NDU Publications

This book deals with the political and military situation in the Middle East in the second half of the thirteenth century, and with the repercussions of this situation on religious and ethnic groups, in particular Maronites, who were torn by the ruling Crusader forces of that era divided into two disputing and warring camps: one led by the Genoese and the other by the Venetians, which, in turn, caused the Maronites, to split according to their geographic location and their subordination to their respective Crusader leaders. As such the Maronites of “Byblos” followed the Genoese volition while the Maronites of the North followed the Venetian volition, with each group having its own patriarch. In view of these circumstances, this Maronite division was political and obligatory, not ideological, and as the Lebanese saying goes, “it is all the fault of the Italians!”