Abstract ID: 3.11600 | Accepted as Poster | Talk/Oral | TBA | TBA

Societies use oronyms to give meaning to and to change landscape (Ex. gr. The change from the Montagne maudite to the Mont Blanc). I aim to show how place names are used a posteriori to give political meaning to heritage landscape.
Qurnat es Sawda is the highest point of Mount Lebanon (3088 m), dominating the Cedars of God and the Qadisha Valley, both world heritage sites. This oronym’s etymology is subject to debate: in Arabic, it means «the black corner», used by goatherds and reported for the first time by Richard Burton in the 1870s. Meanwhile, the Maronite Church affirms that the etymology derives from the Syriac Qorno t’Sohde, «the Martyrs’ peak». In this regard, the oronym would relate to the Mamluk campaign of 1283 and the mass killings of many of the inhabitants, later Arabised to what it is now. This name interpretation, unknown in written sources before the 19th C., is officially condoned by the Maronite Patriarchate. The apparent banality of «the black corner» is transformed and integrated into the holy and Biblical landscape of Lebanon. In this regard, the oronym etymology becomes itself a cornerstone of meaning to a world heritage site legitimising the Maronite vision of Lebanon.

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