Author: Sandra Mackey Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company ISBN: 0393352765 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 275
Book Description
"A beautifully written, often profound account." —Chicago Sun-Times With a new introduction by the author, a seminal study of Lebanon’s past, present, and future. Covering Lebanon's history through the Civil War of 1975—89, Sandra Mackey lays the groundwork needed to comprehend this often ill-understood country—offering insight into its role as the gateway between West and East, and bringing a clarity of focus to the schisms that serve to divide and define Lebanon.
Author: Kamal Salibi Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 9780520071964 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 260
Book Description
"Kamal Salibi is the foremost living historian of Lebanon, and his new book is even more important than his earlier one because it throws light on the present and future of the country as well as its past."—Albert Hourani, author of A History of the Arab Peoples "Among Lebanese historians only Kamal Salibi has the credibility to write such a book. Its timely appearance signals a new era in Lebanese history. It will undoubtedly become a classic."—Nadim Shehadi, Director, the Centre for Lebanese Studies, Oxford
Author: William Harris Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199720592 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 387
Book Description
In this impressive synthesis, William Harris narrates the history of the sectarian communities of Mount Lebanon and its vicinity. He offers a fresh perspective on the antecedents of modern multi-communal Lebanon, tracing the consolidation of Lebanon's Christian, Muslim, and Islamic derived sects from their origins between the sixth and eleventh centuries. The identities of Maronite Christians, Twelver Shia Muslims, and Druze, the mountain communities, developed alongside assertions of local chiefs under external powers from the Umayyads to the Ottomans. The chiefs began interacting in a common arena when Druze lord Fakhr al-Din Ma'n achieved domination of the mountain within the Ottoman imperial framework in the early seventeenth century. Harris knits together the subsequent interplay of the elite under the Sunni Muslim Shihab relatives of the Ma'ns after 1697 with demographic instability as Maronites overtook Shia as the largest community and expanded into Druze districts. By the 1840s many Maronites conceived the common arena as their patrimony. Maronite/Druze conflict ensued. Modern Lebanon arose out of European and Ottoman intervention in the 1860s to secure sectarian peace in a special province. In 1920, after the Ottoman collapse, France and the Maronites enlarged the province into the modern country, with a pluralism of communal minorities headed by Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims. The book considers the flowering of this pluralism in the mid-twentieth century, and the strains of new demographic shifts and of social resentment in an open economy. External intrusions after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war rendered Lebanon's contradictions unmanageable and the country fell apart. Harris contends that Lebanon has not found a new equilibrium and has not transcended its sects. In the early twenty-first century there is an uneasy duality: Shia have largely recovered the weight they possessed in the sixteenth century, but Christians, Sunnis, and Druze are two-thirds of the country. This book offers readers a clear understanding of how modern Lebanon acquired its precarious social intricacy and its singular political character.
Author: David Hirst Publisher: Bold Type Books ISBN: 0786744413 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 498
Book Description
In this magisterial history of Lebanon, from the end of Ottoman rule to the Hezbollah and Hamas wars of today, acclaimed and fiercely independent Middle East journalist and historian David Hirst charts the interplay between a uniquely complex country and the broader struggles of the modern Middle East. Lebanon is the battleground on which the region's greater states pursue their strategic, political, and ideological conflicts--conflicts that sometimes escalate into full-scale proxy wars. Hirst warns that only serious diplomatic action from the Obama administration can prevent the next such action from engulfing the entire region.
Author: Are John Knudsen Publisher: Springer ISBN: 3319551671 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 163
Book Description
This volume examines Lebanon’s post-2011 security dilemmas and the tenuous civil-military relations. The Syrian civil war has strained the Lebanese Armed Forces’ (LAF) cohesion and threatens its neutrality – its most valued assets in a divided society. The spill-over from the Syrian civil war and Hezbollah’s military engagement has magnified the security challenges facing the Army, making it a target. Massive foreign grants have sought to strengthen its military capability, stabilize the country and contain the Syria crisis. However, as this volume demonstrates, the real weakness of the LAF is not its lack of sophisticated armoury, but the fragile civil–military relations that compromise its fighting power, cripple its neutrality and expose it to accusations of partisanship and political bias. This testifies to both the importance of and the challenges facing multi-confessional armies in deeply divided countries.
Author: Noah S. Friedland Publisher: Noah Friedland ISBN: 1449976794 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 232
Book Description
Jonathan Geller, an ambitious young academic, is struggling to build a new life for himself in the US. An American born Jew who had immigrated to Israel with his family as a child, Geller fled the Jewish State after a deadly incident that occurred during his service in the Israeli army. Ten years into his self imposed exile, Geller's younger brother is killed in the line of duty, so he reluctantly returns to Israel to attend the funeral. Once back, Geller is forced to confront his broken family and a life and country he thought he had left behind for good. Colored by his own military experiences, he begins to question the circumstances of his brother's death. Aided by a mysterious source, a childhood friend, an old flame, and his brother's girlfriend, a fiery young redhead, he slowly uncovers the truth - a path that embroils him in a deadly clandestine chess game between two opposing forces - each fighting for what they believe is the very soul of the Jewish state. A fast-paced, character-driven thriller, A House Divided provides an authentic, first-hand look into Israeli society and its legendary military. Unlike many other books in this genre, which have focused on the Arab-Israeli conflict, this work examines the long-term effects of almost one hundred years of conflict on a nation deeply divided on how best to define its future. It also explores how a wounded family, whose bonds have been weakened by distance and time, copes with adversity and loss. Hadassah Magazine: "Friedland has written a good story that shows an intimate knowledge of the military, the landscape of Israel and the effect of the ongoing conflict on the country's citizens."
Author: Zeina Abirached Publisher: Graphic Universe ™ ISBN: 1467772828 Category : Young Adult Nonfiction Languages : en Pages : 96
Book Description
Zeina Abirached, author of the award-winning graphic novel A Game for Swallows, returns with a powerful collection of wartime memories. Abirached was born in Lebanon in 1981. She grew up in Beirut as fighting between Christians and Muslims divided the city streets. Follow her past cars riddled with bullet holes, into taxi cabs that travel where buses refuse to go, and on outings to collect shrapnel from the sidewalk. With striking black-and-white artwork, Abirached recalls the details of ordinary life inside a war zone.
Author: Spencer C. Tucker Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 1440853533 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 1928
Book Description
With more than 1,100 cross-referenced entries covering every aspect of conflict in the Middle East, this definitive scholarly reference provides readers with a substantial foundation for understanding contemporary history in the most volatile region in the world. This authoritative and comprehensive encyclopedia covers all the key wars, insurgencies, and battles that have occurred in the Middle East roughly between 3100 BCE and the early decades of the twenty-first century. It also discusses the evolution of military technology and the development and transformation of military tactics and strategy from the ancient world to the present. In addition to the hundreds of entries on major conflicts, military engagements, and diplomatic developments, the book also features entries on key military, political, and religious leaders. Essays on the major empires and nations of the region are included, as are overview essays on the major periods under consideration. The book additionally covers such non-military subjects as diplomacy, national and international politics, religion and sectarian conflict, cultural phenomena, genocide, international peacekeeping missions, social movements, and the rise to prominence of international terrorism. The reference entries are augmented by a carefully curated documents volume that offers primary sources on such diverse topics as the Greco-Persian Wars, the Crusades, and the Arab-Israeli Wars.
Author: William R. Nester Publisher: Lexington Books ISBN: 1498575315 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 405
Book Description
A specter haunts America, the specter of Global Jihad, Islamic Holy War. This specter was never more horrific than on September 11, 2001, when nineteen fanatics hijacked four jetliners and used them as guided missiles to destroy the twin World Trade Towers, damage the Pentagon, murder nearly 3,000 people, and cause as much as several hundred billion dollars’ worth of direct and indirect damage to New York City and the national economy. But Jihadists have periodically attacked Americans ever since November 1979, when mobs shouting death to America overran the American embassy in Tehran and held 52 officials hostage for 444 days. President George W. Bush responded to the September 11 atrocities by declaring a global war on terror. Now in its second decade, that war has cost the United States thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. Americans are haunted by horrific televised images from across a swath of the Muslim world of bomb-blasted cities, hundreds of slaughtered bodies, thousands of refugees huddled in squalid camps, and American journalists in orange jump suits kneeling in the desert before the black robed and masked men who will behead them. Americans increasingly question whether the global war on terror has been worth those costs for their own nation and the lands where it is fought. This book analyzes America’s crusade against Jihadism. The key related questions it addresses are these: Looking back, what were the successes and failures of Washington’s counter-Jihadist strategy before and after September 11? Looking ahead, should Americans stay the course or cut their losses in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere? Was the catastrophic September 11 attack a one-time event or could its equivalent or worse in death and destruction happen again? Renowned Harvard professor Samuel Huntington asserted that: “The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism, it is Islam, a different civilization, whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.” Is that true? Just what of Muhammad’s words and deeds, if any, justifies the barbarism of al Qaeda, Islamic State, and other Jihadists? Finally, just how corporeal is that specter of global Jihad to the United States? A startling surprise awaits the reader in the final chapter as acclaimed expert William Nester weighs the specter of global Jihad against an array of other national security threats.
Author: Sandra Mackey
Author: Kamal Salibi
Author: William Harris
Author: Andrew Arsan
Author: David Hirst
Author: Are John Knudsen
Author: Noah S. Friedland
Author: Zeina Abirached![Middle East Conflicts from Ancient Egypt to the 21st Century [4 volumes] PDF](https://books.google.com/books/content/images/frontcover/PkTPEAAAQBAJ?fife=w80-h100)
Author: Spencer C. Tucker
Author: William R. Nester