Emira Hbous Arslan

When we speak of Emira Hbous Arslan, it seems to us that we are going back to an age far off in the darkness, sunk deep in antiquity — nothing like the brief interval, a mere hundred and thirty years, that separates us from her; and that is only because of the great distance between the way of life which the heroine of our story led, and the demands of living that we face in our present days.

What doubles this remoteness, despite the recentness of the era, is that the information about her that remains to us is so scanty and meager as to suffice for the telling of tales without quenching the thirst for their details, which does not allow us to penetrate to the core of this personality as though we had truly lived alongside her. Necessity, however, contents us with a mere survey of her deeds; and in that, al-Bustani's book The Emiras of Lebanon is our nearest road and best guide.

She was known among high and low as Sitt Hbous, mistress of the emirate of the Gharb — and this emirate means all the heights that overlook the city of Beirut. She inherited it from her husband, Emir Abbas ibn Fakhr al-Din al-Arslani, and after his death she took to herself the guardianship of their four minor sons, proving thereby that she possessed all the qualifications of any emir in whose person are gathered the destinies of the subjects under him in all the affairs of their political and economic life.

Nor did the sagacity of this able stateswoman escape Emir Bashir Shihab the Great, who was then still at the beginning of his rule over Lebanon; so he worked to raise her standing and appointed her absolute governor over her fief; and she bore all the responsibilities at which this lofty office aims.

In this the Emir was serving his own interest indirectly, and through it the Emira divined a policy of varying appearances and forms: you see her now an open advocate, now a discreet conspirator, now a daring fighter, or an adventurous envoy. She moved among these several political parts, caring for nothing in them but the pursuit of her interest, embodied in the interest of Emir Bashir — an interest whose first fruit was grave troubles in which she was his best helper and supporter, until it was decreed that this fighter should end her days a victim of his exalted rule, when she had come close to her glory and the towering height of her vigor.

Now these two allies had come together through an intermediary, Sheikh Bashir Jumblatt, the Emir's vizier, who, it appears, held such standing with the Emira that she consulted him in everything she undertook with the Emir. And so it was that not a year had passed since the Emir appointed her governor over the Gharb before circumstances called on her to repay the Emir's favor many times over, when the ordeal descended upon Bashir, and al-Jazzar seized the two of them, together with a third — the Emir's brother — and lodged them in the citadel of Acre as hostages for a tribute the Emir had been unable to pay to one of the aghas of the troops.

Meanwhile Sitt Hbous was providing for the needs of the prisoners' families, never ceasing to win the people over to the deposed Emir, inciting them to take his part against the one who had replaced him, explaining that the state is nothing but solidarity, faith, and cooperation.

But neither preaching at home nor local relief could ward off the dangers or turn aside the events. Nothing remained for her but to face the matter from the positive side: to pawn her jewels, or make a show of doing so, as Sheikh Bashir secretly signaled to her from prison, and then to bring the sum herself to al-Jazzar — for how else was there deliverance from a tribute that had turned into a ransom of blood and the fate of a state?

She met Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar in Acre, on his own ground and in his own domain, and she did not come away from that meeting until she had bargained over the sum demanded, reduced the imposed tribute, and secured for the Emir, besides, his honorable return amid horses and retainers, robes of honor and arms.

Nor was that the only calamity of the Emir's in which Hbous Arslan fought so valiantly — her case in this being the case of feudal politics itself, swung to and fro by a web of petty states and a mass of watchful governors. For the contest passed a second time to Abdullah Pasha, the new wali of Acre, with the Emir exiled to Hauran, and Sitt Hbous resisting on his behalf; but this time the Emir was not long in appeasing the Pasha, choosing to forget what he had caused him through the rising of the Kisrawanis against him — the thing that had driven him to that decision. And it was in consequence of this appeasement that the great clash between the two Bashirs took place, in which Sitt Hbous thereafter sided with the vizier and not with the Emir; and from that time her star began to set — even though the Emir tasted a third exile, to Egypt, during which he contrived an alliance with Muhammad Ali Pasha, and soon returned in its wake to Lebanon with one care above all others: to rid himself of his two enemies, Bashir and Hbous.

Bloody battles broke out between the two parties, among them the revolt of the sheikhs and emirs known as the Mukhtara movement, whose pivot was the adhesion of Emira Hbous to Sheikh Bashir; matters were not long in ending in the latter's defeat, then his capture in Damascus, then his killing in Acre.

As for her, the Emir stripped her of her fief and handed it over to her son, Emir Ahmad, who acquitted himself excellently in his service. And in the thick of this politics, which knows no tie of blood or bond of friendship, she stood fast on its cheerless field to the last arrow left in her quiver.

She took refuge in Bshamoun, close by Choueifat, the place of her birth, being then fifty-eight years of age, hoping to retire from politics. But so hot was her friendship and so bitter her enmity that fate would not let her end her days in peace: to those low hills the Emir's men pursued her, and pressed her harder and harder, until she resorted to disguise and turned and fled.

And the fugitive had not run far before she fell dead to the ground. Was she brought down, struck by bullets? Or by exhaustion and heartbreak? Or strangled in her palace, the tale of the flight being of no account?

However the historians may differ over her death, one thing remains certain to us: she was faithful to a politics that was not faithful to her, and she perished by the very instrument she had so long wielded. And just as she would defend high honor from harm, so she gave freely when blood was spilled at its side.