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Conflict on Mount
Lebanon
The Druze, the Maronites and
Collective Memory

MAKRAM RABAH

ALTERNATIVE HISTORIES: NARRATIVES FROM THE MIDDLE EAST AND MEDITERRANEAN

 CONFLICT ON
MOUNT LEBANON
Alternative Histories: Narratives from the Middle East and Mediterranean

Series Editor: Sargon Donabed

This series provides a forum for exchange on a myriad of alternative histories

of ­marginalised communities and individuals in the Near and Middle East and
Mediterranean, and those of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean heritage. It also high­
lights thematic issues relating to various native peoples and their narratives and – with
particular contemporary relevance – explore encounters with the notion of ‘other’
within societies. Often moving beyond the conventional state-centred and dominant
monolithic approach, or reinterpreting previously accepted stories, books in the
series examine and explain themes from inter-communal relations, environment,
health and society, and explore ethnic, communal, racial, linguistic and r­eligious
developments, in addition to geopolitics.

Editorial Advisory Board

Professor Ali Banuazizi

Dr Aryo Makko
Professor Laura Robson
Professor Paul Rowe
Professor Hannibal Travis

Books in the Series (Published and Forthcoming)

Sayfo: An Account of the Assyrian Genocide
‘Abd al-Masih Nu‘man of Qarabash
translated and annotated by Michael Abdalla and Łukasz Kiczko
Tunisia’s Andalusians: The Cultural Identity of a North African Minority
Marta Dominguez Diaz
Palestinian Citizens of Israel: A History Through Fiction, 1948–2010
Manar Makhoul
Armenians Beyond Diaspora: Making Lebanon their Own
Tsolin Nalbantian
Conflict on Mount Lebanon: The Druze, the Maronites and Collective Memory
Makram Rabah
The Art of Minorities: Cultural Representation in Museums of the Middle East and
North Africa
Edited by Virginie Rey
Shi‘a Minorities in the Contemporary World: Migration, Transnationalism and
Multilocality
Edited by Oliver Scharbrodt and Yafa Shanneik
Protestants, Gender and the Arab Renaissance in Late Ottoman Syria
Deanna Ferree Womack

www.edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/ahnme
 CONFLICT ON
MOUNT LEBANON
THE DRUZE, THE MARONITES AND
COLLECTIVE MEMORY

Makram Rabah
Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish
academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social
sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to
produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website:
edinburghuniversitypress.com

© Makram Rabah, 2020

Edinburgh University Press Ltd

The Tun – Holyrood Road
12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry
Edinburgh EH8 8PJ

Typeset in 11/15 Adobe Garamond by

Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire,
and printed and bound in Great Britain

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 4744 7417 7 (hardback)

ISBN 978 1 4744 7419 1 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 1 4744 7420 7 (epub)

The right of the contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and
Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
 CONTENTS

List of Figures viii

Note on Transliteration and Style xi
Acknowledgements xii
Map: Operation Peace for Gallilee xviii

Introduction 1

1 Studying the Druze–Maronite Conflict through the Prism of

Collective Memory and Oral History 7
History vs Memory 9
Sources and Methodology of Oral History 11
Paul Andary Shot Twice 13
The Curious Case of Ghanam Tarabay 16
The Trope of Oral History 20
The Shah of Ba‘abda Meets Salazar 21
Bashir: The Series 24
The Progressive Socalist Party’s Oral History Project 25
The Council for Druze Studies and Development 27
The Permanent Bureau for Druze Associations 28
 vi | conf li ct on mou nt l e b a n o n

2 The Druze and the Maronites: Perceptions of the Other 35

The Druze: Frontier Warriors and Feudal Lords 36
Unity in Variety 43
A Recipe for Disaster 45
Emir Bashir vs Sheikh Bashir 47
The Maronites: Lebanon, a Refuge 51
The Maronites Go West 55
The Maronites and the Eastern Question 58
The Birth of the Lebanese Nation 63

3 The Communal Centres of Power and Elements of Collective

Identity 77
The Custodians of Identity 79
The Warrior Monks 82
The Kaslik Research Committee 86
The Kataeb: In the Service of Lebanon 91
The Druze Way 94
Lost Druze History 96
Druze: Blood Brothers across Generations 98
O Brother, Where Art Thou? 101
Wise vs Ignorant 102
Druze Oneness through Time and Space 106
Progressive Socialism Meets the Druze 108
The ‘1958 Generation’ 114
The Slaying of Na‘im Moghabghab 119

4 The Road to Conflict 130

Harb al-Jabal: 1982–3 130
The Rise of Bashir Gemayel 136
Unity at Gunpoint 139
Zahle: Victory in Defeat 143
The Alliance of Minorities Resurrected 147
The Likud Party and Bashir 149
The End of the Affair: The Killing of Kamal Joumblatt 151
Preparing for War 153
The Missed Opportunity 155
Crossing the Rubicon: Operation Snowball 160
 contents  | vii

5 The Point of No Return 167

Reclaiming our Rightful Place 168
Bashir vs Walid 174
The Battle of Qoubbei‘ al-Krayeh: The First Spark 176
You’re Back? . . . We Have to Fight 178
The Assassination of Bashir 186
Long Live the King 190

6 The War of Others vs Druze–Maronite Collective Animosity 198

The Israeli Tide Shifts 198
The Druze Follow-up Commission 201
The Unification of the Druze 210
The Battle of Mtolleh 219

7 History Meets the Battlefield 230

The Maronite Via Dolorosa 230
General Beaufort Resurrected 232
The Faustian Deal Revoked 234
The Druze Canton 235
Israel Exits the Inferno 237
The Lebanese Army: One Last Try 240
The Battle of Bhamdoun 243
The Siege of Deir al-Qamar 252
The Maronite Exodus 254

8 Post-conflict Rehashing and the Preservation of Collective

Memory 262
Collecting the Collective 262
The Story of a Hero Called Charbel 263
Zajal Harb al-Jabal 276
Bashir . . . We have Returned 284

Conclusion 291
Post-war Lebanon: The Quest for Reconciliation 291

Appendix: Table of Interviews 301

Bibliography 303
Index 314
 FIGURES

1.1 Paul Andary 14

1.2 Ghanem Tarabay holding the PSP banner at a local rally 17
1.3 PSP credential of Ghanem Tarabay 19
3.1 Jocelyn Khoueiry 85
3.2 Bashir Gemayel greeting Bulus Na‘aman 87
3.3 Pierre Gemayel, founder of al-Kataeb, surrounded by members
of his party 92
3.4 Al-Kataeb parade, 1937 93
3.5 Sheikh al-‘Aql Muhammad Abu-Shaqra of the Joumblatti
faction Kamal Joumblatt and Sheikh al-‘Aql Ali Abdul Latif of
the Yazbaki faction 104
3.6 PSP rally in Barouk, March 1951 109
3.7 Unveiling of the statue of Fakhr al-Din in Baakline 111
3.8 Kamal Joumblatt in his home in Moukhtara 114
3.9 Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the PLO, with Kamal Joumblatt 115
3.10 Kamal Joumblatt with his rebel fighters in Moukhtara, 1958 118
3.11 Majid Arslan and Na‘im Moghabghab 121
3.12 Zalfa Chamoun, Camille Chamoun, Majid Arslan and Na‘im
Moghabghab 122
 f i g ures  | ix

4.1 Kamal Joumblatt with his driver and bodyguard 133

4.2 Kamal Jumblatt’s car riddled with bullet holes 134
4.3 Walid Joumblatt at the funeral of his father 135
4.4 Kamal Joumblatt identity cards and a picture of his son,
damaged by bullets 135
4.5 Bashir Gemayel 138
4.6 Walid Joumblatt 140
4.7 Bashir Gemayel, Camille Chamoun and Pierre Gemayel 141
4.8 Returning from Zahle 146
4.9 Ariel Sharon, Bashir Gemayel and Lieutenant General Rafael
Eitan 150
4.10 Bashir Gemayel meeting with Lieutenant General Rafael Eitan 151
4.11 Assad to Joumblatt: ‘How much you resemble your father!’ 153
4.12 PSP cadets at the military academy, 1978 156
4.13 Sharon to Bashir: ‘We rearrange the northern border by
launching a major military operation . . .’ 162
5.1 Naji Butrus addressing his troops before their Shuf incursion 169
5.2 Bashir Gemayel, President Elias Sarkis and Walid Joumblatt 175
5.3 The first and only meeting between Bashir Gemayel and Walid
Joumblatt 175
5.4 Massoud ‘Poussy’ Achkar and Fadi Frem 180
5.5 The Beirut Defense Unit 180
5.6 Mir Majid welcoming Bashir Gemayel into his home in Aley 184
5.7 Faisal Arslan, Bashir’s Druze partner 184
5.8 Charles Malik, Bashir Gemayel and Faisal Arslan, following the
tallying of votes 185
5.9 Bashir Gemayel in his last photograph, at the Monastery of the
Holy Cross 188
5.10 Amin Gemayel, Pierre Gemayel and Bashir Gemayel 192
6.1 Farid Hamada 209
6.2 Akram Shehayab, Anwar al-Fatayri, Raja Harb, Sharif Fayyad
and Hisham Nasreddine 214
6.3 Fouad Abu-Nadir 220
6.4 The al-Saddam unit, fashioned after the elite Israeli unit Sayeret
Matkal 221
 x | conf li ct on moun t l e b a no n

7.1 PSP map of the Battle of Bhamdoun 246

7.2 PSP tanks rolling into Bhamdoun, 3 September 1983 246
7.3 LF fighters manning a 14.5 anti-aircraft gun 247
7.4 LF Infantry heading into battle 247
7.5 Druze sheikh working his land armed with an AK-47 248
7.6 LF fighter praying to a statute of St Charbel 249
7.7 Druze cleric fighting with the Quwwat Abu-Ibrahim 257
8.1 Charbel addresses priest who resembles Abbot Bulus Na‘aman 265
8.2 Keyrouz Barkat receiving the Medal of Zahle 267
8.3 Charbel is studying history when his comrade calls him:
‘Charbel, come on . . .’ 268
8.4 Comrade: ‘Brother, put aside the history books . . .’ 269
8.5 ‘Any gun that is yielded by a non-believer . . .’ 270
8.6 Scenes from different episodes of The Story of Charbel 271
8.7 The killer and the warrior 272
8.8 Bashir Gemayel visiting the front lines 273
8.9 Medal of the Mountain, issued by the LF in 1983 274
8.10 Taleh Hamdan, with the PSP flag and pictures 280
8.11 ‘Son of the Mountains’ 283
8.12 Walid Joumblatt saluting his troops 286
8.13 Walid Joumblatt lighting the torch 286
8.14 Walid Joumblatt flanked by Raja Harb, Anwar al-Fatayri and
Sharif Fayyad 287
8.15 ‘Bashir . . . We have returned’ 288
 NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION
AND STYLE

For Arabic-language transcription, I have relied on the style guide of the

International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES). The names of places
and people will therefore lack diacritical marks except hamza and cayn. For
citation purposes, I have followed the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition.
In many cases, I have deliberately deviated from the IJMES transliteration
system and followed the names as used by their owners, such as Joumblatt
instead of Junblatt, while I have utilised the common usage assigned by the
Lebanese government to place names.

xi
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Journeys, at least the ones worthwhile, are seldom ones which are taken
alone.
First and foremost, my late Mou‘allam Kamal Salibi whom we lost in
September 2011 was with me every step of the way, even after he departed.
Each time I sat down to write or edit, his voice would accompany me, criti­
cising, suggesting or praising, as he had done while I sat at his dining table
writing my Master’s thesis.
For me and many others, Kamal Salibi was not merely a teacher, but also
an inspiration as well as a model of how one should always question many of
the essential truths we take for granted. The many hours I have spent in his
home and on his balcony, I hope, have made me a better person and put me
on a path towards intellectual discovery.
Over my brief career, I have received a number of titles and degrees, but
perhaps the one I cherish most was given to me by Salibi, as he used to refer
to me as his grand-student, having studied under his star pupil, my mentor
and friend Abdul Rahim Abu-Husayn. From the first day I met Prof. Abu-
Husayn at the door of College Hall, he granted me all the privileges of a son.
His many fatherly reprimands throughout the years were a constant reminder
to never allow my activist lifestyle to interfere with my academic progress.

xii
 ack nowledg ements | xiii

Perhaps more importantly, Prof. Abu-Husayn, as the primary authority on

Ottoman Lebanon, has provided the field with many of the building blocks
that shape my current study and helped develop the revisionist school of
Lebanese history, to which I proudly belong.
My gratitude also goes out to my thesis adviser and mentor at Georgetown
University, Prof. Osama Abi-Mershid, who nurtured me throughout my
years on the hilltop. Since my first visit to his office, Prof. Abi-Mershid’s
door has always been open to me, despite his busy schedule and his many
responsibilities. His course suggestions and recommendations outside my
field of study have enriched my knowledge and opened up many comparative
fields where I would not have ventured on my own.
Special thanks go to Prof. Yvonne Haddad who so kindly accepted to
serve on my thesis committee and whose comments and feedback have sig­
nificantly enriched my study.
Fourteen years ago, I was offered a position as research assistant for an
American professor from Boston, writing a book about the history of AUB.
Little did I know that my encounter with Betty Anderson would lead to
years of friendship. Accepting to serve as one of my thesis readers, Prof.
Anderson gave me spot-on comments and edits and pointed out both flaws
and strengths of my thesis; she also suggested possible ways to develop and
improve my work. For this I will always be grateful.
I would also like to thank HE PM Saad al-Hariri, a fellow Hoya, who
upon the good offices of a dear friend, Ms Elena Anouti, offered me a full
scholarship from the Hariri Foundation in the USA, which made it possible
to pursue my doctorate. I would also like to thank Mr Rafic Bizri, the director
of the Hariri Foundation, and Dr David Thompson, my adviser, for their
care and guidance. Thank you, Elena.
My utmost gratitude goes to the people who so kindly accepted to be
interviewed for this study. The countless hours I spent interviewing them
went beyond merely sharing copious amounts of beverages and food, and
listening to their most intimate tales – stories of death, murder, pride, and
remorse; stories of a lost youth and childhood. By allowing me into their
memories, these brave individuals in more than one way shaped my under­
standing and analysis of the conflict on both sides involved. While I do
acknowledge all of the interviewees’ contributions, I would like to specifically
 xiv | conf li ct on mount l e b a n o n

thank Ghanem Tarabay, a brave soul whose dedication to his cause and his
people never ceases to amaze me.
I would also like to thank MP Walid Joumblatt, President of the
Progressive Socialist Party of Lebanon, who gave me unrestricted access to
the PSP Oral History Project, which proved extremely valuable for my work.
I would also like to thank the Director of Dar al-Takadoumi, the late Mr
Mahmoud Safi, and his staff for facilitating my research as well as supplying
me with all sources relevant to this study. I would also like to acknowledge
the friendship and help of Monika Borgmann and Lokman Slim, as well as
the UMAM Documentation and Research who have always provided me
with logistical and scholarly support and allowed me to be part of their
family. Thanks are equally due to the kind people and entities who provided
me with the pictures to this book, MP Nadim Bashir Gemayel, the Bashir
Gemayel Foundation, the Lebanese Forces, Walid Fayyad, Wassim Jabre,
Abbas Tarabay, Tarek Ghassan Moghabghab, the PSP archives and Maison
Du Future.
I cannot thank enough my parents, Ghassan and Nabila, and my brother
Rami for the never-ending love and the support they have lent me during the
many challenges I encountered. My father, retired Judge and Law Professor
Ghassan Rabah, a man of principle and justice, has always stood as my pillar
and a constant reminder that ethics and values still do exist in a world that is
governed by might rather than right.
I owe a great debt of gratitude to my mother Nabila whose large heart
and worrisome nature is the paradigm of motherly love. I owe a great debt
of gratitude to my brother Rami who still hopes one day to sell off my books
to make more room in our shared bedroom. Hopefully, when this thesis
becomes a book you will have to read it.
I am truly saddened that Kamal Abdul-Rahim Abu-Husayn who meticu­
lously and lovingly helped to edit this work is no longer with us to share in
my humble achievement. Kamal – who shares the name of his grandfather,
the late Kamal Salibi – left us suddenly on 28 October 2018. A talented and
kind soul, he will be remembered every time I hold this book. You are deeply
missed, Kamoul.
Many who know me are aware of my difficult character; the stress and
pressures of life and all that comes with it have been made bearable by the
 a ck nowledg ements | xv

love and care of my partner, Rasha. Her love and her eyes have always kept
watch over me at the most difficult of times. For this, I pledge my love and
life.
As time passes, I have become ever more appreciative of friends, especially
those who proved that true friendship is indeed a rare commodity.
Thanks is due to Sami Saab, Omar Slim, Zeina Ghosn, Siso, Wassim
Jaber, Nadine and Bassam Abu-Shakra, Teymour and Diana Joumblatt,
Tony Haikal, Tarek Hassan, Enass Khansa, Eli Khoury, Elie Khayat, Nadim
Shehadi, Abbas Tarabay, Walid Fayyad, Michel Farha, Siso and many more
whose names I have failed to list here.
I also owe thanks to my comrade-in-arms, Husam Raja Harb, a brother
and friend who has always had my back; to him I owe never-ending love,
trust and my unwavering friendship.
While I acknowledge the collective credit and recognition to all persons
listed above, the shortcomings of this study are my sole responsibility.
 ‫ُت ْال َمرْ ع َى َعلَى ِد َم ِن الثَّ َرى‬
ُ ‫َوقَ ْد يَ ْنب‬
‫فوس كما ِهيّا‬ ُّ ُ
ِ ‫َوتَ ْبقَى َحزَازات الن‬
‫زفر بن الحارث‬

Grass will regrow on a blood-soaked pasture

While the rancour of souls remains unchanged

Zafar bin Hareth

xvi
 In Memory of my Mou‘allam
Kamal Salibi (1929–2011)

and

his namesake Kamal Abu-Husayn (1979–2018)

and to the longevity of my Friend and Mentor

Abdul-Rahim Abu-Husayn

xvii
Operation Peace for Galilee – Israeli Invasion of Lebanon, 1982 (Maison du Future).
 INTRODUCTION

T his study is an attempt to gauge the impact that collective memory had
on determining the course and nature of the 1982 conflict between the
Druze and the Maronite communities on Mount Lebanon in what came
to be called the War of the Mountain (Harb al-Jabal). This stretch of land
running parallel to the Mediterranean Sea in the west and adjacent to the
Anti-Lebanon mountain range in the east, is home to the Druze and the
Maronites, the founding communities of modern Lebanon; they clashed on
more than one occasion over the past two centuries, earning them a reputa­
tion of fierce archnemesis. Here, I will attempt to reconstruct, perhaps for
the first time, the events of the 1982 war within the framework of collective
remembrance. In doing so, I hope to achieve a better understanding of the
conflict, as well as of the consequences it had on the two communities and
beyond, most importantly the post-war reconciliation process. This under­
standing, then, may also be applicable to other communal conflicts in the
country and to the region as a whole.
On the morning of 13 April 1975, unknown assailants opened fire on
a Maronite Church in the Christian suburbs of Beirut, killing three people,
among them the bodyguard of Pierre Gemayel, the founder of the Lebanese
Kataeb (Phalangist) Party, Lebanon’s leading Maronite party. An ­outspoken

1
 2 | conf li ct on mount l e b a n o n

opponent of the Palestinian armed presence in Lebanon, Gemayel was attend-

ing the consecration of this church, and this context took this incident to a
new dimension. In retaliation, members of the Kataeb Party ambushed a bus
transporting people returning from a commemorative event in the Palestinian
refugee camp of Tal al-Za‘atar.1 This ambush on a spring Sunday morning
constituted, as Walid Khalidi would later call it, ‘the Sarajevo’ that ignited the
war.2 Khalidi’s analogy to describe the direct cause for the outbreak of the war
has not been shared by the majority of scholars, who believe that the roots of
this conflict predated 1975, and even the existence of the Lebanese state.
The Lebanese Civil War (1975–90) has been studied extensively by
historians, anthropologists, political scientist, health scientists and many
others. Of course, it was also closely and extensively covered by journalists.
Their efforts yielded various interpretations to explain and understand the
underlying structural causes of this war that ultimately led to the destruc-
tion of a country previously held up as an economic and political success-
story. However, my extensive field research led me to the conclusion that the
War of the Mountain has never been addressed or analysed on its own; rather,
it has been incorporated into the master narrative of the different schools
of thought that govern Lebanese Civil War Studies. Such an approach has
obscured the distinctive nature of this chapter of the war – a war that was not
merely a continuation of earlier conflicts, or a prelude to later confrontations.
Many of the scholarly works on the civil war place major responsibility on the
Palestinian factor and the presence of the Palestine Liberation Organisation
(PLO), which after 1969 had moved its centre of operations almost exclu-
sively to Lebanon. This approach either tends to totally exclude and excuse
or make only passing reference to the war’s local dimensions, which perhaps
had a much greater or at least equal share in the responsibility. A remark-
able example of this trend is Farid Khazen’s The Breakdown of the State in
Lebanon, 1967–1976. This work has taken such an approach even a step
further, as it has placed the blame almost exclusively on the PLO and their
Lebanese allies for challenging and weakening the authority of the Lebanese
state, thus paving the way for the conflict to erupt.3
A variant of this interpretation adopts the notion that Lebanon was an
arena for regional and Cold War conflicts, and that the Lebanese had no real
say in the subsequent events. Ghassan Tuwayni’s Une Guerre Pour Les Autres
 i ntroducti on  | 3

constitutes an eloquent example.4 A structural analysis of the Lebanese system

has been undertaken by what may be referred to as the Marxist school of
interpretation. Fawwaz Traboulsi’s A History of Modern Lebanon and Salim
Nasr’s ‘Backdrop to Civil War: The Crisis of Lebanese Capitalism’ argue
that the Lebanese economy, which promoted unmitigated capitalism, paved
the way for the migrant Lebanese working class to channel their syndical
demands via the Palestinian revolution and other, similar venues.5 According
to the Marxists, this fact, together with the failure of the traditional political
class to reform and adjust to the ever-changing realities of Lebanon and the
region, was the main reason for the collapse of the state. The most common
and widely circulated reading, however, concerns the confessional and sectar-
ian nature of the Lebanese political system, which divided the country along
confessional lines. These divisions did not recognise class or social mobility,
and this was coupled with each sect’s alliance with a foreign power to protect
and support its share in the state and its economy. As a result, Lebanon
was exposed to recurrent rounds of violence, as in the events of 1958 and
1975–89. Writing at the end of the war, Kamal Salibi has summed up the
main problems of the Lebanese political system and the essence of the con-
flict; in his A House of Many Mansions: A History of Lebanon Reconsidered, he
has stressed that most of the conflicts between these groups were waged over
each group’s interpretation of Lebanese history, which at one stage or another
were linked to a certain political project.6
I argue that these interpretations have largely been skewed due to their
neglect of history and collective memory; they have viewed the conflict
through the lens of contemporary affairs, such as state structure, Cold War
politics and class struggle. Hence, my approach will incorporate both new
sources and new methodologies, particularly oral history. This will make it
possible to reconstruct the War of the Mountain and offer a more in-depth
understanding of this event, especially as it relates to the two Lebanese found-
ing communities. This deeper understanding will then hopefully contribute
to post-war reconciliation, which remains pending. Thus far, the writing of
a narrative of the War of the Mountain and the events that led up to it has
never been attempted, at least not within scholarly circles. Telling the story,
or perhaps stories, of the many men and women who participated in these
events, or simply suffered as a consequence, is a valuable contribution to the
 4 | conf li ct on mount l e b a n o n

field of Lebanese historical scholarship – especially when it can help expose

the intrinsic motives that led to this conflict.
This book will extensively utilise oral history in some of its sections, in
order to explore how collective memory has shaped the conflict between the
two communities. I have interviewed a number of informants from both
(within and outside) the Druze community (particularly the Progressive
Socialist Party) and the Maronite community (especially the Kataeb Party),
who have been involved in or witnessed the conflict. I asked these and other
informants about how their respective communities have recalled previous
encounters. Therefore, part of my work will deal with the question of employ­
ing oral history in historical research, and the challenges and advantages that
this tool can present to Lebanese history and beyond.
I have also used primary source documents (political party literature and
propaganda), including oral history interviews, as well as the secondary lit­
erature available in the Jafet Library at the American University of Beirut, at
Saint Joseph University and the Lebanese National Archives, to reconstruct
the events of the War of the Mountain and its ramifications. Furthermore, I
will examine the history of both communities – how they have evolved and
interacted with each other on Mount Lebanon as early as in the eighteenth
century, so as to uncover any recurrent patterns in their history. A deeper
understanding of the two community’s perceptions of themselves and each
other will shed more light on the background of the 1982 conflict. Therefore,
this study will also be relevant for the exploration of earlier conflicts between
these two communities, primarily of 1840–5, 1860 and 1958, which still echo
very clearly in their collective memories, rhetoric and literary production.
Subsequently, I will illustrate how the centres of power within each of the
two communities have been actively working to maintain their communi­
ties’ somewhat unified collective memories and perceptions. While my focus
appears to be on the ‘collective’, in no way do I intend to neglect or sideline
individual agency or the relevance of individual memory.
Rather, my work openly challenges the essential facts that both the Druze
and the Maronites take for granted – namely, that they are a primordial social
fabric organically formed over time. As the following chapter will demon­
strate, the process of creating the collective entails the active involvement and
agency of these communities’ centres of power, which create and maintain
 i ntroducti on  | 5

these memory frameworks. Therefore, before delving into this aspect and
in order to properly frame my work, I will present the different schools of
thought in memory studies, beginning with Maurice Halbwachs and his
subsequent supporters and critics. This will be followed by two examples of
active agents as used by the centres of power to promote a collective identity
as well as to recast, adjust and modify the respective communities’ memories
of themselves, as well as of ‘the other’. In the Maronite context, Al-Masiraa’,
the official publication of the Lebanese Forces (Maronite), published The
Story of a Hero called Charbel, a weekly illustrated cartoon written in col­
loquial Lebanese dialect. In contrast, the Druze utilised the works of the
prominent strophic poet Taleh Hamdan, which abound with examples of
what the Druze centres of power wanted their community to remember
concerning their archnemesis (the Maronites) and the Harb al-Jabal.
The modern history of Mount Lebanon began in the seventeenth cen­
tury, when the Maronites migrated from its northern to its southern district.
This history involves an elaborate tale of many chapters, some of which are
still waiting to be told. While my work focuses on certain episodes of conflict
between the Druze and the Maronites, this should not deny the fact that these
two founding Lebanese communities have worked together and coexisted for
much longer periods of time. It is essentially these dynamics of conflict and
accord that came to define the strained relationship between these two groups
and that consequently contributed in one way or another to the War of the
Mountain and its subsequent events.
While the Druze and the Maronite, at least at present, are not in a state
of open warfare or hostility, both communities retain their collective memory
weapons to be deployed when needed, much like all other Lebanese groups.
The following pages will explore the history of this conflict, while using
collective memory as a lens to better understand an important event that has
shaped the history of modern Lebanon and continues to do so until this day.

Notes
1. Kamal Salibi, Crossroads to Civil War: Lebanon, 1958–1976 (Delmar: Caravan
Books, 1976), 98. Consequently, all the passengers on board, except for the driver,
were massacred. The Kataeb claimed that the passengers (mostly Palestinians) had
been armed; however, this claim was never substantiated.
 6 | conf li ct on mount l e b a n o n

2. Walid Khalidi, Conflict and Violence in Lebanon: Confrontation in the Middle East
(Cambridge, MA: Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 1979),
47.
3. Farid Khazen, The Breakdown of the State in Lebanon, 1967–1976 (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).
4. Ghassan Tuwayni, Une guerre pour les autres (Paris: J. C. Lattes, 1985).
5. Fawwaz Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon (London: Pluto Press, 2007),
115; Salim Nasr, ‘Backdrop to Civil War: The Crisis of Lebanese Capitalism’,
MERIP Reports 73 (1978): 3.
6. Kamal Salibi, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered
(London: I. B. Tauris, 1988), 200.
 1
STUDYING THE DRUZE–MARONITE
CONFLICT THROUGH THE PRISM
OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY AND
ORAL HISTORY

T he many attempts to document and explore the history of the Lebanese

Civil War (1975–90) have thus far relied heavily, not to say exclu­
sively, on written archival sources. Virtually no attention has been paid to
non-orthodox sources, such as collective memory and oral history. These
untapped sources can go beyond the obvious utilitarian function of merely
offering new facts pertaining to the conflict overall; they can play a more
important role, especially within the context of the War of the Mountain
and the events that transpired between the Druze and the Maronites in
the summer of 1982. Accordingly, as this study will argue, the central sig­
nificance of historical remembrance for both the Druze and the Maronites
places oral history and collective memory at the crux of the motives that
facilitated polarisation and eventually led to war. Consequently, the framing
of these motives and the interplay between collective memory and oral his­
tory requires a clear understanding of the theoretical concepts of collective
memory, as well as the advantages and limitations of oral history, as utilised
throughout this study.
The concept ‘collective memory’ first appeared in 1902 in the writings
of Hugo von Hofmannsthal. However, it was not until Maurice Halbwachs
published his book The Social Frameworks of Memory in 1925, followed by his

7
 8 | conf li ct on mount l e b a n o n

main work entitled On Collective Memory, that this concept gained currency
and became well-established in the social sciences.1 Halbwachs, an apprentice
of Emile Durkheim, has stated that memories are both public and shareable
and that memory is a product of individual remembrance within a group,
rather than a subjective endeavor. By shifting the unit of analysis from the
individual alone to the individual within his or her social group, Halbwachs
challenged the Freudian model that reigned supreme at the time.
According to the Halbwachsian model, memory is transmitted by both
individuals and members of groups; therefore, ‘there are as many collective
memories in a society as there are social groups’.2 Halbwachs has furthermore
placed individuals within the different frameworks imposed on them by their
group, be they society or family, or anything else between these two ends of
the spectrum. This is clear for Halbwachs who has emphatically asserted the
following:

It is in society that people normally acquire their memories. It is also in

society that they recall, recognize, and localize their memories . . . It is in
this sense that there exists a collective memory and social frameworks for
memory; it is to the degree that our individual thought places itself in these
frameworks and participates in this memory that it is capable of the act of
recollection.3

It follows that the process of remembering and forgetting is regulated by the

interests, goals and practices of the group; essentially, the memories that one
retains of the past are filtered through the medium of the group. Therefore,
the fluidity of memory makes the past exclusively dependent on the present
context and in effect renders futile the attempt to determine what really
happened in the past.
Despite Halbwachs’s novel ideas, sociologists and researchers did not
embrace his work until much later.4 While some researchers adopted the
Halbwachsian interpretation of collective memory, others found his analysis
to be fraught with problems. One of the major criticisms levelled at Halbwachs
has posited that his approach removes individual agency from remembrance
and elevates the group to an overpowering entity. Frederic Bartlett, deemed
the father of modern memory studies, has criticised Halbwachs, claiming
that not groups, but rather individuals in groups have memories. However,
 st u d y ing the druze–maroni te co n f l ict  | 9

Bartlett has agreed with Halbwachs on the importance of the group for
harnessing individual memory, affirming that ‘social organisations give
a persistent framework into which all detailed recall must fit, and it very
powerfully influences both the manner and the matter of recall’.5 In con­
trast, Barry Schwartz has criticised Halbwachs for overstating changes in the
memory process, which ultimately make the past somewhat more vague than
it really is. According to Schwartz, there exists a dialectical relation between
the past and the present, and memory can be understood through that lens
of ‘continuities in our perception of the past across time and to the way that
these perceptions are maintained in the face of social change’.6 It must be
emphasised that such continuities in perception abound within the Druze
and Maronite historical psyche, as the subsequent chapters will illustrate.

History vs Memory

The most significant criticism against memory studies arose from within the
field of history. Starting in the nineteenth century, historiographical scholar­
ship moved towards anchoring the study of history within a more scientific
framework; commonly referred to as the German school, this scholarly
approach sought objectivity in historical writing and relied heavily on written
primary sources.7 Naturally, this excluded memory from playing any role in
the newly founded historical profession. Historians frowned upon unwritten
forms, especially memory, which they claimed to be distorted by a number
of factors; hence, memory came to be labeled as ahistorical.8 However, the
somewhat recent debate on memory vs history has taken a different turn.
The prominent French historian Pierre Nora has regarded memory as the
archenemy of history. According to Nora, ‘memory remains in a permanent
evolution and is unconscious of its successive deformations, vulnerable to
manipulation’; history, on the other hand, ‘is an intellectual secular produc­
tion, calls for analysis and criticism . . . history is suspicious of memory, and
its true mission is to suppress and destroy it’.9 Peter Novick, another critic of
the Halbwachsian discourse, has stripped collective memory of its historical
relevance with the following argument:

To understand something historically is to be aware of its complexity, to

have sufficient detachment to see it from multiple perspectives, to accept
 10 | conf li ct on mou nt l e b a n o n

the ambiguities, including moral ambiguities, of protagonists’ motives and

behavior. Collective memory simplifies; sees events from a single, commit­
ted perspective; is impatient with ambiguities of any kind; reduces events
to mythic archetypes.10

Dismissing the so-called ‘noble dream’ of objectivity in historical research,

Novick has stressed the following important dimension of collective memory,
as it relates to forging a common identity for the group: ‘Collective memory
is understood to express some eternal or essential truth about the group, usu­
ally tragic. A memory, once established, comes to define that eternal truth,
and, along with it, an eternal identity, for the members of the group’.11
It is exactly these eternal or essential truths that make collective memory
problematic in the context of the Druze–Maronite encounter, as ‘the memo­
rializing of tragedies or perhaps victories won against ones’ group will most
probably lead to engendering hostile feeling’.12 Moreover, as this study will
demonstrate, when collective memory is left to develop in an exclusionary
manner within a divided society such as that of Lebanon, it can prevent
post-war reconciliation and perhaps reignite dormant hostilities. This was the
case in 1860, 1958 and 1975–90. The War of the Mountain is perhaps the
best case in point.
While I prefer here to use of the term ‘collective memory’, rather than
terms such as social memory or memory cultures,13 my approach to the realm
of memory does not adopt a strict Halbwachsian model. I rather subscribe to
the notion that, although memory is framed by the group (in Lebanon’s case,
the religious sect or the tribe), individuals are still the vessels in which the
act of remembrance occurs, even if these individuals identify with a certain
group. Amos Funkenstein has squarely placed the individual in the middle
of this debate:

Consciousness and memory can only be realized by an individual who acts,

is aware, and remembers. Just as a nation cannot eat or dance, neither can
it speak or remember. Remembering is a mental act, and therefore it is
absolutely and completely personal.14

While the individual, as opposed to a group, does indeed remember, the

meanings of these memories are interpreted or recast by the group to serve a
 st u d y ing the druze–maroni te co nf l ict  | 11

certain purpose. Another reason for my adoption of this term lies in the fact
that the concept of collective memory, or its Arabic translation al-dhākirah
al-jamāʿīyah, resonates more with the subjects of my oral history interviews.
The very term in Arabic assigns a major role to memory. Hence, coining
and using a different phrase would have alienated or disenchanted my inter­
viewees. While the plain word ‘memory’ presents its own challenges, using
it in conjunction with oral interviews presents even further challenges and
complications for the writing of history. At the same time, it reveals new
vantage points for analysis and offers new insights.

Sources and Methodology of Oral History

In his memoirs, the distinguished yet controversial historian Bernard Lewis

has sketched out the duties and prerogatives of a historian. To Lewis, history
is unequivocally ‘an approach that is free from both inherited attitudes and
imposed constraints, where one follows evidence wherever it leads, where one
starts a piece of research without a prescribed or in any way predetermined
result’.15 Almost all attempts at writing history have theoretically endorsed
Lewis’s answer to the question ‘why study history?’ Yet, some have gone
so far as to believe that a type of ultimate universal truth is attainable. This
school of thought has not come to dominate the profession, at least not at
the time of the writing of this book. Historians have become more and more
aware that their craft, as Marc Bloch has stressed, in fact consists not of a
synthesis of the past, but rather of observation and analyses of past events,
grounded in documentation and traces of evidence which are at times ‘forced
to speak’.16 This spirit, as embodied by Bloch, has become the foundation of
modern historical scholarship.
Lewis’s remarks, however, leave one pondering several issues. Most
importantly, if the evidence which historians deal with is incomplete, is it
permissible to look outside the traditional sources available for supplementary
evidence and documentation? Lewis, a medievalist, came from a generation
of scholars who equated evidence with textuality – evidence was to be found
in the primary sources held in state archives and libraries, kept under lock and
key by archivists and librarians.
The sources used in this project range from the more traditional to previ­
ously untapped ones. These primarily, but not exclusively, consist of oral
 12 | conf li ct on mou nt l e b a n o n

history and both Druze and Maronite party publications. In using them,
I aspire to uncover the symbiosis between individuals and group memory
and to reveal aspects of those stories that otherwise remain suppressed or
simply untold. Alessandro Portelli, a pioneer in the field of oral history, has
elaborated on the uniqueness of this approach:

The first thing that makes oral history different, therefore, is that it tells us
less about events as such than about their meaning. This does not imply
that oral history has no factual interest; interviews often reveal unknown
events or unknown aspects of known events, and always cast new light on
unexplored sides of the daily life of the non-hegemonic classes.17

Oral history has rarely been used in works dealing with the Lebanese Civil
War. Most of the recent work dealing with memory studies, such as that by
Lucia Volk and Sune Haugbolle, do so based on an anthropological approach
that relies on ethnography, a cousin of oral history.18 Furthermore, all the
relevant studies to some extent discuss post-war Lebanon but rarely explore
the conflict and the role of memory in it, focusing on post-war implications
rather than the events of the conflict.
The centrality of memory to oral history adds to the criticism launched
against it as being flawed and unreliable. Nevertheless, collective memory
is always at play when interviewing informants; in fact, it is this encounter
between group and individual memory that adds to our understanding of what
really happened and, most importantly, what it meant to people then and in
hindsight. Furthermore, to use Portelli’s words, ‘the credibility of oral sources
is a different credibility’, because within this exercise ‘what informants believe
is indeed a historical fact just as much as what “really happened”’.19 Therefore,
instead of viewing collective memory as tainting the individual’s remembrance
process, historians can use orality to study encounters between the two.
These encounters between collective memory and the individual’s
remembrance process are best understood when keeping in mind that most
of what oral historians receive from their subjects is in narrative form. The
narrative aspect of this process renders the quest for accuracy somewhat more
elusive. Oral historians do not merely ask their subjects to remember events
and their implications. More accurately, oral history in a sense involves the
reconstruction of past experiences, rather than simply retrieving them from
 st u d y ing the druze–maroni te co nf l ict  | 13

the ‘database’ commonly referred to as memory. To every question, the nar­

rator responds based on what s/he remembers and, more importantly, based
on what her/his present predisposition dictates. Elizabeth Tonkin’s work
Narrating Our Pasts: The Social Construction of Oral History underscores this
point.20 Having conducted extensive research on oral tradition and oral his­
tory in Liberia, Tonkin has concluded that much of what we remember and
relate to others is mediated through the dynamics that bond the teller and the
listener. Tonkin has described this process as follows:

The social contexts of oral histories include the additional condition that
their tellers must intersect with a palpable audience at a particular moment
in time and space. What they choose to say is affected by those conditions,
which also mean that they get immediate feedback.21

She goes on to describe how these narrations are in constant flux:

The narrators and listeners connected by this contingency are thereby

caught at a certain stage of their lives; they have also been formed inescapa­
bly by their own personal pasts to date. These factors influence the narration
whether or not it is autobiographical; tellers are constructing retrospective
accounts for audience with different time scales, and they may adjust their
own narrations to the memories and understanding of their listeners.22

This is not meant to demote the reliability of oral sources; however, Tonkin’s
point supports the claim that oral history accounts are far more important
than just presenting us with factual (or in some cases erroneous) accounts.
Consequently, in the case of the Druze–Maronite relationship oral history
can serve as a tool to investigate and reconstruct a certain historical event or
occasion. Yet, these oral accounts are much more indicative of changes and
continuities across groups and boundaries. Paul Andary’s interview is a case
in point, as the informant’s testimony has been shaped by his own evolution,
as well as the person asking the questions (in this case, myself).

Paul Andary Shot Twice

When I interviewed Paul Andary, the Second-in-Command of the Lebanese

Forces (LF) of the Jabal district during the War of the Mountain, I made a
point of putting the question to him in direct and clear terms: In how far
 14 | conf li ct on mou nt l e b a n o n

Figure 1.1 Paul Andary (LF Archives).

were the events of the 1860 civil war between the Druze and the Maronites
instrumental for shaping his own psyche and that of his comrades? In
response, Andary was clear in dismissing any connection whatsoever between
the 1860 and the 1982 events.23 Yet, an examination of Andary’s memoirs
Al-Jabal: Haqīqah lā Tarªam (The Mountain: A Ruthless Reality) published
immediately after the War of the Mountain proves otherwise.
For example, he described his entry at the head of an LF contingent into
the town of Deir al-Qamar in the following way: ‘its saray [palace] which had
remained unchanged since the dawn of the 1860 massacre . . . imprinted on
its walls are the shadows of the [Druze] attackers, with their striped robes and
black trousers’.24 By choosing to open his book with a tale of the massacres
that the Druze committed against the Christian inhabitants of Deir al-Qamar
in 1860, Andary fused the two episodes, of 1860 and 1983, and inserted
himself and his Maronite cohorts in their midst, thus forming an uninter­
rupted link transcending both space and time. However, Andary has recently
 st u d y ing the druze–maroni te co nf l ict  | 15

published an English translation of his memoirs. An examination of the cover

of both editions indicates that Andary has become increasingly circumspect
of any statement or act that would insult the present-day allies of the LF
and the Druze PSP. Interestingly, Andary’s English-language book cover
and title – War of the Mountain: Israelis, Christians and Druze in the 1983
Mount Lebanon Conflict Through the Eyes of a Lebanese Forces Fighter – does
not resonate with the same tone as the Arabic version, which reflects a bitter
animosity between the Maronites and the Druze.25 In his English translation,
Andary rather wanted to portray that Lebanon’s problems can be externalised
and virtually blamed on the Syrians and the Israelis. Andary’s somewhat mild
answers to my interview in 2010 might have been affected by his awareness
of the interviewer’s – that is, my – identity as a Druze, originally hailing from
the area that saw much of the fighting.
This relates perfectly to the observations made by Paul Thompson, a
pioneer in the field of oral history:

. . . neither contemporary nor historical evidence is a direct reflection of

physical facts or behavior. Facts and events are reported in a way which
gives them social meaning. The information provided by interview evi­
dence of relatively recent events, or current situations, can be assumed to lie
somewhere between the actual social behavior and the social expectations
or norms of the time. With interviews which go back further, there is the
added possibility of distortions influenced by subsequent changes in values
and norms, which may perhaps quite unconsciously alter perceptions. With
time we would expect this danger to grow.26

Andary, therefore, was not being deceitful in his answers; rather, his answers
should be viewed as part of an evolution that he himself and perhaps his
community have undergone. Furthermore, had I limited myself to Andary’s
book, I would have missed the opportunity to explore this aspect, which
sheds light on collective memory formation – in other words, how collective
memory is constantly rehashed to conform to current requirements, whether
personal or communal in nature.
However, neither Tonkin’s remarks nor Andary’s example should lead
one to believe that the narrative nature of oral history renders it unreliable
and incapable of reconstructing the past accurately, as textual archives do.
 16 | conf li ct on mou nt l e b a n o n

The work of Alice and Howard Hoffman has illustrated how, despite the
narrative aspect and the interplay between personal and social memory, oral
history can still produce accurate accounts when cross-referenced with writ­
ten records.27 Hoffman, who had fought in World War II, was interviewed
by his wife Alice on numerous occasions over a period of ten years. This
experiment revealed that the transcripts of all these interviews were to a
large extent identical to events as they had been recorded by the US Army.
Most importantly, the Hoffmans concluded that ‘it is possible for memory
to achieve an archival quality if it is sufficiently rehearsed unconsciously or
consciously shortly after the experience it documents’.28
There also exists the eternal claim that man by nature is forgetful and
that events experienced cannot be accurately recalled, especially if these
encounters are distant, or if they involve a traumatic experience. The nature
of the topic at hand – namely, warfare – is highly charged with traumatic
experiences, as almost every single one of my interviewees either lost loved
ones, was seriously injured, or killed another human being in the course of
the war. Still, this does not necessarily mean that we need to discard the infor­
mation obtained from the informants; instead, we should critically evaluate
this source, just as scholars would with any other document, so as not to
misinterpret the information or drastically add to the traumatic experience.
While poor recall may affect oral history, historians have recourse to a
wide array of tools to jog the memory. This is exactly why historians who use
oral sources allow their informants to speak about themselves at length – to
grease the machine of memory, so to speak. Coincidentally, many of my
interviews started with a short informal conversation about the informant’s
personal life and then continued with questions directly related to their role
in the war or the events surrounding it. However, despite the many strides
achieved in the field of memory studies, both empirical and theoretical,
human memory continues to baffle and amaze.

The Curious Case of Ghanam Tarabay

One of my primary informants, Ghanem Tarabay – a commander in the

Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) militia who lost his father and several ­cousins
during the Battle of Qoubbe‘i between the LF and the PSP, one of the first
military engagements in the summer of 1982 – took me on a tour of the
 st u d y ing the druze–maroni te co nf l ict  | 17

Figure 1.2 Ghanem Tarabay holding the PSP banner at a local rally (PSP Archives).

actual battleground and narrated the events of that battle, which lasted for a
full seven days. He vividly described everything, including how his father had
mocked him when he ordered his men to stay in their positions, just seconds
before a bullet ended his father’s life. However, almost a year after my first
interview with him, Tarabay told me that his maternal uncle later reminded
him of an episode of which he personally had no recollection whatsoever.
Tarabay’s uncle told him how they both took his father’s dead body and
had to make the long drive back to their village to avoid enemy roadblocks.
Furthermore, his uncle added how the soldiers at the Syrian Army check­
point, fully aware that Ghanem was transporting his deceased father in the
back of the vehicle, performed the official military honours reserved for fallen
Syrian soldiers. To this day, Ghanem insists that he cannot remember any of
these details recalled by his uncle; moreover, he cannot even remember that
he himself buried his father. This perplexing episode underscores both the
volatility of oral accounts and the availability of corrective measures. It also
points to untold stories. Had I not interviewed Ghanem in 2010, he would
 18 | conf li ct on mou nt l e b a n o n

not have discussed the topic with his uncle and thus retrieved the story; it
would have remained buried next to his late father.
Much of what Ghanem experienced in terms of loss and repression of
memory is an extremely common occurrence, to varying degrees dependent
on the intensity of the relevant event. The seven sins of memory, as Harvard
Psychologist Daniel Schacter has called them, explain the elusive nature of
memory, as well as how its loss or involuntary remembrance can have affect
peoples’ lives.29 According to Schacter, these sins are the main reasons for the
malfunction of memory, and ‘just like the ancient deadly sins, the memory
sins occur frequently in every daily life and can have serious consequences for
all of us’.30 Schacter has divided these seven sins into two main groups: sins of
omission and sins of commission. Sins of omission (transience, absent-mind­
edness and blocking) account for forgetfulness, while sins of commission
(misattribution, suggestibility, bias and persistence) are responsible for flawed
or unwanted memories. However, these ‘seven deadly sins’ do not adequately
explain the repression of of Ghanem’s memory. Sins of omission are instances
where one might forget a number or name, but certainly not the death of a
loved one. Furthermore, while sins of commission – in particular, the sin
of persistence which involves repeatedly recalling traumatic and disturbing
memories – can lead to psychological problems especially for individuals
involved in combat, Ghanem did not suffer from persistent memories, but
a total lack of memory. As early as after World War I, such mental disor­
ders, previously referred to as shell-shock and now as Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder (PTSD), have been the focus of mental health experts and social
scientists.31 However, an examination of the existing literature on memory
loss makes it somewhat difficult to place Ghanem’s case within the existing
groupings of amnesia.32 In most cases of combat-related memory loss, the
memories lie dormant within the person and lead to dissociative amnesia,
which impedes one’s ability to remember for a time-span ranging from a few
hours to longer periods.
Still, this does not apply to the case under investigation, for a number
of reasons. Ghanem had never suffered from memory loss, other than the
incident reported. My hours of interviews and sporadic conversations over
an extended period, as well as the consistency and vividness of most of the
information he provided, attests to this fact. More importantly, Ghanem
 st u d y ing the druze–maroni te co nf l ict  | 19

Figure 1.3 PSP credential of Ghanem Tarabay, ranked Lieutenant (PSP Archives).

remembers the actual traumatic experience, the battle and the death of his
father and cousins, down to the smallest detail, but he lacks any recollection
of the funeral proceedings that ensued. Ghanem’s case remains one of many
that continue to baffle scholars in their quest to gain a better understanding
of memory and its mechanisms. It also became one of the many occasions on
which I had to re-examine my conclusions while conducting research.
An additional challenge I encountered is the generational gap, which at
times impeded my ability to understand my interlocutors’ somewhat difficult
idiomatic language. For example, Ghanem told me how his school principal
used to tell him about the decline of the Druze with the following line:
‘The Druze became weak the day they stopped sealing their windows with
rocks during the wintertime’.33 This quote did not resonate with me at first,
apparently because it was a reference completely alien to me, but not to
Ghanem and his cohorts. This obstacle, however, is easy to overcome: As I
did so on that occasion, researchers should ask their informants to elaborate
on generational or local idioms to be able to follow the narrator. When asked
about the meaning of this expression, Ghanem explained that in the past
 20 | conf li ct on mou nt l e b a n o n

the dwellings of the Druze did not feature windowpanes; thus, in winter
they had to use makeshift wood or rocks to block themselves from the cold
and wild animals. Therefore, ‘the real degeneration of Druze power started
when they abandoned their old ways and decided to embrace the modern
way of life’.34 Among other old ways that have been abandoned count the
celebrated and much-cited Druze cohesion and solidarity. Of course, the
point of the anecdote here is not only architectural, but also underlines
the Khaldunian concept of ‘asabiyyah or group temperament, which withers
away when the people or the tribe abandon their old ways. This concept is
essential for understanding the Druze’s self-perception as a proud warrior
clan, as the following chapter will elaborate. Much of the Druze rhetoric and
literature produced before and during the conflict reiterated Ibn Khaldun’s
‘asabiyyah to serve a long-term strategic goal, as well as a more immediate
tactical one, such as military mobilisation.

The Trope of Oral History

Many critics also claim that oral history is essentially unverifiable, because it
is grounded in personal stories, in contrast to textual evidence, which usually
can be cross-checked. Although oral historians heavily rely on oral sources,
like all scholars, they nevertheless utilise textual sources including archival
documents, newspapers, songs, films and so on. Without these sources, oral
historians cannot prepare for interviews, nor can they critically evaluate what
informants tell them. The claim that oral accounts are unverifiable is there­
fore inaccurate. While at times incidents cannot be traced back to textual
evidence, this does not mean that the actual event did not occur.
By forming a bond of trust with their informants, oral historians often
find personal archives, which the informant so far has been reluctant to
share with anyone else. This is exactly what happened when I asked the
former Minister of Public Works, Ghazi al-Aridi, about the archive of the
Voice of the Mountain, the PSP wartime radio station. Generally believed
to have been destroyed after the end of the war, Aridi, the former director
of the station, enthusiastically shared the contents of this archive, which he
keeps locked up. Thus, even though oral historians are perceived as bypassing
textual evidence, their activities in fact only enhance the scope and diversity
of their sources. As a consquence, previously unheard voices and experiences
 st u d y ing the druze–maroni te co nf l ict  | 21

become central and can assist historians in redrafting or perhaps discovering

new aspects of many previously taken-for-granted issues. My research on the
War of the Mountain is a case in point. Portelli has forcefully summarised
this shift which oral history was able to accomplish:

The task and theme of oral history – an art dealing with the individual in
social and historical context – is to explore this distance and this bond,
to search out the memories in the private, enclosed spaces of houses and
kitchens – to connect them to history and in turn force history to listen to
them.35

Yet, oral history is still struggling to attain the same recognition that written
archival documents, incomplete and full of gaps as they are, have achieved.
At best, academia has acknowledged that oral sources are supplementary in
nature and should be combined with written sources to add more depth and
insight to a historian’s work.36 Hence, it is natural for historians to prefer the
textual explanation of an event, if it is contradicted by oral testimony. This
approach, however, can prove to be a slippery slope.

The Shah of Ba‘abda Meets Salazar

Usually, historians practise great caution when analysing written evidence,

ranging from speeches over newspaper articles and meeting minutes to radio
broadcasts. However, based on the oral history work I have conducted thus
far, I argue that despite being properly documented and verified, these writ­
ten documents or broadcasts are unreliable and, at times, quite misleading.
For instance, in the archive of the radio station Voice of the Mountain
(VOM, active 1984–90), the Druze PSP Radio, one can come across a
repeated reference to the then President of the Republic Amin Gemayel as the
Shah or Salazar of Ba‘abda. Ba‘abda is a reference to the site of the Lebanese
Presidential Palace, while the two titles are a derogatory set of terms to indi­
cate the despotic nature of the PSP’s political Maronite opponent – the first
refers to the Iranian Shah who was deposed during the Islamic Revolution
in 1979, and the second to Antonio Salazar, the autocratic Portuguese Prime
Minister who held office for thirty-six years. The Salazar incident, as I will
call it, indicates how archives are constantly manipulated and should not
necessarily be given primacy over oral sources.
 22 | conf li ct on mou nt l e b a n o n

During one of the radio station’s daily broadcasts, the newscaster inter­
rupted the usual program to read out a letter that the station had received
from the family of the deceased Portuguese dictator Antonio Salazar. In this
letter, the Salazar family demanded that the radio station immediately cease
using their father’s and their name to refer to Gemayel. The letter said that
Gemayel could not be compared to a man as great as Salazar. A historian
who comes across this segment in the course of research must track down
the actual letter in the station’s archive. Upon investigation, a historian
would be able to see that this letter was indeed mailed to the station and
had all the necessary credentials of a ‘real’ document; however, utilising oral
history methods to verify or explain this specific event leads to a different
conclusion.
Upon interviewing Ghazi al-Aridi, the former head of the VOM, I was
presented with a different version of the Salazar incident. Ghazi al-Aridi
recounted that they were fully aware that Gemayel would feel offended by
these remarks, which the station constantly used in its news segments and
commentaries. Therefore, he and a few of his colleagues decided to play a
practical joke on the air. After drafting the content of the above-mentioned
letter, Aridi instructed one of his staff members to mail it to the radio sta­
tion. A few days later, Aridi’s secretary brought him this letter, to which he
responded in a serious manner, requesting that it be aired verbatim imme­
diately.37 While Aridi may have regarded this incident as practical joke, a
historian writing many years later and with access to either the textual or the
audio evidence, but not both, might perceive this incident differently, result­
ing in unforeseeable consequences. This exemplifies that oral history should
not be viewed as ancillary and merely complementary to already existing
textual evidence, but as an autonomous tool that can be utilised to study and
document past events in the historian’s attempt to reach a kind of truth – or,
in the case of the Lebanese Civil War, truths.
The study of civil wars has been a challenging and elusive task for
scholars. In the case of Lebanon, historians have approached the civil war as
fueled primarily by economic, regional, or sectarian impulses. Even Marxist
accounts, which have used class as a unit of analysis, have not ventured
beyond the group, nor have they looked at individuals beyond their class
affiliation. Moreover, the different theoretical approaches notwithstanding,
 st u d y ing the druze–maroni te co nf l ict  | 23

scholars have over and over relied on the same sources, never venturing out­
side the realm of textuality. These textual primary sources, however, are prob­
lematic, for two main reasons: First, proper state archives or similar entities
are virtually non-existent, and the collections that the state claims to possess
are housed in an abandoned warehouse where they remain un-catalogued,
with the as of yet unfulfilled promise that they will be digitised and made
available to the public. Moreover, most of what remains of this archive has
miraculously survived fifteen years of bombings and looting, which has left
us with a fragmented, if not unusable archive. Most of the political parties’
archives have experienced a similar fate, and what is left of them has over
the years been amassed by universities and research centres, or in some cases
private collectors.
The second reason has to do with the most accessible archives, which
consist of the newspapers and periodicals published by the Lebanese and non-
Lebanese (Palestinian, Syrian) factions. Al-Anbaa’ (PSP), Al-Masiraa’ (LF)
and Al-‘Amal (Phalangist) are some of the periodicals I have used in my work
on the Druze and the Maronites. Yet, these periodicals, like most primary
sources dealing with the Lebanese Civil War, are problematic because they
are partisan in nature and address local and sometime internal matters that are
usually difficult to infer from the text. An example of this would be Al-‘Amal
and Al-Masiraa’, both published by the Maronite factions. The former was
the official mouthpiece of the Phalangist Party, while the latter served as
mouthpiece for their militia, the Lebanese Forces (LF).38 These two factions
were bitter rivals, especially after the death of Bashir Gemayel in 1982, and
the majority of the contents published revolved around this feud. This fact
could not be deduced from a traditional examination of both publications,
but through my oral history informants, as many of them pointed out or
elaborated on the background or the motive of a certain document or article
I encountered in the archives. Many of the articles in either publication did
not carry the author’s name, and when they did, it was usually a pen name.
It is also difficult to locate these publications, because most of them ceased
operations after the end of the war. The many books, pamphlets and visual
material published by the above-mentioned parties or by individuals espous­
ing a certain political ideology were not released by an official publishing
house; thus, obtaining them can prove a difficult task at times. This was the
 24 | conf li ct on mou nt l e b a n o n

case with Andary’s book, which only became readily available after the Syrian
army withdrew from Lebanon in 2005.
Throughout the research for and writing of this book, I have conducted
many interviews, for either brief or extended periods of time. Each of the
interviewees shared with me, to varying degrees, their personal experiences
and their involvement in the events in question. Furthermore, some of the
oral history sources I use here are not my own, but the product of various
projects conducting over many years. Some of these projects were partisan
in nature and toed the line with a certain collective memory of either the
Maronite LF or the Druze PSP.

Bashir: The Series

Shortly after the assassination of Bashir Gemayel in 1982, his wife Solange
and a few of his close associates founded the Bashir Gemayel Foundation
(BGF) with the aims of preserving his legacy and documenting his brief but
meteoric career. The BGF went on to produce a series of publications and
organise various activities around the time of the annual commemoration of
Bashir’s assassination.
In 2012, the BGF collaborated with Mercury Media, a Lebanese online
media platform, to produce a five-part series about the life and political career
of Bashir Gemayel.39 In addition to the conventional sources that the film­
makers consulted – such as books, newspaper articles and Bashir’s speeches
– the production team interviewed and filmed thirty-nine individuals who
had intimate knowledge of Bashir as a man and as a militant politician.40 The
scope of these interviews included his immediate family members, such as his
brother and sisters, his personal assistant, his party comrades, and members
of his militia with whom he had worked closely until his assassination. Given
that this film series had been commissioned by the BGF, the interviews were
edited and inserted throughout the cinematic series to sanctify Bashir and his
actions.
Nevertheless, in their entirety these interviews exceed the series’ aim to
reveal more about the era and shed light on the events that led to the War of
the Mountain and the subsequent period. The majority of these interviews
were conducted with members of Bashir’s inner circle, who since 1980 had
worked closely with him in his bid to be elected president.41 This circle met
 st u d y ing the druze–maroni te co nf l ict  | 25

almost daily, and their discussions were transcribed by the group’s secretary,
Antoine Najm, whom I later interviewed.42 My interviews also included other
group members not featured in the documentary. While these interviews
were conducted almost twenty-nine years after the fact, the interviewees
provided a fairly consistent and lucid narrative that corresponds to much of
the textual sources I used throughout my research. However, this highlights
the limitations of these interviews, in addition to the fact that they were
conducted with an obvious aim in mind. A cross-examination of the full
transcripts and the segments that the producers used for the final released
series clearly reveals how the BGF wanted to adhere to the Maronite col­
lective identity that Bashir Gemayel had moulded and upheld through his
rhetoric and actions. Their bias notwithstanding, these interviews still retain
their historical relevance and are extremely useful, especially when juxtaposed
to similar literature from the Druze side.

The Progressive Socialist Party’s Oral History Project

Another important source I employed in the course of my research is the

Progressive Socialist Party’s Oral History Project, a collection of interviews
conducted by the PSP with its senior leadership, military commanders, sol­
diers, Druze clerics, allies from other parties, civil society activists, families of
fallen soldiers and the public at large.43 The collection contains hundreds of
hours of audio interviews conducted between 1983 and 1984, which were
transcribed between 2000 and 2005.44 As a whole, the collection is meticu­
lously transcribed and properly indexed, as the header of each page features
the interview number, the number of the tape from which it was transcribed
and the date of the transcription. Each interview opens with a small introduc­
tion by the interviewer, during which they brief the subject about the purpose
of this project and request that the interviewee talk about their upbringing,
education, siblings, spouse and professional career. The interviewer then asks
the subject to speak about their political or military involvement in the recent
events, as well as their personal encounters with the enemy – in this case,
the Israelis and the LF. It is noticeable that, with high-ranking or senior
individuals, the interviewer does not feature prominently, as the interviewee
is left to direct the interview as they wish, a luxury not afforded to junior or
less educated interviewees. Overall, the interviews provide an overall picture
 26 | conf li ct on mou nt l e b a n o n

of the Druze psyche, or at least that of the Joumblatti faction, concerning the
War of the Mountain. Nevertheless, like all oral history interviews, they are
not without their limitations and challenges.
One of these limitations is technical in nature. Given that these inter­
views were transcribed sixteen years after they had been conducted, they
have been vulnerable to some of the glitches that usually accompany the
transcription process. The transcribers were not aware of some of the infor­
mation and thus were unable to add marginal comments about the events
discussed; in some cases, they simply misunderstood references to names
and places.45 Hence, reading these interviews requires extensive knowledge
of the events discussed for the reader to understand some of the informants’
references, such as geographical locations and the casual or careless mention
of localised events.
This project, commissioned by Walid Joumblatt directly after the War of
the Mountain in 1984, seemingly sought to document the period before the
Israeli invasion in 1982 and the subsequent events, culminating in a series
of bloody clashes between the Druze and the Maronites. The reasons for
undertaking this documentation are several, and they vary according to many
of the people I interviewed. The popular explanation behind this project has
stressed the military nature of these interviews: They could serve to teach
the PSP militia about the errors they had committed and thus help them
to avoid any future debacle, especially given that the war was still far from
over, despite the recent Druze victory. This claim may be substantiated by
the fact that many of the interviews provide a detailed description of the
battles and the preparations for the ultimate showdown with the Maronite
militia. Additionally, the range of these interviews included all rank and file
of the Druze militia – from the top military commanders, over the less senior
members, to the platoon and squadron leaders.46 Yet, the apparent reason
for this oral history project goes beyond this somewhat simplistic, utilitarian
military aim, since it features as part of a bigger project that Walid Joumblatt
seemed to have envisioned at that stage of his political career.
These interviews are, in fact, part of a more comprehensive project that
Joumblatt hoped to achieve – that is, to rewrite or purify Lebanon’s history
from the fallacies that the Maronite political establishment and its historians
have propagated over the years, virtually erasing the Druze’s role in the estab­
 st u d y ing the druze–maroni te co nf l ict  | 27

lishment of modern Lebanon. Coincidentally, these interviews are extremely

charged with the Druze’s own understanding of their regions’ history dating
back to the eleventh century and even earlier. The depth or sophistication
of these historical claims and analogies usually depend on the informants’
age, educational background and proximity to the decision-making process
within the Druze community. Overall, nearly all the interviewees adhere
to a strict interpretation of the Druze past and at times also their future.
Ultimately, these interviews were intended to act as a repository for future
Druze and non-Druze scholars to consult when documenting the War of the
Mountain and other events, with the goal to rewrite a ‘genuine’ history of
Lebanon, which naturally should be more compatible with Joumblatt’s own
view of Lebanese history.

The Council for Druze Studies and Development

The fact that Joumblatt revived an already existing think-tank almost concur­
rently with the PSP’s Oral History Project and thus established another entity
to pursue this endeavour adds to the validity of the above-mentioned claim.
The Council for Druze Studies and Development (CDSD), established in
1977, brought together a number of predominantly Druze scholars – such
as Sami Makarem, Abbas Abu Salah and Abbas al-Halabi – whose writings
would provide a counter-narrative to the Maronite accounts of Lebanese his­
tory. Both before and after the War of the Mountain, many of their projects
and publications centred on promoting Druze history and heritage while
serving a larger Druze project.
At a congress held in Beirut in 1980 for representatives of the Druze
diaspora, Sami Makarem, Professor of Arabic Literature, Islamic Thought
and Sufism at the American University of Beirut (AUB), in his capacity as
chairperson set out the main aims of the CDSD:

• Collect, publish and translate Druze works.

• Produce films and documentaries about the Druze that particularly target
the Druze diaspora.
• Establishment of a Druze university, which would prepare professionals
capable of teaching the Druze about their faith and history.
• Founding a permanent exhibit for Druze arts and crafts.
 28 | conf li ct on mou nt l e b a n o n

• Creating a Druze library that would hold all works published about the
Druze
• Setting up youth clubs in the diaspora for young people to meet, and
prohibiting marriage outside the sect.47

In due course, most of these aims of the CDSD were addressed, albeit to
varying degrees of success. The council was able to produce a series of studies
and publications whose goal was to re-examine the history of Lebanon as
written by the Maronites, which willfully erased the role played by the Druze
and portrayed the Lebanese past as an exclusively Maronite affair.
One such publication was the joint work of AUB professors Abbas Abu
Salah and Sami Makarem, entitled Tārīkh al-Muwaªªidīn al-Durūz al-Siyāsī
fī al-Mashriq al-ʿArabī (Political History of the Unitarian Druze in the Arab
East).48 The book’s cover depicts a Druze warrior on horseback brandishing
a sword and surrounded by the five colours of the Druze; according to its
publisher (CDSD), the work intends to cover ‘the political history of the
Druze in a scientific manner using primary sources, more specifically Druze
manuscripts, which historians have yet to make use of’.49 The introduction
goes on to elaborate the purpose of this work and its ultimate aim – that is,
to ‘remind the Druze of their true heritage, which has been distorted by some
historians, either out of malice or simple negligence, so the Druze can be
aware of their national duty and to renounce any side loyalties which could
harm the state’s national structure’.50

The Permanent Bureau for Druze Associations

The second entity established to support Joumblatt’s vision consisted of the

Permanent Bureau for Druze Associations (PBDA). Founded at the end of
1982,51 the PBDA was a parallel organisation that served a more immediate
goal than the CDSD. The PBDA had no far-reaching aims, nor did it hope
to rewrite the history of the Druze. Its newsletter, which appeared almost
daily between January 1983 and December 1986, reveals that its main aim
was to counter the propaganda generated by the right-wing Maronite media.
The PSP never acknowledged the PBDA as an entity organically linked either
to itself or to Joumblatt; rather, it was presented as an independent initiative
by several leading Druze public figures and non-governmental organisations.
 st u d y ing the druze–maroni te co nf l ict  | 29

Al-Anbaa’, the PSP’s official mouthpiece, went so far as to affirm the PBDA’s
autonomy with an article praising what it called ‘the Phenomena of the
PBDA’, claiming that it was a populist movement countering Maronite false
claims about the ongoing war in the mountains.52
While the PBDA unequivocally restricted its membership to non-party
affiliates,53 all participants in this entity, in one way or another, adhered to the
PSP/Joumblatti view of the ongoing conflict. Rajeh Naim, the editor of the
PBDA newsletter, had never been a card-carrying member of the PSP; how­
ever, he previously had served as head of the media office for the Lebanese
National Movement (LNM), which after Kamal Joumblatt’s assassination
elected his son Walid as its chairman.54 The publication that Naim issued was
clearly skewed towards the PSP and the Joumblatt clan, as it explicitly criti­
cised and discredited any faction or person trying to defend the Maronite/
LF’s point of view. Raja Naim recalled the establishment of the PBDA as a
spontaneous response to the imminent danger that the Druze faced after the
Israeli invasion and the LF’s entry into southern Mount Lebanon. He also
emphasised that ‘much of the actions of the PBDA was of a defensive rather
than offensive nature and an attempt to correct the deliberate misinformation
of the Christian media outlets against the Druze’.55
While this publication did not produce much original content, except
for an occasional column by its editor, most of it took the form of press
clippings from local, regional and international publications; the selection of
these clippings in itself was a statement. They can be broadly placed into four
main categories. The first category comprised articles that condemn the LF
and the Maronites, usually by quoting from articles in Maronite publications
supportive of their goal to spread fear among the Druze. The second category
consisted of articles highlighting the activities of Druze notables unfavoured
by the mainstream Druze consensus, which the PSP and its subsidiaries rep­
resented. The articles of this second category were cleverly laid out adjacent to
the first category, to suggest to the reader that these two groups were secretly
conspiring, thus discrediting them in the eyes of the Druze public. The third
category of articles mainly focused on defending acts of violence committed
by the Druze, which were explained as a legitimate use of force triggered
solely by the aggression of the LF militias invading their lands.56 The fourth
category included articles and communiqués that reported on the activities of
 30 | conf li ct on mou nt l e b a n o n

the PBDA, such as visits to the president of the republic or his prime minister
and other branches of government, as well as the occasional press conference,
all geared towards bolstering public opinion for the Druze cause. The news­
letter had ‘250 daily subscribers as well as a wide circulation which targeted
the Druze diaspora reaching as far as Africa, Europe, Brazil and the United
States to such entities as the American Druze Society, as well as others’.57 I
will refrain here from elaborating further on these various publications and
oral history projects and the role they played in the course of the conflict, as
these will receive more extensive treatment in the following chapter on Druze
and Maronite collective perceptions of themselves and each other.
Despite all the complications that accompany institutionally commis­
sioned projects – such as Bashir: The Series, the PSP’s Oral History Project,
and the CDSD’s and the PBDA’s activities – which might void its objectivity,
it is exactly this trait that renders them useful, at least for the purposes of this
study. For example, the framework of remembrance that Walid Joumblatt
wished to create for the Druze can be reconstructed by using these interviews
and publications and by further elaborating on the collective memory forma­
tion of this group and potentially also of their Maronite opponents.
Several attempts at writing the history of the civil war and its post-war
implications have fallen victim to the obsession with historical truth, as prop­
agated by the warring factions. It is precisely for this reason that oral history
can salvage and revive scholarship on the civil war, which began to fade away
as early as in the second half of the 1990s. In this respect, oral history can
serve two purposes: First, it can shed more light on earlier episodes already
analysed based on traditional textual sources. Second, and most importantly,
oral history can be used as to heal old wounds.
It is within these parameters that oral history projects about the Lebanese
Civil War and particularly my own project about the War of the Mountain
can investigate these memories of past conflicts, not with the intention of
proving who stood on the right side of history, but of fostering an atmos­
phere of dialogue. The informants of these projects can publicly endorse this
dialogue, by breaking the silence that has dominated post-war Lebanon. The
various stories and publications of the warring factions were often framed to
explain and justify their positions, or to merely justify some of their actions;
therefore, the writing of a new narrative grounded on oral sources may be
 st u d y ing the druze–maroni te co nf l ict  | 31

called a corrective process. Perhaps, by trying to write a narrative of the War

of the Mountain, Lebanese attics may one day be properly swept, to use
Salibi’s words, paving the way for a country that embraces its past as well as
its present.58

Notes
1. Lee Klein Kerwin, ‘On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse’,
Representations 69 (2000 = Special Issue: Grounds for Remembering), 127.
2. Halbwachs, as quoted in The Role of Memory in Ethnic Conflict, ed. Ed Cairns
and Micheál Roe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 11.
3. Ibid., 38.
4. Ibid., 12.
5. Bartlett, as quoted in James V. Wertsch, ‘Collective Memory’, in Memory in
Mind and Culture, ed. Pascal Boyer and James Wertsch (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2009), 118–19.
6. Schwartz, as quoted in Patrick Devine Wright, ‘A Theoretical Overview of
Memory and Conflict’, in The Role of Memory in Ethnic Conflict, ed. Cairns and
Roe, 12.
7. Frederick Beiser. The German Historicist Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2011), 253.
8. Georg Iggers, ‘The Role of Professional Historical Scholarship in the Creation
and Distortion of Memory’, in Historical Perspectives on Memory, ed. Anne Ollila
(Helsinki: Hakapaino Oy, 1999), 55.
9. Nora, as quoted in James V. Wertsch, ‘Collective Memory’, in Memory in Mind
and Culture, ed. Boyer and Wertsch, 125.
10. Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1999), 3–4; Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The ‘Objectivity Question’ and
the American Historical Profession. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2007).
11. Novick, as quoted in James V. Wertsch, ‘Collective Memory’, 126.
12. Graig Blatz and Michael Ross, ‘Historical Memories’, in Memory in Mind
and Culture, ed. Pascal Boyer and James V. Wertsch (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2009), 230.
13. Some authors, such as Frentress and Wickham, have opted to use the term social
memory rather than collective memory, despite their acknowledgment that at
times this usage might apply to Halbwachs’ collective memory as such. James
Fentress and Chris Wickham, Social Memory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).
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 Kites

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 Bucking Goats

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together and bore five fine holes thru them as shown in the drawing.
Then place one of these with each of the unbored legs and bore
these, using the first pair as template for boring the second. Also
bore holes in the two bodies together, saw out the two bars and
bore the holes thru the two together. Saw out the upright and the
tilting pans; bore holes, and fasten together with a loose joint.
Enlarge the two lower holes in legs of the hens to the size of a 1"
nail. Fasten two legs to each hen with three 3/4" brads, and clench.
Finish the parts in appropriate contrasting colors. Place the two bars
between the legs of the hens and insert thru the holes 1" nails,
bending their ends back to form a loose joint. Take the upright and
the pans, and fasten the lower end of the upright to the middle of
the upper bar so that each pan will tilt when the hens peck.

Pecking Hen

ACROBAT
The body, arms and legs are made of 3/16" wood. After the acrobat
is sawed out and holes are bored, paint the parts in gay colors.
Assemble with loose joints. The two upright sticks are fastened to
the cross piece by two 1" brads at each end, after the two holes are
bored in the upper ends for the cord. It is colored green or black.
Insert a strong double cord thru the frame and the hands of the
acrobat. There is a twist in the cord when the legs are down, but it
is straight when the arms point down.
 Acrobat

CLIMBING SAILOR
This nimble tar climbs a rope according to a style that is all his own.
Pull on the string, and the friction on the two nails between his legs
being greater than that between his hands, his hands glide upward.
Let go, and the elastic band between his legs and arms pulls his legs
up, and he thus gets a fresh grip.
Saw out of 3/16" stock one body, two arms and two legs. The arms
are fastened to the body with three 3/4" brads and clenched. The
legs have a loose hip joint on a 1" nail with the end bent back. The
rubber band is held between arms and legs by two nails. The string
is held between two thicknesses of felt or cardboard that are
fastened between the hands with two brads to produce the required
friction. Bore holes to avoid splitting. The string passes down
between the two legs around two nails that pass thru both legs but
do not pull them together. Color the cap white and suit blue.
 Climbing Sailor

THE JUMPING JACK

The wood should be 3/16" thick. Two of each pattern is required,
except the head, which may be made of slightly thicker stock.
Bore the holes as shown to form loose joints.
Color the cap and body blue, thighs and upper arms yellow, calves
and fore arms pink, and shoes brown.
Insert small nails into edge of arms and thighs at the points where
the strings are to be attached. Take two pieces of string, two feet
long; tie the ends of one to nails in the arms, the ends of the other
to the nails in the thighs. Insert 1" nails thru one of the body pieces;
drive 3/4" brads thru it and the neck; place arms and legs in
position; adjust the strings to proper lengths, and tie a knot on
them. Place the other body piece in position. Bend back the ends of
the nails, making loose joints, and drive the brads thru the neck into
the second body piece, and clench. Fasten the legs together with
loose joints, and all should work freely.

Jumping Jack
 BALANCING BARRISTER
The body may be sawed from 3/8" stock as outlined in the drawing.
Find its center of gravity by balancing it on a knife edge, crosswise,
and then lengthwise. Draw lines along the knife edge where it
balances. Where these intersect is the center of gravity. Bore a hole
at this point of intersection perpendicular to the body, and so as to
fit tight on a 1/4" dowel rod. Make two discs 1" diameter, 1/4" thick,
with a hole to fit tight on the dowel on each side of the man.
Color his shirt red, hat and trousers blue, arms and stockings white,
and dowel, shoes and parallel bars black.
The frame on which the man should balance (Fig. 11), with his head
just a little the lighter, is made of seven pieces. The base, 1/2" x 2" x
12"; the four uprights, 1/4" x 1" x 5-3/4", and the two bars, 3/8" x
3/4" x 15", are firmly fastened together so that the two bars will be
parallel and horizontal.
When the man is properly balanced, which may be accomplished by
whittling off a little stock where needed, he should roll from end to
end of the bars by giving the dowel a twist between two fingers.
Fig. 11.
 Balancing Barrister

THE DANCING RASTUS

All parts of the body are of 3/16" stock. When sawed out, the parts
are colored separately and assembled. All joints should swing
without friction. Therefore, bore all holes larger than the nail, thru all
thicknesses, except the one nearest to the point of the nail. At
elbows and knees have the heads of the nails on the inside. At the
shoulders place a small wheel between the arms and body, and use
a 1-1/2" nail for pivot, with plenty of play. The platform (Fig. 12) is
of thin, springy wood, 1-1/2" wide and 9" long. The upright post is
of 1/2" stock about 6" long and securely nailed to the platform and
braced with a small block. Holes are bored into Rastus' back and the
post so as to fit tight on No. 16 spring brass wire, 5" long. Put a
weight on the rear end of the platform, let the front end project out
over the edge of a table and set it vibrating. This should cause
Rastus to swing legs and arms in a merry fashion.

Fig. 12.
 Dancing Rastus

THE SPANKING ESQUIMAUX

The stock for all parts is 1/4" thick except for the oar and broom
which should be 1/8" thick. Saw out the two figures, wheels and
bars. Hold the two wheels together and bore two holes for the pivot
nails. Do similarly to the bars. Assemble wheels and bars temporarily
to mark places on the wheels where the feet of the figures will be
fastened. Saw out the oar and broom. Color all the parts separately
in bright contrasting values to bring out the outlines of the arms and
other parts of the figures. Fasten the wheels to the feet, the bars to
the wheels in loose joint, and the oar and broom to the man and
woman in positions indicated by the dotted lines.
When properly put together, the figures should swing when the bars
are moved back and forth, and the oar and broom go flying and
strike with a rattling bang.
 Spanking Esquimaux

WABBLER
This toy is made so that the wabbler can go or glide down the ladder
on his elbows. The ladder is made from soft wood 3/8" to 1/2" thick,
2-1/2" wide, and 20" long. The openings are cut as shown, and nails
located and driven in exactly as indicated in the drawing. The ladder
is then securely fastened to the base which is made of 3/4" wood, 3-
1/2" square. The wabbler is sawed out of 1/4" wood. A full-sized
drawing is shown. This is all one piece without openings. Features
and parts of the body are to be worked out by using paints of
different colors.
 Wabbler

FALLING TEETER-TOTTER
The stock for the upright piece and end supports is 3/8" thick; that
for the two boys and teeter-totter is 1/4" thick. The upright is made
2" wide and 28" long. On the center line lay off points 1-3/8" apart.
With these as centers, draw semi-circles of 1" radius alternately on
both sides of center line. From each center draw lines tangent to the
circles, as shown in the drawing.
Saw to these lines and curves, and finish the edges so that they are
smooth. Saw out two boys and the teeter-totter board (B, Fig. 13),
cutting out the center opening accurately. Slip this board onto the
upright, and watch it fall from top to bottom in a see-saw motion. If
it fails to travel smoothly, see where the rub is and remove the
obstacle. Fasten the two pairs of cross pieces to each end of the
upright so that it will stand vertically on either end.
Give it a thin coat of paint. Color the boys and fasten them with a
nail thru the body of each boy, fitting loosely, and driven into the
ends of the board. When the see-saw is turned up-end down, the
boys will swing on the nails and keep heads up.

Fig. 13.
 Falling Teeter Totter

TUMBLING TOMMIE
This problem is rather unique in its principle of operation and offers
at once material for study and investigation. Like that of a circus
performer, the combinations must be exactly right or the little fellow
may fall on his head. In making the man, first bore the holes thru
the block and take care to make them parallel. The openings into the
holes from the ends must be in the same plane and made to slide
over the rounds of the ladder without friction. The tumbler may be
shaped and colored to look like a man. A base may be attached to
each end, but on opposite sides of the ladder, so that Tommie may
tumble in both directions.
 Tumbling Tommie

THE BUSY PUP

All parts of this article are made of 1/4" wood except the ears which
should be 1/8" thick. Saw out one body, a pair each of fore legs,
hind legs, ears and tail, and the push-rod and guide. The guide is
made of four pieces and fastened together with glue and brads, as
shown in the drawing. The two pairs of legs are fastened to the
body by loose joints. Holes are bored thru one end of the push-rod
and the forefeet; also thru the projecting end of the guide and hind
feet. Fasten that end of the guide between the hind feet with loose
joint (Fig. 14). Insert the push-rod thru the hole in the guide, which
should slide easily, and fasten between the fore feet. By holding the
guide in the left hand and working the push-rod back and forth, the
dog should work freely and without a hitch in all the varied positions
that it is possible for it to assume. With fine brad fasten the tail.
Bore holes thru head and ears, and pivot them on a loose joint so
that they will swing when the pup is busy scratching.
The pup may be colored white with black spots on neck, body and
legs. The push-rod and guide may be finished in a dark color or
black.
The stunts that this pup can perform are greater in number than one
would suspect. Furthermore, they increase also in variety as the
child acquires skill in manipulation.
Fig. 14.
 Busy Pup

THE DINKEY BIRD

When properly made up, this bird can bob its head and tail up and
down. A swinging pendulum supplies the motive power. The parts
are shown in the drawing full size, except the clamp that holds the
Dinkey in upright position (Fig. 15).
The head, tail and body pieces, one with and one without the leg,
are sawed from 1/4", the back (E) from 5/16", the wedge from 3/8",
and the clamp from 1/2" stock. Finish all edges. Drill 1/16" holes at
A and B. Put the two body pieces together so they coincide, and
drive fine 1" nails thru both of them at C and D. Then separate them
enough to let the back (E) into place between them. Fasten the
three pieces together with five 1" brads, and clench. Fasten clamp
(F) securely to the foot at H.
Color the different parts in gay tints, and let dry.
Take 4 ft. of strong twine and with small nails fasten one end to the
head and the other to the tail. Pull out the nails at C and D enough
to let the head and the tail slip into their places between the body
pieces. Then reinsert the nails. The head and tail should swing
freely, and the back (E) act as a stop in their up-and-down motion.
Put the clamp onto the edge of a table top and fix with the wedge.
Pull down on the loop of the string, grasp it about 6" from the top,
and there tie a simple knot. Fasten a stone or a piece of metal to the
loop. Set it swinging and watch the bobbing performance according
to Dinkey fashion.
Fig. 15.
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