History of Eastern Families, Vol. 4: Mount Lebanon — Metn, Baabda & Chouf

The Metn district, stretching from the coastal hills above Beirut to the mountain peaks at Sannine, is documented as the most confessionally diverse region of Mount Lebanon. Al-Maalouf records Maronite, Orthodox, Catholic, and Armenian families living in close proximity, their interconnected genealogies reflecting centuries of migration, intermarriage, and sectarian coexistence at the heart of the Mountain.

Baabda, as the administrative capital of the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifiyya from 1861, occupies a unique position in the volume. Al-Maalouf documents both the families of the traditional mountain villages and those drawn to the district by its role as the seat of government, creating a portrait of the administrative class that governed Mount Lebanon in its final Ottoman decades.

The Chouf, with its layered Druze-Maronite history, receives extensive treatment as the political heartland of Mount Lebanon. Al-Maalouf documents the great Druze feudal houses — Jumblatt, Arslan, Talhuq — alongside the Christian families who shared the Mountain's villages, providing genealogical depth to the political narratives of the Ma'nid and Shihabi eras. The section implicitly records the demographic transformation wrought by the 1860 civil war, as families documented in the Chouf reappear in the Metn, Baabda, and Beirut sections of other volumes.