Volume 42, Number 11 · June 22, 1995
The Rebirth of Beirut
By Peter Partner
Beirut was never one of the great Arab cities; as a historic center it could never have competed even with such a city as Aleppo, still less with Damascus and Cairo. But for almost thirty years after the end of the Second World War, which was also the first period of Lebanese independence, it was a city with its own brash charm. In a manner that still managed to beguile the visitor, it mixed the French provincialism inherited from the earlier French colonial mandate with the cosmopolitanism of new hotels, nightclubs, banks, and a casino put up by entrepreneurs without any urban plan in mind. Its natural setting, as a little port flanked on two sides by terraced hills, one of which led to the Cedars of Lebanon, was Mediterranean in a way that could recall Naples, though that is perhaps too grand a comparison. Some of the smaller ports of Sicily also come to mind. The large westernized element among Beirut's businessmen and intellectuals reinforced the impression of a town only lightly Middle Eastern.
Feature, 6156 words
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