front cover of The Dune's Twisted Edge
The Dune's Twisted Edge
Journeys in the Levant
Gabriel Levin
University of Chicago Press, 2012
“How to speak of the imaginative reach of a land habitually seen as a seedbed of faiths and heresies, confluences and ruptures . . . trouble spot and findspot, ruin and renewal, fault line and ragged clime, with a medley of people and languages once known with mingled affection and wariness as Levantine?” So begins poet Gabriel Levin in his journeys in the Levant, the exotic land that stands at the crossroads of western Asia, the eastern Mediterranean, and northeast Africa. Part travelogue, part field guide, and part literary appreciation, The Dune’s Twisted Edge assembles six interlinked essays that explore the eastern seaboard of the Levant and its deserts, bringing to life this small but enigmatic part of the world.
 
Striking out from his home in Jerusalem in search of a poetics of the Fertile Crescent, Levin probes the real and imaginative terrain of the Levant, a place that beckoned to him as a source of wonder and self-renewal. His footloose travels take him to the Jordan Valley; to Wadi Rumm south of Petra; to the semiarid Negev of modern-day Israel and its Bedouin villages; and, in his recounting of the origins of Arabic poetry, to the Empty Quarter of Arabia where the pre-Islamic poets once roamed. His meanderings lead to encounters with a host of literary presences: the wandering poet-prince Imru al-Qays, Byzantine empress Eudocia, British naturalist Henry Baker Tristram, Herman Melville making his way to the Dead Sea, and even New York avant-garde poet Frank O’Hara. When he is not confronting ghosts, Levin finds himself stumbling upon the traces of vanished civilizations. He discovers a ruined Umayyad palace on the outskirts of Jericho, the Greco-Roman hot springs near the Sea of Galilee, and Nabatean stick figures carved on stones in the sands of Jordan. Vividly evoking the landscape, cultures, and poetry of this ancient region, The Dune’s Twisted Edge celebrates the contested ground of the Middle East as a place of compound myths and identities.
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Making the East Latin
The Latin Literature of the Levant in the Era of the Crusades
Julian Yolles
Harvard University Press

“This new day, new joy, the consummation of toil and devotion with ever new and eternal rejoicing, required new words, new songs from all!”

So wrote Raymond of Aguilers, a Provençal priest, when an army of nobles, knights, footmen, and priests from across Europe managed to conquer Jerusalem after three years of traveling and fighting. And there certainly were new words and new songs. These settlers produced a hybrid Latin literature—a “Levantine Latinity”—distinct from that in Europe, and their new literary tradition both drew on and resisted Levantine Muslim, Christian, and Jewish cultures in the newly occupied territories.

This volume analyzes the literary and rhetorical techniques of well-known authors such as William of Tyre, literary compositions of communities of canons in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and individual scholars in the Principality of Antioch. These varied sources reveal the coherent and increasingly sophisticated ways in which Crusader settlers responded to their new environment while maintaining ties with their homelands in western Europe. In a short time, Levantine Latinity emerged to form an indispensable part of the literary history of both the Near East and Europe.

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Syrian and Lebanese Patricios in São Paulo
From the Levant to Brazil
Oswaldo Truzzi. Translated by Ramon J. Stern
University of Illinois Press, 2018
Syrian and Lebanese immigrants to Brazil chose to settle in urban areas, a marked contrast to many other migrant groups. In São Paulo, these newcomers embraced new lives as merchants, shopkeepers, and industrialists, making them a dominant force in the city's business sector.

Oswaldo Truzzi's original work on these so-called patrícios changed the face of Brazilian studies. Now available in an English translation, Truzzi's pioneering book identifies the complex social paths blazed by Syrian and Lebanese immigrants and their descendants from the 1890s to the 1960s. He considers their relationships to other groups within São Paulo's kaleidoscopic mix of cultures. He also reveals the differences--real and perceived--between Syrians and Lebanese in terms of religious and ethnic affinities and in the economic sphere. Finally, he compares the two groups with their counterparts in the United States and looks at the wave of Lebanese Muslims to São Paulo that began in the 1960s.

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front cover of Use and Appreciation of Mycenaean Pottery
Use and Appreciation of Mycenaean Pottery
In the Levant, Cyprus and Italy (ca. 1600-1200 BC)
Gert Jan vana Wijngaarden
Amsterdam University Press, 2003
Pottery made in the Aegean during the Late Bronze Age has been found in many parts of the Mediterranean—Mycenaean dinner and storage vessels, for example, have been discovered at some four hundred sites outside Greece. These artifacts provide one of the main sources of information on Mycenaean trade and interregional contact, but the role of pottery in international exchange during this period is still not properly understood. Gert Jan van Wijngaarden brings us closer with this study, which investigates patterns of consumption for the three biggest importers of Mycenaean pottery: the Levant, Cyprus, and Italy.
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