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Widely praised as the definitive history of Beirut, this is the story of a city that has stood at the crossroads of Mediterranean civilization for more than four thousand years. The last major work completed by Samir Kassir before his tragic death in 2005, "Beirut" is a tour de force that takes the reader from the ancient to the modern world, offering a dazzling panorama of the city's Seleucid, Roman, Arab, Ottoman, and French incarnations. Kassir vividly describes Beirut's spectacular growth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, concentrating on its emergence after the Second World War as a cosmopolitan capital until its near destruction during the devastating Lebanese civil war of 1975-1990. Generously illustrated and eloquently written, "Beirut" illuminates contemporary issues of modernity and democracy while at the same time memorably recreating the atmosphere of one of the world's most picturesque, dynamic, and resilient cities.

"Döden i Beirut är en fantastisk idé- och historieresa som emellanåt med närmast poetiska beskrivningar skildrar ett land där de döda 'går igen på de levandes ben." (Rakel Chukri, SDS) Perser, greker, romare, araber, korsfarare, turkar, ryssar, engelsmän, fransmän, syrier, israeler, iranier, palestinier, nordamerikaner - alla har de under årens lopp belägrat Libanons huvudstad Beirut. Efter det långa inbördeskriget 1975-1990, mordet på Hariri och Syriens återtåg 2005, går de levande på de dödas ben. Men också omvänt: Beirut är en stad där det de döda går igen på de levandes ben. Döden i Beirut är en djupt personlig essä om det förflutnas hemsökelser i en stad belägrad av vålnader. Michael Azar är författare och professor i idéhistoria, verksam i Göteborg. "Om den ordinära nyhetsrapporteringen om Mellanöstern snarast ökar ens förvirring så bidrar Azar på ett imponerande sätt till att göra detta dödliga spel något mera begripligt." (Kristina Lundblad, GP) "...en utomordentlig bok, som utöver att vara något så ovanligt som en stilistiskt njutbar essä också förklarar varför ett land som utåt sett kan se ut som ett multikulturellt paradis i själva verket är en krutdurk." (Steve-Sem Sandberg, SvD) "...en tät och kunskapsrik bok, med en djupt personlig botten." (Hans Ruin, DN)

The first in a new in-depth nonfiction series examining the devastating terrorist attacks that changed the course of history from #1 New York Times bestselling author Jack Carr and Pulitzer Prize finalist James M. Scott, beginning with the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut.1983: the United States Marine Corps experiences its greatest single-day loss of life since the Battle of Iwo Jima, when a truck packed with explosives crashes into their headquarters and barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. This horrifying terrorist attack, which killed 241 servicemen, continues to influence US foreign policy and haunts the Marine Corps to this day. Now, the full story is revealed as never before by Jack Carr and historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist James M. Scott. Based on comprehensive interviews with survivors, extensive military records, as well as personal letters, diaries and photographs, this is the authoritative account of the deadly attack.

From the New York Times bestselling coauthors of Under Fire comes the story of the kidnapping and murder of CIA Station Chief William Buckley and the bloody beginning of the CIA’s endless war against Islamic radicalism. On April 18, 1983, a van rigged with two thousand pounds of heavy explosives broke through the security perimeter of the American embassy in Lebanon and exploded, killing sixty-three people and decimating intelligence operations throughout the Middle East.   Only one man inside the CIA possessed the courage and skills to rebuild the networks destroyed in the blast: William Buckley. Assigned as the new Beirut Station Chief, Buckley arrived in the war-torn city to find a CIA station in tatters and an intelligence playing-field unlike any other in the world; the veteran of the Cold War would now be learning Beirut rules. A field operative at heart, he delved into Beirut’s darkest corners, developing new sources and handling assets.   Then, on October 23, a US Marine Corps barrack was destroyed in a plot masterminded by a young terrorist named Imad Mughniyeh. But even as President Reagan vowed revenge, Mughniyeh eyed a new target: Buckley.  Beirut Rules is the pulse-by-pulse account of Buckley’s abduction, torture, and murder at the hands of Hezbollah terrorists. Drawing on never-before-seen US government documents, as well as interviews with Buckley’s co-workers, friends, and family, Fred Burton and Samuel M. Katz reveal how the relentless search for Buckley in the wake of his kidnapping ignited a war against terror that continues to shape the Middle East to this day.

On a ravaged street overlooking a cemetery in a Christian enclave in war-torn 1970s Beirut, we meet Pavlov, the son of a local undertaker. When his father dies suddenly, Pavlov is approached by a member of the mysterious Hellfire Society—an anti-religious sect that arranges secret burial for outcasts denied last rites because of their religion or sexuality. Pavlov agrees to take on his father’s work for the society, and over the course of the novel he becomes a survivor-chronicler of his embattled and faded community at the heart of Lebanon’s civil war.

A Second Edition of Thomas Friedman’s stunning book, the first edition of which won the American National Book Award.‘If you’re only going to read one book on the Middle East, this is it.’ Seymour HershIn this lucid, incisive and memorable book, acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic, Friedman reaches deeper into the traumatic and complex recent history of the conflicts in the Middle East than any previous writer.For this new edition, Friedman has added a further two chapters that bring the book up to 1995 and the unfolding – and stalling – of the Middle Eastern peace process.From Beirut to Jerusalem is wonderully shrewd, surprisingly funny and indispensable to anyone seeking a fuller understanding of the political causes and psychological effects of the seemingly endless strife which besets this embattled region.

Postwar Beirut conjures up contradictory images of remarkable openness and inconceivable violence, of great antiquity and a bright future. The Lebanese capital stands for Arab cosmopolitanism and cultural effervescence but also for its tragedies of destruction. This book examines the historical formation of Beirut as a multiply contested Mediterranean city.Fin de Siècle Beirut is a landmark contribution to the growing literature in Ottoman studies, in Arab cultural history and on Mediterranean cities. Combining urban theory, particularly Henri Lefebvre's work on cities and capitalism, with postcolonial methodology, the central thesis of this book is that modern Beirut is the outcome of persistent social and intellectual struggles over the production of space. The city of Beirut was at once the product, the object, and the project of imperial and urban politics of difference: overlapping European, Ottoman, and municipal civilising missions competed in the political fields of administration, infrastructure, urban planning, public health, education, public morality, journalism, and architecture.Jens Hanssen offers a comprehensive, original account of the emergence of modern Beirut out of an economic shift away from Acre in the wake of the Napoleonic wars. He argues that the Ottoman government's decision to heed calls for the creation of a new province around Beirut and grant it provincial capital status in 1888 paved the way for fundamental urban and regional reconfigurations long before colonial policies during the French Mandate period. This new Ottoman province came to constitute the territorial embodiment of regional self-determination for Arab nationalists in Beirut until the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.Drawing on published and unpublished Ottoman government documents, Arabic sources, and European archival material, Hanssen's book traces the urban experience of modernity in the Ottoman Empire. The transformation of everyday life in late nineteenth-century Beirut and the concomitant policies of urban management is vividly set against the devastating civil war in Mount Lebanon and Damascus in 1860.

This book provides an introduction to the laws of the Middle East, defining the contours of a field of study that deserves to be called 'Middle Eastern law'. It introduces Middle Eastern law as a reflection of legal styles, many of which are shared by Islamic law and the laws of Christian and Jewish Near Eastern communities. It offers a detailed survey of the foundations of Middle Eastern Law, using court archives and an array of legal sources from the earliest records of Hammurabi to the massive compendia of law in the Islamic classical age through to the latest decisions of Middle Eastern high courts. It focuses on the way legislators and courts conceive of law and apply it in the Middle East. It builds on the author's extensive legal practice, with the aim of introducing the Middle Eastern law's main sources and concepts in a manner accessible to non-specialist legal scholars and practitioners alike. The book begins with an exploration of the depth and variety of Middle Eastern law, introducing the concepts of shari'a, fiqh, and qanun, (which all mean 'law'), and dwelling on Islamic law as the 'common law' of the Middle East. It provides a historical introduction to the contemporary Middle East, exploring political systems, constitutional law, judicial review, the laws of tort and obligations, commercial law (including Islamic banking, company law, capital markets, and commercial arbitration); and examines legislative reform in family law and the position of women in the legal system. The author considers the interaction between Islamic and Western laws and includes a bibliography designed for further research into the jurisdictions and themes explored throughout the book.

Diab examines the social repercussions of Beirut's role as a financial, trade, and banking center in the Middle East during Lebanon's post-independence years (1943-1975). He investigates the development of Beirut and its early financial involvement in the region, particularly through the introduction of the cash crop, silk, to Mount Lebanon. He examines the impact of such involvement on steering the Lebanese social structure and economy to meet the needs of capitalist expansion into the Middle East. As capitalist interests sought to transform Beirut into the Switzerland of the Middle East, social and regional disparities increased. Professor Diab presents statistics and other data to show the magnitudes of the disparities that plagued the country and led to increased social unrest.By highlighting the social burden that Beirut's role placed on the Lebanese social structure, Diab exposes the limitations of current developmental strategies that aim to revive Beirut's earlier role in the Middle East, and he asks what are the social costs involved in insisting on restoring Beirut to its previous role? What can be done to prevent the current predicament from producing the kinds of socioeconomic disparities that plagued the post-independence years? An important revisionist study, this will be of particular interest to scholars and students of social, economic, and political change in the Middle East.

Since the American University of Beirut opened its doors in 1866, the campus has stood at the intersection of a rapidly changing American educational project for the Middle East and an ongoing student quest for Arab national identity and empowerment. Betty S. Anderson provides a unique and comprehensive analysis of how the school shifted from a missionary institution providing a curriculum in Arabic to one offering an English-language American liberal education extolling freedom of speech and analytical discovery.Anderson discusses how generations of students demanded that they be considered legitimate voices of authority over their own education; increasingly, these students sought to introduce into their classrooms the real-life political issues raging in the Arab world. The Darwin Affair of 1882, the introduction of coeducation in the 1920s, the Arab nationalist protests of the late 1940s and early 1950s, and the even larger protests of the 1970s all challenged the Americans and Arabs to fashion an educational program relevant to a student body constantly bombarded with political and social change. Anderson reveals that the two groups chose to develop a program that combined American goals for liberal education with an Arab student demand that the educational experience remain relevant to their lives outside the school's walls. As a result, in eras of both cooperation and conflict, the American leaders and the students at the school have made this American institution of the Arab world and of Beirut.

Once the cosmopolitan center of the Middle East, Beirut was devastated by the civil war that ran from 1975 to 1991, which dislocated many residents, disrupted normal municipal functions, and destroyed the vibrant downtown district. The aftermath of the war was an unstable situation Sawalha considers "a postwar state of emergency," even as the state strove to restore normalcy. This ethnography centers on various groups' responses to Beirut's large, privatized urban-renewal project that unfolded during this turbulent moment.At the core of the study is the theme of remembering space. The official process of rebuilding the city as a node in the global economy collided with local day-to-day concerns, and all arguments invariably inspired narratives of what happened before and during the war. Sawalha explains how Beirutis invoked their past experiences of specific sites to vie for the power to shape those sites in the future. Rather than focus on a single site, the ethnography crosses multiple urban sites and social groups, to survey varied groups with interests in particular spaces. The book contextualizes these spatial conflicts within the discourses of the city's historical accounts and the much-debated concept of heritage, voiced in academic writing, politics, and journalism. In the afterword, Sawalha links these conflicts to the social and political crises of early twenty-first-century Beirut.

Since the American University of Beirut opened its doors in 1866, the campus has stood at the intersection of a rapidly changing American educational project for the Middle East and an ongoing student quest for Arab national identity and empowerment. Betty S. Anderson provides a unique and comprehensive analysis of how the school shifted from a missionary institution providing a curriculum in Arabic to one offering an English-language American liberal education extolling freedom of speech and analytical discovery.Anderson discusses how generations of students demanded that they be considered legitimate voices of authority over their own education; increasingly, these students sought to introduce into their classrooms the real-life political issues raging in the Arab world. The Darwin Affair of 1882, the introduction of coeducation in the 1920s, the Arab nationalist protests of the late 1940s and early 1950s, and the even larger protests of the 1970s all challenged the Americans and Arabs to fashion an educational program relevant to a student body constantly bombarded with political and social change. Anderson reveals that the two groups chose to develop a program that combined American goals for liberal education with an Arab student demand that the educational experience remain relevant to their lives outside the school's walls. As a result, in eras of both cooperation and conflict, the American leaders and the students at the school have made this American institution of the Arab world and of Beirut.

Modern Art in Cold War Beirut: Drawing Alliances examines the entangled histories of modern art and international politics during the decades of the 1950s and 1960s.Positing the Cold War as a globalized conflict, fraught with different political ideologies and intercultural exchanges, this study asks how these historical circumstances shaped local debates in Beirut over artistic pedagogy, the social role of the artist, the aesthetics of form, and, ultimately, the development of a national art. Drawing on a range of archival material and taking an interdisciplinary approach, Sarah Rogers argues that the genealogies of modern art can never be understood as isolated, national histories, but rather that they participate in an ever contingent global modernism.This book will be of particular interest to scholars in art history, Cold War studies, and Middle East studies.

This volume is the first monograph devoted to the philosophy of Taurus of Beirut, and provides a long-awaited analysis of his texts and their first English translation. Through close examination of the extant witnesses, Petrucci gives a new account of Middle Platonism based on a fresh approach to the theological and cosmological view of Taurus. In this way, the book contributes substantially to the debate on Post-Hellenistic Platonism from the point of view of both exegetical methods and philosophical doctrines, and offers a starting point for a new understanding of many aspects of ancient thought.

Widely praised as the definitive history of Beirut, this is the story of a city that has stood at the crossroads of Mediterranean civilization for more than four thousand years. The last major work completed by Samir Kassir before his tragic death in 2005, "Beirut" is a tour de force that takes the reader from the ancient to the modern world, offering a dazzling panorama of the city's Seleucid, Roman, Arab, Ottoman, and French incarnations. Kassir vividly describes Beirut's spectacular growth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, concentrating on its emergence after the Second World War as a cosmopolitan capital until its near destruction during the devastating Lebanese civil war of 1975-1990. Generously illustrated and eloquently written, "Beirut" illuminates contemporary issues of modernity and democracy while at the same time memorably recreating the atmosphere of one of the world's most picturesque, dynamic, and resilient cities.

How the Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center informed the PLO’s relationship to Zionism and IsraelIn September 1982, the Israeli military invaded West Beirut and Israel-allied Lebanese militiamen massacred Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Meanwhile, Israeli forces also raided the Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center and trucked its complete library to Israel. Palestinian activists and supporters protested loudly to international organizations and the Western press, claiming that the assault on the Center proved that the Israelis sought to destroy not merely Palestinian militants but Palestinian culture as well. The protests succeeded: in November 1983, Israel returned the library as part of a prisoner exchange. What was in that library?Much of the expansive collection the PLO amassed consisted of books about Judaism, Zionism, and Israel. In Reading Herzl in Beirut, Jonathan Marc Gribetz tells the story of the PLO Research Center from its establishment in 1965 until its ultimate expulsion from Lebanon in 1983. Gribetz explores why the PLO invested in research about the Jews, what its researchers learned about Judaism and Zionism, and how the knowledge they acquired informed the PLO’s relationship to Israel.

How the Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center informed the PLO’s relationship to Zionism and IsraelIn September 1982, the Israeli military invaded West Beirut and Israel-allied Lebanese militiamen massacred Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Meanwhile, Israeli forces also raided the Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center and trucked its complete library to Israel. Palestinian activists and supporters protested loudly to international organizations and the Western press, claiming that the assault on the Center proved that the Israelis sought to destroy not merely Palestinian militants but Palestinian culture as well. The protests succeeded: in November 1983, Israel returned the library as part of a prisoner exchange. What was in that library?Much of the expansive collection the PLO amassed consisted of books about Judaism, Zionism, and Israel. In Reading Herzl in Beirut, Jonathan Marc Gribetz tells the story of the PLO Research Center from its establishment in 1965 until its ultimate expulsion from Lebanon in 1983. Gribetz explores why the PLO invested in research about the Jews, what its researchers learned about Judaism and Zionism, and how the knowledge they acquired informed the PLO’s relationship to Israel.