Beirut

by Kassir, Samir

• ISBN13: 9780520256682
• ISBN10: 0520256689
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-11-15
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

Widely praised as the definitive history of Beirut, this is the story of a city that has stood at the crossroads of Mediterranean civilization for more than four thousand years. The last major work completed by Samir Kassir before his tragic death in 2005,Beirutis a tour de force that takes the reader from the ancient to the modern world, offering a dazzling panorama of the city's Seleucid, Roman, Arab, Ottoman, and French incarnations. Kassir vividly describes Beirut's spectacular growth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, concentrating on its emergence after the Second World War as a cosmopolitan capital until its near destruction during the devastating Lebanese civil war of 1975-1990. Generously illustrated and eloquently written,Beirutilluminates contemporary issues of modernity and democracy while at the same time memorably recreating the atmosphere of one of the world's most picturesque, dynamic, and resilient cities.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Foreword	p. xv
Translator's Note	p. xxi
Acknowledgments	p. xxiii
Abbreviations	p. xxv
Prologue: The Eyes Of The Mind	p. 1
From the Ancient to the Modern World
Beirut before Beirut	p. 33
The Great Transformation	p. 80
The Ibrahim Pasha Era	p. 96
The Roads from Damascus	p. 109
A Window on Ottoman Modernity	p. 129
The Awakening
A Cultural Revolution	p. 163
Between Boston and Rome	p. 180
The Horizon of the World	p. 203
Uncertain Identities	p. 227
The Capital of the Mandate
France Broadens Its Mission	p. 251
The French City	p. 279
Grand-Liban and Petit Paris	p. 301
A Crucible for Independence	p. 327
The Cosmopolitan Metropolis of the Arabs
The Switzerland of the East	p. 347
Beirut, Male and Female	p. 371
The Pleasures of the World	p. 385
Écochard's Lost Wagers	p. 409
The City Of Every Danger
On the Knife's Edge	p. 439
The End of Innocence	p. 468
Beirut, O Beirut!	p. 494
Epilogue: To Be Or To Have Been	p. 521
Notes	p. 549
Glossary of Arabic and Turkish Terms	p. 583
Bibliography	p. 589
Photographic Credits	p. 601
Index	p. 603
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