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Taken from
Cedarland Website :
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Parliament/2587/index.html
A great deal of debate has gone on
regarding the identity of the
Lebanese, many state that the
Lebanese are Arabs and that Lebanon
is an Arab state, whilst many argue
that this is not the case, that the
Lebanese are not Arab. In the
Lebanese constitution the word Arab
does not appear, the constitution
only makes reference to Arabic as
being the official language in
article 11, yet this seemingly
trivial matter was deemed of such
importance that an entire sentence
stating that Lebanon is Arab was
inserted at the beginning of the
Taif agreement in 1990. The
contribution of the Arabs to the
development of mankind cannot be
ignored, as it was truly immense in
its proportion. In almost every
field the Europeans learnt much from
their eastern neighbours. In
medicine, astronomy, chemistry,
physics, geography, mathematics, and
architecture the Europeans drew
heavily from Arabic books. In
industry the Europeans learned of
the processes used by the Arabs in
paper making, leather working, and
textile manufacture. It seems that
it would be an honour for any
country to be identified as Arab,
however one cannot simply state that
one is an Arab just for the sake of
it, similarly one cannot state that
an entire country is Arab just
because he wishes to please his
neighbours. In order to answer the
question of Lebanese identity one
has to look into the history of
Lebanon so as to determine the
origin of its inhabitants. Upon
examination on finds that the
Lebanese are ethnically a mixture of
Phoenician, Greek, Arab, Persian and
Armenian elements.
The earliest recorded texts refer to
the inhabitants of Lebanon as
Canaanites. Philo of Byblos claims
that the Canaanites were
autochthonous, i.e. born from the
soil of a land, and so have
inhabited Lebanon from the earliest
times, and that they were not only
men but also gods and that the whole
human culture hails from their area.
However many theories involving
migration have been put forward as
to Canaanite origins, which range
form Eritrea, the Sinai, the Persian
Gulf or as far away as Antarctica.
Herodotus locates them on the
Eritrean sea and Justin tells how
they were driven from their original
land by an earthquake and settled
first on the coast of the Dead Sea
and then on the Mediterranean. For
migration theories to make sense
they must presuppose that some kind
of 'nation' must have existed for
the Canaanites to migrate from
before their appearance in the area
of Lebanon, but there is no
historical or archaeological
evidence for such a 'nation' and so
migration does not hold.
Evidence of human settlement in
Lebanon dates back to the
Palaeolithic period when man was
differentiated from other animals by
little more than the simple tools he
was able to make. It was at the end
of the last glaciation around 10,000
B.C. a period known as the
Mesolithic, that mankind took an
enormous step forward by cultivating
plants and domesticating animals.
Archaeologists have proven that this
process began in what is known as
the Fertile Crescent an area
comprising the Nile Valley, Israel,
Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. It was
around this time that small towns
started to appear, the oldest in the
world being Jericho in Israel and
Byblos in Lebanon going back to at
least 9000 B.C. as shown by
carbon-14 dating. By 8000 B.C. these
Canaanite towns had populations of
between 2000 and 4000.
Canaanites
are described as a Semitic people.
The term Semitic ot Semite is
frequently used and it is important
to understand what it means as it
applies to a number of peoples. The
following definitions are found:
Se•mit•ic
Pronunciation:(su-mit'ik),—n.
a subfamily of Afroasiatic
languages that includes Akkadian,
Arabic, Aramaic, Ethiopic,
Hebrew,and Phoenician.—adj.
of or pertaining to the
Semites or their languages, esp. of
or pertaining to the Jews
Sem•ite
Pronunciation:(sem'Itor,esp.Brit.,sE'mIt),—n.
1. a member of
any of various ancient and modern
peoples originating in Asia,
including the Akkadians, Canaanites,
Hebrews, and Arabs. These peoples
are grouped under the term Semite,
chiefly because their languages were
found to be related, deriving
presumably from a common tongue,
Semitic.
2. a member of
any of the peoples descended from
Shem, the eldest son of Noah.
3. a Jew.
The Canaanite
language was indeed Semitic as per
the first definition, however the
Canaanites were not the descendants
of Shem. According to Genesis, Noah
had three children, Shem, Ham, and
Japheth. The eldest son of Noah,
Shem, is the traditional ancestor of
Semites (Genesis 10); descendants
include Hebrews, Aramaeans, and
Arabs. Ham is biblical ancestor of
Hamites, who included the Cushites,
the Canaanites, and the Egyptians
(Genesis. 8;9). According to
tradition the descendants of Japheth
inhabited Europe and Asia Minor
along the Mediterranean coast. Ham
had a son called Canaan who in turn
had one called Sidon (Genesis
10;15). These decedents of Canaan,
the Canaanites lived on the coast of
the eastern Mediterranean (Genesis
10;19).
The Canaanites
who lived in what is now present day
Lebanon were later called the
Phoenicians by the Greeks c. 10th
century B.C. The Phoenicians are
well known as having been great
benefactors to mankind.
From the dawn of recorded history
Lebanon has swung between
independence and occupation. Long
periods of independence were
interrupted by Assyrian rule, then
Babylonian and Persian rule, then by
Alexander and by 64 BC Lebanon had
become part of the Roman Empire.
Throughout these years, the original
native inhabitants of Lebanon were
not displaced nor were they diluted,
their Levantine, Canaanite origin
remained intact.
It was in Roman
times that a carpenter's son who was
born in a stable was to forever
change world. News of the teachings
of this Jesus of Nazareth was to
reach Lebanon early in his ministry
and it prompted people from Lebanon
to go and visit him (Mk. 3:8, Lk.
6:17), and he was also to journey to
Lebanon where he healed the daughter
of a Phoenician woman (Matt.15:21-8,
Mk. 7:24-31) and attended a wedding.
After the death of Christ, upon the
martyrdom of Stephen, some of the
disciples that were scattered abroad
to preach went north to Phoenicia
(Acts 11:19), through their works
and the work of Paul, Lebanon
converted. The pagan Canaanites, the
early Lebanese, became Christian.
Christianity flourished in Lebanon
and by the close of the second
century Tyre had become the seat of
a Christian Bishop as has Sidon,
whose Bishop attended the council of
Nicea in 325 in which the Nicene
Creed was formulated, furthermore in
the year 335 a church council was
held in Tyre. At about the same
time, Frumentius, a Tyrian
missionary introduced Christianity
to Ethiopia. From early in the 5th
Century and throughout the 6th,
through the works of the disciples
of St. Maron the people of Lebanon,
the Phoenicians, both pagan and
Christian, joined the Maronite
Church.
For many years
the Maronite Lebanese worked the
land, terraced the mountains built
their villages and expanded their
cities. Soon a human tidal wave was
not only to change the demographics
of Lebanon but was also to change
the history of the civilized world.
In a little
know area of a Byzantine province in
570 AD was born, to a camel trading
father, a child known to history by
his honorific name Mohammed, or
'highly praised'. The religion
founded by Mohammed in Arabia was
that of Islam, and he is regarded by
his followers as a prophet. The book
he, an unschooled man produced, was
written by one of his followers and
is considered by the Islam (Muslims)
to be the literal word of God told
to Mohammed by the Angel Gabriel. By
the time he died in 632, Mohammed
had converted the Arabian peninsula,
mainly by the sword, to Islam.
In 633, a year
after Mohammed's death, in a valley
just south of the Dead Sea, a group
of Arabian Muslims fought their
first battle outside of Arabia
against the Byzantines. By 637
almost the entire Middle East had
fallen into Arab hands. The victory
of Islam was in three parts: Islam
the state; Islam the religion; and
Islam the language, Arabic.
Lebanon,
however, remained a Christian island
in a sea of Islam. It is in Lebanon
that Islam the state did not govern,
Islam the religion did not convert,
and Islam the language did not take
over from Aramaic Syriac for over a
thousand years, and even then never
as a spoken language but as the
written one. In Lebanon today there
is a huge difference between the
spoken Lebanese and the written
Arabic, Lebanese being a mixture
rich in Syriac. A great part of the
coastal population of Lebanon joined
their fellow Christian countrymen
high in the mountains out of Arab
reach. The mountains offered no
attraction to the desert Arabs,
agriculture was considered below
their dignity and and they knew
little of industry and even less
about maritime trade. The Arabs did
not realize the strategic importance
of Lebanon and they left it to
itself and so opened the way for
Byzantine naval raids. Such
incursions were a prime reason why
an inland seat of government,
Damascus, was chosen by the Arabs.
As a result of the coastal
inhabitants of Lebanon refusing to
convert and moving to the mountains
the Lebanese coast was left
undefended and so it became
necessary for Muawiyah the Caliph,
in 663, to transplant Persians and
Arabians to the Lebanese coast so as
to provide a measure of protection
against naval incursions by the
Byzantines.
By the end of
the 7th century the Arabs and the
Persians, newcomers to an ancient
land, began to settle on the
Lebanese coast and in the Bekaa
valley and the native Lebanese moved
deeper into the mountain.
The
transplantation of outsiders into
Lebanon in 663 was not the only one
to occur in Lebanon's long history.
Lebanon's refusal to be assimilated
so infuriated the Mamluks that in
the years following the departure of
the Crusaders from Lebanon the
Mamluks launched heavy military
reprisals against Lebanon. In 1307
the Mamluks under al-Nasir Muhammad
went so far as to occupy the coastal
strip between Beirut and Tripoli and
divide it between three hundred
transplanted and newly introduced
nomadic tribes from north east
Persia. The Mamluks hoped that the
settling of these thousands of pro
Mamluk nomads would not only provide
a measure of protection against
Mongol attack or Crusader raids from
Cyprus but they hoped that such a
step would over time change the very
orientation of Lebanon itself. These
measures however failed to
reorientate Lebanon and the Lebanese
remained a thorn in the side of the
Mamluk established order.
Over the many
years that were to follow the Arab
invasion, the religion of the Muslim
and the mainly Maronite Christians,
coupled with the Maronite siege
mentality, kept the two peoples
firmly apart as they had very little
in common. The sea crossing and
mountain dwelling Maronites share
nothing in the way of culture with
the desert Arab, even their language
was different, the Maronites
speaking Aramaic (Syriac) well into
the 19th century. Marriage between
the Shiite Muslim Persians and the
Sunni Muslin Arabs was at times
acceptable but for the Christians of
Lebanon marriage outside of one's
own village was rare and marriage
between Maronite and Muslim was
non-existent, even today it is
extremely uncommon. The Muslim and
Christian blood lines thus remained
pure, even the most modern of the
Lebanese are still in touch with
their ancestral village and have a
good knowledge of their forefathers.
The resistance of Lebanon to
absorption ensured it maintained an
individual identity and remained a
separate entity.
The history of
Lebanon as a separate entity from
its neighbours began many thousands
of years ago, long before the modern
state was born. In fact it is
doubtful whether any country in the
Middle East apart form Egypt can
claim such a long and continuos
history as a separate political
entity. Certain unique features had
appeared as far back as the
Byzantine Empire, but the modern
Lebanese entity emerged in the late
16th century during the rain of
Fakhr al-Din II when within its
territory an evolving form of
political authority continued
without interruption to our own
time, giving Lebanon and the
Lebanese a separate and distinct
identity and a strong sense of
nationality.
The Lebanese
have always been great travellers,
and due to the many hardships the
Lebanese have had to face over the
ages, they have been forced to look
outside their borders for the right
to live in peace and so emigration
plays an important role in their
history. Today the majority of the
Lebanese live outside of Lebanon,
some 3.5 million living inside its
borders and 14 million of Lebanese
origin living outside the country.
Of those living in Lebanon around 2
million are Muslim and of those
living abroad some 12 million are
Christian.
Since Arabs are
a Semitic people originally
inhabiting the Arabian peninsular
who spread throughout the Middle
East, N. Africa and Spain in the 7th
and 8th centuries A.D., it is clear
that some part of the Muslim
population of Lebanon are of Arab
origin, some are of Persian orgin
and some are of Canaanite origin
which had converted to Islam. There
is no doubt however that when the
Arabs arrived in Lebanon it was
already inhabited by the Maronites
and other Christians who are of
Canaanite origin and therefore not
Arab. The Canaanites had lived in
Lebanon for many thousands of years
before the arrival of the Arab, and
Lebanon was touched by Christianity
some 600 years before being touched
by the Arab and Islam.
The suggestion
that most Lebanese are not Arab
seems to cause panic and open
hostility towards the Lebanese by
Arabs. For years Arabists have been
trying to remove any trace of
Lebanon's Phoenician Canaanite
heritage, even going so far as to
change history books in an atempt to
brain wash the young.
Since 2002, DNA
testing has been underway to answer
a simple question, "Who Were the
Phoenicians?" Supported by a grant
from National Geographic's Committee
for Research and Exploration,
scientists collected blood samples
from men living in the Middle East,
North Africa, southern Spain, and
Malta, places the Phoenicians are
known to have settled and traded.
Starting with between 500 and 1,000
well-typed samples, they began
looking at the Y chromosome, the
piece of DNA that traces a purely
male line of descent. What the study
has revealed so far, detailed in
"Who Were the Phoenicians?" in the
October 2004 issue of National
Geographic, is compelling. The DNA
testing showed the obvious and the
conclusion reached was simple:
"Today's Lebanese, the Phoenicians,
and the Canaanites before them are
all the same people."
It would seem
that any country with Canaanite,
Persian and Arab identities should
consider itself truly blessed. With
the infusion of Greek and Armenian
elements whose contribution of the
evolution of Lebanon has been
nothing short of remarkable,
Lebanon's identity becomes truly
multi-faceted.
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