Levant
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- See also: Names of the Levant
The Levant (IPA: /lə'vænt/) is a geographical term that denotes a large area in the Middle East, roughly bounded on the north by the Taurus Mountains, on the south by the Arabian Desert, and on the west by the Mediterranean Sea, while on the east it extends into Upper Mesopotamia; however, some definitions include nearly all of Mesopotamia. The term Levant is somewhat synonymous with the term Mashriq derived from the Arabic consonantal root sh-r-q (ش ر ق), relating to "the east" or "the sunrise". An imprecise term, Levant refers to an area of cultural habitation rather than to a specific geographic region.
The Levant forms the middle part of the Fertile Crescent, between the Nile Valley (Egypt) to the south-west, and Mesopotamia (Iraq) to the east.
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[edit] Dimensions
The Levant measures about 560 miles (900 km) east to west and 330 miles (530 km) north to south. It has an area of approximately 200,000 sq mi, or 500,000 sq km. Its lowest point is the surface of the Dead Sea, 1,000 feet (304 m) below sea level. Its highest point is the peak of Qurnat as Sawda', 3,083 m (10,131 ft) above sea level.
[edit] Etymology
The term Levant, which first appeared in English in 1497, originally meant a wider sense of "Mediterranean lands east of Venetia". 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 Eastern direction of the rising Sun from the perspective of those who first used it and has analogues in other European languages, notably Morgenland (i.e., morning land) in German and Danish. As such, it is broadly equivalent to the Arabic term Mashriq, "the land where the Sun rises". It is similar to the Ancient Greek name Ανατολία (Anatolía) which means the "land of the rising Sun", or simply the East. It derives from ανατολή = “the rise, especially the sunrise”, resp. from ἀνατέλλω = to rise, esp. said of the Sun or Moon (ἀνά = up, above + τέλλω = to go, rise, come into existence). For the Greeks, Ανατολία (Anatolía) is a synonym of Μικρά Ασία (Mikrá Asía = Asia Minor), not of Levant.
An alternative, though unlikely, etymology suggests that the term stems from Lebanon — the letters b and v are, in fact, one letter in Hebrew and Aramaic and interchange according to pronunciation. Spanish translators of Arabic would use the letters b and v interchangeably as a consequence of their Spanish pronunciations. Thus, the Levant would refer to the areas surrounding Lebanon, itself deriving from the Aramaic word for white in reference to the snow-capped Lebanese mountains. Note that the term levant is also used to refer to a portion of the eastern Spanish littoral, which also argues for a romance language origin.
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. In 19th-century archaeology, it referred to overlapping cultures in this region during and after prehistoric times, intending to reference the place instead of any one culture.
The name Levantine is additionally applied to people of Italian (especially Venetian and Genoese), French, or other Euro-Mediterranean origin who have lived in Turkey or the East Mediterranean coast (the Levant) since the period of the Crusades, the Byzantine period and the Ottoman period. The majority of them are descendants of traders from the maritime republics of the Mediterranean (such as the Republic of Venice, the Republic of Genoa and the Republic of Ragusa) or of the inhabitants of Crusader states (especially the French Levantines in Turkey and Lebanon). They continue to live in İstanbul (mostly in the districts of Galata, Beyoğlu and Nişantaşı) and İzmir (mostly in the districts of Bornova and Buca).
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.[citation needed]
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 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 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. The term is also occasionally employed to refer to modern or contemporary events, peoples, states, or parts of states in the same region, namely Israel, Jordan, the West Bank / Judea and Samaria and Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and Syria.
In "The Maltese Falcon" by Dashiell Hammett, the character Joel Cairo is referred to as a Levantine.
[edit] Regions
[edit] See also
- History of the Levant
- Mashriq
- Southern Levant
- Canaan
- Land of Israel
- Greater Syria
- Bilad al-Sham
- Amarna letters
- Council for British Research in the Levant
- Phoenicia
[edit] References
- Braudel, Fernand, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Phillip II
- http://www.levantine.plus.com/index.htm. Levantine Heritage Site. Includes many oral and scholarly histories, and genealogies for some Levantine Turkish families.
[edit] External Links
- The History of the Ancient Near East The Ancient Levant
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