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The Levantine Review, 2013

This paper investigates the reasons behind Middle Eastern Syriac Christian communities - particulary the Maronites' - use of the Syriac script when writing Arabic; a phenomenon known as Karshuni.

Cultures in Contact Transfer of Knowledge in the Mediterranean Context

2016

The city of Aleppo was located within a hundred and ten kilometers of the northern Syrian coasts of the Mediterranean, neither on a fertile nor barren land. Aleppo has always been an important commercial city due to its geographical location and its historical development. Despite geographical advantages and shortcomings, Aleppo could not see Syria's role as the leading economic and political center for a long time. Aleppo remained inactive in Antakya during the classical period and Damascus in the Islamic period. Before the Ottomans, Hittites, Aramis, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and Romans ruled the city. Most of the mosques, monuments and public buildings that shaped the city until the time of the modern turnover belonged to the pre-Ottoman period. Hundreds of inscriptions on these works reminded the city dwellers that their city had a history before arriving here before Ottoman 1516. 1

Der Islam

A new and more complete history of the ʿAlawis, formerly known as Nusayris, from their beginnings in the 9th century to the 20th century has been long overdue. Classical historiography presented them as a constantly outlawed and oppressed religious minority that developed its secretive identity due to persecution. In his excellent and well-researched study Stefan Winter aims to prove that this "metanarrative" or notion of "historical persecution" is "not borne out by the historical evidence" (1-2). Without discrediting the relevance of ʿAlawi religious identity and the sectarian community as a subject of analysis, he bases his study rather on secular than religious sources in order to show the broad mutual relationship of the ʿAlawis with their neighbours, rulers and supposed oppressors. What makes Winter's book outstanding is his use of sources that have not been made use of to date. By scrutinizing Mamluk administration manuals, Ottoman and Turkish archival documents in Istanbul and Tripoli, and the ʿAlawi prosopographical literature, he challenges the notion that they had been always

American Journal of Islam and Society

Although the revolution in Syria is unfolding within the modern politicalboundaries of this country, its proper understanding is not attainablewithout putting it in a larger historical context, which includes the adjacentgeographical areas of the Levant, Bilad al-Sham. Without such a broaderview, the appreciation of the complexity of the Syrian case is not possible,nor accounting for its consequences and anticipating its future.Probably, in no case, is the mess of colonial legacy more visible than itis in Syria. The pathway of this legacy marks the future development of thecountry, and its implications are facing the revolution today with arduouschallenges. The complexity of the Syria case is not limited to the politicaldimension; it is also complex at the meta-cultural level. Furthermore, thechange in Syria has consequences for the region as whole ‒ it will institutionalizethe Arab Spring as an unavoidable political force, and it will energizethe process of cultural reformation and...

The Languages of Jewish Cultures: Comparative Perspectives, Anita Norich and Joshua Miller [eds.], 2016

2015

Contacts and Interaction. Proceedings of the 27th Congress of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants Helsinki 2014, 2017

This paper compares the attitudes of the Maronite and Greek Orthodox communities in Bilād al-Shām to the Arabic language, their contacts with circles of elite culture and their access to European learning of the time.

This article contributes to current research on the development of Syriac Christian identity during the modern period by bringing into discussion a previously unknown literary source, the Book of the Rule, composed in the year 1829 by Sāḇā, an East Syrian priest from the village * An earlier version of this paper has been presented at the International Conference dedicated to the Centenary of the Birth of Academician Konstantine Tsereteli (20-22 December 2021, Tbilisi). I am most grateful to Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent and to the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of the manuscript and their many insightful comments and suggestions. I am also indebted to Michael Rand (z"l), who very kindly provided me with a complete copy of the manuscript

This project asks: What can the documents of Jewish Syrians teach us about the ways medieval Near Easterners experienced the conquest and regime change of the First Crusade? It analyzes the conquest’s impact on five spheres of Jewish communal life: demographics, minority-state relations, commerce, the law and religious authority. Most of the existing literature on the First Crusade has assumed that the Franks eliminated Greater Syria’s Jewish and Muslim communities. The Cairo Genizah documents, however, demonstrate that large numbers of Jews remained in the Latin ports after the First Crusade. Moreover, these Jewish Syrians were neither segregated from European Christians nor limited to specific professions (with some very rare exceptions). They traded with Frankish merchants and served as tax-collectors and physicians for Latin lords. The Jews of Latin Syria are a particularly helpful case-study because they adhered to a different religion from either the conquering Christians or the vanquished Muslims. But far from embracing Latin-Christian culture, Jews continued to speak and write Arabic and issue Arabic legal documents throughout the nearly two-centuries of Frankish rule of the Levant (1098-1291). This seems paradoxical: Why would a community integrated into the economic and social life of its kingdom decline to adopt the language of its rulers? The answer I have found is practical necessity: After the First Crusade, the Jews of the Latin-ruled Levant continued to seek out commercial partnerships with Arabophone merchants from Cairo, Damascus and Palermo; they continued to solicit religious guidance from clergymen in Baghdad, Mosul and Fustat; and they continued to patronize religious institutions in Iraq, Islamic Syria and Egypt. In other words, they remained part of a broader, Eastern Mediterranean koinē.

2019

University of Religions and Denominations, 2023

The siege of Aleppo by the crusaders posed a threat to the city's security, livelihood, and economy. The inefficiency of the city's rulers brought Aleppo to the brink of collapse. In response, Shiite families and Imami judges in Aleppo worked to eliminate this threat. This study aims to examine the role of Shiite judges in creating security in Aleppo. The findings of this study reveal that the judges in Aleppo utilized their social and divine influence to invite powerful Sunni rulers, such as the Artuqids and the rulers of Mosul, to restore political, livelihood, and economic security in Aleppo. The judges' political actions were primarily focused on military attacks, famine, disease, and the shutting down of trade. Therefore, this study examines the political, social, and economic context of Aleppo to understand the actions of these judges.

Eurasian Studies, 2016

This article presents a translation of a waqf document from the Ottoman archives of Aleppo. The author’s contention is this waqfiyya bears witness to the resilience of Shiite presence in a predominantly Sunnite city.

In this paper the autor offers an state of art on the scriptural practice in Karshūnī, which appears to be the product of an Arabic acculturation process designed by the Arab-Islamic power, with the end result of a dual linguistic assimilation by the Christian communities under the dominant culture imposed by the Arab-Islamic state.

2010

Taking into account the Maronites connections with the West the article rises aquestion: in what areas did the Syriac Christian community constitute a bridge between the East and the West? Although not all critical remarks of Kamāl Ṣalībī (b. 1929) on the Maronite view of history are accepted without reservation, his remark that “the awareness of the historic truth constitutes the ultimate foundation for the possibility to build a healthy society” seems valuable. The postulate of the verification of over-interpretation is always valid, nevertheless the discussion: what is a myth and what is the truth in the history of Lebanon continues.

The Arabic dialect of the Jews in Baghdad (JB) presents some surprising similarities with Levantine dialects, and specifically with the Arabic dialect of the Jews in Aleppo (JA). These similarities, which are rarely found in the vast geographical area between the two cities, might be explained by immigration or at least strong connections between these two Jewish centers. This article presents the grammatical features that the two dialects share and compares them with other dialects in the Mesopotamian-Levantine region. Afterwards, these findings are compared with existing historical sources. Finally, some speculations are presented about how the linguistic evidence reflects on the history of these two communities.