Everything about Levant totally explained
The
Levant is a geographical term that denotes a large area in the
Middle East, roughly bounded on the north by the
Taurus Mountains, on the west by the
Mediterranean Sea, on the east by
Upper Mesopotamia, and on the south by the
Arabian Desert. An imprecise term, it refers to an area of cultural habitation rather than to a specific area of land.
The Levant forms the middle part of the
Fertile Crescent, between the
Nile Valley (
Egypt) to the south-west, and
Mesopotamia (
Iraq) to the east.
Dimensions
The Levant measures about 120 miles (190 km) east to west and 200 miles (320 km) north to south. Its lowest point is the surface of the Dead Sea, 1,000 feet (304 m) below sea level. Its highest point is the peak of Qurnat as Sawdā’, 3,083 m (10,131 ft) above sea level.
Etymology
The term
Levant, which first appeared in English in 1497, originally meant a wider sense of "Mediterranean lands east of Venetia". It derives from the
Middle French levant, the participle of
lever "to raise" — as in
soleil levant "rising Sun" — from the
Latin levare. It thus referred to the Eastern direction of the rising
Sun from the perspective of those who first used it and has analogues in other European languages, notably
Morgenland (for example, morning land) in
German and
Danish. As such, it's broadly equivalent to the
Arabic term
Mashriq, "the land where the Sun rises". It is similar to the
Ancient Greek name Ανατολία (
Anatolía) which means the "land of the rising Sun", or simply the East. It derives from ανατολή = “the rise, especially the sunrise”, resp. from ἀνατέλλω = to rise, esp. said of the Sun or Moon (ἀνά = up, above + τέλλω = to go, rise, come into existence). For the Greeks, Ανατολία (
Anatolía) is a synonym of Μικρά Ασία (
Mikrá Asía =
Asia Minor), not of Levant.
An alternative, though unlikely, etymology suggests that the term stems from
Lebanon — the letters b and v are, in fact, one letter in Hebrew and Aramaic and interchange according to pronunciation.
Spanish translators of Arabic would use the letters
b and
v interchangeably as a consequence of their Spanish pronunciations. Thus, the Levant would refer to the areas surrounding Lebanon, itself deriving from the Aramaic word for
white in reference to the snow-capped Lebanese mountains. Note that the term
levant is also used to refer to a portion of the eastern Spanish littoral, which also argues for a romance language origin.
The term became current in
English in the 16th century, along with the first English merchant adventurers in the region: English ships appeared in the Mediterranean in the 1570s and the English merchant company signed its agreement ("capitulations") with the
Grand Turk in 1579 (Braudel).
In 19th-century
travel writing, the term incorporated eastern regions under then current or recent governance of the
Ottoman empire, such as
Greece. In 19th-century archaeology, it referred to overlapping cultures in this region during and after prehistoric times, intending to reference the place instead of any one culture.
The name
Levantine is additionally applied to people of
Italian (especially
Venetian and
Genoese),
French, or other
Euro-Mediterranean origin who have lived in
Turkey or the East Mediterranean coast (the Levant) since the period of the
Crusades, the
Byzantine period and the
Ottoman period. The majority of them are descendants of traders from the maritime republics of the
Mediterranean (such as the
Republic of Venice, the
Republic of Genoa and the
Republic of Ragusa) or of the inhabitants of
Crusader states (especially the French Levantines in
Turkey and
Lebanon). They continue to live in
İstanbul (mostly in the districts of
Galata,
Beyoğlu and
Nişantaşı) and
İzmir (mostly in the districts of
Bornova and
Buca).
When the
United Kingdom took over
Palestine in the aftermath of the
First World War, some of the new rulers adapted the term pejoratively to refer to inhabitants of mixed
Arab and
European descent and to Europeans (usually
French,
Italian, or
Greek) who had "gone native" and adopted local dress and customs.
The French Mandates of
Syria and
Lebanon from 1920 to 1946 were called the Levant states. The term became common in
archaeology at that time, as many important early excavations were made then, such as
Mari and
Ugarit. Since these sites couldn't be classified as Mesopotamian,
North African, or
Arabian, they came to be referred to as "Levantine."
Today "Levant" is typically used by archaeologists and historians with reference to the
prehistory and the
ancient and
medieval history of the region, as when discussing the
Crusades. The term is also occasionally employed to refer to modern or contemporary events, peoples, states, or parts of states in the same region, namely
Israel,
Jordan, the
West Bank /
Judea and Samaria and
Gaza Strip,
Lebanon, and
Syria.
In "
The Maltese Falcon" by
Dashiell Hammett, the character Joel Cairo is referred to as a Levantine.
Regions
Further Information
Get more info on 'Levant'.
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