Mardaites

Marada was a group of independent communities in Lebanon and the surrounding highlands following the conquest of Syria by the Arab caliphs in the 630 model - years.

While some historians argue that the Marada "states" formed, led by a Maronite Aramaic- speaking Christian warrior elite, the Mardaiten, other historians tend to downplay their relevance and to describe a more complex scenario. Shards of Christian Aramaic tribal groups managed to obtain in the rugged hinterland of the Mount Lebanon coastal range of a relative autonomy, which was the borderline between the Umayyad and then the Byzantines. The Byzantine expansion 985-1025 caused the immigration of the Maronites from the Orontes valley into the northern part of Mount Lebanon, mainly in the area of ​​Wadi Qadischa. The Maronite groups settled there as a federation of tribal clans with the Patriarch as their leader.

During the Lebanese civil war was called one of the Maronite militias " Marada Brigade ".

Credentials

• Phares, Walid. Lebanese Christian Nationalism: The Rise and Fall of an Ethnic Resistance. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1995.
• Salibi, Kamal. A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered, London: IB Tauris, 1988.
• Salibi, Kamal. Maronite Historians of Medieval Lebanon, Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1959.
• Salibi, Kamal. The Modern History of Lebanon, Delmar: Caravan Books, 1977.

• History of Lebanon