AHC:A Truly Chrisitian Lebanon

I don't really know. I don't think the protests are anywhere near what they were in Egypt and Tunisia nor has the situation devolved to civil war. I think he'll stay. I think the memory of what his father did to that one town is still really fresh

Indeed, I'm putting it on the Syrians to handle this one... hopefully Assad will make reforms though, he probably already was, just politics mired it all.
 

Kosta

Banned
I thought it was in Antioch. :confused:

But yes, I suppose so.

It moved to Damascus in like 1517ish, the year the Ottomans were moving into southern Anatolia. They wanted safety from the Empire and found it in the territory of the Mamelukes.
 
The absence of Israel might do the trick. Have the British not be succesfully lobbied by Zionists to set up a Jewish state, in which case France probably gets the entire Levant as their mandate. In which case post independance the Levant conflict will not be between Jews and Arabs but rather between Christian Arabs and Muslim Arabs, with the former being viewed as Western stooges. In this case you probably have France backing Lebanon in much the same fashion that America presently backs Israel, with significant ethnic cleansing and population transfers just like what happened against Jews in Arab countries and Arabs in Israel OTL.

It's questionable whether the same degree of animosity will exist since the Christians are Arabs rather then Western immigrants like the Jews. But Syria is still going to want to unite the Levant under it's rule, and Arab countries are still going to want a bogeyman so they can distract their populations with Jingoism, so a similar dynamic is not out of the question.

Number 2 seems like the most plausible one. Just have different borders agreed on by the French and viola. It would probebly also be the best case out of all the others, as since mount Lebanon had some autonomy, there will be a tradition of self goverment to draw upon. It was something the other Arabs lacked, and look what happened to the rest of us...
Eh? North African Arabs and the Arabs of the South and South Eastern peninsula had a tradition of self governance. Those areas are not notably better off.

Oh I didn't mean that. In some circles, they're not considered Muslim. In that respect, the Assads had managed to protect the minorities.
Well they're Muslim enough to be President of Syria, a role that is constitutionally limited to Muslims.
 
Number 2 seems like the most plausible one. Just have different borders agreed on by the French and viola. It would probebly also be the best case out of all the others, as since mount Lebanon had some autonomy, there will be a tradition of self goverment to draw upon. It was something the other Arabs lacked, and look what happened to the rest of us...

Most likely, yes. Though it would be interesting if the Lebanese decided, by plebiscite, to join Metropolitan France - in which case, it would have the same status that Corsica has now, but even more so.
 
Most likely, yes. Though it would be interesting if the Lebanese decided, by plebiscite, to join Metropolitan France - in which case, it would have the same status that Corsica has now, but even more so.

Lebanon was a Mandate though - they were meant to be given independence sometime down the road.
 
Depends? How fast did Hebrew become an obscure dead language that was only used for liturgy to an official language spoken by several million people? That said, they may need to modernize it. There were efforts in OTL I think to make Lebanese Arabic an distinct language or revive Phoencian. It was one of them.

Well, there is a difference. A revival of Syriac would be more or less easy - all one has to do is translate their native Lebanese Arabic pronunciation and grammar to Syriac, and it would still sound Semitic. The Hebrew revival was, shall we say, interesting - I'd suggest Ghi'lad Zuckermann regarding Hebrew, since it would be too complex to write here.
 
Well, there is a difference. A revival of Syriac would be more or less easy - all one has to do is translate their native Lebanese Arabic pronunciation and grammar to Syriac, and it would still sound Semitic. The Hebrew revival was, shall we say, interesting - I'd suggest Ghi'lad Zuckermann regarding Hebrew, since it would be too complex to write here.

Given that many Christian Arabs nowadays for some reason or another tend to distance themselves from Arab nationalism and go more for the pre-Islamic identities - like the Copts identifying themselves more as Egyptian as Arabs, etc. It would be pretty nice to have. I like language revivals.
 
Lebanon was a Mandate though - they were meant to be given independence sometime down the road.

Doesn't really matter. Say, around the moment of independence, Lebanon decides that instead of being independent, they decide to join France instead. That actually has some basis - the Maronites had long considered France as their protector and the Maronites wanted to ape the Europeans; what better way of doing that would there be than joining France?
 
Given that many Christian Arabs nowadays for some reason or another tend to distance themselves from Arab nationalism and go more for the pre-Islamic identities - like the Copts identifying themselves more as Egyptian as Arabs, etc. It would be pretty nice to have. I like language revivals.

Which is funny, since it was the Arab Christians that invented Pan-Arab nationalism in the first place. Though the Copts are not unique in identifying themselves more as Egyptians than as Arabs - all Egyptians are like that.
 
Which is funny, since it was the Arab Christians that invented Pan-Arab nationalism in the first place. Though the Copts are not unique in identifying themselves more as Egyptians than as Arabs - all Egyptians are like that.

Yeah but from my experience, it's the Copts who really emphasize their Egyptian-ness. Irony, eh?
 
Top