Governing summer in Mount Lebanon: Istiyaf, tourism, and mobility in the interwar Arab East

ABSTRACT

This article examines the lattice of dynamics, networks, and perceptions underpinning the blanket label of ‘tourism’ in Lebanon and the broader Arab East during the interwar (mandate) era. It analyses guidebooks, pamphlets, government correspondence and travelogues published in the Middle East and Europe. Hoteliers, tour operators, merchants, and journalists distinguished between siyaha (tourism) and istiyaf (‘summering’) to create different tourist publics – one western, the other regional Arab. Separate guidebooks were written for each, pinpointing different sites of interest, cuisines, and leisure destinations, based on assumed cultural attributes, travel practices, and desires. While historiography argues that Europeans created mass tourism as an industry, istiyaf was rooted in a legacy of indigenous travel practices and economies. By drawing Arab travellers to Mount Lebanon’s village resorts, istiyaf enabled residents to produce, narrate, and exhibit Lebanon–not just aesthetically or geographically, but also climatologically and gastronomically. Different classes and genders could claim ownership of this new Lebanon. Making interwar Lebanon a regional leisure destination cemented its connection to new neighbours while simultaneously distinguishing it from them. This research thus reveals how tourism, leisure, and mobility both undergirded and undermined nation and state-building efforts in these germinal postwar decades of the Middle East.

KEYWORDS:

• Tourism
• Mount Lebanon
• Middle East
• leisure
• mobility
• interwar

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers of Journal of Tourism History for their insightful feedback on this article. Further, for their time and valuable suggestions I am grateful to Andrew Arsan, Carol Fadda, Tamara Fernando, Victoria Googasian, Sami Hermez, Mekarem El-Jamal, Trish Kahle, Dina Rizk Khoury, Janina Santer, Sherene Seikaly, and Karine Walther.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Untitled article, al-Sayf fi Lubnan (1934).

2 I borrow this apt phrase from Sherene Seikaly, Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015).

3 Singular masyaf, a summer village resort.

4 When possible, I use the terms siyaha, istiyaf, masyaf, and mustafin to adhere as closely to the original meaning as it appears in the sources. To make the differences accessible to the reader, I use siyaha to denote western leisure travel as it was defined at the time; istiyaf to describe Arab summer leisure travel; and the English ‘tourism’ as an umbrella term that includes both siyaha and istiyaf.

5 John Pudney, The Thomas Cook Story (London: T. Firm, 1953). Hasan Ali Polat and Aytuğ Arslan, ‘The Rise of Popular Tourism in the Holy Land: Thomas Cook and John Mason Cook’s Enterprise Skills that Shaped the Travel Industry’, Tourism Management 75 (2019): 231–44; Ussama Makdisi, ‘The “Rediscovery” of Baalbek’, in Baalbek: Image and Monument, ed. Thomas Scheffler Helene Sader, and Angelika Neuwirth (Beirut: Orient Institut der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, 1998), 137–56.

6 Rudy Koshar, ‘“What Ought to be Seen”: Guidebooks and National Identities in Modern Germany and Europe’, Journal of Contemporary History 33, no. 3 (1998): 323–40.

7 See Samir Kassir, Beirut, trans. M.B. Debevoise (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), and Fawwaz Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon (London: Pluto Press, 2007). Richard Alouche would claim that Europeans invented villégiature in the late 1880s–see his Evolution d’un centre de villégiature au Liban (Broummana) (Beirut: Dar el-Machreq, 1970). The likening of Mount Lebanon to Switzerland was first reported by two Ottoman officials, Rafiq al-Tamimi and Mohamad Bahjat in Wilayat Bayrut (Beirut: Matba‘at al-wilaya, 1917, 14), before re-appearing in 1919 in La Revue Phénicienne. The phrase would be preserved in the title of Jacques Tabet’s book, Pour faire le Liban la Suisse du Levant (Paris: n.p., 1924).

8 Work redressing this lacuna includes Andrea L. Stanton, ‘Locating “Palestine’s Summer Residence”: Mandate-Era Tourism and National Identity’, Journal of Palestine Studies XLVII, no. 2 (Winter 2018): 44–62; Jasmin Daam, Tourist Transformations: The Emergence of Nation-States in the Arab Eastern Mediterranean, 1920s-1930s (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2023); and the first chapter of Zeina Maasri’s Cosmopolitan Radicalism: The Visual Politics of Beirut’s Global Sixties (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). Maasri’s work moreover is an excellent example of how the myth of Lebanon’s so-called ‘Golden Age’ of the 1960s as the heyday of tourism can be unpacked for the untold histories and communities it marginalises and for the political tensions it masks.

9 See Nadine Meouchy and Peter Sluglett, eds., The British and French Mandates in Comparative Perspective (Leiden: Brill, 2004); Cyrus Schayegh and Andrew Arsan, eds., Routledge Handbook of the History of the Middle East Mandates (London: Routledge, 2015); and Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon.

10 Asher Kaufman, Reviving Phoenicia: The Search for Identity in Lebanon (London: Bloomsbury, 2004); Michelle Hartman and Alessandro Olsaretti, ‘“The First Boat and the First Oar”: Inventions of Lebanon in the Writings of Michel Chiha’, Radical History Review 86 (March 2003): 37–65.

11 Kaufman, Reviving Phoenicia, 174.

12 Israel Gershoni and Paul Jankowski, Egypt, Islam, and the Arabs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Thomas Philipp, The Syrians in Egypt, 1725–1975 (Stuttgart: Franz Zteiner, 1985).

13 Nadya Sbaiti, ‘“A Massacre Without Precedent”: Pedagogical Constituencies and Communities of Knowledge in Mandate Lebanon’, in Routledge Handbook of the History of the Middle East Mandates, 321–35.

14 Albert Hourani, ‘Ideologies of the Mountain and the City’, in Essays on the Crisis in Lebanon, ed. Roger Owen (London: Ithaca Press, 1976), 33–41.

15 As opposed to a pilgrim or a missionary.

16 Cook’s Travellers Gazette, 1902–1934. Thomas Cook Archive, Peterborough, UK.

17 John Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies (London: Sage Publications, 1990).

18 See, for example, Cook’s Tourist Handbook for Palestine and Syria (London: Thos. Cook & Son, 1911), 239.

19 T. Cook & Son, The Traveller’s Handbook for Palestine and Syria (London: Simpkin Marshall, 1924), 390–91.

20 When European guidebooks begin featuring the ‘summer resort’ by the mid-1920s, it was as a spatial/organisational concept, not a picturesque village where local urbanites sought refuge. The idea of a concretely demarcated leisure space appealed to tour operators like Cook, who sought established destinations and points of interests, and pre-arranged contractual agreements with hotel owners, for example.

21 See for example, Tamimi and Bahjat, Wilayet Bayrut, vol. 2.

22 Akram Fouad Khater, Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870–1920 (University of California Press, 2001); Jonas Frykman and Ovar Löfgren, Culture Builders: A Historical Anthropology of Middle Class Life, trans. Alan Cozier (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987), especially chapter two.

23 Visitors from Syria, Transjordan, and even Iran would later also be mentioned, but the intended mustaf consumer-visitor demographic was always clearly indicated as Egypt, Iraq, and Palestine. The assumption was that they were Arab, though this was not always borne out on the ground. See Jasmin Daam, Tourist Transformations.

24 Much of the Arab middle and upper classes around the region would have been educated in French and English first, Arabic second (or last). The cultural capital afforded by language of instruction cemented their claims to class membership. There were relatively fewer guidebooks in Arabic.

25 Wadi‘ Abi Fadel, Dalil Lubnan (Cairo: Matba‘at al-Ma’arif, 1909). Fouad Debbas Collection, Sursock Museum Library.

26 George Haddad, Beirut, Byblos, and Mt Lebanon: Description, History, and Touristic Guide (Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1952).

27 Abdallah Zehil, Petit Guide Historique de la Palestine, la Syrie, et l‘Egypte (Imprimerie E. Maurin, 1929). Abdallah Zehil was the agent for the Fabreline steamship company and a former car garage owner who decided to contribute his own guidebook. Also see Lubnan Bilad al-Arz (n.p., 1930).

28 Farid Fuleihan, ‘Lebanon as a Summer Resort’. Unpublished BA thesis, American University of Beirut, 1929, 53.

29 Dalil Sharikat Masayef Lubnan (Egypt: al-Muqtataf Press, 1924).

30 Lebanon, the Ideal Summer Resort (Beirut: Imprimerie Tabbara, 1925) was a complimentary guide for visitors from Iraq, issued by the Société du Villégiature du Mont Liban. The guide listed branches in Beirut, Damascus, Haifa, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Port Said, and Khartoum. Guide de la Sociéte du Villégiature du Mont Liban (Cairo: Parladi, 1925), was distributed free in Egypt, Sudan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon.

31 ‘Le tourisme en Syrie’, Les Echos, October 18, 1929, 1.

32 Gabriel Menassa, Plan de reconstruction de l’économie Libanaise et de réforme de l’état (Beyrouth: Éditions de la Société Libanaise d’économie politique, 1948), in particular 62, 129, 224, 306.

33 Maasri, Cosmopolitan Radicalism, 31–35.

34 Daam, Tourist Transformations, chapters two and three.

35 Report from Alfred Sursock to Henri Gouraud, ‘Tourisme au Liban et en Syrie’, October 1921, 1–2. Sursock Family Archive, Beirut.

36 Nadya Sbaiti, ‘“A Massacre Without Precedent”’; Asher Kaufman, ‘Too much French, But Swell Exhibit: Representing Lebanon at the New York World’s Fair, 1939–1940’, British Journal of Middle East Studies 35, no. 1 (April 2008): 65.

37 For example, Société de Villégiature du Mont Liban, Société d’Encouragement du Tourisme, and Maktabat al-siyaha wa al-istiyaf.

38 Shereen Khairallah, Railways in the Middle East, 1856–1948: Political and Economic Background (Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1991), 143.

39 This group was modeled on the Touring Club de France. Simon Jackson indicates the French mandate built 8,400 km of roads between 1919 and 1939. Jackson, ‘Personal Connections and Regional Networks: Cross-Border Ford Automobile Distribution in French Mandate Syria’, in Regimes of Mobility: Border and State Formation in the Interwar Middle East, 1918-1946, eds. Jordi Tejel and Ramazan Hakki Öztan (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University press, 2022), 131.

40 Receipt from Charles Corm to Isabella Boustros, October 29, 1929, Sursock Family Archive. See also Jackson, ‘Personal Connections and Regional Networks’.

41 Kristen Monroe, ‘Automobility and Citizenship in Interwar Lebanon’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 34, no. 3 (2014): 523.

42 ‘Civil improvements in the Lebanon – Scheme to Attract Tourists’, Palestine Post, December 26, 1932, quoted in Stanton, 55 fn40. It also explains why most of the roadwork was concentrated on Beirut and Mount Lebanon, and on connecting the two. The rest of the country was given but cursory infrastructure, a negligence that would last well into the 1970s in some parts.

43 See César Jaquier, ‘Motor Cars and Transdesert Traffic: Channeling Mobilities between Iraq and Syria, 1923–1930’, in Regimes of Mobility, 228, 231–33; Samuel Dolbee, ‘Borders, Disease, and Territoriality in the Post-Ottoman Middle East’, in Regimes of Mobility, 205–227, and Toufoul Abou-Hodeib, ‘Involuntary History: Writing Levantines into the Nation’, Contemporary Levant 5, no. 1 (2020): 49–50.

44 ‘Busses make trips over Syrian Desert’, Sunday Morning, September 6, 1925; ‘The Beyrouth-Baghdad Route’, unknown paper, November 20, 1924. The Nairn Transport Company Collection, Box 1, Middle East Center Archive, St. Antony’s College, Oxford. See also Jaquier, ‘Motor Cars and Transdesert Traffic’, 230.

45 Fuleihan, ‘Lebanon as a Summer Resort’, 31–34.

46 E.S. Stevens, Cedars, Saints, and Sinners in Syria (n.p. 1926); Jaquier, ‘Motor Cars and Transdesert Traffic’, 230. The easing of visa and customs regulations also applied at the port and travellers' safety ensured. See Musa Krayyem, Ta’theerat al-siyaha (Sao Paolo, n.p., 1928), 247–49.

47 Ina Aurelia Issa, Tourism in Lebanon, Dissonance Between Idealism and Reality (VDM Verlag, 2009), 20–21.

48 ‘Untitled’, al-Sayf fi Lubnan, May 29, 1934.

49 ‘“Inayat al-hukuma al-lubnaniyya bi rahat al-mustafin”, al-Sayf fi Lubnan, May 29, 1934.

50 Jaquier, “Motor Cars and Transdesert Traffic”, 246.

51 ‘Sayarat al-jabal wa al-‘amal’, illustration in al-Ma‘rad, April 5, 1931. Cited in Monroe, ‘Automobility and Citizenship’, 523.

52 ‘Telephone between Egypt and Lebanon’, May 22, 1934; ‘Egyptian Radio’, June 12, 1934; ‘The telephone connects Iraq to Lebanon’. 12 June 1934, all in al-Sayf fi Lubnan.

53 ‘Untitled’, al-Sayf fi Lubnan, May 29, 1934; ‘Untitled’, al-Sayf fi Lubnan, June 12, 1934, and July 3, 1934.

54 Sursock letter to Gouraud; André Geiger, Syrie et Liban (Grénoble: Éditions J. Rey, 1932), 12.

55 The term loqanda is likely the Arabisation of the Italian locanda. Al-Barq, June 20, 1922; Lisan al-Ḥal, March 5, 1928; al-Bayraq, July 26, 1932; al-Bayraq, July 16, 1932.

56 ‘Jibal Lubnan masyaf ‘Iraq al-tabi‘i’, al-Bayraq, July 16, 1932; Stanton, ‘Palestine’s Summer Residence’; ‘Lubnan, masyaf al-sharq’, al-Sayf fi Lubnan, May 13, 1934.

57 See issues of al-Ma`rad; La Revue du Liban; al-Makshuf; al-Bayraq; al-Sayf fi Lubnan.

58 ‘Inayat al-hukuma al-lubnaniyya bi rahat al-mustafin’, al-Sayf fi Lubnan, May 29, 1934.

59 Diana ‘Abbani, ‘Musique et Société au temps de la Nahḍa à Beyrouth (fin XIXe siècle-1938)’ (PhD diss., Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2018).

60 ‘Al-malahi fi Lubnan’, al-Sayf fi Lubnan, June 19, 1934.

61 Kamal Salibi, Bhamdoun: Historical Portrait of a Lebanese Mountain Village (Oxford: Center for Lebanese Studies, 1997), 18–19.

62 ‘Ma‘lumat ‘amma li al-mustafin’, al-Sayf fi Lubnan, June 25, 1934; Guide to Lebanon, 1937, Lebanese Ministry of Tourism archive.

63 Au Pays des Cédres (Beirut: n.p, 1931), and Le Liban, Pays de Tourism et de Villégiature (Beirut, n.p., 1935). Fouad Debbas Collection, Sursock Museum Library.

64 Stanton, ‘Locating ‘Palestine’s Summer Residence’, 44–46.

65 ‘Al-fanadiq wa al taftish al-suhhi ‘alayha’, al-Sayf fi Lubnan, June 26, 1934.

66 The villages were: ‘‘Abay, ‘Ainab, ‘Ain Zhalta, ‘Aley, ‘Araya, Ba‘albek, Bsharri, Beit Mery, Beiteddine, Bhamdoun, Bijnis, Bhamdoun Mahatta, Bikfayya, Brummana, Chweir, Chweit, Dhour Shweir, Deir Qamar, Ehden, Falugha, Ghazir, Hammana, Hasroun, Jizzine, Qolei‘at, Kfour, Khinshara, Mreijat, Roum, Sofar, Souk al-Gharb, and Zahle’. ‘Ma‘lumat ‘amma lil mustafin,’ al-Sayf fi Lubnan, June 25, 1934. Interestingly, the largely Christian village of Jizzine – in south Lebanon – is included here. By 1954, there would be 58 centres d’estivage, designated and regulated by governmental decree according to specific geographic and climatological attributes. Maasri, Cosmopolitan Radicalism, 52–54.

67 Al-Sayf fi Lubnan, ‘Hasroun, ard al-basateen,’ June 5, 1934.

68 Al-Sayf fi Lubnan, May 29, 1934.

69 ‘Lubnan Masyaf al-Sharq’, ‘Hammana’, ‘Dayr al-Qamar’, all in al-Sayf fi Lubnan, May 13, 1934.

70 Untitled postcards from the archive of the Lebanese Ministry of Tourism.

71 ‘Dhour Shweir’, al-Sayf fi Lubnan, May 13, 1934.

72 This would continue to unfold in the post-independence era, as for example, municipalities began to standardise hotel prices. The central government determined which villages were designated masayif, and afforded political and economic privileges and powers to municipal authorities accordingly. Mona Harb, ‘Much Ado About Nothing? Municipalities in 1950s Lebanon’, paper presented at the workshop, ‘State Building, Economic Development and Social Mobilization in Lebanon, 1943–1958’, Beirut, June 27–28, 2015.

73 Kamal Salibi, Bhamdoun, 18–19.

74 Al-Ma‘rad, August 27, 1934; Al-Ma`rad, September 1935 issue; ‘Dhour Shweir’, al-Sayf fi Lubnan, May 13, 1934. Only the mountain resorts participated in this; a Miss Beirut pageant would not be held until 1937.

75 Holly Schissler, ‘Beauty is Nothing to be Ashamed Of: Beauty Contests as Tools of Women’s Liberation in Early Republican Turkey’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24, no. 1 (2004): 108–9. In Turkey and Lebanon, the contestants themselves were marriageable young women drawn from ‘good families’ and possessing a certain level of education and ‘culture’.

76 ‘Madaris wa al-talaba’, and ‘Nashid Lubnan’, both May 13, 1934; ‘Sukkan Lubnan’, and ‘Hukumat Lubnan: tashkilat idaratihi’, both May 22, 1934, ‘Al-Jumhuriyya al-Lubnaniyya’, May 29, 1934. All in al-Sayf fi Lubnan.

77 Murray’s 1903 Handbook for Travellers in Syria and Palestine; Cooks’ 1922 Guide; Au Pays des Cèdres (Beirut: n.p, 1931); Cook’s Traveller’s Gazette ran many ads for what it considered quality schools, geared to British missionaries, officials, and their families moving to the Middle East.

78 Al-Ma‘rad and al-Makshuf were two key Lebanese publications that ran these features during the 1930s.

79 ‘Nabatiyya’, al-Sayf fi Lubnan, July 31, 1934.

80 ‘Lubnan: mu’tamar sharqi `am’, al-Sayf fi Lubnan, July 31, 1934.

81 ‘Madrasat al-Sanaya‘‘, al-Sayf fi Lubnan, May 13, 1934.

82 Abou Hodeib, ‘Involuntary History’, 46.

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Nadya Sbaiti

Nadya Sbaiti is Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Georgetown University in Qatar.