Our Cultural Heritage
Presented by:
Michel N. Laham, M.D.

Back in the sixties, as a senior in college majoring in history but having satisfied all the requirements for a pre-medical education, I found myself writing an undergraduate thesis and taking some high-powered courses and seminars in history. That senior year in college was the most stimulating and challenging of my entire life, and I will forever remember it fondly. One such seminar was in paleography, the art of deciphering ancient writings and inscriptions. Another was in historiography, the study of the theory and methods of historical scholarship. It was in that particular seminar that I first studied the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406 A.D.).

Although the Greek historian Herodotus is universally recognized as the "father of history", it was Ibn Khaldun who postulated all the principles on which the writing of history, as we now understand it, is based. His Muqaddimah is a brilliant analysis of the methodological and cultural knowledge required to write scientific history. He believed, for example, that the basic causes of the rise and fall of civilizations are to be found in the social and economic structure of society. And this at a time when the writing of history in the West amounted to tales of chivalry and epic poetry. It took Europe nearly three centuries to catch up with Ibn Khaldun!

So it was during a particularly animated discussion in my historiography seminar concerning the contributions of different cultures to the course of history and the advancement of mankind that I was challenged to specify the contributions of Syria and Lebanon. Greece, I was told, contributed its art and architecture, its great philosophers, and Euclidean geometry to mankind. Italy contributed the great painters and sculptors of the Renaissance and the towering figure of Galileo who introduced the modern heliocentric view of the universe. England gave us Magna Carta, Newtonian physics and calculus which explained the laws on which this universe is based, and the Darwinian theory of evolution. France gave us Cartesian logic on which all Western scientific and philosophical thought rests, the great thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment, and the lofty principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity of the French Revolution. Germany, etc....the list goes on.

Along the same lines, I was asked: specify for us the unique contributions of Syria and Lebanon to the course of history and to the progress of humanity. I do not recall precisely what I said, but I remember going into a lengthy exposition of the disregard of our contributions by Western historians, either through benign neglect or through systematic suppression of relevant data. I remember lamenting the paucity of available information on the subject. Now, looking back on it, I think that was a poor excuse. The information was there if you took the time to look for it. And we cannot wait for others to do the work for us. We have to do it ourselves.

I have often thought about this incident, and I have often wondered how I could have handled the situation differently. If I were asked the same question today, how would I rise up to the challenge? Well, I would single out the four paramount contributions of Syria and Lebanon to Western Civilization:

First, it was in Syria along the banks of the Euphrates River, around 6000 B.C., that man first cultivated wheat and barley, turning from a nomadic way of life to a settled agricultural society. And it was there also, around 4000 B.C., that man started using metal implements, first copper, then bronze, effectively bringing to an end the long period known as the Stone Age.

Second, it was the Phoenicians, those intrepid mariners of the coastal regions of Syria and Lebanon, who invented the alphabet that they passed on to the Greeks, and that was subsequently adopted, in modified form, by the Etruscans and eventually by the Romans, becoming the basis of all modern alphabets. Had the peoples of Syria and Lebanon contributed nothing else to civilization, the invention of the alphabet would have singled them out as the originators of written history and benefactors of humanity.

Third, during the first three centuries of the Christian Era, it was the people of Syria and Lebanon who were largely responsible for the spread of Christianity to the farthest corners of the Roman Empire. After the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 A.D., Antioch in Syria became the capital of Christendom. This is where Saint Luke, the evangelist, was born. This is where the followers of Jesus of Nazareth were first called Christians. This is where the cross was adopted as the symbol of Christianity: the Maronite cross is still known today as the Antiochene cross. And it was from Antioch that the Christian tidal wave burst forth, eventually engulfing the entire Roman Empire, reclaiming through the force of ideas what the Romans had conquered through the force of arms.

Fourth, after Europe had sunk into the Dark Ages, it was the people of Syria and Lebanon who kept the science and philosophy of Ancient Greece alive, translated the Greek classics into Syriac and Arabic, and transmitted them back to Europe during the High Middle Ages, effectively bringing about the Renaissance. The works of Plato, Aristotle, and Hippocrates were thus translated into Syriac by the greatest of the translators, Hunayn Ibn Ishac (809-873 A.D.), and these translations were then rendered into Arabic by his son and nephew. Thiyufil Ibn Tuma, a Maronite, translated Homer and Galen into Arabic. Thabit Ibn Qurrah translated Euclid, Ptolemy and Archimedes. And it was through these Arabic translations that the Greek classics were reintroduced into Europe, long after the Greek originals were lost or destroyed.

Not only were the people of Syria and Lebanon present at the inception of Western Civilization, they were there again at its rebirth during the Renaissance! What happened next is a matter of record. The entire Levant entered its Dark Age under the repressive and benighted rule of the Ottoman Empire from which it is only now finally emerging.