A group of autonomous communities living on Mount Lebanon and the surrounding highlands following the conquest of Syria and Phoenicia by the Arab Muslims in the 630's CE. The Marada states were dominated by a Maronite Christian, Aramaic-speaking warrior elite known as the Mardaites. Though not unified politically, the Marada states acknowledge the spiritual supremacy of the Maronite patriarch. The last of the Marada states was destroyed by the Mamluks in 1305.

In the civil wars that plagued Lebanon in modern times, one of the Maronite militias styled itself the "Marada Brigades".

References

• Phares, Walid. Lebanese Christian Nationalism: The Rise and Fall of an Ethnic Resistance. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1995.

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