As a people who value privacy, the history of the Druze has often been misunderstood. To tell the stories of the prominent Arslan family, and of their links to other Arabian royal families, a museum has opened in Aley, Mount Lebanon.
The story of the Druze family of Arslan, descendants of the third-century Lakhmids kings in southern Iraq, begins with the survival of an infant after a massacre of the tribe’s men by the Crusaders.
Thirty-three Arslan princes were killed at a river north of Beirut, known ever since as Nahr El Mawt, or the River of Death.
Decades later in 1187, under the leadership of the legendary Saladin, the baby had grown to become Prince Jamaleddine Hujji the First, chief of the Arslan Druze tribe.
Along with the Tanukhi Druze, they fought and fended off the Crusaders from the Mount Lebanon area.
The Arslan name appears throughout the region’s history. Prince Toufic Arslan was one of the major figures behind the creation of Greater Lebanon in 1920 and his son, Prince Majid, was one of the country’s independence leaders in 1943.