
Lebanon
A History, 600-2011
William Harris(Author)
Oxford University Press Inc
1st Edition
Published on 11. July 2012
Book
Hardback
400 pages
978-0-19-518111-1 (ISBN)
Description
For most Americans, the civil war in Beirut is their sole point of connection with Lebanon. But Lebanon, a crossroads of major religious communities, has held a central place in the geopolitical significance of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East for many centuries. In this book, William Harris synthesizes the history of Mount Lebanon and the surrounding areas within the modern Lebanese state-from the Islamic conquest of the Levant to modern times. Harris relates the communities that characterize Mount Lebanon and its vicinity, while interpreting the evolution of modern Lebanon in its multi-communal context. He traces the consolidation of Lebanon's Christian, Muslim, and Islamic derived sects from their origins between the sixth and eleventh centuries. The identities of Maronite Christians, Twelver Shia Muslims, and Druze, the mountain communities, developed alongside assertions of local chiefs under external powers from the Umayyads to the Ottomans. The chiefs began interacting in a common arena when the Druze lord Fakhr al-Din Ma'n achieved domination of the mountain under the Ottomans in the early seventeenth century.
The book offers a fresh perspective on subsequent trends, knitting together the interplay of the elite under the Sunni Muslim Shihab relatives of the Ma'ns after 1700 with demographic instability as Maronites overtook Shia as the largest community and expanded into Druze districts. By the 1840s many Maronites conceived the common arena as their patrimony. Maronite/Druze conflict ensued. Modern Lebanon arose out of European and Ottoman intervention in the 1860s to entrench sectarian peace in a special province. In 1920, after the Ottoman collapse, France and the Maronites enlarged the province into the modern country, with a pluralism of communal minorities headed by Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims. The book considers the flowering of this pluralism in the mid-twentieth century, and the strains of new demographic shifts and of social resentment in an open economy. External intrusions after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war rendered Lebanon's contradictions unmanageable and the country fell apart. The book contends that Lebanon has not found a new equilibrium and has not transcended its sects.
There is an uneasy duality: Shia have largely recovered the weight they possessed in the sixteenth century, but Christians, Sunnis, and Druze are two-thirds of the country.
The book offers a fresh perspective on subsequent trends, knitting together the interplay of the elite under the Sunni Muslim Shihab relatives of the Ma'ns after 1700 with demographic instability as Maronites overtook Shia as the largest community and expanded into Druze districts. By the 1840s many Maronites conceived the common arena as their patrimony. Maronite/Druze conflict ensued. Modern Lebanon arose out of European and Ottoman intervention in the 1860s to entrench sectarian peace in a special province. In 1920, after the Ottoman collapse, France and the Maronites enlarged the province into the modern country, with a pluralism of communal minorities headed by Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims. The book considers the flowering of this pluralism in the mid-twentieth century, and the strains of new demographic shifts and of social resentment in an open economy. External intrusions after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war rendered Lebanon's contradictions unmanageable and the country fell apart. The book contends that Lebanon has not found a new equilibrium and has not transcended its sects.
There is an uneasy duality: Shia have largely recovered the weight they possessed in the sixteenth century, but Christians, Sunnis, and Druze are two-thirds of the country.
Reviews / Votes
Much of the recent literature about Lebanon deals with the civil war, and too much is biased or superficial. Harris's book shows no signs of bias and is certainly not superficial. Harris displays an intimate knowledge of Arabic. T. J. Gordon, The Times Literary SupplementMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Students/scholars of Middle Eastern history
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 241 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 32 mm
Weight
650 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-518111-1 (9780195181111)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Book
01/2015
Oxford University Press Inc
€56.30
Shipment within 15-20 days

E-Book
07/2012
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€25.49
Available for download

E-Book
06/2012
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€25.49
Available for download
Person
Associate Professor of Political Studies, University of Otago
Content
Acknowledgments ; A Note on Transliteration ; Glossary ; Timeline ; Introduction ; Part I: Foundations ; 1. Emerging Communities, 600-1291 ; 2. Druze Ascent, 1291-1633 ; 3. Mountain Lords, 1633-1842 ; Part II: Modern Lebanon ; 4. Emerging Lebanon, 1842-1943 ; 5. Independent Lebanon, 1943-1975 ; 6. Broken Lebanon, 1975-2011 ; Conclusion ; Abbreviations ; Notes ; Bibliography ; Index