Jamal al-Din Hamdan

Who is Jamal al-Din Hamdan?

Sheikh Jamal al-Din Hamdan was a Lebanese Druze Sheikh living in the nineteenth century in Mount Lebanonin Bater EchChouf.

Following the Lebanese civil war of 1859-1860, Hamdan was sentenced to death by the Ottoman Turkish authorities alongside ten other Druze sheikhs : Sheikh Sa'id Jumblat, Sheikh Hussein Talhuq, Sheikh As'ad Talhuq, Sheikh Qasim Abu Nakad, Sheikh As'ad 'Imad, Amir Muhammad Qasim Arslan, Sheikh Salim Jumblat, Muhyi al-Din Shibli, 'Ali Sa'id, and Bashir Miri Sa'id.

The Ottoman government's extraordinary envoy to the region, Fuad Pacha, had ordered that these men be executed for their participation in the atrocities of the Lebanese civil war of 1859-1860 against the Maronite Christians. According to C.H. Churchill's 1862 The Druses and the Maronites, "none of these sentences have carried into execution, whether of death or of penal imprisonment".

A Part of the Hamdan family had been banished from Mount Lebanon following the battle of Ain Dara in 1711. This battle was fought against two Druze factions : the Yemeni and the Kaysi. The Kaysi were represented by the Jumblat and Arslan families and the Yemeni by the Hamdan and Al-Atrash families.