Kamal Salibi

Kamal Suleiman Salibi (Arabic كمال الصليبي, DMG Kamāl aṣ - Salibi; born May 2, 1929 in Beirut, † September 1, 2011 ) was a Lebanese historian.

Life

Salibi comes from a Christian Lebanese family. He studied history in Beirut, received his doctorate in London in 1953 and eventually became Professor of History and Archaeology at the American University in Beirut. Until 2004 he was Director of the Royal Jordanian Institute for Interfaith Studies in Amman.

Jerusalem thesis

In addition to numerous publications on historical default themes among all was his work " The Bible came from the land of Asir " for active attention and sharp criticism. In it, he considers it possible that the ancient Jerusalem in the Old Testament in the period before the Babylonian Exile ( 586-537 BC), not in the land of Canaan (now Israel ) or in today belonging to the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, but instead in the southwestern Arabian region of Asir (today Saudi Arabia) might be doing wrong. Thither Moses had once led the Hebrews out of Egyptian bondage and there Solomon had built the temple in al - Sarim ( Old Jerusalem). (Al- Sarim or LSRM was an Arabized sound shift / metathesis of RSLM or Jerusalem. ) Only after the Jewish liberation from the Babylonian captivity, a New Jerusalem in Palestine had been built to replace the destroyed and dilapidated Old Jerusalem in Asir.

Salibi, based his theories mainly to his studies of place names. In Asir he found to his specifications not only Western Arabic place names and geographical names, but mainly Canaanite and Aramaic and Hebrew place names that correspond to the Old Testament. Transferred to West Arabia fit after Salibis considers 80 % of the 700 distances and landscape descriptions of biblical places with each other much better than the interpretation based on the geography of Palestine. The magazine Der Spiegel in 1985 dealt extensively with this theory.

In the professional world Salibis came thesis unanimous rejection. In addition to serious methodological errors in the field of linguistic theories as well as the non-observance of archeology was criticized.

Salibi on the Quran

Salibi, even Christ, has repeatedly assured that it is not his to a religious- political content revaluation claims or even to a new interpretation of the Bible, only to long-overdue historical- geographic adjustments in light of overwhelming new knowledge.

According Salibis conclusions and the Koran is reframe. He was neither a mutilated form of the Bible, as Non Muslims claim, nor later, Mohammed revealed by God correction thereof, as Muslims believe, but a time- parallel Western Arabic version of the Hebrew -Aramaic Old Testament, so Salibi.

Writings

• Maronite Historians of mediæval Lebanon, with a preface by Bernard Lewis, American University of Beirut, Beirut 1959.
• The Modern History of Lebanon .. IB Tauris, London / New York 1993. ISBN 1-85043-610- X.
• Syria under Islam - Empire on trial, 634 - 1097th Caravan Books, Delmar NY 1977 ISBN. 0-88206-013-9.
• A House of Many Mansions - The History of Lebanon Reconsidered. I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, London 1993. ISBN 1-85043-091-8.

• The Bible came from the land of Asir. Reinbek (Hamburg) 1985 ISBN. 3-498061798.
• The Conspiracy of Jerusalem. Goldmann, Munich 1993. ISBN 3-442-12495-6.