After the service a memorial column was dedicated, honouring the history of female education in the region. Can you name some who still live and work in Beirut? The SSDI is a searchable database of more than 70 million names. In many cases, these organizations would approach archives and offer to digitize manuscripts and archives free of cost and, in return, would obtain a digital copy of the archive. As such, she caught the eye of many suitors, and after rejecting many offers, she decided upon one persistent young suitor, a recent convert to Protestantism named Butrus al-Bustani. However, protests against such acts are increasing, such as the campaign to save Dalieh (Beirutâs last public beach) and against the Fouad Butrus highway. 7- Historically there are some families in Lebanon whose ancestors came from Europe in different waves. There are also smaller Protestant cemeteries adjacent to former mission sites and schools, including Protestant cemeteries in Sidon, Ain Zahlta, Brummana as well as Damascus in Syria. ), Entangled Education: Foreign, National and Local schools in Ottoman Syria and Mandate Lebanon (Beirut: Ergon Verlag Würzburg in Kommission, forthcoming). You've only scratched the surface of Levantine family history. Julia Hauser, German Religious Women in Late Ottoman Beirut: Competing Missions, (Leiden: Brill, 2015). Jahrhundert: Implikationen eines transkulturellen Dialogs,â Th.D. Historically, surnames evolved as a way to sort people into groups - by occupation, place of origin, clan affiliation, patronage, parentage, adoption, and even physical characteristics (like red hair). First, the Levant doesn't have Arabs. However, other institutions continue to struggle to secure financing for the preservation of their archives. Ashkenazi Jews come from the same genetic group , no matter if their ancestors were from Poland, Russia, Hungary, Lithuania, or another place with a large historical Jewish population. Although only a few letters and artefacts of Rahils have survived, a memorial service was held after her death in 1894, where eulogies on Rahilâs influence were given by the missionary Henry Harris Jessup, the educator Salim Kessab and Rahilâs daughter, the writer, Alice al-Bustani to an audience of 400 congregants. Discover the unique achievements of ancestors in your family tree, This page needs Javascript enabled in order to work properly. The funding for universities, libraries and other archives is uneven. While their objectives would be to preserve endangered archives and to make these records available to the wider global audience through open source outlets, the result is that the local institution is often left without a voice in how their archives are being circulated, no recourse to develop their archives as sustainable sources of income and with little or no training of their own staff to preserve their collections and develop digital archives of their own. Some institutions, like AUB and the University of Balamand, have been fortunate to receive financial support from both foreign and local donors. One of the biggest problems I observed as the director of the PPHME project was the nature of foreign organizations, both European and American, in projects to âsaveâ archives in the region. What's surprising is the Ashkenazi and Middle Eastern roots, bearing in mind that my last name is Italian/Sicilian/Maltese. The most famous and well-kept are the cemeteries commemorating WWI and WWII, such as the Commonwealth War Graves Commissionâs Beirut War Cemetery, the Sidon War Cemetery and the Tripoli (Victoria) Naval Cemetery. View Social Security Death Index (SSDI) for Levantine. 9- Do you have an interest in the Ottoman history of Lebanon and is this a field the general native population embraces or would rather forget? On the other hand, many buildings were seriously damaged during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990). Born in 1826 to a Greek Orthodox family in Beirut, Rahil was an early student of the American Protestant missionaries and was eventually chosen to be a boarding student under Sarah Smith, the first wife of Eli Smith. 14- How healthy and well-funded are the various universities, libraries and historical research institutes of Lebanon are in your opinion? Ezekiel’s Vision and Jewish Ancestry. Many of the modern surnames in the dictionary can be traced back to Britain and Ireland. However, I always encourage researchers to venture outside of Beirut: to Tripoli, Sidon, Mount Lebanon and the Bekaa. Another reason is the division between âLevantinesâ, i.e. For the past decades, paleogenomics, the field dealing with ancient genomes, has been fulfilling Ezekiel’s vision by extracting DNA from dry bones and telling their stories with increasing accuracy. The Levant (/ ləˈvænt /) is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. Today, there are significant I was first drawn to the Anglo-American Cemetery of Beirut, as well as other historic cemeteries, as a way to find information about the women that I was studying. found an approximately even mixture of Middle Eastern, particularly Levantine, and European ancestry in Ashkenazi Jews, with the majority of the European ancestry being of southern European origin While the Brummana cemetery is well maintained, the others are in need of repair, particularly the cemeteries in Syria. I submitted my results to DNA.Land and it came back with the following: Ashkenazi/Levantine 35% (Mediterranean Islander 29% and Ashkenazi 5.8%) and 9.5% Sardinian. Their marriage was defined by love and mutual respectâand served as a model for others, including her children who wrote about the central role of love in modern marriages and the important role of women in the development of a modern education. Copyright © 2015 LHF. Located as a gateway between two continents, and surviving for thousands of years as Caucasian, Near Eastern, and African empires were rising and … Is ancestry always relevant? Is the same term used in the same way in Lebanon? While mission archives are rich sources of information, I was frustrated by the gaps in basic biographical information for some women. The term âLevantineâ is less frequently used in Lebanon today. ), Butrus al-Bustani: Spirit of the Age (Melbourne: IPHOENIX Publishing, 2014), 49-67. I recently published a short biography of entitled, âRahil Ata al-Bustani: Wife and Mother of the Nahdaâ, in: Adel Beshara, (ed. Has there been some who have moved away in the recent years due to fear of nearby wars? They are Egyptians who have ancestry originating from the Levant, mostly what is now Syria and Lebanon. Christine Lindner | Frank Castiglione | Clifford Endres | Zeynep Cebeci Suvari | Sadık UÅaklıgil | Ä°lhan Pınar | Ãmit Eser | Bugra Poyraz | OÄuz Aydemir. What are you working on right now? 1870-1915,â Ph.D. Thesis, (Princeton: Princeton Theological Seminary, 2015). But the events of September 11, 2001 spurred me to focus specifically on the Middle East: to look into the historic relationship between the United States, Europe and the Middle East in order to better understand âwhy this happenedâ and deconstruct the narratives that were being proposed to justify the ensuing War on Terror. Shipping Company), the Bliss-Dale-Dorman family, the SomervillesâCarslawss, the Nachmanns, as well as the descendants of Theodore Waldmere. The practice of genealogy, researching one’s ancestors and family tree, has exploded lately. Many of the modern surnames in the dictionary can be traced back to Britain and Ireland. This includes the Joly family (who now run the Henry Heald & Co. One reason for this is that the division between Euro-Americans and Lebanese is much more blurred than in other areas of the region, due to the large number of Lebanese who lived and worked in the “ mahjar ”, where they developed their own hybrid identity that they brought back to Lebanon. The cemetery waned a bit after Banksâs departure, but in 2012, the Anglo-American Cemetery Association was reconstituted. It must be noted that the label âforeignerâ is problematic for Lebanon as many Lebanese hold foreign citizenship and due to the high rate of immigration and intermarriage. There are 90 military records available for the last name Levantine. Between 1973 and 2003, in the United States, Levantine life expectancy was at its lowest point in 1986, and highest in 1994. For example, when Pliny Fisk died in 1825, he was first buried in the garden of the missionaries associate, Antun Thabit. 12- Who would you rate as the most fascinating historical person to emerge from the region and why? For the past five years I lived and worked in Lebanon, first teaching history and cultural studies at the University of Balamand, then at the Near East School of Theology, where I was the director of the Preserving Protestant Heritage in the Middle East (PPHME) project. Part of my own research focuses on the role that the Tanzimat reforms played in the development of the Protestant church in Lebanon, as a new religious community that petitioned for its rights under the Sultan. We found no specific Ashkenazi ancestry, nor Ashkenazi/Levantine ancestry, but we did find 1.6% ambiguous West Eurasian ancestry, which could be Ashkenazi. 10- Have you been to any other ports in the region such as Alexandria, Mersin etc. Interview conducted by Craig Encer, May 2015. Public spaces, including historic buildings and parks, where Beirutis from all backgrounds come together, are being privatized for high-end property development. From sunken shipwrecks off Tripoliâs port, abandoned train stations built by Australian workmen, former centers of international oil pipelines, ruined silk factories, dilapidated palaces of travellers like Lady Hester Stanhope, hospitals like the Hamlin Sanatorium for Tuberculosis and the now abandoned Asfouriyeh Mental Hospital, to mission schools still serving the rural communitiesâ¦all provide insight onto the legacies of those who came before, both foreign and local, and shaped the development of the country. 3- Are there any other âforeignâ (Catholic / Protestant) cemeteries in the region and do you know their current state? Although some, like the National Evangelical Church of Beirut were rebuilt, many historic buildings have been torn down by urban developers. The “demographic Egyptian/Kurdish & Turkish “Admixture” not “roots” Levantine is still the Palestinian Muslims main component and so still there “root” so to Speak. Many of the haplogroups which are considered European actually originated in the eastern Mediterranean. There are 26 immigration records available for the last name Levantine. ), Butrus al-Bustani: Spirit of the Age (Melbourne: IPHOENIX Publishing, 2014), 49-67, abandoned train stations built by Australian workmen, mission schools still serving the rural communities. The best way to know if you have actual Jewish ancestry is to see if you have genetic cousins who are fully Jewish. Ashkenazi Jews generally plot on or near the Greek island of Crete. Unfortunately I have not travelled to many of the port cities where Levantine culture thrives today. A short lifespan might also indicate health problems that were once prevalent in your family. Passenger lists are your ticket to knowing when your ancestors arrived in the USA, and how they made the journey - from the ship name to ports of arrival and departure. Two of Beirutâs most famous neighborhoods are defined by these ârelicsâ: Ras Beirut, with the American University of Beirut, Lebanese American University and Haigazian University, and Ashrafiyya, with the Université de Saint Joseph. The majority of the cemeteries date to the 19th and early 20th centuries, as Lebanon only became a focus for modern European migration during the mid-19th century. What do you think are the deficiencies? This includes making the institution aware of their rights, presenting them with options to develop their own digitization and preservation plans, and to establish their own criteria for public access. How exactly do you define “Levantine?” Bedouins are of known Arabian origin (hence the overwhelming amount of J1), so positing them as “Levantine” is absurd. Otherwise, though, I think you just seem close to certain Jewish populations because you are a mix of Levantine While most of this ancestry is native to western Asia, traces of Central and East Asian-like genetic signatures were introduced as a result of Turkic migrations and the 13th-century Mongol invasion. Many of the historical spaces that are preserved and celebrated as central within Lebanese heritage date to the Ottoman period, such as Beit al-Dine and the âtriple-arched houseâ. Levantine population (TIF) Simply start with a family member and we'll do the searching for you. About 35,000 Levantines live in Turkey. 4- How far back do you know of the various foreign (European) cemeteries in the region or were some Europeans buried in the existing native Christian cemeteries in the region? The high rates of unemployment create opportunity not just for radicalization, but for politically motivated individuals to stir troubles. On the one hand, Beirut and the other cities in Lebanon, are full of physical relics illuminating the historical connections to Europe and the United States.
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