The southern Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges in the rear-land of the Haifa-Beirut coast[246] are inhabited by Druzes. Tribes of this people are met as far southeast as the Hawran volcanic uplift, whither they have steadily emigrated from the Lebanon in the course of the past hundred years and where they have succeeded in dislodging the former Bedouin inhabitants. These Druzes are best known for their warlike disposition. Although numerically inferior to the Christian population of their native districts, their bellicose qualities have won them predominance in central Syria. In religion they are pure monotheists. Their standard of morality is high. They call themselves Mohammedans but do not maintain mosques and rarely practise polygamy. Orthodox Moslems generally repudiate them on account of the discrepancy between their teachings and the tenets of the Koran. As far as can be determined the doctrines of the Mosaic law, the Gospels, the Koran and Sufi allegories are represented in their creed. Often when with Christians they will not hesitate to assert belief in Christianity. The leaven of Iranian influences which pervades their doctrines estranges them from the surrounding Semitism just as their highland home separates them from the plainsmen settled around them. The dominance of this eastern strain in their thoughts does not, however, necessarily indicate racial migrations. Historical testimony is available to prove that the known form of Druze religion can be traced to the teachings of Hamze, a Persian disciple of Hakem.[247] The case is more probably that of an infiltration of foreign ideals and its retention within a region deprived by its relief from intercourse with the more progressive life of the surrounding lowland. THE MARONITES Closely related to the Druzes are their northwestern neighbors, the Maronites, a Christian people, who seceded from the Roman Church in the great schism that followed the council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D.[248] They form a compact mass settled on the western slopes of the Lebanon mountains between the valleys of the Nahr-el-Kebir and the Nahr-el-Barid. Mountain isolation and intermarriage among them have maintained an old type with remarkable purity. Being better farmers than warriors they have suffered from the oft repeated depredations of their war-like neighbors.[249] Enmity with their Mohammedan neighbors dates from the time of the Crusades when the Maronites had sided with the Christian knights. THE JEWS