Levant
For other uses of the terms Levant, Levante or Levantine, see Levant (disambiguation). |
The Levant |
Levant
or in
Arabic الشام,
Ash-Shām is an imprecise
geographical term historically referring to a large area in the
Middle East south of the
Taurus Mountains, bounded by the
Mediterranean Sea on the west, and by the northern
Arabian Desert and Upper
Mesopotamia to the east. The Levant does not include the
Caucasus Mountains, any part of the
Arabian Peninsula proper, or
Anatolia " although at times
Cilicia may be included. The
Sinai Peninsula may also be included, but may be excluded as a marginal area forming a land bridge between the Levant and northern
Egypt. At times Levantine cultures and peoples dominated the region between the Sinai and the
Nile river, but that region is usually excluded from the geographical Levant. For what the Levant has been called by natives and others over time, see
Names of the Levant.
The term
Levant is first attested in English in
1497, originally used in the wider sense of "Mediterranean lands east of Italy." It derives from the
Middle French levant, the participle of
lever "to raise" " as in
soleil levant "rising sun" " from the
Latin levare. It thus referred to the direction of the rising
sun from the perspective of those who first used it. As such, it is broadly equivalent to the
Arabic term
Mashriq, "the land where the sun rises."
An alternative etymology suggests that the term stems from
Lebanon " noting that Spanish translators of Arabic would use the letters
b and
v interchangeably as a consequence of their Spanish pronunciations. Thus, the Levant refers to the areas surrounding Lebanon, itself deriving from the Aramaic word for
white in reference to the snow-capped Lebanese mountains.
The term became current in
English in the
16th century, along with the first English merchant adventurers in the region: English ships appeared in the Mediterranean in the 1570s and the English merchant company signed its agreement ("capitulations") with the
Grand Turk in
1579 (Braudel).
In
19th century travel writing, the term incorporated eastern regions under then current or recent governance of the
Ottoman empire, such as
Greece.
The name
Levantine was applied to people of
Italian (especially
Venetian and
Genoese),
French, or other Mediterranean origin who lived in
Turkey during the period of the
Ottoman Empire. The majority of these people were descendants of traders or of the inhabitants of
Crusader states.
When the
United Kingdom took over
Palestine in the aftermath of the
First World War, some of the new rulers adapted the term pejoratively to refer to inhabitants of mixed
Arab and
European descent and to Europeans (usually French, Italian, or
Greek) who had "gone native" and adopted local dress and customs.
The French Mandates of
Syria and
Lebanon from
1920 to
1946 were called the Levant states. The term became common in
archaeology at that time, as many important early excavations were made then, such as at
Ebla,
Mari and
Ugarit. Since these sites could not be classified as Mesopotamian,
North African, or
Arabian, they came to be referred to as "Levantine."
Today "Levant" is most typically used by archaeologists and historians with reference to the
prehistory and the
ancient and
medieval history of the region, as when discussing the
Crusades. But the term is still employed occasionally to refer to modern or contemporary events, peoples, states, or parts of states in the same region, namely
Israel,
Jordan,
Lebanon,
Palestine or
Syria.
*
Lebanon*
Levantine Arabic*
Levante*
History of the Levant*
Southern Levant*
Canaan*
Greater Syria*
Bilad al-Sham*
Mesopotamia*
Council for British Research in the Levant*
Levantine Cultural Center*
Braudel, Fernand,
The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Phillip II
