Governing summer in Mount Lebanon: Istiyaf, tourism, and mobility in the interwar Arab East

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the lattice of dynamics, networks, and perceptions underpinning the blanket label of ‘tourism’ in Lebanon and the broader Arab East during the interwar (mandate) era. It analyses guidebooks, pamphlets, government correspondence and travelogues published in the Middle East and Europe. Hoteliers, tour operators, merchants, and journalists distinguished between siyaha (tourism) and istiyaf (‘summering’) to create different tourist publics – one western, the other regional Arab. Separate guidebooks were written for each, pinpointing different sites of interest, cuisines, and leisure destinations, based on assumed cultural attributes, travel practices, and desires. While historiography argues that Europeans created mass tourism as an industry, istiyaf was rooted in a legacy of indigenous travel practices and economies. By drawing Arab travellers to Mount Lebanon’s village resorts, istiyaf enabled residents to produce, narrate, and exhibit Lebanon–not just aesthetically or geographically, but also climatologically and gastronomically. Different classes and genders could claim ownership of this new Lebanon. Making interwar Lebanon a regional leisure destination cemented its connection to new neighbours while simultaneously distinguishing it from them. This research thus reveals how tourism, leisure, and mobility both undergirded and undermined nation and state-building efforts in these germinal postwar decades of the Middle East.