The Marada Movement () is a Lebanese political party and a former militia active during the Lebanese Civil War named after the legendary Marada (also called Mardaites) warriors of the early Middle Ages that fought on the external edge of the Byzantine Empire. Originally designated the Marada Brigade ( Liwa al-Marada), the group initially emerged as the personal militia of Suleiman Frangieh, president of Lebanon at the outbreak of the war in 1975. They were also initially known as the Zgharta Liberation Army, after Frangieh's hometown of Zgharta in northern Lebanon. Marada in Lebanese history The Marada were a group of independent communities in Lebanon and the surrounding highlands after the conquest of Syria by the Arab army in 630 CE. While some historians argue that the Marada "States" were that of a Maronite Aramaic-speaking Christian warrior elite, other historians tend to downplay their importance, and describe a more complex scenario. The Maronites and thus the Marada were given relative autonomy in the Umayyad Caliphate. The Marada were known by some as a fierce warrior group, and according to some, the name was synonymous with the Arabic word for rebels or also Maronites. Lebanese civil war During the Lebanese civil war was called one of the Maronite militias "Marada Movement". During the Lebanese civil war, Zgharta was the frontline and Christian stronghold of the north in northern Lebanon. The Zgharta-based Marada Brigade militia successfully repulsed and responded with attacks on armed militias from Tripoli, Danniyeh and Koura districts, and from PLO militias from the neighboring Palestinian refugee camps of Beddawi and Nahr al-Bared. In March 1976, the Marada Brigade supported the hard-pressed Lebanese Army Republican Guard Battalion in defending the Presidential Palace in Baabda from a two-pronged combined LNM–LAA assault, though prior to the attack the Lebanese President had decamped to the safety of Jounieh. The Marada were initially allied with the Kataeb until 1978, the year when Suleiman Frangieh refused the Lebanese Front's plan to declare a Christian canton, a Christian enclave separated from the rest of the country. A new alliance was formed between Suleiman Frangieh and Prime Minister Rachid Karami to counter the Lebanese Front's plan that called for separate enclaves/cantons of Christians, Druze and Muslims. Frangieh became firmly set against the onset of a Lebanese federal state that would make an alliance with Israel, promoted instead an Arab pro-Syrian alliance and stopped attending meetings with the