The priest Mansur al-Hattuni, in his Nabdhah Tarikhiyah ‘an al-Muqata’ah al-Kisrawaniyah recorded the displacement in the first years of the sixteenth century of the entire population of the Maronite village of Hadthun (pronounced Hattun), in the Batrun district of Mount Lebanon, following a blood feud with neighboring Shi’ites. He based his account on information from Patriach Bulus Mas’ad.
Such must have been the fear and disarray of this small village’s forty households, all hailing from the same clan, that they left the village in one go, and scattered across areas of Maronite settlement to the south. Hadthun was to remain abandoned until another Maronite clan, the Khalifahs, settled in the nineteenth century.
The main destination of the Hadthun migrants was the Kisrawan mountains, where the dominance of the Khazin Maronite Shaykhs provided a safe haven. The family of Abu Mansur Sulayman settled in Dlebta, where they soon took the surname al-Hattuni. This was Mansur al-Hattuni’s own clan. Other families of migrants from Hadthun included the families of Abu Karam and Abu Sulayman of Brummana (Matn), Marun in Sahel ‘Alma (Kisrawan), Nakuzi in Salima (Matn), and al-Tiyyan (the seller of tin, figs) in Beirut.
The story of the people of Hattun is characteristic of a pattern of southward movement of the Maronites towards Kisrawan and the Matn, and later the Shuf, Jazzin and Jabal ‘Amil districts as well, but the pace of the migration and the scope of the scattering stand out.
Maronitica 