page_title: Tyre, Lebanon
section_title: 1958 Lebanese Civil War
hierarchical_section_title: Tyre, Lebanon / History / 1943 Lebanese independence / 1958 Lebanese Civil War
caption_attribution_description: العربية: كاظم الخليل (1902-1990) - سياسي نائب ووزير لبناني سابق
context_page_description: Tyre is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, though in medieval times for some centuries by just a tiny population. It was one of the earliest Phoenician metropolises and the legendary birthplace of Europa, her brothers Cadmus and Phoenix, as well as Carthage's founder Dido. The city has many ancient sites, including the Tyre Hippodrome, and was added as a whole to UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1984.
  The historian Ernest Renan noted:
  One can call Tyre a city of ruins, built out of ruins.
  Today Tyre is the fifth largest city in Lebanon after Beirut, Tripoli, Aley and Sidon, It is the capital of the Tyre District in the South Governorate. There were approximately 200,000 inhabitants in the Tyre urban area in 2016, including many refugees.
context_section_description: When President Camille Chamoun introduced a new electoral system in 1957, Ahmed al-Asaad from the feudal Ali al-Saghir dynasty, who at the beginning of the decade had even been the Speaker of the Lebanese parliament, for the first time lost the vote for deputy (MP). He had presented his candidacy in Tyre, the stronghold of his Shia rival Kazem al-Khalil, rather than in his traditional home base of Bint-Jbeil.
  As a consequence, al-Asaad became a "major instigator of events against Chamoun" and his allies, primarily al-Khalil, who likewise was a long-time member of parliament and the scion of a family of large landowners ("zu'ama") ruling through patronage systems:
  "The Khalils, with their age-old ways, [..] were known for being particularly rough and hard."
  During the 1958 crisis, Kazem al-Khalil was the only Shi'ite minister in the cabinet of Sami as-Sulh, to whose family the al-Khalil feudal dynasty was traditionally allied. Thus,
  "Kazim's followers had a free hand in Tyre; they could carry Guns on the streets".
  Then, after the formation of the United Arab Republic (UAR) under Gamal Abdel Nasser in February 1958, tensions escalated in Tyre between the forces of Chamoun and supporters of Pan-Arabism. Demonstrations took place – as in Beirut and other cities – that promoted pro-union slogans and protested against US foreign policy. The Jafariya school became the base of the opposition.
  Still in February, five of its students were arrested and "sent to jail for trampling on the Lebanese flag and replacing it with that of the UAR." Hussein Sharafeddin, a son of Imam Abdul Hussein Sharafeddin and as the director of Jafariya a leader in the protests, was imprisoned, too.
  "The issue caused violent parliamentary wrangling between [..] Kazem al-Khalil, and the Greek-Catholic twin brothers Nicolas and Joseph Slam, who were accused by him of fanning riots."
  On 28 March, soldiers and followers of Kazem al-Khalil opened fire on demonstrators and – according to some reports – killed three. On the second of April, four or five protestors were killed and about a dozen injured. Al-Khalil alleged "that some of the demonstrators had thrown sticks of dynamite before the gendarmes fired", but this was not corroborated.
  Subsequently, opposition leaders like Rashid Karami expressed support for the people of Tyre, and the neighbouring city of Sidon/Saida joined the strike. A US-Diplomat, who travelled the region shortly afterwards, reported though that the clashes were more related to the personal feud between al-Asaad and al-Khalil than to national politics.
  In May, the insurgents in Tyre gained the upper hand. Ahmad al-As'ad and his son Kamil al-Asaad supported them, also with weapons. According to a general delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) who visited in late July, "heavy fighting went on for 16 days". Kazem al-Khalil was expelled from the city and the Sharafeddin family "took over control". While the rebels held the old town, the government forces controlled all access to the peninsula. The ICRC got permission from them for regular relief distributions.
  The crisis dissolved in September, when Chamoun stepped down. Al-Khalil returned still in 1958, but was attacked several times by gunmen. Despite the victory of the al-As'ad dynasty who had played a dominant role in Tyre and Jabal Amel for almost three centuries, its power began to crumble at the same time with the arrival of a newcomer:
caption: "Tough" Kazem al-Khalil[106]
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