Mediterranean Travel, Interconfessional Rivalry, and the Written Languages of Late Mamluk Mount Lebanon

In the twentieth century, the languages of medieval Mount Lebanon became a subject of contention between Arab and Lebanese nationalists. A largely unstudied manuscript corpus from the fifteenth century illuminates this matter. In this corpus, bilingualism prevails, with Middle Arabic serving as the primary written language and Syriac serving as the language of worship and prestige. This article draws on colophons, chronicles, and the fifteenth-century literary texts to examine the norms governing language in late Mamluk Mount Lebanon. It is centered on the lives and works of Mūsá Ibn ʿAṭshah, Yūḥannā ibn Ḥasan, Nūḥ al-Baqūfānī, and Jibrāyil Ibn al-Qilāʿī. Through these figures, it considers authorial intention, educational background, audience, and dynamics of power as determinants of language choice. From this social history of language, a portrait of Mount Lebanon emerges as the site of Syriac revival and a new Christian Arabic literature at the confluence of Mamluk culture, Eastern Christianity, Franciscan vocation, and the Mediterranean.