BTS 90
2002. 354 pp. English BrochureISBN 978-3-935556-91-0
This book focuses on the development and formation of Lebanese historiography from the middle of the 19th century until present. For this purpose the author analyzes historical works by Lebanese authors reflecting on their home country. Aiming at illustrating and clarifying Lebanese historical self-conception and the issue of a general, national depiction of history, the author examines the relationship between historiography and ideology, between history and identity. The sources used for this work of research range from various historical manuscripts of the last 150 years, academic as well as nonscientific, unpublished historical manuscripts and interviews conducted by the author during the civil war and in the 1990s. This book’s value lies in its capacity to depict the formation and change of Lebanese historiography as a product of Lebanese history itself.
Axel Havemann is a professor at the Department for Islamic Studies at the Free University of Berlin. He studied Islamic and Iranian Studies, Byzantine Studies and History at the Free University of Berlin and attained his Ph.D. in 1983 after having carried out research in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and France.