Back from a long break, but still heartbroken about the #BeirutExplosion.

What is the history of Beirut in classical and late antiquity? What impact did it have on Roman, Christendom and Islamic Law?

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Beirut (Lt. Berytus) was a city was settled thousands of years ago, serving as a port for generations of Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans. The Severan dynasty sowed the seeds of Roman jurisprudence, a Semitic tradition which thrived along the Levantine coast of Syria, ...

and which flowed seamlessly into late antique church canon law (Syr. namosa) and medieval Islamic law and jurisprudence (Arab. fiqh).

Its ancient/secular or pagan proponents, Paul of Padua (d. 210), Papinian of Emesa (d. 212) & Ulpian of Tyre (d. 223) were all of Syro-Phoenician extract. They developed a formidable body of case law which fed the imperial Theodosian Code, Syro-Roman Law Book and Justinian Code.

If we are to believe the church historian Eusebius of Caesaria (d. 340 CE) the ancient Phoenician scholar, Sanchuniathon of Berytus (13th C BCE) bemoaned the sexual freedom and matrilineal customs practiced by the goddesses found in Phoenician mythology.

The Law School of Beirut and those in Sidon and Antioch were critical to the running of the Roman-Byzantine Empire. Located on the Syrian coast, students and scholars frequented Beirut from Mediterranean Africa and Europe to study classical Roman law, rhetoric and philosophy.

The main language of instruction was Latin rather than Greek. Although the Law School was destroyed by an earthquake in 551 its jurisprudence paved the way for Islamic Law a century later.

With time Antioch and Beirut became known as the centers of Roman legal education and instruction. Coming from Antioch, the Chalcedonian Christian jurist, John Scholasticus (d. 577), produced the first Digest of Canon Law or Nomocanon.

His Muslim successor, as it were, worked and died in Beirut. Indeed it was he, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Awza‘i (d. 157/774), who established the very fundamentals of Islamic jurisprudence (Arab. usul al-fiqh).

Before it was the 'Paris of the East,' Beirut was the epicenter of juridical power in service of empire. This power fundamentally expressed itself in terms of the law, and intimately linked both Roman, Christian and Muslim societies for centuries to come.

Finally, the Severan dynasty and Beirut typify "male power" in my upcoming book on "female power" in late antique Arabia.

Also, who knew that brown-folk once ruled the Roman Empire!

If you have not already, please donate and help rebuild this currently troubled and historically magnificent city! I am giving through a local Houston non-profit

https://www.futurebeyondcharity.org/