Druze
Qaysites and the Yemenites

The conquest of Syria by the Muslim Arabs in the middle of the seventh century introduced into the land two political factions later called the Qaysites and the Yemenites. The Qaysite party represented the Bedouin Arabs who were regarded as inferior by the Yemenites who were earlier and more cultured emigrants into Syria from southern Arabia. Druze and Christians grouped in political, rather than religious, parties; the party lines in Lebanon obliterated ethnic and religious lines and the people grouped themselves into one or the other of these two parties regardless of their religious affiliations. The sanguinary feuds between these two factions depleted, in course of time, the manhood of the Lebanon and ended in the decisive battle of Ain Dara in 1711, which resulted in the utter defeat of the Yemenite party. Many Yemenite Druze thereupon migrated to the Hauran region, laying the foundation of Druze power there.

The Qays were led by Emir Haydar of the Shihab dynasty and consisted of the Druze clans of Jumblatt, Talhuq, Imad and Abd al-Malik and the Maronite clan of Khazen. The Yamani faction was led by Mahmoud Abu Harmoush and consisted of the Druze Alam al-Din, Arslan and Sawaf clans. The Yamani faction also had backing from the Ottoman provincial authorities of Sidon and Damascus. The battle ended in a rout of the Yamani faction and resulted in the consolidation of Qaysi political and fiscal domination over Mount Lebanon. The battle's outcome also precipitated a mass migration of pro-Yamani Druze nobility and peasants from Mount Lebanon to the eastern Hauran, in a mountainous area today known as Jabal al-Druze. This area had seen previous waves of Druze migration starting in 1685. Consequently, the Maronite Christian population in Mount Lebanon became the dominant group. The Yamani Druze exodus significantly contributed to a demographic shift in Mount Lebanon, with Maronites and other Christians, namely from the Greek Orthodox and Melkite sects, making up a large share of the population at the expense of the Druze.
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