Reviving Phoenicia

The Search for Identity in Lebanon

Asher Kaufman

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780857736024
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Nationalism & Patriotism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Reviving Phoenicia follows the social, intellectual and political development of the Phoenician myth of origin in Lebanon from the middle of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth. Asher Kaufman demonstrates the role played by the lay, liberal Syrian-Lebanese who resided in Beirut, Alexandria and America towards the end of the nineteenth century in the birth and dissemination of this myth. Kaufman investigates the crucial place Phoenicianism occupied in the formation of Greater Lebanon in 1920. He also explores the way the Jesuit Order and the French authorities propagated this myth during the mandate years. The book also analyzes literary writings of different Lebanese who advocated this myth, and of others who opposed it. Finally, Reviving Phoenicia provides an overview of Phoenicianism from independence in 1943 to the present, demonstrating that despite the general objection to this myth, some aspects of it entered mainstream Lebanese national narratives. Kaufman's work will be vital reading for anyone interested in the birth of modern Lebanon as we know it today.

3

The Mandate Years

[…] Lebanon is the meeting place of widely branching roads, struggling nations and various crossing cultures. And just as no power on earth can shut off its western shores — this wide open gate to the Mediterranean — from civilizations and nations which gave unto it and received from it […] so there is no power in the world that can remove it from this Semite East, whence, since and even before the beginning of history, it received its blood and tongue, its tradition of legend and culture. […] By nature and by historical decree, Lebanon serves as a means of communication between the East and the West which meet there […] Possibly the best wares provided by Lebanon are its children, who emigrate to all four corners of the world, who build cities and ships, who compete without being unfair, who are intelligent by nature and work, who are conservative without gloomy gravity, who are new without doing evil, who invented the alphabet in ancient times and who today embrace Arabic; these children carry the cultural mission of Lebanon to the world.

Sunni writer ‘Umar Fakhuri¹

The creation of Greater Lebanon on September 1, 1920 thoroughly transformed the lives of the population in Mount Lebanon and in the territories annexed to the new entity. Much has been written about these fateful days and their impact on the fragile socio-political structure of the fledgling political community.² The Maronite absolute majority in the Mutasarrifiyya, the autonomous region, was wiped out, and with it the political and cultural justification for the existence of a cohesive national community in Lebanon disappeared. The historical narrative of the Maronites, as a self-conscious community with historical memories that are traced back to the Church’s formation in the 5th century, and to the legendary Marada Christian tribe, could not have worked for the rest of the communities in Lebanon. As we have previously seen, in the 1880s the ancient Phoenicians began to be thought as the ancestors of all Syrians by lay Syro-Lebanese from Beirut who were seeking a secular identity for themselves and their communities. Phoenicianism, then, did not bear any political connotation. However, during the political strife that led to the formation of Greater Lebanon, the Phoenician identity crystallized and was used by Christian Syro-Lebanese as the historical justification for the existence of a distinct national community, founded on the ethnic and cultural non-Arab similarities of its members. Most of the annexed population, however, could not and would not recognize this identity as their own. Moreover, the Phoenician identity was still an alien concept even for a large number of the inhabitants of Mount Lebanon. Before 1920, Phoenician expressions were strictly limited to the bourgeoisie in Beirut. Thus, Greater Lebanon was founded on a national historical narrative that was not only renounced by the non-Christian population, but was also somewhat foreign for many of the Christian Lebanese, residents of the Mountain and other isolated locales.

The objective of this chapter is not to provide a chronological description of the development of Phoenicianism in mandatory Lebanon. Rather, I explore several subjects that, overall, provide a wide picture of the social, political and cultural forces that helped shape this identity and make it part of the (much disputed) Lebanese national narrative. The first subject I investigate is the French High Commission, which strove to shape the Lebanese society by all possible means. I examine its policy towards education in Lebanon and its approach to archeology in the mandated regions. The second subject is the Jesuits, who, although they were a foreign element within the Lebanese society, evolved to become an inseparable part of the social, political and cultural life there. Thus, their lasting impact on Lebanon was the impact of an insider and, therefore, much stronger than any French colonial force. Third, I look at the period 1936-1937, perhaps the two most turbulent years in mandatory Lebanon, and the role the Phoenician identity played therein. This period saw a concentration of the social and political forces in Lebanon that used this identity to support their political views and challenge the views of their opponents. The chapter concludes with an inquiry of the process that gradually led to the acceptance of Lebanon as a fait accompli by all sectors of Lebanese society, most notably the Sunni community. This process also inevitably led to the recognition of a separate Lebanese national narrative, which ushered in an acknowledgement of the Phoenician past, though in a modified, arabized form.

The French Mandate and the Lebanese Educational System

The crucial role of historiography in the process of nation-forging has long been recognized by students of nationalism.³ Throughout the world, scholars and politicians often collaborated in the dissemination of national sentiments and the crystallization of collective identities by conducting selective historical scientific research, proving the indigenous nature of their nations and demonstrating their ancient and proud pedigrees. Universities, the most powerful institutions of the production and diffusion of knowledge, often served as vital agents in the dissemination of these national sentiments. Using the network of state-controlled schools, the Ministry of Education also evolved as a spearhead in the development of historical national narratives.⁴ Keeping all this in mind, there is no surprise in the fact that one of the first steps the French took upon their arrival in Syria, at the end of World War I, was the rehabilitation of the devastated education system and the construction of a wide, French-oriented public school system. They believed that this would best serve their colonial interests and would also befit their mission civilisatrice.

Prior to WWI, education in Syria was mainly in the hands of private schools of the various religious communities and the foreign missions that operated throughout Syria but were especially dominant in Mount Lebanon and Beirut. There were also Ottoman state schools, mainly in the large cities of Beirut, Damascus and Aleppo, but only a small number of Syrians attended them and in general these schools were poorly equipped.⁵ The two foreign universities in Beirut, Université Saint Joseph and the Syrian Protestant College, were the vanguard of higher education in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. In addition to functioning as institutes of higher learning, these universities also operated as the basis of a network of schools, from kindergarten through secondary, in their respective missions throughout Syria.⁶

A few days after the entry of the British and French forces into Beirut in October 1918, Colonel Piepape, the head of French troops, issued an act proclaiming the maintenance and rehabilitation of the educational system and the replacement of Turkish with French as the official language of instruction, along with Arabic.⁷ At first, this act affected only Lebanon, which was controlled by the French, but in July 1920, General Gouraud entered Damascus and extended the policy to Syria as well. The calamities of the war had left the educational system, like other domains, in debris. The French worked to reconstruct the existing confessional and foreign schools and to construct, almost ex nihilo, the public school system. The records of the Office of Public Instruction of the High Commission (that was actually in charge of the private schools as well) are filled with deliberations and reports about the desired curricula in the public state schools. The French authorities were absorbed by the idea that they could use school curricula as an the avenue through which to cast national content into the new petty states they had formed by teaching Syrian, Lebanese, Druze and ‘Alawite children French and European Civilization, on the one hand, and selective local history, on the other.⁸ This, of course, was not a novel idea for the French, who had already practiced this policy extensively in their colonies, most notably in North Africa. In fact, the majority of the officers who served in Syria during the first decade of the French mandate had previously served in Morocco and were intentionally transferred to Syria so that they could implement the same colonial policy there.⁹ French, previously studied only in the private and confessional schools, became a compulsory subject in the public schools as well. After French, history and geography were naturally considered to be the preferred fields through which political messages could be conveyed. The following examples, from the first two years of the mandate, mirror the atmosphere of these deliberations and the educational orientation dictated by the High Commission, particularly from 1920-1924, the terms of the first two commissioners, Henri Gouraud and Maxime Weygand.

In one of the numerous exchanges of letters between the High Commission and its representatives in the mandated regions, High Commissioner Gouraud replied to a report written by Combe, the inspector of public instruction in Aleppo, elaborating on the curriculum in two public schools in the city. Gouraud criticized the content of the curriculum, particularly in the subject of history, and asked Combe to make major revisions. Gouraud wrote that the curriculum did not reflect the shift from Ottoman to French control the region had undergone. It should include courses on the history of Syria instead of on the Arabs. Ancient history prior to the Arab-Islamic conquest should also be taught, Gouraud stated, because there had been other civilizations in Syria before the Arabs and the Prophet. Arab civilization should not be given a place in history greater than it deserved, concluded the High Commissioner.¹⁰ In response, Combe explained that history of the Arabs was studied more than that of Syria simply because the teachers were unfamiliar with the latter. With time, he continued, teachers would learn this new subject and be able to teach Syrian and not only Arab history.¹¹

The second example, reflecting the atmosphere in the first years of the French mandate in Syria and Lebanon, pertains to Louis Jalabert, one of the most outspoken Jesuits in support of the Christian Syro-Lebanese and an advocate of the non-Arab identity of Lebanon.¹² Jalabert taught at USJ from 1901-1919, then moved back to Paris to become the editor of the prestigious Jesuit journal Études and the representative of USJ’s Faculty of Medicine to the Quai d’Orsay. He wrote often to French officials stating his views about political issues in the mandated regions. In a correspondence with Robert de Caix, the secretary of the High Commissioner and the architect behind French policy in Syria and Lebanon, Jalabert explained his ideas on the educational system in Lebanon. He argued that if France wished the mandate to become “France d’autre Méditerranée,” there was a need to furnish the Lebanese with local, national, and French education simultaneously.¹³ Our interest, Jalabert wrote, lies in attaching the thoughts and the hearts of the local elite to France, thus mixing their interests with ours.¹⁴ This goal, he believed, could be achieved by emphasizing secondary and higher education at USJ and AUB. History classes, according to Jalabert, should focus on the Mediterranean and Roman ancient history and on local histories of Syria and Lebanon. Concluding his remarks, Jalabert wrote: “Un programme libanais, syrien, conçu dans cet esprit semblerait devoir donner une satisfaction suffisante à tous les besoins politiques du pays, tout en réservant l’intérêt français.”

When Gouraud demanded that the history of Syria should be studied more than the history of the Arabs in public schools, he marked a major change in the historiographical and political focus of the region.¹⁵ Private and confessional schools had already been teaching local history before the establishment of the French mandate, especially in Beirut and Mount Lebanon. Now, with French guidance and a state-controlled educational system, public schools began doing the same, introducing to their primarily Muslim students a new concept of history, one that preceded Muhammad and went as far back as the dark days of the Jahiliyya in the pre-Islamic eras. The change did not come at once, for public schools were never too popular in Syria and even less so in Lebanon, but with time, more students attended these schools and naturally were affected by their curricula.

As for Jalabert’s ideas regarding the educational system...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Note on Transliteration
• Acknowledgements
• Preface to the New Paperback Edition
• Introduction
• Section I: Origins
• Section II: The Mandate Years
• Section III: After Independence and Beyond
• Bibliography