and keeping his seat.

'If you do not, there is not a man here who will not take it as a
personal insult,' said the Emir, speaking rapidly between his teeth,
yet affecting to smile. 'It has been the custom of the mountain for more
than seven hundred years.'

'Very strange,' thought Tancred, as he complied and dismounted.

All Syria, from Gaza to the Euphrates, is feudal. The system, generally
prevalent, flourishes in the mountain region even with intenseness. An
attempt to destroy feudalism occasioned the revolt against the Egyptians
in 1840, and drove Mehemet Ali from the country which had cost him so
much blood and treasure. Every disorder that has subsequently occurred
in Syria since the Turkish restoration may be traced to some officious
interposition or hostile encroachment in this respect. The lands of
Lebanon are divided into fifteen Mookatas, or feudal provinces, and the
rights of the mookatadgis, or landlords, in these provinces, are power
of punishment not extending to death, service in war, and labour in
peace, and the collection of the imperial revenue from the population,
who are in fact their vassals, on which they receive a percentage from
the Porte. The administration of police, of the revenue, and indeed
the whole internal government of Lebanon, are in the hands of the
mookatadgis, or rather of the most powerful individuals of this class,
who bear the titles of Emirs and Sheikhs, some of whom are proprietors
to a very great extent, and many of whom, in point of race and antiquity
of established family, are superior to the aristocracy of Europe.

There is no doubt that the founders of this privileged and territorial
class, whatever may be the present creeds of its members, Moslemin,
Maronite, or Druse, were the old Arabian conquerors of Syria. The Turks,
conquerors in their turn, have succeeded in some degree in the plain to
the estates and immunities of the followers of the first caliphs; but
the Ottomans never substantially prevailed in the Highlands, and their
authority has been recognised mainly by management, and as a convenient
compromise amid the rivalries of so many local ambitions.

Always conspicuous among the great families of the Lebanon, during
the last century and a half preeminent, has been the House of Shehaab,
possessing entirely one of the provinces, and widely disseminated and
powerfully endowed in several of the others. Since the commencement of
the eighteenth century, the virtual