Identity and Peoples in History Speculating on Ancient Mediterranean Mysteries

We are familiar with a philo-­‐Semitic disposition characterizing a number of communities, including Phoenicians/Lebanese, Kabyles/Berbers, and Ismailis/Druze, raising the question of a historical foundation binding them all together. The ethnic threads began in the Galilee and Mount Lebanon and later conceivably wound themselves back there in the persona of Al-­‐Muwahiddun [Unitarian] Druze. While DNA testing is a fascinating methodology to verify the similarity or identity of a shared gene pool among ostensibly disparate peoples, we will primarily pursue our inquiry using conventional historical materials, without however—at the end—avoiding the clues offered by modern science. Our thesis seeks to substantiate an intuition, a reading of the contours of tales emanating from the eastern Mediterranean basin, the Levantine area, to Africa and Egypt, and returning to Israel and Lebanon. The story unfolds with ancient biblical tribes of Israel in the north of their country mixing with, or becoming Lebanese Phoenicians, travelling to North Africa—Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya in particular— assimilating among Kabyle Berbers, later fusing with Shi'a Ismailis in the Maghreb, who would then migrate to Egypt, and during the Fatimid period evolve as the Druze. The latter would later flee Egypt and return to Lebanon—the place where their (biological) ancestors had once dwelt. The original core group was composed of Hebrews/Jews, toward whom various communities evince affinity and identity today with the Jewish people and the state of Israel. Evidence from friends and acquaintances aroused my historical inquiry across continents and time-­‐periods, offering a notion of the enigma of solidarity at hand. In recent years, I was privy to some startling personal disclosures. A young Lebanese woman divulged that in the cedars mountain are the original Israelites; a Kabyle from Algeria revealed the tale of four tribes, one being his own, claiming Jewish identity and that half the members of his family were Jewish; a friend from the Druze village Dalyat al-­‐Carmel in Israel declared the Druze to be the true Jews. Could these self-­‐revelations be sound oral evidence for an ancient bond among seemingly disparate peoples—people bound at the source to the Jewish people? Lebanese Phoenicians/Semites