Syria And Lebanon Research Articles

Navigating futures past: colonialism, nationalism, and the making of post-Ottoman order in Kilis, 1919–1926

ABSTRACT In the early 1920s, Kilis was a mid-size town situated in the north of the Ottoman province of Aleppo. The border introduced in October 1921 between Turkey and French Syria passed right to the south of Kilis, leaving the landowning elites who lived in the city detached from their lands located in Syria. This article reconstructs the complex episodes that unfolded both before and after the introduction of this border, as the territorial future of Kilis’ agricultural hinterland intimately shaped how the town’s landed notables interacted with the coming of colonial rule to the region and the ensuing resistance efforts. In tracing these post-war developments in Kilis, this study is an attempt to come to terms with the complex ways in which historical actors operated in a world that was increasingly defined by the uncertainties of the future, and hopes to show how historians could best approach such key moments while navigating the study of futures past. As we will see, the immediate post-war years in Kilis not only led old problems to flare up with greater intensity, but also quickly resulted in the consolidation of new discursive positions in line with the emerging post-Ottoman order across the region.

‘So that we can safeguard your lives’: the Jews of Aleppo between colonialism, nationalism, and Zionism, 1918–1946

ABSTRACT In the Middle East, as elsewhere, the protracted transition from empire to nation-state was accompanied by a brutal tide of ethnoreligious homogenisation. One of the more dramatic examples was the destruction of the Arab world’s millennia-old Jewish communities. While this destruction is often discussed only in reference to the creation of the State of Israel, this article proposes a complementary model for understanding it, a model predicated on these Jews’ status as ordinary, not exceptional, inhabitants of the Ottoman world, and the disruption caused by the end of the Ottoman empire and its replacement with European colonial rule. Using interwar Aleppo as a case study, this article demonstrates how the end of the Ottoman system of religious communities led to an extended period of dysfunction for Aleppo’s Jewish communal institutions. Under the French Mandate, this dysfunction left Aleppo’s Jews unable to contend with a succession of crises, including a three-way competition for the community’s loyalty between French administrators, Arab nationalists and the Zionist movement. This dysfunction set the stage for the community’s terminal crisis – the 1947 pogroms.

Towards the Drying of Hatay Amik Lake in History and Its Traces on Society

As a result of Turkey’s agricultural policy that has developed since the 1950s, lakes in different provinces have been dried within the scope of expanding agricultural areas. Amik is one of the lakes that were dried in this context. Amik Lake, which was once an important water source for Antakya, which has hosted different cultures from the past to the present, has an important place in the history of the city. Since the lake used to cause floods since the past, the idea of drying was on the agenda during the Ottoman period, the French mandate administration and the administration of the Hatay state. These attempts continued after the annexation of Hatay to Turkey. In this context, a number of researches were carried out and reports were prepared by experts from abroad.The gradual drying of the lake in the 1970s in the Republican period has brought many discussions on the city agenda from the past to the present. This study is part of a scientific research project focusing on the economic aspects of drying Amik Lake. A detailed literature study was carried out within the scope of the project, and the works of wanderers traveled around Antakya in the past were also examined. Within the scope of field research, 19 people from Arpahan, Küçükdalyan, Paşaköy, Bakras, Muratpaşa, Torun, Büyükdalyan, Serinyol and Topboğazı villages around the old lake mirror, two people ran the lake commercially and two people from the institutions and key actors in the city were interviewed. In line with the information obtained from the in-depth interviews and the literature, the economy of the lake, the local and international dimension of fish and bird hunting, the process leading to drying, the land sharing after drying, and the ideas and memories of the city residents about the drying of the lake today were brought together. In line with the written and oral information obtained, it is understood that the lake was dried with motives such as drying the swamp areas in accordance with the spirit of the period, preventing malaria, expanding the agricultural areas and providing land to the farmers. By the help of the acquired field study data, it is aimed to assess the effects of drying operation on local people. Although a period of approximately 50 years has passed since the drying of the lake, agricultural areas remain under water due to heavy rains even today. This keeps the criticisms and narratives about the drying of the lake alive.

Reading Field Diaries against the Grain: The Notable and the Absent in Syrian Archaeology

ABSTRACT Before standardized context forms, before section drawing, and before photography, archaeology was recorded in field notebooks. Field diaries are perhaps the archetypal archaeological document both in the field and in the archive, and they persist in various contemporary forms as a key means of recording. Based on archaeological field diaries made in Syria during the French Mandate, in particular those of Clark Hopkins at Dura-Europos and Harald Ingholt at Palmyra, this article looks to the inclusions, elisions, and absences in archaeological field notebooks and asks whether it might be possible to reexamine the history of Mandate-era archaeology in Syria through them.

Imperial debris, intimate partnerships and family law reform in Cameroon

AbstractThis article explores the enduring impact of efforts by the French mandate administration and Spiritan missionaries to regulate intimate partnerships in French Cameroon between 1916 and 1956. Drawing primarily on French archival material, I show how administrators and missionaries sought to domesticate ‘modernity’ through activities targeting women’s status and roles within intimate partnerships. Spiritans promoted monogamous Christian marriage by advocating for Christian legal status and through ‘schools for fiancées’ called sixas, which often provoked violent confrontations. Despite decrying these activities as culturally disruptive, the administration passed significant marriage legislation. While these efforts are characterized as exercises of epistemic violence because of their attempted erasure of women’s and broader local perspectives, I nevertheless highlight their ambiguity. Moreover, garnering insights from history, anthropology, critical legal studies, postcolonial and feminist theory, I argue that remnants of these attempts to reshape intimacy endure as ‘imperial debris’, contributing to the impasse in reforming the Cameroonian Family Code. Further research unearthing local historical perspectives and experiences of intimate partnerships can facilitate more egalitarian family law in Cameroon.

The Violence of Extractive Urbanization: Dying to Live in Lebanon

: Drawing on the case of Lebanon, this article seeks to conceptualize how processes of urbanization are entangled with extractive violence. It begins by situating the establishment of both the cement industry and the legal framework for construction in the historical context of French Mandate Lebanon, and discusses their evolution through the post-independence period, the early 1990s, and until today. Furthermore, the article proposes a framework for identifying the different scales at which extractive violence is deployed in both spatial and temporal terms. It traces the entanglement between processes taking place at hyperlocal, territorial, national, regional and global scales; and examines how extractive violence is enacted across different temporalities. Finally, the text highlights how extractive industries do more than render their violence unknowable and imperceptible: they employ strategic modes of appearance to control the narratives that surround them, and they use technical and scientific authority to create competing regimes of truth.

Defining the Impacts of Historical Development Activities on Urban Heritage of İskenderun (Alexandretta)

İskenderun, also known as Alexandretta in antiquity, has long been a strategically significant port city in the Eastern Mediterranean thanks to its natural harbour. Due to its advantageous location, the settlement began to rapidly urbanize after the mid-19th century as a result of the impacts of Ottoman and later the French Mandate period development activities. This article focuses on defining the influences of historical development activities on the urban heritage of İskenderun by understanding and evaluating various efforts that lie behind the formation of the city as an important trade centre and port city connecting the Middle East, Asia Minor, and Europe. By doing so, the formation, development and transformation of the settlement are chronologically deciphered regarding its historical turning points: the mid-19th century Ottoman period, the beginning of the French Mandate period (1919), and the joining of İskenderun to the Republic of Türkiye (1939). Accordingly, the characteristics of the urban form, the ways these characteristics were transformed, and the problems and strategies encountered within different periods are decoded. This decoding employed a combined methodology, including historical interpretation and case study research methods. The results of the study reveal that İskenderun has experienced different solutions for problems of infrastructure within the different periods, as a reflection of different political understandings and public and social needs among those periods.

Knowing Palmyra: Mandatory production of archaeological knowledge

During the Syrian conflict, ongoing since 2011, Palmyra became notorious for the destruction and looting of its Roman-period remains, giving rise to many narratives of what Palmyra’s future should bring, often without attention to how we have come to know its past. This article explores that past through a key period—the French Mandate—when European archaeologists categorically reshaped the site, culminating in the relocation of the site’s population from mudbrick houses in and around the Temple of Bel to a new, military-built town north of the original. We examine the site immediately prior to that transformation through contemporary archaeological diaries from 1924 to 1928, written by Danish archaeologist Harald Ingholt. Through his diaries, it is possible to reconstruct the complexity of knowledge production at the site, which disrupts the authorized discourses of archaeological discovery with important consequences for how we understand the contribution of local inhabitants to scientific knowledge.

Competing to Protect: Repatriation and Legal Protection of Syrians in Istanbul under Allied Occupation (1918–1923)

AbstractThis article examines interstate competitions over “Syrians” whose legal status as Ottoman subjects was not yet terminated by a peace treaty at the end of World War I. Focusing mainly on occupied Istanbul, it traces French efforts to protect or bring Syrians back home to a “Syria.” Given that Syria was still in the making, the stakes here were high and determined postwar reconfigurations that connected Istanbul and Beirut. I argue that competition over Syrians in occupied Istanbul—especially the wealthier and those with military experience—proved critical in the construction of new diplomatic and legal significance accorded to the categories of “Syria” and “Syrian” in the early 20th century. In addition to offering new insights into the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, the article historicizes projections of imperial influence after World War I and sheds new light on the foundations of French mandate rule in Syria and Lebanon.

Úton Kamerun függetlensége felé

In September 1945 spontaneous revolts broke out in the port city of Douala. In Cameroon, which was a French mandate territory at the time, social unrest and tensions were rising due to colonial oppression and the social crisis. Because local authorities were unable to keep things under control, policing was taken over by the Europeans, and the number of casualties is unknown to this day. An important factor in the events was the large number of poor people moving into the city from the countryside, which changed the social structure of Douala. The Douala Uprising became an important step on the way to Cameroon’s independence.

Royalism in Syria after Faysal I: The Struggle for the Crown of Damascus, 1920-1958

On 24 July 1920 the first and only king in the modern history of Syria, Faysal I, was dethroned and exiled by the invading army of colonial France. Although later rewarded with the job of king of Iraq, Faysal I never lost his appetite for the crown of Damascus, and nor did any of his brothers, nephews, and other royals from the Hashemite family. Much has been written about Faysal’s era in Syria, which began in October 1918 and lasted until July 1920. Few historians, however, have paid attention to the monarchial current that emerged thereafter in Syria, as ambitious politicians and retired officers tried to restore the Hashemite Crown both during the years of the French Mandate (1920-1946) and well into the independence of Syria. They went for the ballots and, when that failed, they tried to stage a coup that would restore the royalists to power, often with material support from one of Faysal’s many relatives. This paper looks at the post-Faysal monarchial project in Syria, which triggered the emergence of two political parties, and at least two coup attempts during the years 1946-1958. None succeeded, and the monarchial dream was abandoned in July 1958 with the toppling of the monarchy in neighboring Iraq, ruled at the time by Faysal’s grandson, King Faysal II.

The Contradictory Syrian Presence in Turkey’s Southern Borderlands

The displacement of Syrians into Turkey is approaching its twelfth year, but the conditions of Syrian presence in the country are still fraught with ambivalence. The dramatic changes in migration and border dynamics and the instrumentalization of Syrian migrants in Turkish politics have intensified racially motivated animosity. Yet in border provinces where Syrians are densely concentrated, popular attitudes toward them operate on other axes, which reveal complex entanglements of border politics, migration policies, and citizenship ideologies. This essay describes how these entanglements unfold in the country’s southernmost border province, Hatay, which was controversially annexed from French Mandate Syria in 1939.

Review: Art and Material Culture in the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds: Studies in Honour of Erica Cruikshank Dodd, edited by Evanthia Baboula and Lesley Jessop

Review: <i>Art and Material Culture in the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds: Studies in Honour of Erica Cruikshank Dodd</i>, edited by Evanthia Baboula and Lesley Jessop

Turkish-French Relations 1923-1939 A.D

In 1921, the League of Nations placed Alexandretta under the French mandate. The Mandatory began to formulate a special political situation in the district, which later became an independent republic. During the period from the establishment of the modern Turkish Republic in 1923 until the outbreak of World War II in 1939, French-Turkish relations witnessed several developments, events and agreements that resulted from the tense international situations between the two world wars. The issue of the Alexandretta Brigade was the most important and fundamental detail in the nature of relations between the two countries, especially through the Turks' continuous efforts to return the brigade that was stripped from it to the Turkish border again. This is why it is noted how large the volume of diplomatic activity of the two countries is through the frequent meetings and constant visits of the two parties. France, as the mandatory power in Syria, agreed to include the Alexandretta Brigade with the aim of ensuring Turkey's neutrality in the eastern Mediterranean, especially when the signs of World War II began to appear on the horizon.

New money in old Tripoli

This article seeks to describe the ways in which municipal administration and informal networks among political elites during the French mandate contributed to the poor state of public health in North Lebanon, in general, as well as an outbreak of typhoid in Tripoli by the late 1930s. This study largely stems from archival research in France and Lebanon. By examining state-building efforts within what came to be known as the annexed territories of Lebanon, this article will highlight the ways in which public health, as a function of colonial state formation, reproduced political and socio-spatial inequality. In turn, the effects of this inequality can be seen in the crumbling infrastructure and spread of infectious disease in North Lebanon. In these ways, the article will show how the mandate institutions and practices designed to centralize authority ultimately reproduced neo-patrimonialism and rather than create a new relation of power that bound residents to the metropole, further divided the population, widened inequality and set the precedent whereby control of public infrastructure became a political object to exploit while public infrastructure itself was left to erode overtime amid the contests for the spoils of office.

Lebanese Women at the Crossroads: Caught between Sect and Nation

Lebanese Women at the Crossroads: Caught between Sect and Nation

الوجود الكردي في دمشق ودور الوجيه علي آغا زلفو

تضم مدينة دمشق العديد من الترب والأضرحة والمقامات التي تعود لشخصيات كردية متنفذة استقرت في تلك المدينة طوال قرون كما هو معلوم، ويمكن القول: إن أشهر الأضرحة تعود إلى السلطان صلاح الدين الأيوبي، ومولانا خالد النقشبندي والأمير بدرخان بك، فضلاً عن الكثير من الآثار تركها الشخصيات الكردية في مختلف العهود، والتي لاتزال تزخر بها دمشق حتى وقتنا الحالي. وبسبب ما تقدم، كانت دمشق محط اعتزاز الكرد على الدوام، والذين هاجرت أسر وقبائل منهم إليها في مراحل عدة، ومنها أسرة علي آغا زلفو، التي استقرت في الحي الكردي بدمشق وكان لها دور مهم في المجتمع الدمشقي على الدوام. برز دور علي آغا زلفو في الكثير من المواقف الوطنية السورية، إذ كان من أوائل السوريين الذين شاركوا في الثورة السورية الكبرى وحارب قوات الانتداب الفرنسي في سوريا بشجاعة، وشارك في محاولة الجنرال غورو المسؤول الفرنسي الأول في سوريا وقتذاك. كما عرف عن علي آغا زلفو استقباله لإخوته الكرد المهاجرين إلى دمشق في العشرينيات من القرن الماضي، حيث خصص لهم قصره في دمشق، واعتنى بهم أحسن اعتناء، وبذل لهم أمواله الخاصة، وهذا الأمر ذكره نورالدين زازا في مذكراته بالتفصيل، وأبدى إعجابه الشديد بمواقفه وأفعاله الخيرة لصالح إخوته في كل مكان. لقد حظي علي آغا زلفو نتيجة كل ما سبق، بالإحترام والتقدير من السوريين كلهم بسبب وطنيته المعروفة وخدمته للشأن السوري العام، وكذلك من قبل الكرد السوريين، الذين بدورهم وجدوا فيه الشخصية التي تستحق الاحترام والعرفان على الدوام.

Kamel Khalil Al-Asaad and his political role in Lebanon 1908 -1924

Researchers in history dealt with Jabal Amel and its various religious and political personalities with study and analysis, but it did not single out a specific study of an important (Amili) personality that had a clear impact on the history of Lebanon in general, and the history of Jabal Amel in particular, which is the personality of Kamel Khalil Al-Asaad, so the title Research (Kamel Khalil Al-Asaad and his political role in Lebanon 1908-1924). Being the first global leader throughout the first quarter of the last century, especially since he is a descendant of an ancient Arab family that ruled southern Lebanon for a long period of time, as he experienced the Ottoman Empire, the Arab government in Damascus and the French mandate over Lebanon, and contributed to the events of that stage.

The struggle of Syrian women during the French Mandate

The research deals with the role of Syrian women during the French Mandate. Syrian women did not neglect the revolutions and associations, but tried and made all efforts to get rid of the French Mandate. The Syrian woman stood with the man and supported him in his wars against the French colonialist. In addition to the associations that it founded until independence was achieved in 1946, many politicians supported the participation of women in political and social life, as Syrian women had a great role, whether during the Ottoman era, the Faisal era, or during the mandate, as they actively participated with Her brother, the man, was in the fight against French colonialism and demanded freedom and independence like men. She also participated socially through forums and associations in the fight against colonialism or through education, which she considered a weapon in the face of the French enemy until Syria gained its independence in 1946, in which Syrian women had a role in that.

The Kurdish presence in Damascus, and the role of the notable Ali Agha Zalfo

The city of Damascus includes many ancient Kurdish shrines that belong to the Kurdish personalities who settled in that city for centuries, since the era of Sultan Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi. that city. As a result of the foregoing, Damascus has always been a center of pride for the Kurds, who migrated to it in several stages, including the family of Ali Agha Zalvo, which settled in the Kurdish neighborhood of Damascus and has always played an important role in the Damascene society. The role of Ali Agha Zalvo emerged in many Syrian national positions, as he was one of the first Syrians to participate in the Great Syrian Revolution and bravely fought the French Mandate forces in Syria, and participated in the attempt of General Gouraud, the first French official in Syria at the time. The role of Ali Agha Zalvo also emerged in the field of receiving his Kurdish brothers who immigrated to Damascus in the twenties of the last century, as he allocated to them his palace in Damascus, took good care of them, and gave them his own money. Ali Agha Zalvo and his good deeds for the benefit of his brothers everywhere. As a result of all of the above, Ali Agha Zalvo has been respected and appreciated by all Syrians because of his well-known patriotism and service to the general Syrian affairs, as well as by the Syrian Kurds, who in turn found in him the person who always deserves respect and gratitude.