Who Knows What 'The Levant' Is?

[MineralMan]

Last edited Tue Sep 9, 2014, 03:36 PM - Edit history (1)

Damned few of us, actually. It's an old word, no longer much in use, that describes the entire region now in the middle of yet another conflict. We've heard about it because our President says ISIL, instead of the more commonly used ISIS. Learning is good. Here's a basic Wikipedia page on the region, a map of which is below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levant

[Cleita]

1. It's a term that dates back to British colonialism when Turkey ruled most

of the Middle East. The Brits were very fond of the term and now so apparently is the President and you.

[MineralMan]

4. I'm not "fond" of the term.

It's just a word. We don't understand that word, though, and there's part of the problem. The current situation is all tied up with the history of the region that was once know by that term.

Learning history is a good thing.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

9. Earlier, actually.

According to wikipedia, its first dated use is 1497; the best part of a century before the British started founding colonies seriously.

[Xithras]

11. The term far predates British colonialism.

It actually goes back to the earliest days of Western European trade in the Mediterranean. The Levant was simply a blanket term referring to the various regions along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, and the inland areas controlled by them. It was used in the same way that Barbary Coast referred to wide swathes of the North African coast, or the Haemus Peninsula for the region today referred to as the Balkans.

It's not that the terms are negative or a slur, but simply that they are outdated and no longer relevant. It's more respectful to refer to nations by their names, or regions by neutral geographic terms.

[dtotire]

2. That's where we got the name for Lebanon

[NuclearDem]

17. Lebanon's name comes from the Arabic for "white."

In reference to Mount Lebanon, covered in snow.

[NightWatcher]

3. I prefer Clusterfuckistan

It's a repetitive lesson on why colonization and empires do not work on a very different part of the planet.

[MineralMan]

6. Indeed it is a lesson.

One we should all understand before weighing in on the current situation. Without history, we have no background.

[NightWatcher]

10. We don't remember what happened 10 years ago, much less 50 or 100

But the people over there do. Some of them haven't seen much change in the last 50 or 100 years.

[MineralMan]

13. Indeed. Most Americans don't travel widely in that region.

In the mid to later 1960s, I found myself stationed in Turkey, at a little AFB in Samsun, Turkey. Samsun was a fairly sizable port on the Black Sea, and was pretty westernized, as cities in Turkey go. The base was on the outskirts of the city, though, and adjacent to pretty much open country.

Since I was a shift worker and had four days off in a row at the end of the shift cycle, I decided to explore. I checked a backpack out from the recreation office and did some serious hiking away from the city. You didn't have to walk far, maybe five miles, along well-trodden trails, to find yourself in a place that hadn't changed for 1000 years. No roads, just trails, trodden by people and donkeys. No electricity in the villages, no motor vehicles, and a lifestyle that reflected a time you'd think would have disappeared.

I had learned enough Turkish to be able to be polite and friendly, and met some very interesting people on those multi-day hikes. I slept on dirt floors in villages and made friends. I learned a great deal from those friends. Most knew that Samsun was just over a couple of hills and valleys, but had never seen it. It was irrelevant to their lives.

I visited some of those villages a number of times during my 15 months in Turkey. It was an amazing revelation for me, and I began to understand what life was like long in the past.

[Cleita]

7. I like Mess O'Potamia myself. n/t

[sufrommich]

5. I have,I grew up in metro Detroit with a huge arab

population, I've heard mostly lebanese people use the term.

[MineralMan]

8. Yes, Lebanon was part of that region. It still is.

The region still exists. We just don't recognize it. We (the West) created the national boundaries to suit ourselves. That was the first mistake we made. There has been an endless stream of other mistakes since then.

[hobbit709]

12. how about Ile du Levant?

[MineralMan]

14. Not really part of the region.

But an interesting place, nevertheless. I've never been there, though.

[hobbit709]

16. Was there once back in the days when my body wouldn't send people screaming away.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

15. "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Ambrose Bierce nt

[longship]

18. Yet another great MM thread.

Thanks for this. It is amazing what a Wikipedia click can bring you. And your post on your Turkey experiences is damned good.

R&K

[MineralMan]

20. I looked up that area in Turkey on Google Maps

It's changed dramatically, and there are dirt roads now going to those villages. I was lucky to be there before all that, I think.

Thanks for the reply!

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. Not that uncommon on DU2

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22the+levant%22+-%22alert+abuse%22+site:democraticunderground.com

[MineralMan]

21. Cool. I just added another one to the mix.

I have to ask, though, why you included "alert abuse" in your search. Just curious.

[muriel_volestrangler]

24. Excluding "alert abuse" excludes the more recent results from DU3

when "the Levant" is more likely to be part of a thread about ISIS/ISIL itself. If you want DU3 results, include "alert abuse"; if you want DU2, use -"alert abuse".

[MineralMan]

27. Thanks very much. I'll remember that.

Very useful.

[Bluenorthwest]

22. I'm surprised to hear that people don't know that term. I've been aware of it since childhood.

But then I have been there. But the name is on many maps, books, it is also the name of a dialect of Arabic, Levantine Arabic.

[MineralMan]

23. I knew the term as well, and have been there, too.

I just thought I'd offer a reference point and a link for those who aren't familiar with it.

[raven mad]

38. Myself, as well, but had many Lebanese neighbors.

It was not an unused term, at all, 50 years ago.

[Marr]

25. As I understand it, "Levant" is a more accurate translation of the Arabic "al-Sham".

The cynic in me wonders if perhaps our government and corporate media interests aren't simply looking for a more expansive, less nation-specific title than "Iraq and Syria".

[blm]

26. I knew....but, I'm so old I can even quote Oscar Levant. ; )

.

[Bluenorthwest]

28. Oscar on the Jack Parr show....

[frazzled]

29. It's a useful term, in that ...

it gives us neutral terminology to discuss a region whose current geopolitical divisions date only to extremely recent 20th-century history. We talk about Southeast Asia or Central America or Northern Africa to refer to regions composed of many states (that have also undergone changes in boundaries and names): why not have a way of talking about this part of the world, which shares thousands of years of commingled history and culture?

I knew the term Levant from history, art history, and also from reading 19th-century novels. Indeed, a new translation of Emile Zola's "Money" (one of the Rougon-Macquart novels, and I must say the most boring of the 8 or 9 I've read) has to do almost entirely with French speculative investment in the "Levant."

[MineralMan]

30. I agree. The actual current national boundaries don't

really reflect the region very well. It's instructive to look at older boundaries, since the current ones were created by parties not actually living in the region. They're artificial, and that's part of the problem. It's interesting to review the history of the region, and Wikipedia does a good rundown in that article as well as other articles at the links in that one.

We tend, naturally, to look at things in the short term, but much of the story is buried in history.

[frazzled]

31. The old ones were artificial, too

The hundreds of years of rule by the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate, to speak only of modern times (and we could go back much farther than that), were just as "artificial."

Fact is: all nation-states are artificial constructs. We just seem to accept some more easily than others. These geopolitical entities, just like the world's languages, change and evolve over time and with history. I am not a fundamentalist, so I accept these changes that occur with history. Many will change again. Sometimes they are bad changes, the result of invasions; sometimes necessary and just ones, agreed upon by the world community.

That region has been a clusterfuck for thousands of years--for millennia, as we like to say: invaded by Babylonians and Greeks and Romans and European Crusaders and Turks and so forth. So who is to say that today's configurations are any worse?

[MineralMan]

32. That's true. It has been a contentious region for a very long time.

Even the Old Testament records the history of the disputes. Now, I don't count that as carefully historic, but it referred to real incidents in many cases.

Of course, even here, the Europeans violently displaced the people already living here, causing no end of misery. We have our own legacy of invasion and occupation, right here in the good old You Ess Ay. Nobody's innocent in history, really.

[Paladin]

33. Isn't it that homely piano player who co-starred in "An American In Paris"?

First name was Oscar, as I remember.....

[MineralMan]

34. Well played!

[Paladin]

36. Thank you, sir. I'm here all week.

And I wish to hell I could play the piano half as well as did Oscar Levant.

[JDPriestly]

35. My guess is the word comes from lever, the French verb for lifting, maybe because the

sun rises in the East and the East is where the levant is. But here is the official etymology. My guess is wrong according to this dictionary. Maybe lever or lift is used as we used to use it to say someone lifted or stole something.

le·vant
ləˈvant/
verb
Britisharchaic
verb: levant; 3rd person present: levants; past tense: levanted; past participle: levanted; gerund or present participle: levanting

run away, typically leaving unpaid debts.

Origin
early 17th century: perhaps from Levant: compare with French faire voile en Levant ‘be stolen or spirited away,’ literally ‘set sail for the Levant.’
sto·rax
ˈstôˌraks/
noun

a rare fragrant gum resin obtained from an eastern Mediterranean tree, sometimes used in medicine, perfumery, and incense.
a liquid balsam obtained from the Asian liquidambar tree.
noun: Levant

More at

https://www.google.com/webhp?gws_rd=ssl#q=levant+etymology

[muriel_volestrangler]

37. No, your guess was right, according to the OED:

Etymology: < French levant, present participle of lever to rise, used subst. for the point where the sun rises; hence as in senses 1, 2

1. Geogr.

†a. The countries of the East. the High Levant = the far East (cf. high adj. 2). cloth of Levant = bezetta n. (see quot. 1558). Obs.

b. spec. The eastern part of the Mediterranean, with its islands and the countries adjoining.

2. An easterly wind blowing up the Mediterranean; a levanter. ? Obs.