Jabal ‘Amil, the traditional name for the less elevated but still rugged, remote extension of the Syrian coastal range lying to the south-east of Sidon, is home to the oldest and most illustrious Twelver Shiite community in the region. Since at least the Middle Ages its large population of ashraf and Shiite scholar families has made it a high place of Imami learning, piety and asceticism; the migration of many of its mujtahids to institutionalize Shiism in Iran in the sixteenth century would consecrate the “Amili’ identity as one of distinction within the Shiite universe. During the Ottoman period this identity was fuelled by poverty and isolation, by the perceived hostility of the Ottoman state and of local neighbours, but also by pride in its scholars and its independent feudal lords. This golden age of autonomy would end in the late eighteenth century, with the increasing dominance of the Shihabi emirate and, particularly important in the Shiite collective memory, the appointment of Cezzar ‘the butcher’ Ahmed Paşa as governor of Sidon in 1775. Henceforth the history of Jabal ‘Amil would be one of bloodshed and dispossession, of loss of identity and finally marginalization, in what is today referred to, sometimes dismissively and euphemistically, as no more than ‘the South’.