Acknowledgments
A Note on Transliteration
Glossary
Timeline for Lebanon and its Communities
Introduction
Part One Foundations
1. Emerging Communities, 600-1291
2. Druze Ascent, 1291-1633
3. Mountain Lords, 1633-1842
Part Two Modern Lebanon
4. Emerging Lebanon, 1842-1942
5. Independent Lebanon, 1943-1975
6. Broken Lebanon, 1975-2011
Conclusion
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
William Harris is Professor of Politics at the University of Otago. He has taught at Princeton University, Haigazian University College in Beirut, Middle East Technical University in Ankara, and the University of Exeter. He is the author of The Levant: A Fractured Mosaic and Faces of Lebanon: Sects, Wars, and Global Extensions.
"William Harris has written an expansive political and
institutional history of Lebanon.....Offers a historical context
and a set of arguments for considering the past and present of this
complex, divided and vulnerable country....The book is
well-sourced....The writing is clear and crisp [and] the reader
never loses track of the narrative's thread....Harris's account
offers much food for thought." --James A. Reilly, Middle East Media
and Book Reviews
"This book is a welcome addition to the historiography of the
modern Middle East... [A]n impressive achievement....Harris seems
as much at home in the medieval and early modern periods as he is
in the more modern and contemporary period" --Peter Sluglett,
Middle East Journal
"This book is a major contribution to the social history of modern
Lebanon." --A. J. Abraham, Journal of Third World Studies
"This book will provide scholars with a useful and overdue
reference." --T.J. Gorton, Times Literary Supplement
"One of the few recent works in English on the complete history of
Lebanon in the Islamic period. Most books have strengths and
shortcomings. Harris's study is almost completely free of the
latter. An excellent volume." --Juan Romero, Middle Eastern
Studies
"The history of Lebanon remains culturally and religiously complex,
and with this work, Lebanon: A History, William Harris presents the
reader with both a blueprint and a roadmap. Wither well-written
prose and clear evidence, the author enables readers to navigate
and unlock the labyrinth of Lebanese history -its people and its
culture." --Teaching History
"Fifteen hundred years of history is a monumentally long and
perilous journey that any historian, gifted and competent as he may
be, would be foolhardy to undertake. Yet Harris promises and
delivers history in the longue durée, in a gripping seamless
narrative, bringing clarity, class, and depth to a story a rare few
can tell without disorienting themselves and losing their readers
along the way....A meticulous, ambitious, and compelling story
of
Lebanon." --Franck Salameh, The Levantine Review
"William Harris, a recognized scholar of the Levant, provides a
nuanced narrative of this often fractious nation."--Arab Studies
Quarterly
"This Herculean effort is the best book about Lebanon to come out
in the past half decade. Intense at the beginning, where the author
had to grapple with a scarcity of resources and the confusing
jumble and black hole of ethnicities in the post-Roman collapse,
the book is compact in the second half, which Lebanon became
central to Roman attempts to penetrate and hold the Levant. The
book is compelling, easily readable, digestible, and
understandable.
Essential." --CHOICE
"A successful account that provides much of value for those
interested not only on Lebanese history but also that of the Middle
East. The limitations of Ottoman control and complexities of ethnic
and confessional politics emerge clearly." --The Historical
Association
"A signal contribution to the study of Lebanon. William Harris
savors that country and knows its ways. With this book, he steps
forth as one of the very best historians of Lebanon. With no ax to
grind, this is history in the finest tradition."--Fouad Ajami,
Hoover Institution, Stanford University
"William Harris discovered Lebanon in its darkest hours, and became
an intimate. Few are better qualified to write an overview of
Lebanese history, as he has done here in this excellent book, the
outcome of decades of such intimacy."--Michael Young, author of The
Ghosts of Martyrs Square: An Eyewitness Account of Lebanon's Life
Struggle
"Lebanon is defined by its religious diversity, its communities
long predating the modern state. In this lucid and engaging new
history, William Harris traces the evolution of the Christian,
Muslim, and Druze communities of Mount Lebanon over fourteen
centuries, the better to understand the dangerous sectarian
democracy of modern Lebanon. A bold and authoritative analysis
based on Arabic and European sources that will guide Western
readers through the maze of
Lebanese history and politics."-- Eugene Rogan, The Middle East
Centre, University of Oxford
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