The 1860 Massacres in the Mount Lebamon, Aleppo, Damascus region
Khilafah Massacres from 1840-1860
[...] A good example of State complicity by the Khilafah in massacres of Christians begun by individual Muslims occurred in Lebanon and Syria in 1860, and which were only finally ended by the intervention of French forces:
In Lebanon, from April to July, more than sixty villages of Al-Matn and Al-Shuf were burned to ashes by the Druze and Kurdish forces. The big towns then followed. The Ottoman garrison commander again offered the Maronite population asylum, as he had offered to the small villages, asking for the surrender of their arms and then slaughtering them in the local serai. Such was the fate of Dayr al-Qamar, which lost 2600 men; Jazzin and environs, where 1500 were slaughtered; Hasbayya, where 1000 of 6000 were cold bloodedly killed; Rashayya, where 800 perished. The orders for Hasbayya were that no male between seven and seventy years of age should be spared. Malicious eyes feasted on mangled, intermingled bodies of old and young in the courtyard of the Shihabi palace.
Zahla, largest among the towns with 12000 inhabitants, held out for a short time and then succumbed under an attack by a host including fighters from Harwan and Bedouins from the desert. The town lay snugly in a deep ravine carved by the Bardawni flowing from the Mount Sannin. Hardly a house escaped the flames. The total loss of life within the span of three months and a space of a few miles was estimated at 12000. From Lebanon the spark of hate flew to Damascus and ignited a reservoir of Muslim ill-feeling generated by the policy of Ibrahim Pasha and the egalitarian provisions of Khatti Humayun. The Assyrian quarter was sent on fire and some 11000 of its inhabitants were put to the sword.
http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/xstnc-6.html
During the weary centuries that Syria was under the heel of the Turk, the pashas, agas, kaimakams, and the entire horde of hungry officials, looked upon the Christians as their natural prey, and dealt with them unchecked and unquestioned by any authority. The only limit to their rapacity consisted in the practical limitations of their victims' resources. The life of the rayah was deplorable. He lived because he had made his choice between death and tribute. This was his official position in a Muhammedan state. But besides this he was constantly loaded with contumely. If by industry, or good luck, he happened to have wealth he was plundered. If he tried to conceal his treasure he was beaten on the feet till he disclosed it. Whatever his merit, he was not permitted to ride on a horse, or even on a donkey. When he met a Turk in the street he was obliged to leave the side path and step into the slush in the centre. He was obliged towear blackclothes and blackhead gear,while the Turks dressed in gay silks and golden embroideries. He was obliged to speak to a Turk with bated breath, and if by inadventence he raised his voice he was struck on the mouth. He dared not live in a house as high as that of his Muslim neighbours, or wear arms for protection, or have his seal engraved in the common Arabic character, and when he died it was not permissible to carry his corpse past a mosque.
In regard to the massacre of the eleven thousand Christians in Syria in 1860, the officials of the Porte at Constantinople formed a conspiracy for the blotting out of the Christian name in those parts, they appointed their own creatures to the governments of Damascus, Beirut, Sidon, and furnished them with soldiers, who were posted as garrison in the chief towns inhabited by Christians, under pretense of defending them against the Druses.
When all was ready the savage Druses of Hauron were summoned, and they and their brethren of Lebanon and AntiLebanon immediately set themselves to burning the villages and killing the people without any provocation. They put to death every male, even the infants at the breast, and enslaved as many of the women and girls as they chose.
The Turkish garrison at first simply looked on; then they urged the Christians to take refuge in the castles on condition of delivering up whatever weapons they might possess. They swore by the Koran that no harm should be done them. But no sooner were they thus entrapped than the Druses were called in and every one of these helpless victims was shot down or his throat cut in cold blood.
The streets of DeirelKamr, Ilosbayan, and Zahlah flowed with human gore, in which men waded ankle deep. The worst scenes occurred in Damascus, the center of Moslem fanaticism. Here the pasha himself directed the operations, and after the butchery of the Christians and the plunder of their property, their quarter of the city was set on fire and burned down.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/syria-1860.htm
Symposium: The Muslim Persecution of Christians - Lebanese Political Forum.
http://www.lebanese-forces.org/vbullet/showthread.php?t=5065
The 1860 Massacres - by Victor ABBOUD - ASG Alumni - Antonine ...
Mishaqa was to be a chief witness of the events that were to characterize the year 1860, primarily the massacres perpetrated by the Druze inhabitants of Mount Lebanon against their fellow Maronites, and more importantly, as resident of Damascus at that time, of the riots and ensuing massacres of the local Damascene Christian population by some of its Muslim inhabitants. Mishaqa would come to produce a series of regular dispatches as the events unfolded during the months of June and July 1860 to his superiors in the consulate in Beirut. As time progressed, he acquiesced to the request of one his relatives to write down some kind of general history of the area, as he had witnessed it. The answer came in 1873 as the book commonly known as “Murder, Mayhem, Pillage and Plunder, the History of the Lebanon in the 18th and 19th Centuries”, or as it is known by its Arabic title “al-Jawab ‘ila Iqtirah al-Ahbab.
The 1860 massacres proper:
The 1860 massacres happened on two primary fronts, Mount Lebanon and Damascus, in chronological succession over a period of weeks during the months of June and July 1860...
http://www.asgalumni.com/documents/display_document.php?id=36
OVERVIEW OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF SYRIA 1860: the massacres of Christians in Mount Lebanon spread to Damascus: 12000 ... were fiercely persecuted and massacred by the Ottomans in Aleppo in 1817. ...
http://www.ewtn.com/library/chistory/syriahis.htm
In the second half of the 19th century Moslems began to feel the force of the Western colonial threat. In the 1860 massacre in Damascus, Moslems slaughtered more than 10,000 Christians. In Aleppo, Christians were butchered as well.
http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=3&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=624&PID=0&IID=741&TTL=The_Development_of_Arab_Anti-Semitism
Moslems massacre Christians at Aleppo, Syria. 1860...
http://www.strategypage.com/militaryhistory.asp