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Phoenicianism

A Lebanese nationalist ideology.

Phoenicianism is based on the idea that Lebanon is unique in the Middle East for its location, people, and mission, and therefore should not be bound in any arrangement to neighboring countries, which are seen as inferior. The ideology of Phoenicianism flourished early in the twentieth century, when decentralization parties proliferated in the Arab region of the Ottoman Empire. Many Christians were dedicated Arab nationalists, although some Lebanese Christians believed that their nation should not be associated with the Arab region.

Phoenicianism is based on the belief that the Lebanese political entity is, contrary to historical realities, not the product of the twentieth century. "Lebanese nationalists" - a term that has come to describe the views of the right-wing Maronite Christian establishment and its allies in other sects - believe that Lebanon, both as a political entity and as a people, has been in continuous existence since Phoenician times. The Phoenicians are seen as ancient Lebanese, and Phoenician achievements are exaggerated to the point that the Greek and Roman civilizations are perceived as inferior to the "Lebanese Phoenician civilization." Lebanese nationalists argue that the Phoenician identity defines the Lebanese political identity. Other identities, such as those based on Islam or Arabism, are regarded as alien to the Lebanese historical experience.

The dispute over Phoenicianism is at the root of the Lebanese political problem. There is no consensus on the identity of Lebanon. Although the Maronite establishment has insisted that the Lebanese identity should be defined in purely historical terms (i.e., Phoenician), Lebanese Muslims and others who support their views argue that the Lebanese identity has been shaped by the Islamic Arab legacy. Arab nationalists dismiss the Phoenician claims and compare then to Zionist claims over Palestine. The political arrangement of Lebanon since 1943 has failed to settle this thorny political issue. The National Pact of 1943, for example, tried to please both sides by declaring that Lebanon has "an Arab face," leaving the determination of the identity of the "body" unspecified. For advocates of Phoenicianism, the only linkage between Lebanon and the Arab world rests in Lebanon's membership in the League of Arab States.

Phoenicianism has developed from an ideology into a full-fledged myth. Nobody has contributed to the nourishment of the myth more than Lebanese poet and ultranationalist Saʿid Aql, who traces most of the great discoveries of civilization to the Phoenician people. Even the discovery of America is attributed by Aql - among others in Lebanon - to Phoenician travelers who preceded Columbus. The great Greek thinkers are called Phoenicians. The school curricula in Lebanon reinforce the myths about the Phoenician people among all who accept a version of history promulgated by ideologues who have dominated the Ministry of Education since independence.

Bibliography

Kaufman, Asher. "Phoenicianism: The Formation of an Identity in Lebanon in 1920." Middle Eastern Studies 37 (January 2001): 173.

— AS'AD ABUKHALIL

 
 
Wikipedia: Phoenicianism


Phoenicianism (Arabic,نزعة فينيقية) is a form of Lebanese nationalism that promotes the idea that Lebanese people are not Arabs and the Lebanese speak their own language and have their own culture, separate from the surrounding Middle Eastern countries. Followers maintain that Lebanese are descended from Phoenician origins, and are not Arab. Some also feel that they speak Lebanese, not Arabic.[1]

Notwithstanding the professional view of historians, summed up by Lebanon's most prominent historian, Kamal Salibi, "between ancient Phoenicia and the Lebanon of medieval and modern times, there is no demonstrable historical connection",[2] Phoenicianism, overleaping a millennium and a half of Arabisation, embraces Phoenicia as an alternative cultural foundation.

The earliest sense of a Lebanese identity is to be found in the writings of historians in the early nineteenth century, when, under the emirate of the Shihabs, a Lebanese identity emerged, "separate and distinct from the rest of Syria, bringing the Maronites and Druzes, along with its other Christian and Moslem sects, under one government."[3] The first coherent history of Mount Lebanon was written by Tannus al-Shidyaq (died 1861) who depicted the country as a feudal association of Maronites, Druzes, Melchites, Sunni and Shi'ites under the leadership of the Shihab emirs. "Most Christian Lebanese,anxious to dissociate themselves from Arabism and its Islamic connections, were pleased to be told that their country was the legitimate heir to the Phoenician tradition," Kamil Salibi observes, instancing Christian writers like Charles Corm (died 1963), writing in French, and Said Aql, who urged the abandonment of classical Arabic, together with its script, and attempted to write in the Lebanese vernacular, using the Roman alphabet.

An origin myth founded in Phoenicianism has had an additional appeal for the Christian middle class, as it presented the Phoenicians as traders, and the Lebanese emigrant as a modern-day Phoenician adventurer, whereas for the Sunni it merely veiled French imperialist ambitions, intent on subverting pan-Arabism[4].

Criticism of Phoenicianism

Many critics of this argument feel that Phoenicianism disregards the Arab cultural influence and linguistic influence of the Lebanese, citing much of this reasoning due to sectarian influences Lebanese culture and the insistence of many Lebanese Maronites to distance themselves from Arab culture and tradition which has Arabic influences. While descendants of the ancient Phoenicians are present among the coastal Lebanon population, irrespective of religious heritage, the nation's culture is influenced by Greek, French and Arabic culture, islamic or not. However some Lebanese identify with a Phoenician past, in a similar manner in which the Scandanavians identify with a Viking past.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ In a quite separate eighteenth-century Irish context "Phoenicianism" controversially wove an independent, purely Irish cultural history, beginning with supposed Phoenician contacts in the first millennium BCE, to satisfy incipient Romantic nationalism; Irish Phoenicianism is surveyed by Joep Leerssen, Mere Irish and Fior-Ghael: Studies in the Idea of Irish Nationality, Its Development and Literary Expression Prior to the Nineteenth Century (1986) and its sequel Remembrance and Imagination: Patterns in the Historical and Literary Representation of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century (both reissued 1996). The metaphoric freight of this parallel pseudo-history is briefly inspected by Elizabeth Butler Cullingford, "British Romans and Irish Carthaginians: Anticolonial Metaphor in Heaney, Friel, and McGuinness" PMLA 111.2 (March 1996:222-23).
  2. ^ Salibi, Salibi, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered, 1988:177; Salibi is equally critical of an "Arabian" cultural origin.
  3. ^ Kamal S. Salibi, "The Lebanese Identity" Journal of Contemporary History 6.1, Nationalism and Separatism (1971:76-86).
  4. ^ Salibi 1971:84.

Further reading

  • Salibi, Kamal 1988. A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered (Berkeley: University of California Press). The historiography of Lebanon in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

External links


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Mideast & N. Africa Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa. Copyright © 2004 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
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