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General Books publication date: 2009Original publication date: 1908Original Publisher: Rumford printing co.Subjects: Lebanon (N.H.)History / United States / State ... Read more

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Lebanon examines the ideological, political and social underpinnings of the attempted coup against General Chihab's government in Lebanon in 1961. The author analyzes the role of the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party, the history of the army in Lebanon and it role in Lebanese politics and the impact of the coup on Lebanese political life. This book provides an extraordinary insight into the mechanisms of military coups in the Arab world and will be of interest to students and researchers of the history and politics of the Middle East. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Thorough and Well-Documented Account
University of Otago's William Harris said that Beshara provides a thorough, well-documented account of a curious punctuation in Lebanon's modern history--the attempt by the small Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), in cooperation with sympathetic middle rank army officers, to overthrow the regime of President Fouad Chehab on the night of December 31, 1961. The SSNP, founded by the Orthodox Christian Antun Sa'adeh in Beirut in 1932, aimed to combine the new states of the Levant into a Greater Syria; accordingly, he opposed both Arab nationalism and Lebanese sectarian politics. The SSNP gained enough adherents and was sufficiently well organized to make intermittent assertions in Lebanon and Syria in the 1940s and 1950s, though it lacked the public following necessary to make its ambitions realistic. Out of frustration, it became increasingly radicalized, looking to its paramilitary wing, its links with army officers, and strong-arm tactics to compensate for limited popular weight.

Beshara, a historian at the University of Melbourne, has closely examined the SSNP and Syrian nationalist ideology. He here deploys his formidable knowledge of both the party and the Lebanese political environment of the time to place the 1961 coup attempt in a wider context. He investigates the SSNP's emergence as a significant armed backer of President Camille Chamoun in the 1958 confrontation between the Lebanese regime and Nasserite Arab nationalism. He then charts the SSNP's drift into hostility to the regime as the new president, former army commander Fouad Chehab, sought to pacify Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt and the mainly Muslim Arab nationalists in Lebanon by updating rather than eroding the country's sectarian political system. In particular, Beshara includes an excellent study of the army's position in Lebanese political life and the increasing distaste of some younger officers for Chehab's political predilections, authoritarian tendencies, and manipulation of the military intelligence apparatus. The SSNP and the disaffected officers gravitated together and dreamed up a scheme to remove Chehab and transform Lebanon in defiance of the actual balance of forces in the country.

Beshara's detailed, balanced dissection of the incompetence of the coup attempt, the mixing of judicial fairness and casual brutality in the regime's response, and the underlying strength of pluralist, confessional politics tells a great deal about Lebanon's distinctiveness in the Arab world. His analysis of the subsequent evolution of the SSNP, as it changed from a rightist to a leftist orientation with entirely new allies in reaction to prolonged regime hounding, is a good illustration of the more general twisting and turning in the Lebanese pressure-cooker. The SSNP began the 1960s in alignment with Camille Chamoun and ended the decade at the opposite end of the spectrum with Kamal Junblatt. Finally, Beshara's information on the Lebanese army's interface with civilian affairs is useful background material for anyone interested in President Emile Lahoud's "security regime."

the frustration of fascism.
a piece of junk written by a member of the ssnp, a secular and the most fascistic ideological enterprise in the history of the middle east.
do not waste your time and money on it. the ssnp and its frustratedintellectuals cannot pen but junk..it deserves a minus 5 stars..

superb book about a powerful movement in the Middle East
This is the first well written and excellently researched English book on a less known but powerful political movement in the Middle East.It's a must read if you are interested in secular movements in the region, the modern political history of Lebanon and Syria, and coups in general. It is easy to read and well researched and documented. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The first accurate version on Lebanese history
Noted historian Kamal Salibi wrote this book right after he had acquired his PhD in the mid-1960s. His skill and genius is evident as the book covers the history of the most of the fragments of the Lebanese society that has been since the dawn of history divided into sectarian communities.
Still, Salibi's perspective on Lebanon and his understanding of the country and its history changed by the time he had released his second book that also covers the history of this small Mediterranean nation. His book, A House of Many Mansions, is a later version of Salibi's view on the Modern History of Lebanon. This latter book appeared I around 1989.
Therefore, despite the wonderful style and the amount of information The Modern History of Lebanon offers, I suggest that readers go for the more updated version and buy A House of Many Mansions where this leading historian comes up with more innovative analysis and bold statements.
A House of Many Mansions has also been very controversial since Salibi argues that Maronites had always been a Church following the rite of the Eastern Church and that the community is originally of an Arab stock that had emigrated from Yemen in old times. Maronite historians, the subject of Salibi's PhD dissertation, started rewriting their history after the great schism between the Eastern and the Western Church in the mid 15th century by linking the history of their Church to the Catholic Church of Rome instead of their original following of the Eastern Church of Antioch. ... Read more

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Lebanon achieved its independence in 1943, after years of French rule under a League of Nations Mandate that dated back to the First World War. The country, formerly part of Syria, embraced a wide variety of religious and ethnic groupings, all of which proved mutually antagonistic. Samuel M Katz and Lee E Russell examine the conflicts in Lebanon from 1982-84 in a volume containing a wealth of contemporary photographs and eight full page colour plates by Ron Volstad detailing uniforms [accompanied by 11 pages of commentaries]. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Useful Introduction to A Tragic Turmoil
For those with curiosity about all the factions involved this book will behelpful. This book details the complex factional civil war in Lebanon, the Palestinian occupation of the south, the Israeli invasion, and the foreign intervention attempt to make peace. The events covered here follow on from those covered in the two earlier volumes The Israeli Army in the Middle East Wars, 1948-1973, and Arab Armies in the Middle East Wars, 1948-1973.
The rivalry between Israel and the surrounding Arab nations goes back before WW II with the 1917 Balfour Declaration that a homeland for the Jews would be established in Palestine. This was done in the wake of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire without consulting the Arabic peoples of Palestine.
After much unrest in the 1930s matters came to a head in 1948 after the British left and Israel was proclaimed, the surrounding Arabic states invaded Palestine. The resulting war caused many of the Palestinian Arabs to flee the conflict. The resulting de facto partition resulting from the Israeli victory led to four more major ground wars and ongoing border raids and terrorism.
But their return was not to be allowed but even more tragically, they were kept in refugee camps and not allowed to disperse or assimilate in the rest of the Arab world in a manner similar to that done by the displaced persons who fled Eastern Europe in 1945. Now, several generations on, the desires of the Palestinians to return, destroy the state of Israel, and reclaim the land of their origin, have festered for so long that no rational solution seems in sight. At various times the Israeli's neighbors have backed or opposed or expelled the Palestinian forces in response to their own internal political imperatives. Thus, the Egyptians have signed a peace with Israel, while the rest have not. Syrians, Saudis, and others have continued to offer them refuge and aid while the Kingdom of Jordan expelled them all in "Black September" 1970, an event which led to the raid on the Olympic delegation in 1972.
No matter on what side your sympathy lies, hope of peace is still remote, and all concerned victims of this conflict deserve the prayers and good wishes of the world.
The color plates are of the usual high quality and, along with the Israeli, Lebanese, and other local forces, cover the French, Italian, and US Marines sent to seperate the warring factors along the Green Line in Beirut.

A somewhat biased analysis of the Israeli intervention.
I am somewhat disappointed with this book even though it covers this particular conflict thoroughly. The problem is the pro-Israeli bias which is not even subtle. This is reflected in the text and some of the captionsof the otherwise good photographs. Even the plates show drawings of heroiclooking Israeli troops and frightened lebanese militiamen and Syriantroops. Authors should seek whenever possible to analyse complex problemssuch as the Lebanese Civil War in a balanced and scholarly way. My ownperception is that this book does not follow these basic principles. ... Read more

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A brilliant history of the land into which more historical and cultural events were croweded than perhaps into any area of equal size. For Syria has either invented or transmitted to mankind such benefits as monotheistic religion, philosophy, law, trade, agriculture, and our allphabet. ... Read more

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Syria from Way Back to the Pre-Islamic Period

This history contains the details a student of history should be familiar with; but, for the average person interested in history, it is much too detailed.

For the most part, it is easy to read. However, for most people, the book would be substantially more clear if the author provided a short summary of each Part.

Nevertheless, I found it interesting because it brings out the story of large influential groups such as Seleucid institutions that do not make the cut in high level history.
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Good overview, incomplete analysis
This book deserves to be in print. Unfortunately, the truly detailed, play-by-play history of the Lebanese civil war has yet to be written. Petran views the conflict through a more or less traditional left lens, which is helpful in understanding some of the specifics of the war in the seventies and eighties, and in particular the rise and fall of Petran's hero Kamal Jumblatt. It also makes the book remarkably dated. You need more than socio-economic theory to understand the death of Lebanon, and this book does little to explain how important political Islam was even before its influence became obvious in the mid eighties. Conversely, her outrage at the Maronites and their atrocities doesn't help toward any understanding of how embattled the Maronites have always felt in Lebanon, and how that paranoia colored their actions then and continues to guide them now. Marxist theory is all well and good, but the people who actually fought the war would have scoffed at the notion that this was an economic struggle disguised as a sectarian one. The combatants really did see themselves involved in an existential religious war, and it might have helped if the author had taken them seriously. ... Read more

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The Lebanese civil war has made the study of Lebanon a difficult endeavor. The complexity of Lebanese society is the result of a unique political system and a richly diverse populace. This volume will help those who wish to delve beyond the superficial journalistic accounts of Lebanese society and culture. Entries encompass information about various subject areas, including political leaders, poets, artists, actors, writers, musicians, singers, important events and places, political parties, militia groups, foreign interests, and military elements. It is important to note that this dictionary does not exclude women, as is often the case with historical works on Lebanon. It escapes the narrow confines of a male-gendered history of Lebanon. Many of the personalities presented in this text are not presently known to English readers, and the volume easily bridges the widening gap between Arabic and English approaches to the study of Lebanese history. It also offers crucial information about rarely discussed issues such as AIDS, homosexuality, and prostitution, and delineates the ethnicities that exist in the country, making clear the balances of power that propelled Lebanon into civil war and dragged it back toward peace again. The volume includes an extensive bibliographic section with sources in Arabic, English, French, and German. An essential volume on a country that has occupied center-stage in the last decade of Middle Eastern politics. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A good source that should be encouraged
So that the one star posted by the previous comment does not stick to this book, this is a different view. I think one should be fair to this brave attempt to construct a dictionary of Lebanese history, and ask for more (instead of damning darkness. light a candle). So what if the book contains a few errors? The author will gladly correct them and even improve on the content in the next edition. I am curious to know why the previous comment was so negative that its writer did not find one positive thing to say? First, almost 99% of the book's contents are accurate and to the point. Second, those who know professor AbuKhalil know about his style:Yes, the reader will not find praise in this book for Kamel Al-Assaad or for Suleiman Frangieh Sr in this book. Why? because the Lebanese deserve better than Mr. Al-Assaad as Parliamentary Speaker; suffice to say that al-Assaad's family was the incarnate of feudalism and corruption. Also, Frangieh the elder has blood on his hand (he supervised a massacre in Mizyara in 1957); and yes he is not educated; there are thousands of Maronite Christians who are better candidates for president than Frangieh the elder. To prove that this is not something personal against Suleiman Frangieh, one good example for president waas his brother Hamid Frangieh, who could have been the best president of Lebanon with his superior education and skills. Also, the figure about the population of Beirut is accurate as it reflects the number inside the municipal boundaries and excludes the suburbs (i.e., bounded by the City Sports Stadium on the south side and the Beirut River bridge on the north side). Finally, if the previous commentator is so keen about food items, he could check the many cooking books available at Amazon.com and do not expect cuisine items in a general book about Lebanese history.

A subjective and pugnacious reference work...
As Hilal Khashan, of the American University of Beirut said: AbuKhalil explains his goal: to "provide essential information in order to grasp the realities of an exceedingly complex country and, in passing, to dispel some myths and illusions." Sounds like he will provide (p. ix).authoritative and even-handed definitions and avoid the divisions that continue to mar Lebanese life. Were it only so! Instead, his dictionary is riddled with assertions and accusations that insult the reader and Lebanon alike.

AbuKhalil freely derogates those whom he dislikes. Kamil al-As'ad, the most powerful southern Lebanese leader of the 1960s and 1970s, comes off as a politician "known for his indulgence in earthly pleasures and for his contempt of the very Shi'ite peasants he ostensibly represented." Sulayman Franjiyyah, president of Lebanon during 1970-76, is an "uneducated Maronite." AbuKhalil's entry on the Beirut Arab University announces that its "quality of teaching is considered low, and its graduates are not favored in employment."

Many entries do not even minimally contribute to the understanding of "an exceedingly complex country" but deal with such subjects as agriculture, Beirut International Airport, and a mental asylum. Amusing entries abound on such Lebanese dishes as kibbi,qawarma, and tabbulah. But then, why did he leave out shawarma, humus tahini, and baklava?

AbuKhalil displays negligence; the entry on Tawfiq Yusuf `Awwad (1911-?), a literary figure killed by a Syrian shell in 1989, finds a question mark by the writer's year of death. Shouldn't a dictionary writer look up something so elementary? Ilyas Sarkis, Lebanese president during the 1976-82 period, died vaguely in the "1980s," not in 1985. Errors of fact abound: the Muslim conquest of Lebanon in the seventh century, he rewrites as "Arab." He miss-labels the moderate, Association of Islamic Charitable Projects as "fundamentalist." He provides a population figure for Beirut in 1996 (the 407,403) that is mysteriously lower than the 1975 figure (475,000). He asserts that Ely Salem, a politician and academician, completed his graduate work at the University of Cincinnati, whereas it really was at the University of Indiana.

Abu Khalil's work does not dispel "myths and illusions" but, to the contrary, it represents a setback for scholarship. The last thing this country tormented by political divisions needs is a subjective and pugnacious reference work. But that's what it got.
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With a nominal Christian majority, Lebanon has suffered not only periods of civil war and internal infighting, but also invasions by Palestinians, Syrians, and Israelis. This book tells the story of a 16-year-long civil war (1975-1992) noted for massacres, treachery, atrocities, kidnapping, assassination, changing alliances of convenience, and invasions. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The only book NOT to read
The book is full of mistakes, be they names of places or events.
This is one book to avoid.

Good Overveiw
This book is a very good overview of the Lebanese Civil War.This is also the only book I know out their that covers the whole war from 1975 to 1992. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Interesting book that is insightful as to modern Lebanon
This is a detailed history of the ruling sheikhs and events in 19th century Lebanon.Mishaqa is very open about the religious divisions and problems of the times.He gives his own views of the various domestic andforeign players, but is also respectful of and tells, from his ownperspective, the rationale of others. The book is very, very detailed inparts, and can be difficult to wade through, but many of the small storiesgive real insight as to what happened, for example in the civil strife of1860 and in Lebanese domestic politics in the 1840's. Overall, Mishaqacomes across as remarkably modern and open-minded for a person of his time.I really loved the book, as I'm interested in Lebanese history, and am alsoa distant relative of Mishaqa through one of his brothers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

An overview of the Lebanon Civil War.
A nice work and very relevant about the Civil War in Lebanon.This showed the various fighting between Shiite, Sunni, Druze, and Christian factions.This war destroyed one of the few functioning democracies in the Middle East and brought in the armies of Syria, Israel, and the PLO.Lebanon has never been the same.Theocracy is rearing its ugly head through the Shiite, and the Christians have been marginalized resulting in mass emigration.The Palestinians continue to play a role in Lebanon's future, and Syria is still assasinating national politicians.The Middle East wars basically destroyed the demographics of the population resulting in the outside influences of her regional neighbors.It was interesting to hear Asad in the appendix justify his interference in Lebanon's internal affairs by saying they are a member Arab state, but it was strictly forbidden for the U.S. or other western countries to intervene.

This is a nice authoritative read about the causes of Lebanon's Civil War.It shows how each group overplayed their hand, and caused the death of thousands.

A good book
This is a good book, and few exist on the subject.A short easy, consice, and pleasent read not full of polemics or bias.It covers the main actors involved, the struggle and the outcome.The Lebanese Civil war began in 1976 with the attempted assasination of Pierre Gemayel, a Lebanese Christian leader.In retaliation a cycle of violence broke out originally between Phalange militias and PLO elements, widening into a costly wider war, that dragged in all communities eventually dividing the nation between christian and Muslim.In the ensuing violence and massacres more than 100,000 may have been killed.The Syrians intervened in the first year and in 1982 so did the Israelis.

After the Israeli withdrawel from Beirut Lebanon became a Syrian colony accept for the south which was jointly contested by israel and Shia Islamists, and the north which was largely given over to the Maronites.However more than 200,000(mostly Christians) were forced to flee in the period.

This is an important work.

Seth J. Frantzman

This is excellent work
Itamar Rabinovich's The War for Lebanon is by far one of the most authoritative works on the Lebanese civil war. It is a quick survey that gives background information about most of the players, whether international, regional or domestic.

The account is concise, however, and sacrifices some details for the sake of brevity and coherence. Rabinovich's style is rich and attractive. For readers familiar with the Middle East, the book would serve as a fresh reminder and wouldn't take more than a couple of evening to finish.

Another drawback is that the book covers the period 1975-1984 without covering the rest of the civil war that ended on 1990. Perhaps an updated version with the war's conclusion and perhaps some analysis of the aftermath of the war are currently needed.

If you are looking for the history of the Lebanese civil war, this book is the one you are looking for. If you want some more history of the war, get Kamal Salibi's A House of Many Mansions as a supplement. Between the two books, you would have a complete and comprehensive idea of the Lebanese modern politics and its history. ... Read more

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In this groundbreaking book, Ilham Khuri-Makdisi establishes the existence of a special radical trajectory spanning four continents and linking Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria between 1860 and 1914. She shows that socialist and anarchist ideas were regularly discussed, disseminated, and reworked among intellectuals, workers, dramatists, Egyptians, Ottoman Syrians, ethnic Italians, Greeks, and many others in these cities. In situating the Middle East within the context of world history, Khuri-Makdisi challenges nationalist and elite narratives of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern history as well as Eurocentric ideas about global radical movements. The book demonstrates that these radical trajectories played a fundamental role in shaping societies throughout the world and offers a powerful rethinking of Ottoman intellectual and social history. ... Read more

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Based on an award-winning thesis, this volume is a pioneering study of musical theatre and popular culture and its relation to the production of identity in Lebanon in the second half of the twentieth century.

In the aftermath of the departure of the French from Lebanon and the civil violence of 1958, the Rahbani brothers (Asi and Mansour) staged a series of folkloric musical theatrical extravaganzas at the annual Ba‘labakk festival which highlighted the talents of Asi’s wife, the Lebanese diva Fairouz, arguably the most famous living Arab singer. The inclusion of these folkloric vignettes into the festival’s otherwise European dominated cultural agenda created a powerful nation-building combination of what Partha Chatterjee calls the ‘appropriation of the popular’ and the ‘classicization of tradition.’

The Rahbani project coincides with the confluence of increasing internal and external migration in Lebanon, as well as with the rapid development of mass media technology, of which the Ba'labakk festival can be seen as an extension. Employing theories of nationalism, modernity, globalism and locality, this book shows that these factors combined to give the project a potent identity-forming power.

Popular Culture and Nationalism in Lebanon is the first study of Fairouz and the Rahbani family in English and will appeal to students and researchers in the field of Middle East studies, Popular culture and musical theatre.

Customer Reviews (1)

Expensive and does not deliver on the title
I find this book extremely expensive at $132. If its pages were made of gold I would buy it. But it is a thin volume of fewer than 200 pages of text. However, it has a grand title and I decided to hit the unievrsity library and borrow it. And I did. The first observation I should make is that it is a good book on the subject matter and the author is honest in his attempt to link music to culture and national identity. Yet it is largely descriptive and poor on intellectual content. The author seems to draw heavily from the plays and musicals of Fairuz and Rahbanis, which is good if the reader is into theatre, but the title promises to talk about nationalism, which is not seen anywhwere in the book. One would expect at least a discussion of the debate on lebanese identity inside Lebanon and the various disagreements over its history and how music was a main component of modern identity in the country, etc., while citing standard texts from Arab and western sources on culture and the nation. But this was missing. I felt starved of a nice intellectual discussion while reading this book. It is entertaining anyway, and I did not waste my time. ... Read more

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Long notorious as one of the most turbulent areas of the world, Lebanon nevertheless experienced an interlude of peace between its civil war of 1860 and the beginning of the French Mandate in 1920. Engin Akarli examines the sociopolitical changes resulting from the negotiations and shifting alliances characteristic of these crucial years.Using previously unexamined documents in Ottoman archives, Akarli challenges the prevailing view that attributes modernization in government to Western initiative while blaming stagnation on reactionary local forces. Instead, he argues, indigenous Lebanese experience in self-rule as well as reconciliation among different religious groups after 1860 laid the foundation for secular democracy. European intervention in Lebanese politics, however, hampered efforts to develop a correspondingly secular notion of Lebanese nationality.As ethnic and religious strife increases throughout much of eastern Europe and the Middle East, the Lebanese example has obvious relevance for our own time. ... Read more

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For almost nine decades, since their mass-resettlement to the Levant in the wake of the Genocide and First World War, the Armenian communities of Lebanon and Syria appear to have successfully maintained a distinct identity as an ethno-culturally diverse group, in spite of representing a small non-Arab and Christian minority within a very different, mostly Arab and Muslim environment. The author shows that, while in Lebanon the state has facilitated the development of an extensive and effective system of Armenian ethno-cultural preservation, in Syria the emergence of centralizing, authoritarian regimes in the 1950s and 1960s has severely damaged the autonomy and cultural diversity of the Armenian community. Since 1970, the coming to power of the Asad family has conributed to a partial recovery of Armenian ethno-cultural diversity, as the community seems to have developed some for of tacit arrangement with the regime. In Lebanon, on the other hand, the Armenian community suffered the consequences of the recurrent breakdown of the consociational arrangement that regulates public life. In both cases the survival of Armenian cultural distinctiveness seems to be connected, rather incidentally, with the continuing "search for legitimacy" of the state. ... Read more

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Rejecting approaches that emphasize economics or ethnicity, this investigation of the wars in Rhodesia and Lebanon sets out the complex political dynamic--within and between belligerents, civilian populations and neighboring states--that eventually brought each to an end. Above all, it demonstrates the robustness of local agendas in civil wars and the difficulties outsiders face in brokering settlements. With intervention in "failed states" so high up the international agenda, the message is one that scholars and policy-makers can ill afford to ignore.
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