt sparred with Baathist Syria. Where Bashir Shihab was quietly both a Druze and a Maronite, Bashir Gemayel loudly turned to Washington and more. Rafik Hariri, with his Saudi billions and French connections, tried to make Lebanon the Paris of the East again, even under the shadow of Damascus. And Imam Musa Sadr, charismatic and pragmatic, played the Shiite community out of centuries of marginalization by speaking simultaneously to Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the Vatican — while insisting the Shiite belonged fully in the Lebanese pact.

Each of these figures, like their predecessors, rose by performing the same delicate choreography: embrace just enough of the dominant empire to avoid destruction, while cultivating Western patrons to give Lebanon room to breathe. Din wrote letters to Tuscany; Hariri wrote checks in Paris. Shihab entertained Austrian and French envoys in Deir al-Qamar; Gemayel posed with American emissaries in Beirut. The vocabulary changes — firman becomes fatwa, Ottoman garrison becomes Syrian checkpoint, Tuscan cannons and architects became U.S. sanctions, Starlinks and AUB — but the Lebanese script is remarkably consistent.

What unites these episodes is not so much independence in the modern sense as independence-as-performance. Lebanon has never overthrown its hegemon outright. Perhaps we can “until now.” The Ottomans crushed Din; the Syrians assassinated Gemayel and Joumblatt; the Persians today loom over Hezbollah and the political order it anchors. But Lebanon has always managed to insist on a separate voice, a mountain stubbornness and a political style that translates subjugation into a brand of independence.

This is why modern Lebanese Christians and Druze once again find themselves sounding eerily like their ancestors. Where Din and Shihab allied with Tuscany, today’s independents look to Washington, Paris or Rome. The Ottomans have been replaced by Islamist Persians, the Syrians by militias and mukhabarat (intelligence) networks. Yet the instinct is unchanged: survival through balancing, identity through paradox.

Lebanon’s eternal Tuscany, then, is not a place but a strategy — a recurring belief defining us all for centuries that Western values can shield a mountain people from Eastern empires. Ottoman enough to survive, Western enough to thrive — perhaps Lebanon’s destiny is not to escape empires, but to outlast them with style.

Lebanon, your time as a modern state may be here for the first time in many generations. Rise up, and make it happen.

Jack Tohmé M.D.

Consulting Endocrinologist

Former faculty at AUB and Columbia University

The views expressed in “The Inbox” belong to their respective author, not L’Orient Today. This is your space to weigh in on the issues that matter to you — we just ask that you keep things respectful and steer clear of defamation, hate speech or offensive language. 

Got something to say? We’d love to read it — send your submission to editor@lorientlejour.com.