Levant

Levant
Author: Philip Mansel
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2011-05-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300176228

Not so long ago, in certain cities on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean, Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived and flourished side by side. What can the histories of these cities tell us? Levant is a book of cities. It describes three former centers of great wealth, pleasure, and freedom—Smyrna, Alexandria, and Beirut—cities of the Levant region along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. In these key ports at the crossroads of East and West, against all expectations, cosmopolitanism and nationalism flourished simultaneously. People freely switched identities and languages, released from the prisons of religion and nationality. Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived and worshipped as neighbors.Distinguished historian Philip Mansel is the first to recount the colorful, contradictory histories of Smyrna, Alexandria, and Beirut in the modern age. He begins in the early days of the French alliance with the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century and continues through the cities' mid-twentieth-century fates: Smyrna burned; Alexandria Egyptianized; Beirut lacerated by civil war.Mansel looks back to discern what these remarkable Levantine cities were like, how they differed from other cities, why they shone forth as cultural beacons. He also embarks on a quest: to discover whether, as often claimed, these cities were truly cosmopolitan, possessing the elixir of coexistence between Muslims, Christians, and Jews for which the world yearns. Or, below the glittering surface, were they volcanoes waiting to erupt, as the catastrophes of the twentieth century suggest? In the pages of the past, Mansel finds important messages for the fractured world of today.

The Levant

The Levant
Author: Olivier Binst
Publisher: Konemann
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2000
Genre: History
ISBN: 9783829004954

" ... about the archaeology of the Levant, which here means more specifically the region east of the Mediterranean between Turkey in the north and Egypt in the west ... the historical and once greater Syria ..."--Page 7.

The Social Archaeology of the Levant

The Social Archaeology of the Levant
Author: Assaf Yasur-Landau
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 941
Release: 2018-12-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1108668240

The volume offers a comprehensive introduction to the archaeology of the southern Levant (modern day Israel, Palestine and Jordan) from the Paleolithic period to the Islamic era, presenting the past with chronological changes from hunter-gatherers to empires. Written by an international team of scholars in the fields of archaeology, epigraphy, and bioanthropology, the volume presents central debates around a range of archaeological issues, including gender, ritual, the creation of alphabets and early writing, biblical periods, archaeometallurgy, looting, and maritime trade. Collectively, the essays also engage diverse theoretical approaches to demonstrate the multi-vocal nature of studying the past. Significantly, The Social Archaeology of the Levant updates and contextualizes major shifts in archaeological interpretation.

The Levant Express

The Levant Express
Author: Micheline R. Ishay
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2019-08-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0300249225

A surprisingly hopeful assessment of the prospects for human rights in the Middle East, and a blueprint for advancing them The enormous sense of optimism unleashed by the Arab Spring in 2011 soon gave way to widespread suffering and despair. Of the many popular uprisings against autocratic regimes, Tunisia’s now stands alone as a beacon of hope for sustainable human rights progress. Libya is a failed state; Egypt returned to military dictatorship; the Gulf States suppressed popular protests and tightened control; and Syria and Yemen are ravaged by civil war. Challenging the widely shared pessimism among regional experts, Micheline Ishay charts bold and realistic pathways for human rights in a region beset by political repression, economic distress, sectarian conflict, a refugee crisis, and violence against women. With due attention to how patterns of revolution and counterrevolution play out in different societies and historical contexts, Ishay reveals the progressive potential of subterranean human rights forces and offers strategies for transforming current realities in the Middle East.

Quaternary of the Levant

Quaternary of the Levant
Author: Yehouda Enzel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 789
Release: 2017-04-27
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1316841847

Quaternary of the Levant presents up-to-date research achievements from a region that displays unique interactions between the climate, the environment and human evolution. Focusing on southeast Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel, it brings together over eighty contributions from leading researchers to review 2.5 million years of environmental change and human cultural evolution. Information from prehistoric sites and palaeoanthropological studies contributing to our understanding of 'out of Africa' migrations, Neanderthals, cultures of modern humans, and the origins of agriculture are assessed within the context of glacial-interglacial cycles, marine isotope cycles, plate tectonics, geochronology, geomorphology, palaeoecology and genetics. Complemented by overview summaries that draw together the findings of each chapter, the resulting coverage is wide-ranging and cohesive. The cross-disciplinary nature of the volume makes it an invaluable resource for academics and advanced students of Quaternary science and human prehistory, as well as being an important reference for archaeologists working in the region.

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Levant

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Levant
Author: Margreet L. Steiner
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 912
Release: 2014-01-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0191662550

This Handbook aims to serve as a research guide to the archaeology of the Levant, an area situated at the crossroads of the ancient world that linked the eastern Mediterranean, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. The Levant as used here is a historical geographical term referring to a large area which today comprises the modern states of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, western Syria, and Cyprus, as well as the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and the Sinai Peninsula. Unique in its treatment of the entire region, it offers a comprehensive overview and analysis of the current state of the archaeology of the Levant within its larger cultural, historical, and socio-economic contexts. The Handbook also attempts to bridge the modern scholarly and political divide between archaeologists working in this highly contested region. Written by leading international scholars in the field, it focuses chronologically on the Neolithic through Persian periods - a time span during which the Levant was often in close contact with the imperial powers of Egypt, Anatolia, Assyria, Babylon, and Persia. This volume will serve as an invaluable reference work for those interested in a contextualised archaeological account of this region, beginning with the 'agricultural revolution' until the conquest of Alexander the Great that marked the end of the Persian period.

The Archaeology of the Bronze Age Levant

The Archaeology of the Bronze Age Levant
Author: Raphael Greenberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2019-11-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107111463

An up-to-date, systematic depiction of Bronze Age societies of the Levant, their evolution, and their interactions and entanglements with neighboring regions.

Natufian Foragers in the Levant

Natufian Foragers in the Levant
Author: Ofer Bar-Yosef
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 737
Release: 2013-12-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1789201578

This large volume presents virtually all aspects of the Epipalaeolithic Natufian culture in a series of chapters that cover recent results of field work, analyses of materials and sites, and synthetic or interpretive overviews of various aspects of this important prehistoric culture.

Syria’s Uprising and the Fracturing of the Levant

Syria’s Uprising and the Fracturing of the Levant
Author: Emile Hokayem
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2017-10-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 135122400X

As an upbeat and peaceful uprising quickly and brutally descended into a zero-sum civil war, Syria has crumbled from a regional player into an arena in which a multitude of local and foreign actors compete. The volatile regional fault lines that run through Syria have ruptured during this conflict, and the course of events in this fragile yet strategically significant country will profoundly shape the future of the Levant.