Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Levantine recipes. This page provides links to all the Levantine recipes presented on this site, with 113 recipes in total.

These recipes, for the major part, originate in the Levant. Otherwise they are fusion recipes with major Levantine influences.

The Levant is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of West Asia and core territory of the political term Middle East. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is equivalent to Cyprus and a stretch of land bordering the Mediterranean Sea in western Asia: i.e. the historical region of Syria ('Greater Syria'), which includes present-day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Palestinian territories and most of Turkey southwest of the middle Euphrates. Its overwhelming characteristic is that it represents the land bridge between Africa and Eurasia. In its widest historical sense, the Levant included all of the Eastern Mediterranean with its islands; that is, it included all of the countries along the Eastern Mediterranean shores, extending from Greece in Southern Europe to Cyrenaica, Eastern Libya in Northern Africa.

In the 13th and 14th centuries, the term levante was used for Italian maritime commerce in the Eastern Mediterranean, including Greece, Anatolia, Syria-Palestine, and Egypt, that is, the lands east of Venice. Eventually the term was restricted to the Muslim countries of Syria-Palestine and Egypt. The term entered English in the late 15th century from French. It derives from the Italian levante, meaning 'rising', implying the rising of the Sun in the east, and is broadly equivalent to the term al-Mashriq (Arabic: ٱلْمَشْرِق, [ʔal.maʃ.riq]), meaning 'the eastern place, where the Sun rises'.

In 1581, England set up the Levant Company to trade with the Ottoman Empire. The name Levant States was used to refer to the French mandate over Syria and Lebanon after World War I. This is probably the reason why the term Levant has come to be used more specifically to refer to modern Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, and the island of Cyprus. Some scholars mistakenly believed that it derives from the name of Lebanon. Today the term is often used in conjunction with prehistoric or ancient historical references. It has the same meaning as 'Syria-Palestine' or Ash-Shaam (Arabic: ٱلشَّام, /ʔaʃ.ʃaːm/), the area that is bounded by the Taurus Mountains of Turkey in the north, the Mediterranean Sea in the west, the north Arabian Desert and Mesopotamia in the east, and Sinai in the south (which can be fully included or not). Typically, it does not include Anatolia (also known as Asia Minor), the Caucasus Mountains, or any part of the Arabian Peninsula proper. Cilicia (in Asia Minor) and the Sinai Peninsula (Asian Egypt) are sometimes included.

As a name for the contemporary region, several dictionaries consider Levant to be archaic today. Both the noun Levant and the adjective Levantine are now commonly used to describe the ancient and modern culture area formerly called Syro-Palestinian or Biblical: archaeologists now speak of the Levant and of Levantine archaeology; food scholars speak of Levantine cuisine; and the Latin Christians of the Levant continue to be called Levantine Christians.

The term Levant appears in English in 1497, and originally meant 'the East' or 'Mediterranean lands east of Italy'. It is borrowed from the French levant 'rising', referring to the rising of the sun in the east, or the point where the sun rises. The phrase is ultimately from the Latin word levare, meaning 'lift, raise'. Similar etymologies are found in Greek Ἀνατολή Anatolē (cf. Anatolia 'the direction of sunrise'), in Germanic Morgenland (lit. 'morning land'), in Italian (as in Riviera di Levante, the portion of the Liguria coast east of Genoa), in Hungarian Kelet ('east'), in Spanish and Catalan Levante and Llevant, ('the place of rising'), and in Hebrew מִזְרָח mizraḥ ('east'). Most notably, 'Orient' and its Latin source oriens meaning 'east', is literally 'rising', deriving from Latin orior 'rise'.

The notion of the Levant has undergone a dynamic process of historical evolution in usage, meaning, and understanding. While the term 'Levantine' originally referred to the European residents of the eastern Mediterranean region, it later came to refer to regional 'native' and 'minority' groups.

The term became current in English in the 16th century, along with the first English merchant adventurers in the region; English ships appeared in the Mediterranean in the 1570s, and the English merchant company signed its agreement ('capitulations') with the Ottoman Sultan in 1579. The English Levant Company was founded in 1581 to trade with the Ottoman Empire, and in 1670 the French Compagnie du Levant was founded for the same purpose. At this time, the Far East was known as the 'Upper Levant'.

The Countries in the Levant

Arms	Flag	Name of Territory	Capital	Name in Official Language(s)
		Akrotiri and Dhekelia	Episkopi	Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia
		Cyprus	Nicosia	Κυπριακή Δημοκρατία (Greek)/Kıbrıs Cumhuriyeti (Turkish)
		Israel	Jerusalem	מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל/دَوْلَة إِسْرَائِيل
		Jordan	Amman	المملكة الأردنية الهاشمية (Arabic: al-Mamlakah al-ʾUrdunniyah al-Hāshimiyah)
		Lebanon	Beiruit	الجمهورية اللبنانية (Arabic: al-Jumhūrīyah al-Lubnānīyah)
		Northern Cyprus (Unrecognised)	North Nicosia	Kuzey Kıbrıs Türk Cumhuriyeti (Turkish)
		Palestine	Ramallah	دولة فلسطين (Arabic: Dawlat Filasṭīn)
		Syria	Damascus	الجمهورية العربية السورية (Arabic: al-Jumhūriyya al-ʿArabiyya as-Sūriya)
		Hatay Province (Turkey)	Ankara	Türkiye Cumhuriyeti