The Levant (IPA: /lə'vænt/) is an imprecise geographical term historically referring to a large area in the Middle East south of the Taurus Mountains, bounded by the Mediterranean Sea on the west, and by the northern Arabian Desert and Upper Mesopotamia to the east. The Levant does not include the Caucasus Mountains, any part of the Arabian Peninsula proper, or Anatolia — although at times[citation needed]Cilicia may be included. The Sinai Peninsula may also be included, but may be excluded as a marginal area forming a land bridge between the Levant and northern Egypt. At times Levantine cultures and peoples dominated the region between the Sinai and the Nile river, but that region is usually excluded[citation needed] from the geographical Levant. For what the Levant has been called by natives and others over time, see Names of the Levant.
The term Levant is first attested in English in 1497, originally used in the wider sense of "Mediterranean lands east of Venetia."[citation needed] It derives from the Middle Frenchlevant, the participle of lever "to raise" — as in soleil levant "rising sun" — from the Latinlevare.[citation needed] It thus referred to the Eastern direction of the rising sun from the perspective of those who first used it. As such, it is broadly equivalent to the Arabic term Mashriq, "the land where the sun rises."
An alternative, though unlikely, etymology suggests[citation needed] that the term stems from Lebanon — noting that Spanish translators of Arabic would use the letters b and v interchangeably as a consequence of their Spanish pronunciations. Thus, the Levant would refer to the areas surrounding Lebanon, itself deriving from the Aramaic word for white in reference to the snow-capped Lebanese mountains.
The modern Levant
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 Grand Turk in 1579 (Braudel).
The French Mandates of Syria and Lebanon from 1920 to 1946 were called the Levant states. The term became common[citation needed] in archaeology at that time, as many important early excavations were made then, such as at Ebla, Mari and Ugarit. Since these sites could not be classified as Mesopotamian, North African, or Arabian, they came to be referred to as "Levantine."
Today "Levant" is typically used by archaeologists and historians with reference to the prehistory and the ancient and medieval history of the region, as when discussing the Crusades. The term is also occasionally employed to refer to modern or contemporary events, peoples, states, or parts of states in the same region, namely Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories.
Braudel, Fernand, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Phillip II
http://www.levantine.plus.com/index.htm. Levantine Heritage Site. Includes many oral and scholarly histories, and genealogies for some Levantine Turkish families.
