2020/02/26 by Franck Salameh · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Archaeology and Historical Studies #Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies #African history and culture analysis
paper · pdf · doi:10.1163/9789004423220_005
openalex publication_date 2020/02/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
In the context of modern Middle Eastern history, the varied peoples of the "Greater Middle East" are often viewed through simplified notions of "Arab" and "Muslim," sometimes to the neglect of other, pre-Arab pre-Muslim Middle Easterners otherwise lapsed from the prevalent paradigms on, of, and about the modern Middle East. To non-historians, a century or more of Western academic interest in the region seems to have yielded little beyond clichs and assumptions referring to "'Arabs,' 'Arab' fears, 'Arab' hopes, 'Arab' concerns, and 'Arab' hang-ups -'Arab' being the emblematic "be all end all" of all matters Middle East."1 Yet there exists a vibrant and venerable Middle East outside the dominant platitudes about which traditional Middle East scholarship remains largely mute. It is within this context that this paper offers the suggestion that the prevalent assumptions about an essentially Arab (or uniformly Muslim) Middle East be confronted with a more culturally and religiously diverse Middle East. In line with this, this paper focuses on the so-called "Young Phoenicians" in Lebanon who in the early twentieth century put forward another interpretation of the history of the region and of their region, foregrounding non-Arab and non-Muslim interpretations of it.