Levant : Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean

by Philip Mansel

• ISBN13: 9780300172645
• ISBN10: 0300172648
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2011-05-24
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

Levantis a book of cities. It describes three former centers of great wealth, pleasure, and freedomSmyrna, Alexandria, and Beirutcities 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.

Author Biography

Philip Mansel is a historian of France and the Ottoman Empire. His publications include histories of Constantinople and nineteenth-century Paris, as well as biographies of Louis XVIII and the Prince de Ligne. While writing Levant, he lived in Beirut and Istanbul.

Table of Contents

Map	p. viii
Introduction	p. 1
The Vineyards of Pera	p. 5
Smyrna: The Eye of Asia	p. 16
Smyrna: Massacres and Merriment	p. 39
Alexandria: The Key to Egypt	p. 56
Alexandria: Bid for Empire	p. 75
Beirut: The Republic of Merchants	p. 91
Alexandria: Khedives and Consuls	p. 102
Alexandria: British Years	p. 127
Beirut: The Jewel in the Crown of the Padishah	p. 148
Smyrna: Greeks and Turks	p. 156
Drifting Cities	p. 176
Catastrophe and Liberation	p. 196
Alexandria: Queen of the Mediterranean	p. 238
Egyptianization	p. 267
Beirut: Birth of a Capital	p. 296
The Paris of the Middle East	p. 311
The Dance of Death	p. 325
New Levants for Old	p. 344
Acknowledgements	p. 357
Notes	p. 359
Bibliography	p. 425
Illustration Acknowledgements	p. 451
Index	p. 453
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