This paper examines the historical writings of Muhammad Jabir al-Safa. Considered the first modern Shiʿa historian and a central figure in the early 20th century history of the Shiʿa in Lebanon, al-Safa wrote the most widely circulated historical text on Jabal ʿAmil, entitled Tarikh Jabal ʿAmil during the 1930s. Al-Safa’s historical narrative influenced the ways in which others came to write the history of the region and the Shiʿa in particular. Although al-Safa did not speak of a Lebanese national entity in particular, he placed an importance on the history and past of the Shiʿa of Jabal ʿAmil. This paper examines the ways in which al-Safa constructed the history and political reality of Jabal ʿAmil in the post-Ottoman era of French colonial presence and Amir Faysal’s Arabist cause of the 1920s and 1930s. As a supporter of Arab nationalism, how did the political situation of the time impact and inform his narrative of history? How did al-Safa’s methodological approach to divide history into public and private history allow him to inscribe the Shiʿa into a larger historical narrative? More importantly, how did al-Safa inscribe Jabal ʿAmil in regional politics and his larger notion of world history? This paper will examine the multidimensional nature of al-Safa’s historical texts to gain a better understanding of Shiʿi historiography and the interpretative framework he used to inscribe a history for the Shiʿa residing in what was to become Lebanon. This paper will reveal how, on the one hand, al-Safa did not see Jabal ʿAmil and the Shiʿas in the periphery but rather as central to the politics of the region. On the other hand, this paper will argue that al-Safa’s writings complicate our notion of sectarianism by historicizing the inter-confessional nature of Jabal ʿAmil, while advocating for the Arabist cause. By looking at al-Safa’s work, this paper will reveal how al-Safa’s notion of history was informed more by the regional and political happenings of the time and not by an idea of a unified Shiʿi sectarian entity. Through a thorough examination of his texts, I reveal the complexities behind making sectarian demarcations during the Mandate period. This paper will examine the role al-Safa’s writing had on the way Shiʿi Muslims of South Lebanon came to conceptualize their place in the nation as a community and a sectarian entity in the future.