By Dr. Adel Beshara (Extracts from his book: "Syrian Nationalism: An Inquiry Into the Political Philosophy of Antun Sa’adeh". Bissan – Beirut, 1995)

Sa'adeh considered the creation of the modern state of Lebanon in 1920 a breach of the territorial integrity of natural Syria. In an article entitled "al-wihda al-Suriyya" (Syrian Unity), written soon after the proclamation of the new state, he argued that it would be erroneous to suggest, as some Lebanese nationalists have, that present-day Lebanon constituted a single national entity with a unique historical continuity. Instead, Lebanon is depicted as an invaluable part of Syria, no different, certainly no less important, than the rest of the country. As Sa'adeh's political awareness sharpened, his argument took on added significance. He began to emphasize that, from the internal point of view, the Lebanese question arose from subsidiary reasons which were valid at a time when the sectarian idea formed the predominant social ideology. He wrote:

It is clear that the Lebanese question can only be sectionally justified. The Lebanese question is not based on the existence of Lebanon as something independent, nor on the existence of a separate Lebanese homeland, or even on an independent Lebanese history. Its only basis is religious party partisanship and theocracy.

This meant, in effect, that the foundations of modern Lebanon hinged on the continuing presence of a sectarian feeling. If this feeling were to be eradicated, the claim to a separate Lebanese nation would lose its political legitimacy. By contrast, the Lebanese nationalists see the history of Lebanon as an unbroken historical procession tending toward "national" self-fullfilment. This procession, according to them, did not begin in 1920 with the creation of the modern state, nor in 1861 with the establishment of the autonomous Sanjak of Mount Lebanon (the Mutasarrifiya). Certain unique features had already appeared as far as back as the Mameluk period; but a truly Lebanese entity, the Imarah, emerged only in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries during the reign of Fakhr al-Din II. During this period (1590-1842), so the argument goes, Lebanon acquired its special character as a separate political entity with a tradition of autonomy. The argument made considers the Maronite political, economic, social and numerical dominance of vital importance to Lebanon's development as a distinct entity. It was the work of the traditional historiographers of the Maronites. Their writings stressed a strong sense of religious unity and a feeling that their community was 'a rose among thorns'. Ironically, this reinforced rather than negated Sa'adeh's interpretation. The Lebanese entity emerged in Maronite writings not as a scientific or historical reality, but rather as a sectarian reaction to an anomalous situation.

After the creation of modern Lebanon in 1920, various attempts were made to give scientific depth to the demand for a separate Lebanese state. Pheonicianism, which may be broadly defined as that body of opinion which postulated the existence of a distinctive Lebanese national essence persisting from the Phonician era to the present, was perhaps the most pivotal theory developed. Youssef Sawda, its leading exponent, claimed that modern Lebanon is not a mere product of post-War diplomacy, but the direct descendent of ancient Pheonicia and, as such, possessed the same essential characteristics, qualities, and potential. Similarly, Michel Chiha regarded Lebanon as the "warehouse and financial and services centre of the Arab World - the Phoenicia of the modern Middle East." In his writings on Lebanon, the Phoenician days are projected impressionistically to illustrate the various features of the country and its unique character.

Sa'adeh dismissed the Phoenician theory as a fantasy that lacked any sense of historical objectivity. Those of this way of thinking, he argued, see history as tailor-made to their own particularistic and personal needs. For instance, they are oblivious to the fact that the Phoenicians were not confined to Mount Lebanon or to the geographical entity of contemporary Lebanon. They covered the entire coastline of Syria and parts of the Syrian interior. "If the [Lebanese] Christians refer back to their scripture, the Bible," asserted Sa'adeh, "they will find that it is defined as the Pheonicia of Syria, not the Phoenicia of Lebanon." From a chronological point of view, the largely Maronite population of Mount Lebanon could not possibly be biologically related to the ancient Phoenicians because they belonged to a different part of Syria. They did not move to the safety of the Lebanese mountains until the ninth century. This made them, in Sa'adeh's opinion, considerably more "Syrian" than any other group in the country. Sa'adeh could take heart in anthropological studies which showed no direct connection between the present-day population of Lebanon and the Pheonicians. Rather, they seemed to suggest a common, though distant ancestry, possibly to be seen an early Proto-Hittite race, believed to have once occupied the entire region from Armenia proper across the Taurus to the Syrian coast and the area of the Fertile Crescent.

A recent book by the celebrated Lebanese historian, Kamal Salibi, has given an added credibility to this claim. Salibi writes:

Clearly, between ancient Phoenicia and the Lebanon of Medieval and modern times, there is no demonstrable historical connection. The historical chasm between the two involves two major changes of language, from Canaanite to Aramaic, then from Aramaic to Arabic, and the accompanying shifts of population which no doubt occurred at the same time. There is also the intervening Hellenistic period to account for, when Phoenicia, certainly by the late Roman period, was no more than a geographical expression loosely used. Not a single institution or tradition of Medieval or modern Lebanon can be legitimately traced back to ancient Phoenicia.

Regretably, the Lebanese particularists were too deeply and passionatly absorbed in the search for political legitimacy to see Sa'adeh's point.

A second, but equally influential theory, portrayed Lebanon's existence from a geographical perspective. It argued that Lebanon was separated from Syria by unique dividing frontiers and has a natural environment that is both unique and distinct. Its architects placed an enormous emphasis on a mountain chain that runs through the centre of Lebanon. Charles Malek, a contemporary Lebanese nationalist, has expressed this theory as follows:

Lebanon, in the first place, means those mountains that are unique in the Near East, this nature which God bestowed as a beauty but almost surpasses any natural beauty...there is no country in the Middle East and it is rare to find a comparable country in the world in which mountains dominate the life of human beings, their mentality, their thinking, and their destiny as the mountains of Lebanon do for the Lebanese. Lebanon and Mount Lebanon are almost synonymous and Mount Lebanon historically and as an entity has been a source of separation keeping the desert at bay and an orientation and movement towards the Meditterranean. Thus, it is through nature and the mountains that Lebanon has been completely distinguished from other countries, and without them Lebanon could have no existence.

For another pioneer of this theory, Jawad Boulas, the existence and evolution of Lebanon into a "natural" entity were subject to numerous tests and events (eg. civil wars, wars). They are affirmed by the most ancient of history.

Sa'adeh tackled this theory from within the literature of Lebanese nationalism itself. He stressed that even those generally regarded as ardent supporters of Lebanese independence, like Shukri Ghanem, have conceded that the Syrian environment is an unbroken natural territory and a unique a geographical site. A recent study of Jawad Boulas has found the same trend in his discussion of geographical Syria: a tendency to consider it as a whole, a single distinct region; and a tendency to meticulously examine its geographical structure and regard it as a collection of regions. Its author, Nassif Nassar, concluded that Boulas' "oscillation between these two tendencies was not free of a certain confusion and caution despite his apparently settling the issues in favour of the second tendency."

Actually, the Lebanese mountains had never impeded the contacts between the Lebanese coastline and the Syrian interior. Over them, populations have flowed back and forth and settled there, even in sections that are today arid and desolate. Historically, the mountains were hardly ever treated as an autonomous region. During the Ottoman period, for instance, they were divided into different parts, depending on the size and political organization of the vilayets inside Syria. Here again, it is worth quoting Kamal Salibi:

In terms of historical geography, there had always been a territory of special character, between the desert and the Mediterranean coast, which the ancient Greeks were the first call Syria. In this Syrian territory, Lebanon was no more than the name of a small cluster of mountain ridges which geographers in classical and modern times, but not in the intervening centuries, applied by extension to a longer mountain range.

A third school of thought tried to forge a collective Lebanese identity from a purely historical perspective. For those who hold this view, "the sovereignty of Lebanon as a nation-state is not a temporary arrangement or a historical stage." It is claimed that the history of Lebanon as a separate entity began, not in 1920 with its proclamation of Greater Lebanon nor in 1861 with the mutassarifiya, but with the creation of the Imarah during the reign of Fakhr al-Din II. Within the Imarah, an evolving form of political authority has continued without interruption from the early seventeenth century to our own time, giving Lebanon a separate and distinct identity.

In dealing with this school, Sa'adeh was equally uncompromising and ruthless. The Imarah, he wrote, appertained to the age of feudalism when political authority was decided purely along the lines of feudal aspirations. Fakhr al-Din, he added, was a great politician whose penetrating mind understood that Lebanon alone was insufficient to form an independent state, and who tried to extend the borders of his state to the furthest borders of Syria. A recent study by George Houran has found that, in fact, the territories over which Fakhr al-Din exercised his authority extended well beyond the boundaries of contemporary Lebanon. Houran concluded that the real political aspirations of al-Din was the reunification of Greater Syria in its historical sense, and not Lebanon in its present form.

In short, Sa'adeh considered the theories of Lebanese particularism as an exercise in vanity. Its proponents committed their gravest error in failing to distinguish between Lebanon as a "political question" arising for a religious motive and Syria as a "national cause" of a completely different nature. Sa'adeh wrote: Our Social Nationalist ideology is a social thing and the Lebanese entity is a political thing and we do not confuse the two. If utility or political conditions required that the Lebanese entity needed to become an actual, physical entity, the question from this aspect remains a purely political one and there is no justification to turn it into a national issue. Because of this, those who consider the Social Nationalist Party [Sa'adeh's party] a party that exists solely to demand Syrian unity err or misunderstand its cause. Those who try to panic the ultras among the Lebanese by saying that the party wants to annex Lebanon to Syria are deliberately making false propaganda.

Actually, Sa'adeh respected the political entity of Lebanon and understood its real issues. But he did not want the country to develop into a self-indulgent fortress, isolated from the rest of Syria. In one of his memorable speeches, he said: "What do the Lebanese want of their entity? Is it to have light themselves while the surrounding region can remain enshrouded in darkness? If there is light in Lebanon, it is only to be expected that this light should spread itself out throughout the whole of natural Syria. Could we accept that we in Lebanon could have light without all compatriots in our nation having a share in it." Sa'adeh tried in vain to get this message across. At one stage, he said that his real aim was Syrian unity and not the dismemberment of the Lebanese state. But few understood what he was saying and actually thought he was contradicting himself. He meant that any union between Lebanon and Syria must be preceded by a program of intense national education to overcome the existing psychological barriers. Such education would have to go further than merely pointing out the kind of problems and contradictions that prevailed in Lebanon. It had to consist of making the Lebanese more aware of the national question and their stake in it. Inevitably, this would lead to Lebanon's dissolution as a separate political entity, but its re-incorporation into Syria would not be a question of merger or annexation, but one of genuine unity.