With the advent of the Ottoman Turks and the conquest of Syria by Sultan Selim I in 1516, the Druze Ma'ans were acknowledged by the new rulers as the feudal lords of southern mount Lebanon. Druze villages spread and prospered in that region, which under Ma'an leadership so flourished that it acquired the generic term of Jabal Bayt-Ma'an (the mountain of the Ma'an family) or Jabal al-Druze. The latter title has since been usurped by the Hauran region, which since the middle of the 19th century has proven a haven of refuge to Druze emigrants from Mount Lebanon, and has become the headquarters of Druze power [3] The Druze family of Al-Atrash had nominally governed the region of Suwayda since 1879.