Kamal Salibi

Kamal Suleiman Salibi (Arabic كمال سليمان الصليبي) (born in Beirut, [1929] ) is Emeritus Professor at the American University of Beirut (AUB), Department of History and Archaeology, and Honorary President (formerly, founding Director) of the [http://www.riifs.org/ Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies] in Amman, Jordan.

A Protestant from the village of Bhamdoun (Lebanon), he completed his secondary education at the Prep School in Beirut (now [http://www.ic.edu.lb/ International College] ), and his BA in History and Political Science from the AUB, before moving to the School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS (University of London) where he earned his PhD under the supervision of Professor Bernard Lewis. His dissertation was subsequently published under the title "Maronite Historians of Mediaeval Lebanon".

After his graduation from SOAS, Salibi joined AUB first as bibliographer of the Arab Studies Program and then as a professor in the department of History and Archaeology where he joined other famous historians such as Nicholas Ziadeh and Zein Zein. In 1965, he published "The Modern History of Lebanon", which subsequently appeared in Arabic, Russian and French translations. Salibi eventually became one of the pillars of the history department, mentoring, training and supervising students such as Abdul-Rahim Abu-Husayn, a known expert in Ottoman history.

In the summer of 1982, during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Salibi was finalizing his book, "The Bible Came from Arabia", which a German publisher brought out in German translation at the same time as the original English version was published in London. Salibi subsequently wrote other works on biblical subjects using the same etymological and geographic methodology. Meanwhile, he produced other books, notably "A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered" (1988) and "The Modern History of Jordan" (1993).

In 1994, Salibi helped found the [http://www.riifs.org/ Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies] in Amman, Jordan, of which he became full-time director from 1997 until 2004, following his retirement from AUB. Since then, he has been associated as a consultant with the [http://www.druzeheritage.org/ Druze Heritage Foundation] .

Salibi's theory that the Old Testament refers to events in West Arabia

Kamal Salibi has written three books advocating the controversial "Israel in Arabia" theory. In this view, the placenames of the Hebrew Bible actually allude to places in southwest Arabia; many of them were later reinterpreted to refer to places in Palestine where the Hasmonean kingdom was established by Simon Maccabaeus in the second century BC.

The (literally) central identification of the theory is that the geographical feature referred to as הירדן, the “Jordan”, which is usually taken to refer to the Jordan River, although never actually described as a “river” in the Hebrew text, actually means the great West Arabian Escarpment, the Sarawat Mountains. The area of ancient Israel is then identified with the land on either side of the southern section of the escarpment that is, the southern Hejaz and 'Asir, from Ta’if down to the border with Yemen. Salibi finds hundreds of correspondences between place-names in the Bible and towns and villages still extant in this area.

It is claimed that Salibi was able in this book to resolve many mysteries and contradictions in the modern view of the history of pre-Islamic Semitic groups etc. etc.)

Works

* "Maronite Historians of Mediaeval Lebanon", Beirut, AUB Oriental Series 34, 1959
* "The Modern History of Lebanon", London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1965
* "Crossroads to Civil War, Lebanon 1958-1976", Beirut, Caravan Books, 1976
* "Syria under Islam: Empire on Trial 634-1097", Beirut, Caravan Books, 1977
* "A History of Arabia", Beirut, Caravan Books, 1980
* "The Bible Came from Arabia", London, Jonathan Cape, 1985
* "Secrets of the Bible People", London, Saqi Books, 1988
* "Who Was Jesus?: Conspiracy in Jerusalem", London, I.B. Tauris, 1988
* "A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered", [London, [I.B. Tauris] , 1988
* "The Historicity of Biblical Israel", London, NABU Publications, 1998
* "The Modern History of Jordan", London, I.B. Tauris, 1993

External links

* http://www.cwo.com/~thowoods/salibi.htm more information and pictures of Asir.
* Phillip C. Hammond's 1990 [http://www.cwo.com/~thowoods/hammond.htm Review] of "The Bible Came from Arabia", in The International Journal of Middle East Studies (August, 1990)
* http://baheyeldin.com/science/kamal-salibi-and-the-israel-from-yemen-theory.html gives lots of links.

References on his theory of Jewish history

Al-Ahram weekly, a major Egyptian publication, briefly alluded to it [http://web.archive.org/web/20000829082353/http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/1998/383/pal1.htm]

Some critical reviews:

*Beeston, A.F.L., Review of "The Bible Came from Arabia", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1988, pp. 389-93)
*Cardinal, P., "La Bible et L'Arabie", Revue d'études Palestiniennes vol. 7 No. 26 (winter 1988) pp. 63-70
*Dahlberg, Bruce, "Comments" in the Ancient Near East Digest, 1994.
*Parfitt, Tudor, “The hijacking of Israel”, The Sunday Times (London) 27 October 1985
*Towner, W. Sibley, Review of "The Bible Came from Arabia", Middle East Journal 1988, 42 pp. 511-513

Supportive review:

*Salamé-Sarkis, H., "Et si la Bible venait d'Arabie?", Berytus, Beirut 1985 XXXIII pp. 143-165

Books based on the “Bible from Arabia” theory:

*Leeman, Bernard. “Queen of Sheba and Biblical Scholarship”, Queensland Academic Press, 2005; relates Salibi’s theory to the Kebra Nagast
*Berry, Steve. “The Alexandria Link” Hodder & Stoughton, 2007; fiction. A thriller using Salibi’s theory as a plot device.