Lost military figures resurfacing…”The Marada Archers”
Dr. WAlid Phares/November 04/15
Lebanon’s modern history books between 1943 and 1990 were carefully written and illustrated so that large areas of the country’s history, bad or good, was suppressed. My book of 1979 included a severe critique of the educational system of “1943.” But the Taef “educational regime” did worse. Not only it suppressed parts of history, it disfigured the remaining parts. Nothing pertaining to the historical evolution of Lebanon from the 7th century to the 16th survived the Taef history books.
More precisely the entire history of Mount Lebanon disappeared. Even more particularly its military history. Now more research is surfacing and more material is being gathered. I wish if time was available to write extensions to my books in the 1980′s and the 1990s. Maybe few years from now.
Here is an exclusive portrait-painting, of a Marada archer circa 1099. The Marada, Mardaites, Mordoyo, were the armed forces of the Aramaic-speaking populations of Mount Lebanon between the 7th century and 1305 AD. According to growing research, the Marada archers were among the best of medieval times in the Levant. Today they would be the equivalent of sniper corps.
They were portrayed as the defensive force barring the valleys of the Mount Lebanon range to the Umeyads and Abbassids for centuries. Some history references describes them as playing a role in the Crusaders advances in the Levant in the 10th and 11th centuries, along with Armenian brigades.
Note their light uniforms and hats and small shields. Ironically and mysteriously the “Marada archers” appeared in online games few years ago along with Mameluks, Franks, Seleucids and Byzantines.
No matter how we read history today, these prominent soldiers active for six hundred years, almost ten times the history of the “Lebanese Republic”, are no where to be found in official history, in museums or in the speeches of national leaders and politicians.
This is a drop in a sea of information and literature, gone absent from the curricula and from the minds of any young generations of Lebanese. Fortunately, there are those very few researchers, very young ones, who are excavating the patrimony of a national history, abandoned by an power-hungry elite.