The al-Rizzi Maronite patriarchs and their descendants the al-Dahir shaykhs

At least three consecutive Maronite patriarchs, two brothers and their nephew, carried the patronym al-Rizzi: Mikhayil son of Yuhanna al-Rizzi (1567-1581); his brother Sarkis al-Rizzi (1581-1597); and their nephew Yusuf al-Rizzi (1597-1608); they hailed from the now ruined village of Bqufa in in the highest ranges of Mount Lebanon, between Bsharray and Ihdin.

Tannus al-Shidyaq, in his Kitab Akhbar al-A’yaan fi Jabal Lubnan, (page 83 of the Lebanese University edition) mentioned that the al-Dahir muqata’ji family of al-Zawiyah traced their origin to a Butrus al-Rizzi who left Bqufa for the village of Kfar Hawra in the Zawiyah in 1760.

[The date of 1760 may be the result of a printing error and a date of 1670 or earlier seems more likely, because Shidyaq also ascribes an event happening to a grandson of Butrus al-Rizzi to the year 1741, in the time of Milhim Shihab whose career spanned the years 1732 to 1753.]

Bishop Yusuf Diryan and Abbot Ighnatius Tannus al-Khuri, both basing their accounts on an unmentioned source by Patriarch Estephan al-Duwayhi, also wrote that the family of al-Dahir was from the same family as the three patriarchs, without making a genealogical link.

A more reliable but slightly different account is that of Antuniyus Abu Khattar al-‘Aynturini (d. 1821) in his Mukhtasar Tarikh Jabal Lubnan, who wrote of the al-Dahir shaykhs that:

“Four patriarchs came from within their ranks. And the name of their family in Bqufa was the house of al-Rizz […]. And when Bqufa was ruined by excessive snowfalls and the oppression of the rulers, they went down to the village of Kfar Hawra in al-Zawiyah, in the vicinity of Zgharta, and settled there, in the era of the 1600s. And among them rose one known as the shiqyaq Mihayil […], who became a scribe for the governor of al-Zawiyah for several years […]. When the governor of al-Zawiyah changed, the shidyaq Mikahyil governed the muqata’ah of al-Zawiyah […]. And one called Kan’an al-Dahir appeared […].”