page_title: Tyre, Lebanon
section_title: Maan clan rule
hierarchical_section_title: Tyre, Lebanon / History / Ottoman period (1516–1918) / Maan clan rule
context_page_description: Tyre is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, though in medieval times for some centuries by just a tiny population. It was one of the earliest Phoenician metropolises and the legendary birthplace of Europa, her brothers Cadmus and Phoenix, as well as Carthage's founder Dido. The city has many ancient sites, including the Tyre Hippodrome, and was added as a whole to UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1984.
  The historian Ernest Renan noted:
  One can call Tyre a city of ruins, built out of ruins.
  Today Tyre is the fifth largest city in Lebanon after Beirut, Tripoli, Aley and Sidon, It is the capital of the Tyre District in the South Governorate. There were approximately 200,000 inhabitants in the Tyre urban area in 2016, including many refugees.
context_section_description: The Ottoman Empire conquered the Levant in 1516, yet Tyre remained untouched for another ninety years until the beginning of the 17th century, when the Ottoman leadership at the Sublime Porte appointed the Druze leader Fakhreddine II of the Maan family as Emir to administer Jabal Amel (modern-day South Lebanon) and Galilee in addition to the districts of Beirut and Sidon.
  One of his projects in Tyre was the construction of a residence for his brother, Prince Younis Al-Maani. Its foundations were evidently built upon ruins from the Crusader period. The ruins of the palace are still standing in the centre of today's Souk marketplace area and are known as Khan Abdo El-Ashqar, or Khan Al-Askar as well as Khan Sour.
  Fakhreddine also encouraged Shiites and Christians to settle to the East of Tyre to secure the road to Damascus. He thus laid the foundation of modern Tyre demographics as many of those settlers – or their descendants respectively – later moved to the town. Those development efforts were over-shadowed though when the Emir aspired to establish an independent state that is widely viewed as the earliest vision of Lebanon as a country:
  "In 1608, Fakhr al-Din signed a treaty with Ferdinand, the Medici grand duke of Tuscany, which included a secret article clearly directed against the Porte.
  At the core of this alliance with Florence was the plan to rebuild the harbour for naval support. In this context, he converted the remains of Tyre's former Crusader's Cathedral in 1610 into a military fortress. Notwithstanding, he was chased out by the Turkish army and went into exile in Tuscany.
  In 1618, Fakhreddine (also spelled Fakhr-al-Din) returned to the Levant thanks to the removal of some of his enemies within the Ottoman regime. He then also entertained poitical relations with France: after a diplomatic mission sent by King Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu the Maani palace in Tyre "became the property of the Franciscan fathers." By 1631, Fakhreddine dominated most of Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, but the Maan era ended when Sultan Murad IV had the Druze Emir executed together with one or two of his sons in 1635 for his political ambitions.
caption: 1590 portrait of Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinando I de' Medici, by Scipione Pulzone, Uffizi Gallery Florence
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