Aoun Tubiyya

Bishop Tubiyya Aoun (also spelled Awn, 'Aun, Tubiya), Lebanese Maronite Catholic Bishop of Beirut and much respected leader of the Maronites during the 1859-1860 Civil War in Mount Lebanon.

According to American missionary Henry Harris Jassup in his "Fifty-Three Years in Syria", Bishop Tubiyya was "the man who next to the Patriarch had done more than any other Maronite to precipitate this awful civil war".

Furthermore, Lord Dufferin, the United Kingdom's extraordinary envoy to Lebanon in 1860-1861, states in his "Correspondence Relating to the Affairs of Syria" that "With regard to Bishop Tobia, who may be considered one of the chief causes of all the misery and bloodshed which has existed in the Lebanon, I would only say that his removal from the country is an absolute necessity. Unfortunately, it will be difficult to discover any direct evidence against him...(His) ambition and passion for intrigue verify one's conception of the worst specimen of a medieval ecclesiastic".

In his lifetime, Bishop Aoun was awarded the French Legion of Honor and the Ottoman Empire's military order of Medjidjie ("Nishan-i-Majidia").

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