Phoenicianism

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Phoenicianism (Arabic,نزعة فينيقية) is a form of Lebanese nationalism that promotes the concept 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.

Although Lebanese of all sects support the idea of Phoenicianism, it's believed mostly by Maronite Christians and a minority of Druze, Greek Orthodox Christians, and Shi'ite Muslims.

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).[1] Timothy Champion remarked on the ambivalent roles in Western historical imagination.[2] One such role was as a valued predecessor and prototype for the industrial and maritime enterprise of nineteenth-century imperial Britain. Explicit parallels were drawn in historical representations and more popular culture. It is still widely believed that the Phoenicians had been present in Britain, especially in Cornwall, despite a lack of convincing historical evidence, and much importance was placed on supposed archaeological evidence. Ideological tensions arose from the need to reconcile ancient and modern Britain, and from the Semitic origin of the Phoenicians. This example shows the power of archaeological objects to provide material support for national and imperial constructions of the past.

As for Lebanon, 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",[3] 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."[4] 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.

Phoenician origins have additional appeal for the Christian middle class, as it presents 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.[5]

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[edit] 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 has been influenced influenced by Greek, Persian and Arabic culture.

The counter position is summed by As'ad AbuKhalil, Historical Dictionary of Lebanon (London: Scarecrow Press), 1998:

Ethnically speaking, the Lebanese are indistinguishable from the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean. They are undoubtedly a mixed population, reflecting centuries of population movement and foreign occupation. It is not uncommon to see in Lebanon people with blonde hair and light-colored eyes, reflecting perhaps the legacy of the Crusades. While Arabness is not an ethnicity but a cultural identity, some ardent Arab nationalists, in Lebanon and elsewhere, talk about Arabness in racial and ethnic terms to elevate the descendants of Muhammad. Paradoxically, Lebanese nationalists also speak about the Lebanese people in racial terms, claiming that the Lebanese are "pure" descendants of the Phoenician peoples, whom they view as separate from the ancient residents of the region, including — ironically — the Canaanites. For the statistical purposes of the American Census Bureau, Arab people (of Asia and North Africa) are listed as Caucasian.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ 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. ^ Champion, "The appropriation of the Phoenicians in British imperial ideology", Nations and Nationalism 7.4 (October 2001:451-65.
  3. ^ Salibi, Salibi, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered, 1988:177; Salibi is equally critical of an "Arabian" cultural origin.
  4. ^ Kamal S. Salibi, "The Lebanese Identity" Journal of Contemporary History 6.1, Nationalism and Separatism (1971:76-86).
  5. ^ Salibi 1971:84.

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links