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This study questions the anachronism about Phoenicia, often thought to have ended when Alexander the Great conquered the Levant. However, toponymic evidence suggests that Phoenicia came into existence with and after Alexander’s conquests. Then it became an administrative division of the Roman Empire, to subsist as an ecclesiastical title down to Ottoman times. It was only in 1861 that the French scholar Ernest Renan invented and mapped “Phoenician archaeology.” Later interpretations of Renan’s view, converging with Biblical projections, led to the anachronistic use of “Phoenicia.” This anachronism still governs historiography and politics in the Levant today.

Toponymic inscriptions are an ‘authorized version’ of history written on space. This article aims to explore the toponyms on a French map of Beirut published in 1936 to show how France, as a sovereign power, transformed her ‘Lebanese policy’ into place names and thus created a different reality, in rupture with the past. This reality still endures today on the map. The new polity was created under the mission protectrice of France. The ‘mission’ is read on the map through the names of Gouraud, Foch, Petain, and other generals of World War I, and by key features of the French Republic (‘The Marseillaise’, ‘the French’, ‘Paris’, and so on). With Lebanon being a ‘refuge for minorities’, the 1936 map of Beirut has thoroughfares named after saints, ulemas, and religious figures of Christians and of Muslims (‘rue patriarche Hoyek’, ‘rue Ibn Arabi’, and ‘rue Abou Bakr’). In 1918, political martyrdom was introduced to political discourse, but also to the map; thus the main square of the city is renamed ‘Place des Martyrs’, with numerous streets named after intellectuals hanged by the Ottomans and considered martyrs of the new Republic. These three ‘toponymic systems’ are in discontinuity with the toponymic past of Beirut. These toponymic dynamics still shape the map of Beirut; no constitution change or ‘toponymic cleansing’ happened after Independence in 1943. There are more ‘martyrs’ and religious figures added to the map and mandate army generals are still commemorated. Mandate-made maps continue to shape Beiruti place names today.

Alors qu’une grande vague de contestation s’est étendue sur une vaste partie de la Syrie à partir de mars 2011, dans le Projet de l’Euphrate, ensemble d’aménagements hydro-agricoles de plusieurs centaines de milliers d’hectares, peu de manifestations contre le régime au pouvoir ont été enregistrées. L’objectif de cet article est double. D’une part, il s’agit d’insister sur un différentiel entre cette région et d’autres concernant le nombre de manifestations enregistrées. D’autre part, il s’agit de revenir sur l’histoire politique et économique de cette région afin d’émettre des hypothèses sur le rapport entre le pouvoir ba‘thiste et les habitants de ces grands périmètres irrigués. Although mass protests swept across most of Syria as from March 2011, the Euphrates Project lands, a set of large-scale hydro-agricultural developments, remained relatively peaceful with a small number of registered protests against the Syrian Regime. The purpose of this article is two-fold: first we point out to the difference observed between this region and others via the reading of demonstration pattern in Syria; and secondly we explore the political and economic history of this region in order to hypothesise on power relations between central Baathist state and inhabitants of the Project areas.

Référence de l’ouvrage : Atlas du Proche-Orient arabe, de Fabrice Balanche. Paris : PUPS, 2012, 140 p., 300 cartes et graphiques, ISBN : 978-2-84050-797-0 L’Atlas du Proche-Orient arabe est le premier du genre en français. Jusqu’à aujourd’hui, les atlas sur la région à cette échelle étaient essentiellement historiques (Hours, Auranche, Cauvin, et al., 1994 ; Roaf, 1991 ; Schyle, 1992). D’autres avaient été réalisés à des échelles plus petites à propos de géopolitique (CIA, 1993 ; Lemarchand, ...

Reference de l’ouvrage : Atlas du Proche-Orient arabe, de Fabrice Balanche. Paris : PUPS, 2012, 140 p., 300 cartes et graphiques, ISBN : 978-2-84050-797-0 L’Atlas du Proche-Orient arabe est le premier du genre en francais. Jusqu’a aujourd’hui, les atlas sur la region a cette echelle etaient essentiellement historiques (Hours, Auranche, Cauvin, et al., 1994 ; Roaf, 1991 ; Schyle, 1992). D’autres avaient ete realises a des echelles plus petites a propos de geopolitique (CIA, 1993 ; Lemarchand, ...