Beirut

1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-0-520-27126-5
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 656 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 154 mm x 228 mm, Gewicht: 870 g

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kassir, Samir

Weitere Mitwirkende

Debevoise, M. B.

Fisk, Robert

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Regional- & Stadtgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

Foreword by Robert Fisk

Translator’s Note

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Prologue: The Eyes of the Mind

Part One: From the Ancient to the Modern World

1. Beirut before Beirut

2. The Great Transformation

3. The Ibrahim Pasha Era

4. The Roads from Damascus

5. A Window on Ottoman Modernity

Part Two: The Awakening

6. A Cultural Revolution

7. Between Boston and Rome

8. The Horizon of the World

9. Uncertain Identities

Part Three: The Capital of the Mandate

10. France Broadens Its Mission

11. The French City

12. Grand-Liban and Petit Paris

13. A Crucible for Independence

Part Four: The Cosmopolitan Metropolis of the Arabs

14. The Switzerland of the East

15. Beirut, Male and Female

16. The Pleasures of the World

17. Écochard’s Lost Wagers

Part Five: The City of Every Danger

18. On the Knife’s Edge

19. The End of Innocence

20. Beirut, O Beirut!

Epilogue: To Be or To Have Been

Notes

Glossary of Arabic and Turkish Terms

Bibliography

Photographic Credits

Index

Über Autor(innen)

One of the leading voices for progressive change in the Middle East, Samir Kassir (1960-2005) taught at the Institut des Sciences Politiques of the Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut, worked as a journalist and editorial writer for the daily An-Nahar newspaper there, and was a co-founder of the Democratic Left Movement in Lebanon. The author of several other books, including Being Arab, Kassir was assassinated by a car bomb in Beirut in June 2005.