Note on Transliteration; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Who Were the Phoenicians?; National Identities in the Arab Middle East; Theorizing Lebanese Nationalism?; The French Colonial Idea; Chapter I: First Buds: 1860-1918; Chapter II: Before and After the War; Chapter III: The Mandate Years; Chapter IV: Three Phoenician Currents; Chapter V: The Adversaries; Chapter VI: Chronicle of a Dream and Disillusionment; Conclusion: Arabs, Phoenicians and What Lies Between; Bibliography; Index;

This study follows the social, intellectual and political development of the Phoenician myth of origin in Lebanon from the middle of the 19th century to the end of the 20th. Asher Kaufman demonstrates the role played by the lay, liberal Syrian-Lebanese who resided in Beirut, Alexandria and America towards the end of the 19th century in the birth and dissemination of this myth. Kaufman investigates the crucial place Phoenicianism occupied in the formation of Greater Lebanon in 1920. He also explores the way the Jesuit Order and the French authorities propagated this myth during the mandate year