A Brief History of BEIRUT
There are a few claimants to the title of “oldest city on Earth.” Beirut, by any measure, is one of them.
A New York Times article from 1997 entitled “Under Beirut’s Rubble, Remnants of 5,000 Years of Civilization” describes excavation sites opened up by destruction during the Lebanese Civil War. These sites provide evidence that people have been living where Beirut currently is for a long, long time. That we found them because of destruction is an irony that lies at the heart of a nation: out of struggle and hardship, Lebanon has always ascended and shone.
What do the Latin alphabet, the ancient city of Carthage, and purple dye have in common? They’re all thanks to the Phoenician Empire, which centered on the area we now call Lebanon. Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, was there from the beginning.
The Phoenician Empire (actually more a group of city-states and regions linked by a common language, shared cultural features, and sophisticated trade networks) was centered around the city of Tyre, a prominent port 70 kilometers south of Beirut.
One of the remarkable things about the Phoenician “Empire” is its longevity. Of its major ports, many are still populated, including Tripoli, Byblos, Tyre and Beirut: all in modern Lebanon. This is one of the things that makes Lebanon a remarkable place — it gives you a sense of inexorability, of abiding, of living.
You already know what happened to Beirut on August 4th, 2020. You’ve seen the video, your jaw dropped. Maybe you’ve donated. Even better, maybe you’ve shared places to donate on social media. But what next?
Next, you learn about this city. It deserves that. So do you.
This article is merely a place to start. At the bottom there will be links to further, better reading.
The Early Period: 2500–1000 BCE
Bronze Age Phoenicia existed in the periphery of the stronger Egyptian empire. There is some disagreement about from where the Phoenicians came; some say the Persian Gulf, some the Red Sea, some claim that they are a distillation of cultures that originated in situ.
The Ancient Egyptians desired the area known as the Levant (modern Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, etc) for their cedar timber (Egypt itself didn’t have any significant timber resources of its own) and their proximity to Mesopotamian trade. Beirut, along with the other Phoenician hubs, enjoyed a status somewhere between “most favored nation” and a semi-autonomous colony.
Allied to Egypt, Lebanon enjoyed prosperity and relative peace. Brief contestation from the Hittite Empire around 1300 BCE was a dark cloud presaging worse trials to come.
The Bronze Age Collapse
Something remarkable happened to the civilizations around the Meditteranean Sea around 1200 BCE, but historians and archeologists are entirely sure what. We know that within a single lifetime almost every significant civilization in that area collapsed — and that the “Sea Peoples” had something to do with it.
The Canaanites, Mycenaeans, Egyptians, and Hittites were subjected to invasions from the north by a mysterious group whom the Egyptians called the “Sea Peoples.” We don’t know much about these people other than that they came from the north-east, left no writings, and were intent on conquering as much as they could. Only Egypt held out, albeit weakened by war and trade disruptions. The devastation wrought by the Sea Peoples, and by whatever other variables must have contributed to the calamity, were hard on the region; but, crucially, it left a vacuum that the Phonicians would come to fill spectacularly, thus beginning a millennia-long trend of rising up through hardship to excellence.
The Height of Influence; 1,100–200 BCE
Phoenicia’s cedar wood and famous purple dye made it rich. Its seafaring abilities and prime location made it spread wealth and influence across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Its rise to cultural and economic hegemony is remarkable for peacefulness; the Phoenicians were less interested in conquering nations than in trading with them.
One of the only acts of aggression you can find in Phoenician history, interestingly, is its northward push from Tyre to Sidon and Beirut, which it conquered in the 800s BCE. Beirut then becomes the one, quiet symbol of violence in the otherwise placid Phoenician Empire.
Phoenician coins, dye, and cedar tromped around the Mediterranean for centuries — and so did its alphabet. Perhaps the most important legacy of the Empire is encoded in the very text which now boasts of it, the very letters you’re looking at.
The millennium saw the wax and wane of several empires including the Assyrians, the Neo-Babylonians, and the Persians, some of which subjugated the Levant and the famous Phoenician ports. There always persists a distinct trend in these mercurial empires to leave the Levantine ports alone. Let them make money, let them thrive, and let them increase in wealth and prestige — this, they understood, benefits everyone.
It was during the middle part of this millennium that Carthage began to thrive, and then spectacularly fell; that Alexander the Great swept through and then vanished barely a decade later; that the Persian Empire grew and began to lean to the west; and, finally, that Greek influence gave way to Roman influence and the Roman Empire began to close around the Mediterranean.
It would take not a book, but a series of books to chart Phoenicia’s place in these happenings.
What we can conclude for now is that for a whole thousand years, what is now Lebanon was a major center of peace, culture, and economy that linked three continents.
Lebanon Joins the Arab World
In 635 CE the Levant was conquered by a powerful new religious movement called “Submission to God,” practiced by those who called themselves “Submittors.” Lebanon and Beirut had joined the Muslim world.
Beirut was still a prominent trading center, but not as important as Akka to the south (in modern Israel). Lebanon as we know it today was beginning to form, naming itself after a snow-capped mountain range in the middle of the country.
A brief period in the 1100–1200s CE saw Beirut tossed between European Crusaders and Muslim re-conquerors. Lebanon lay along a corridor of heated conflict, and it was destroyed and rebuilt several times. This legacy of push and pull contributed to the diversity of Lebanon today: Muslims, Christians, and Druze (an offshoot of Shia Islam dating to around the 11th century) have lived in close proximity for centuries.
This diversity was facilitated by the relatively liberal policies of the Ottoman Empire beginning in the 16th century. During the Ottoman Empire, Lebanon was under the mostly autonomous control of the Mount Lebanon Emirate, which was lead by various strongmen who fought other various regional leaders in Syria to facilitate the Ottomans’ divide and conquer strategy. The Mount Lebanon Emirate lasted over three hundred years, from about 1500 to 1850. The most prominent leader of Lebanon by the end of this period was Bashir II, who attempted to unify the region and end bickering between religious and ethnic factions. Caught between the British, the French, and the Egyptians, each of which tried to assert hegemony over the region, Bashir sided with and was eventually double-crossed by the British.
A New Lebanon Begins to Form
Lebanese nationalism finds a key early figure in Youssef Bey Karam, a Maronite Christian who fought the Ottomans and attempted to free Lebanon from Ottoman taxes, governorship, and troops. Part governor, part statesman, part general, Karam was eventually exiled and died in Italy. He had far-reaching ideas for the future of Lebanon, trying to leverage European investment in Lebanese coal mines and railroad networks. Frustrated by constant shuttle diplomacy between European powers, he even had early notions of a League of Nations and a pan-Arab league.
The population of Lebanon on the eve of the war is difficult to pin down exactly, but was waxing. Karam’s vision of an independent, flourishing Lebanon looked like it might come true. Railroads were being built including one linking Lebanon with Damascus, universities were established, intellectual life flourished, tourism grew.
On the horizon, however, a dark cloud loomed. The First World War would bring the greatest calamity that the nation had yet faced, and might ever face.
The Great Famine of Lebanon
The Allied Powers had imposed an economic blockade on Germany, and now turned this technique on the Ottoman Empire. Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran believed that the blockade was in fact in inside job: “The famine in Mount Lebanon has been planned and instigated by the Turkish government. Already 80,000 have succumbed to starvation and thousands are dying every single day.” The reality is probably more complicated. Drought and locusts already made for a poor harvest season, and conscription meant that agricultural laborers were not tending the fields. Families couldn’t buy food, since prices were severely inflated and their normal sources of income had been disrupted. Lebanon began to starve. People died by the thousands each day.
All told, half of all Lebanese people starved to death.. 200,000 out of 400,000 are estimated to have perished.
Climbing Back to Prosperity
If there is one thing to take away from this article, it is that the people of Lebanon are exceptionally resilient.
With borders expanding and population swiftly regrowing, the French, who had received control over the region from the Sykes-Picot Agreement (another one of the many “carve ups” that the Europeans so loved), did what they could to favor Lebanese Christians. When France fell to Germany in WWII, the puppet Vichy government allowed the Nazi’s into Syria and Lebanon, where they operated until ousted by the British in 1941. Charles de Gualle, the acknowledged leader of Free France, marched in and recognized Lebanese independence. This independence was at first caveated by keeping Lebanon within the French sphere of influence, but the new Lebanese government was swift to reject this. After an attempt to imprison the new government, the French quickly gave into international pressure and withdrew their claim.
A wholly independent Lebanon was born.
And with it, the city of Beirut rose to stardom. It was the jewel in the newly free crown, and an important center of international trade, tourism, and fascination. The next few decades were marked by prosperity. Lebanon was referred to as the “Switzerland of the Middle East” due to its reputation for economic robustness, and Beirut earned the epithet of “Paris of the Middle East.” These nicknames betray something of a tendency of Westerners to “Europeanize” Lebanon. One could just as reasonably call Paris the “Beirut of the West,” or Switzerland the “Lebanon of Europe.” But the Western gaze adores finding European analogues to help it better understand places with which Westerners might be unfamiliar. One of the goals of learning more about Lebanese history should be to circumvent and undermine this Western Gaze, and to forego the European analogy.
Civil War
By the 1970s, tensions within Lebanon had reached boiling point. Changing demographics were not being represented in government — an all-too-common legacy of European meddling. Proximity to Israel and Palestine lead inexorably to taking sides in the bloody Arab-Israeli conflict; Lebanese involvement was minor compared to Syria, Jordan and Egypt, but Israel saw fit to punish Lebanon nevertheless.
The civil war officially began in 1975 and didn’t end until 1990. This period encompasses the Camp David Agreement, the Iranian Revolution, the Iran/Iraq War, and the sustained campaigns between the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Israel. It was a tumultuous time.
Lebanon’s diversity became an engine of discord. A large population of Palestinian refugees meant a significant presence of the PLO. The PLO tended to ally with native Lebanese Muslim powers against the elite Maronite minority, which held most government power.
The Lebanese National Movement, comprised of left-leaning pan-Arabists, was pitted against more radical Christian factions. The government forces were caught in between. Allegiances shifted rapidly and unpredictably. Beirut itself splintered into a Christian West Beirut and a Muslim East Beirut. The competing influences and shifting power dynamics involved in the Lebanese Civil War are intensely complicated. They deserve more fervid study than this brief article pretends to afford.
During the bloodiest period of the conflict from ‘75-’77, around 60,000 people were killed. All told, more than double that figure would die in the Lebanese Civil War.
Years passed, and peace seemed distant. General Michel Aoun, a Maronite Christian, was appointed prime minister of Lebanon in 1988; an avowed opponent of the Syrian presence in Lebanon, Aoun fought the Syrians and was eventually ousted by them in 1990.
Increased Syrian presence made many Lebanese uncomfortable, but also led to a calming of sectarian conflict. Parliamentary elections were held for the first time since 1972. Imbalances between Christian and Muslim representation in government were corrected. Violence continued sporadically, but militant groups were largely weakened or disbanded. Israeli troops remained in Southern Lebanon until 2000, and Syrian troops would not withdraw until after mass demonstrations against their presence, in 2005.
Today
Lebanon’s economy is crippled by the coronavirus epidemic. Its currency is severely inflated. Its central bank, Banque du Lion has defaulted on $90 billion of debt. This has exposed an import/export imbalance (according to news network Al Jazeera, Lebanon imports 80% of its goods), high level fraud and “book-cooking” by the managers of the BdL, and the redirection of funds to Hezbollah.
Although economic devastation wrought by the pandemic is severe, thankfully the figures of the virus itself are not as dire as they could be. According to the World Health Organization, Lebanon has suffered around 6,000 cases of COVID-19 and 78 deaths.
Then, on August 4th, Beirut exploded.
Watch the video of it, if you can. It’s disturbing and horrific, but galvanizing. The docks were obliterated
The WHO webpage for Lebanon cites the following figures: “More than 5000 people were injured as a result of the blast, over 130 admitted to intensive care units, and up to 300 000 people have been displaced from their homes and need urgent support for shelter and food assistance.” All this during a pandemic.
See below for donation links.
Conclusion
Lebanon has given the world the alphabet and the color purple. It has given its beautiful cedar wood, its beautiful ports and cities, mountain ranges and valleys. It is an emblem of the power and beauty of diversity, and even when that diversity is stoked by dark influences to be a source of discord and violence, we do not for a second believe the lie that the diversity itself is somehow at fault.
Lebanon and Beirut have at their heart a dark irony. Its beauty and vivacity have dark shadows: destruction and violence. But as long as there are people living and thriving in Lebanon — and you can expect that there will be, possibly for another 3,000 years — it is a place of life, energy, vitality, and goodness.
It has survived, and will survive.
The question is: how can you help it do so?
TO DONATE:
Humanitarian Aid for Children: https://www.unicefusa.org/
CARE. https://www.care.org/
International Rescue Committee: https://help.rescue.org/donate/beirut
World Food Program USA: https://www.wfpusa.org/
There are many more. Just Google it.
Citations
Al Khalifa, Shaikh Abdullah Bin; Rice, Michael. Bahrain Through the Ages: The Archaeology. Routledge, 1993.
Cook, Chris. The Facts on File; World Political Almanac. 3rd edition. Facts on File, 1994.
Cummings, Lindsey. “Economic Warfare and the Evolution of the Allied Blockade of the Eastern Mediterranean: August 1914-April 1917.” Georgetown University, 2015.
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Economic-Warfare-and-the-Evolution-of-the-Alli
Gazal, Rym. “Lebanon’s dark days of hunger: The Great Famine of 1915–18.” The National,
2015. https://www.thenational.ae/world/lebanon-s-dark-days-of-hunger-the-great-famine-of-1915-18-1.70379
Jodice, David; Lewis, Charles. The World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators. Yale
University Press, 1983.
“Lebanon.” World Health Organization, 2020.
http://www.emro.who.int/countries/lbn/index.html.
Marquis P., Les fouilles de centre-ville. In: Doumet-Serhal C, editor. Decade: a decade of archaeology and history in the Lebanon. Beirut Archaeology and History in Lebanon 2004. p. 266–279.
Timour, Azhari. “Lebanon Will Default On Its Debt For the First Time Ever.” Al Jazeera, 2020.
https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/lebanon-default-debt-time-200307182500108.html
Wilson, Charles William; Hogarth, David George (1911). “Beirut” . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.).
Encyclopædia Britannica. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 658.