Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean

497 Pages·2011·5.45 MB·English

by  Philip Mansel

Levant
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Levant
Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean
PHILIP MANSEL
New Haven & London
First published in Great Britain in 2010 by John Murray (Publishers)
an hachette UK Company
1
© Philip Mansel 2010
First published in the United States in 2011 by Yale University Press.
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Contents
Map viii
Introduction 1
1. The Vineyards of Pera 5
2. Smyrna: The Eye of Asia 16
3. Smyrna: Massacres and Merriment 39
4. Alexandria: The Key to Egypt 56
5. Alexandria: Bid for Empire 75
6. Beirut: The Republic of Merchants 91
7. Alexandria: Khedives and Consuls 102
8. Alexandria: British Years 127
9. Beirut: The Jewel in the Crown of the Padishah 148
10. Smyrna: Greeks and Turks 156
11. Drifting Cities 176
12. Catastrophe and Liberation 196
13. Alexandria: Queen of the Mediterranean 238
14. Egyptianization 267
15. Beirut: Birth of a Capital 296
16. The Paris of the Middle East 311
17. The Dance of Death 325
18. New Levants for Old 344
Acknowledgements 357
Notes 359
Bibliography 425
Illustration Acknowledgements 451
Index 453
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There are few greater pleasures than to extricate oneself from the
caulked circumference of a ship and step forth upon the quay of
a Levantine city.
Eyre Evans Crowe, The Greek and the Turk; or,
Power and Prospects in the Levant, 1853