In general, the effects of the Crusades on Syria were disastrous. The cities had been destroyed and the ports dismantled; all was ruin and desolation. Dissident Moslem elements, comprising Shiites, Ismailites and Nusayris, who then reportedly outnumbered the Sunnites and had on varied occasions compromised their loyalty by aiding Franks, were now decimated. Their remnant sought refuge in central Lebanon and the Biqa. The Mamluk al-Ashraf exacted from the Druzes outward conformity to Sunnite Islam, but the conformity did not last long. Baybars forced the Nusayris to build mosques in their villages, but he could not force them to pray in them. Instead, they used the buildings as stables for their cattle and beasts of burden. In pursuit of the 'scorched earth' policy Mamluk sultans methodically ravaged Lebanon. Shiites of the Kisrawan region were replaced by Kurds and Turkomans; Maronites from the north pushed on later to fill the vacancy. The defence of Beirut against recurring sea incursions was en- trusted in 1 294 by the sultans to amirs of the Buhtur family, one of whose members left us the most detailed account of the period. Lebanon then became less oriented westward; it assumed the general aspect that it has maintained till modern times. In fact, all Syria had in it by then almost every element of civilization it possessed until the early nineteenth century, when a fresh wave of Western ideas and cultural elements began to break on its shore.
Native Christians suffered no less than schismatic Moslems. A measure of hostility was engendered between the Syrian Christians and their Moslem neighbours that was seldom attained before and that is not yet entirely abated. The active help given the Crusaders by the native Christians led to ruthless reprisals which rarely discriminated between active collaborators and their innocent co-religionists. In Lebanon the Maronites were accorded by the Latins all the ecclesiastical and civil rights that pertained to members of the Roman Catholic church, though actual union was not
