Fakhr al-Din Ma'n (Arabic: فَخْر ٱلدِّين مَعْن, romanized: Fakhr al-Dīn Maʿn; 6 August 1572 – 13 April 1635), commonly known as Fakhr al-Din II or Fakhreddine II (Arabic: فخر الدين الثاني, romanized: Fakhr al-Dīn al-Thānī), was the paramount Druze emir of Mount Lebanon from the Ma'n dynasty, an Ottoman governor of Sidon-Beirut and Safed, and ruler over much of the Levant from the 1620s to 1633. For uniting modern Lebanon's constituent parts and communities, especially the Druze and the Maronites, under a single authority for the first time in history, he is generally regarded as the country's founder. Although he ruled in the name of the Ottomans, he acted with considerable autonomy and developed close ties with European powers in defiance of the Ottoman imperial government.
Fakhr al-Din succeeded his father as the emir of the Chouf mountains in 1591. He was appointed over the sanjaks (districts) of Sidon-Beirut in 1593 and Safed in 1602. Despite joining the rebellion of Ali Janbulad in 1606, Fakhr al-Din remained in his post and the Ottomans recognized his takeover of the Keserwan mountains from his rival Yusuf Sayfa. Seven years later, an imperial campaign was launched against him for allying with Tuscany and garrisoning the strategic fortresses of Shaqif Arnun and Subayba. He escaped and became an exile in Tuscany and Sicily. Upon his return in 1618, he resumed control of his former domains and within three years took over predominantly Maronite northern Mount Lebanon.
After Fakhr al-Din routed the governor of Damascus at the Battle of Anjar in 1623, he extended his control to the Beqaa Valley, the stronghold of his rivals, the Harfush dynasty. Fakhr al-Din proceeded to capture fortresses across central Syria, gained practical control of Tripoli and its eyalet, and acquired tax farms as far north as Latakia. Although he frequently attained government favor by timely forwarding of tax revenue, bribing officials, and using opportunities of mutual interest to eliminate local rivals, his outsized power and autonomy were considered a rebellion by the imperial government. A near-contemporary historian remarked that "the only thing left for him to do was to claim the Sultanate". He surrendered to the Ottomans during a siege of his Chouf hideout in 1633 and was executed in Constantinople two years later. In 1697 Fakhr al-Din's grandnephew was awarded a tax farm spanning southern Mount Lebanon. It was gradually expanded by the Ma'ns' marital relatives, the Shihabs, in 1711, and was a precursor to the Lebanese Republic.
According to the historian Kamal Salibi, Fakhr al-Din "combined military skill and eminent qualities of leadership with a keen business acumen and unusual powers of observation". During a period when the empire was in a long economic crisis, Fakhr al-Din's territories thrived, and Sidon in particular attained political significance for the first time in its modern history. He protected, promoted, and helped modernize commercial agriculture in his domains, inaugurating the lucrative silk trade of Mount Lebanon. By opening his port towns for European commerce, he facilitated the most significant European political and economic penetration of the Levantine coast since the 13th century. Fakhr al-Din's wealth, derived mainly from his tax farms, but also from extortion and counterfeiting, enabled him to invest in the fortifications and infrastructure needed to foster stability, order, and economic growth.
His building works included palatial government houses in Sidon, Beirut and his Chouf stronghold of Deir al-Qamar, caravanserais, bathhouses, mills, and bridges, some of which remain extant. Tax farming financed his army of sekban mercenaries, which after 1623 mostly replaced the local peasant levies on which he previously depended. Christians prospered and played key roles under his rule, with his main enduring legacy being the symbiotic relationship he set in motion between Maronites and Druze, which proved foundational for the creation of a Lebanese entity.
Fakhr al-Din was born c. 1572, the eldest of at least two sons of Qurqumaz ibn Yunus, the other son being Yunus. They belonged to the Ma'n dynasty, a Druze family of Arab stock established in the Chouf area of southern Mount Lebanon from before the Ottoman conquest of the Levant in 1516; traditional accounts date their arrival in the Chouf to 1120. The Chouf was administratively divided into a number of nahiyas (subdistricts). They were part of the Sidon Sanjak, a district of Damascus Eyalet. The Chouf, together with the neighboring mountainous nahiyas of the Gharb, the Jurd and the Matn, all south or east of Beirut, were commonly referred to in contemporary sources as "the Druze Mountain" due to their predominantly Druze population.
Like other Ma'nids before him, Qurqumaz was a muqaddam, a local rural chieftain in charge of a small area. He was also a multazim—a holder of a limited-term tax farm known as an iltizam—over all or part of the Chouf. He was referred to as 'emir' by local chroniclers, but the title reflected the traditional prominence of his family in the community and was not an official rank. Fakhr al-Din's mother, Sitt Nasab, belonged to the Tanukh, a princely Druze family established in the Gharb from at least the 12th century. In the words of the historian Kamal Salibi, Fakhr al-Din's paternal ancestors "were the traditional chieftains of the hardy Druzes" of the Chouf, and his maternal kinsmen "were well acquainted with commercial enterprise" in Beirut (see family tree below).
The Druze were officially considered Muslims by the Ottomans for taxation purposes, though they were not viewed as genuine Muslims by the authorities. Members of the community had to pretend to be of the Sunni Muslim creed to attain any official post, were occasionally forced to pay the poll tax known as jizya which was reserved for Christians and Jews, and were the target of condemnatory treatises and fatwas (religious edicts). In countering their incorporation into the Ottoman administrative and fiscal system, the Druze benefited from their rugged terrain and stockpiles of muskets, making it difficult to impose Ottoman authority in the Druze Mountain. Ottoman efforts to tax and disarm the Druze manifested in a series of punitive expeditions between 1523 and 1585. During the summer 1585 expedition, hundreds of Druze elders were slain by the vizier Ibrahim Pasha and the Bedouin chief Mansur ibn Furaykh of the Beqaa Valley, and thousands of muskets were confiscated. Qurqumaz refused to surrender and died in hiding shortly after the expedition.
The period between Qurqumaz's death and Fakhr al-Din's emergence in local politics is obscure. According to the historian William Harris, the chiefs of the Druze, "long disobedient and fractious, again became ungovernable" after Qurqumaz's death. The 17th-century historian and Maronite patriarch Istifan al-Duwayhi, who was an associate of the Ma'n, holds that Fakhr al-Din and Yunus were afterward taken in by their maternal uncle Sayf al-Din, the Tanukhid chief of Abeih in the Gharb, for about six years.
Most contemporary descriptions of Fakhr al-Din's appearance note his small stature. He had an olive complexion, a ruddy face, and black eyes, described as "brilliant" by Eugène Roger, a Nazareth-based Franciscan who served as Fakhr al-Din's physician in 1632–1633. His practical court historian, Ahmad al-Khalidi, referred to him as latif al-hamah, roughly translating as 'one with a kind face'. The French consul in Sidon and traveler Chevalier d'Arvieux commented on his appearance:
Fakhr al-Din was of mediocre height, brown in face; he had a colored complexion, large eyes full of fire, an aquiline nose, a small mouth, white teeth, a beautiful face, a chestnut-blond beard, a very majestic air, of wit infinitely male and a harmonious voice.
According to Harris, the English traveler George Sandys, a contemporary of Fakhr al-Din, offered the "best description" of his personality, calling him "great in courage and achievements ... subtle as a fox, and a not a little inclining to the Tyrant [Ottoman sultan]". Sandys further noted that he was "never known to pray, nor ever seen in a mosque" and only made major decisions after consulting his mother. Roger remarked that he had "invincible courage" and was "learned in astrology and physiognomy".