The Levant is a subregion of West Asia along the Eastern Mediterranean that forms part of the Middle East. The term is often used in conjunction with historical or cultural references.
In its narrowest sense, used in archaeology and other contexts, the Levant refers to Cyprus and land bordering the Levantine Sea (Mediterranean) in West AsiaGasiorowski, Mark (2016). The Government and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa. p. 5: "... today the term Levantine can describe shared cultural products, such as Levantine cuisine or Levantine archaeology". .Steiner & Killebrew, p. 9 : "The general limits ..., as defined here, begin at the Plain of 'Amuq in the north and extend south until the Wâdī al-Arish, along the northern coast of Sinai. ... The western coastline and the eastern deserts set the boundaries for the Levant ... The Euphrates and the area around Jebel el-Bishrī mark the eastern boundary of the northern Levant, as does the Syrian Desert beyond the Anti-Lebanon range's eastern hinterland and Mount Hermon. This boundary continues south in the form of the highlands and eastern desert regions of Transjordan." that includes Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, and south Cilicia (Turkey). In its widest historical sense, the Levant included all the Eastern Mediterranean;. extending from Greece to Egypt and Cyrenaica (Eastern Libya).Pierre-Louis Gatier, E. Gubel, Philippe Marquis. The Levant History and Archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean, Könemann, Page 7 The Levantine corridor represents the land bridge between Africa and Eurasia, has been described as the crossroads of West Asia, Eastern Mediterranean, and Northeast Africa, and geologically as the "northwest of the Arabian plate".Egyptian Journal of Geology, Volume 42, Issue 1, p. 263, 1998
In the 13th and 14th centuries, levante was used for Italian maritime commerce in the Eastern Mediterranean, including Greece, Anatolia, Syria-Palestine, and Egypt, that is the lands east of Venice. It derives from the Italian , meaning "rising", implying the rising of the Sun in the east, and is broadly equivalent to the Mashriq,; meaning "eastern place, where the Sun rises". Eventually the term was restricted to the Muslim countries of Syria-Palestine and Egypt. The term entered English in the 15th century from French. In 1581, England set up the Levant Company to trade with the Ottoman Empire. The name Levant States was used to refer to the French mandate over Syria and Lebanon after World War I, so Levant has come to refer to modern Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, and Cyprus.
As a name for the contemporary region, several dictionaries consider Levant to be archaic.LEVANT archaic The eastern part of the Mediterranean with the islands and neighbouring countries. New Oxford Dictionary of English, 2nd ed., revised, 2005."LEVANT, THE". "A general term formerly given to the E shores of the Mediterranean Sea from W Greece to Egypt". The Penguin Encyclopedia, revised 2nd ed., 2004.LEVANT, (vieilli) Le Levant: les pays, les régions qui sont au levant (par rapport à la France) et spécialt. les régions de la Méditerrranée orientale. Le Nouveau Petit Robert de la langue française, (1993 revised ed.). The noun Levant and adjective Levantine are sometimes used to describe the ancient and modern culture area formerly called Syro-Palestinian. Archaeologists now speak of the Levant and Levantine archaeology,Thomas Evan Levy, Historical Biblical Archaeology and the Future: The New Pragmatism, Routledge, 2016 . Thomas E. Levy, "The New Pragmatism", p. 8: "after 1994, it is possible to see an increase in the use of the less geographically specific and more political [sic] neutral words 'Levant' or 'Levantine' in scholarly citations.... It is important to highlight the pedigree of the term 'Syro-Palestinian' and its gradual replacement by the term 'Levant' or 'Levantine' because the latter is a more culturally and politically neutral term that more accurately reflects the tapestry of countries and peoples of the region, without assuming directionality of cultural influence.". Aaron A. Burke, "The Archaeology of the Levant in North America: The Transformation of Biblical and Syro-Palestinian Archaeology" p. 82ff: "A number of factors account for the gradual emergence during the past two decades of what is now widely identified as Levantine archaeology in North America... a growing consensus regarding the appropriate terminology... archaeological field research in the Levant"William G. Dever, The Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel: When Archaeology and the Bible Intersect, 2012, , p. 249: "Today, however, the discipline is often called Palestinian, Syro-Palestinian, or Levantine archaeology."Steiner & Killebrew (2013). p. 1-2. food scholars of Levantine cuisine, and Latin Catholics of the Levant are sometimes called Levantines,Michel Elias Andraos, "Levantine Catholic Communities in the Diaspora at the Intersection of Many Identities and Worlds", in Michael L. Budde, Scattered and Gathered: Catholics in Diaspora, 2017 p. 24: "The word 'Levantine' in the title is used on purpose instead of the 'Middle East' or the 'Near East'.... I use 'Levantine' more than the two other designations, because this is the term being used more often nowadays by Christian communities in the Middle East to describe their shared identity as al-maseeheyoun al-mashriqeyoun, Levantine Christians" though the term is normally used to describe the Levant population more widely.Orfalea, Gregory (2006). The Arab Americans: A History. Olive Branch Press. Northampton, MA. Page 249.
Etymology
The term Levant appears in English in 1497, and originally meant "the East" or "Mediterranean lands east of Italy". It is borrowed from the French "rising", referring to the rising of the sun in the east, or the point where the sun rises.Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition The phrase is ultimately from the Latin word , meaning "lift, raise". Similar etymologies are found in Greek Anatolē (cf. Anatolia 'the direction of sunrise'), in Germanic Morgenland (), in Italian (as in Riviera di Levante, the portion of the Liguria coast east of Genoa), in Hungarian Kelet ('east'), in Spanish and Catalan Levante and Llevant ('the place of rising'), and in Hebrew mizraḥ ('east'). Most notably, "Orient" and its Latin source oriens meaning "east", is literally "rising", deriving from Latin orior "rise".
The notion of the Levant has undergone a dynamic process of historical evolution in usage, meaning, and understanding. While the term "Levantine" originally referred to the European residents of the eastern Mediterranean region, it later came to refer to regional "native" and "minority" groups.
The term became current in English in the 16th century, along with the first English merchant adventurers in the region; English ships appeared in the Mediterranean in the 1570s, and the English merchant company signed its agreement ("capitulations") with the Ottoman Sultan in 1579.. The English Levant Company was founded in 1581 to trade with the Ottoman Empire, and in 1670 the French was founded for the same purpose. At this time, the Far East was known as the "Upper Levant".
In early 19th-century travel writing, the term sometimes incorporated certain Mediterranean provinces of the Ottoman Empire, as well as independent Greece (and especially the Greek islands). In 19th-century archaeology, it referred to overlapping cultures in this region during and after prehistoric times, intending to reference the place instead of any one culture. The French mandate of Syria and Lebanon (1920–1946) was called the Levant states.
Geography and modern use of the term
Today, "Levant" is the term typically used by archaeologists and historians in relation to the history of the region. Scholars have adopted the term Levant to identify the region due to its being a "wider, yet relevant, cultural corpus" that does not have the "political overtones" of Syria-Palestine. The term is also used for modern events, peoples, states or parts of states in the same region, namely Cyprus, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey are sometimes considered Levant countries (compare with Near East, Middle East, Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia). Several researchers include the island of Cyprus in Levantine studies, including the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), the UCLA Near Eastern Languages and Cultures department,Biblical and Levantine studies , UCLA Journal of Levantine Studies and the UCL Institute of Archaeology,The Ancient Levant, UCL Institute of Archaeology, May 2008 the last of which has dated the connection between Cyprus and mainland Levant to the early Iron Age. Archaeologists seeking a neutral orientation that is neither biblical nor national have used terms such as Levantine archaeology and archaeology of the Southern Levant.Dever, William G. "Syro-Palestinian and Biblical Archaeology", pp. 1244–1253.Sharon, Ilan "Biblical archaeology" in Encyclopedia of Archaeology Elsevier.
While the usage of the term "Levant" in academia has been restricted to the fields of archeology and literature, there is a recent attempt to reclaim the notion of the Levant as a category of analysis in political and social sciences. Two academic journals were launched in the early 2010s using the word: the Journal of Levantine Studies, published by the Van Leer Jerusalem InstituteAnat Lapidot-Firilla, "Editor's Note", Journal of Levantine Studies 1:1:5-12 (Summer 2011) full text and The Levantine Review, published by Boston College.Franck Salameh, "From the Editors", The Levantine Review 1:1:1-6 (Spring 2012), , full text
The word Levant has been used in some translations of the term ash-Shām as used by the organization known as ISIL, ISIS, and other names, though there is disagreement as to whether this translation is accurate.
Archaeological definition
In The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Levant: c. 8000–332 BCE (OHAL; 2013), the definition of the Levant for the specific purposes of the book is synonymous to that of the Arabic "bilad al-sham, 'the land of sham [Syria]'", translating in Western parlance to greater Syria.Steiner & Killebrew, p. 2 . OHAL defines the boundaries of the Levant as follows. To the north: the Taurus Mountains or the Plain of 'Amuq To the east: the eastern deserts, i.e. (from north to south) the Euphrates and the Jebel el-Bishrī area for the northern Levant, followed by the Syrian Desert east of the eastern hinterland of the Anti-Lebanon range (whose southernmost part is Mount Hermon), and Transjordan's highlands and eastern desert (also discussed at Syrian Desert, also known as the Badia region). In other words, Mesopotamia and the North Arabian Desert. To the south: Wadi al-Arish in Sinai To the west: the Mediterranean Sea
Subregions A distinction is made between the main subregions of the Levant, the northern and the southern: The Litani River marks the division between the Northern Levant and the Southern Levant. The island of Cyprus is also included as a third subregion in the archaeological region of the Levant: Cyprus, geographically distinct from the Levant, is included due to its proximity and natural resources (copper in particular), which induced close cultural ties.
History
Demographics
The region is inhabited by Levantine Arabs, Jews, Kurds, Assyrians, Armenians, Chechens and Circassians. The population of the modern Levant border is approximately 57.6 million consisting of the populations of Syria, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon and Palestine.
StatePopulation (2023)Density/km2 (2018)Life expectancy (2018)10,094,00045882.5 years11,484,80511474.8 years5,364,48251378.7 years5,483,45073173.4 years25,255,139118.374.8 yearsTotal57,681,876184.276.4
Religious and ethnic groups