In Lebanon the first Arabic journal was an annual review, Majmu fawaid li nukhbat afadil which was first published in 1851. [1] The first political, literary, and scientific magazine, the first children's magazine, and the women's magazine in the country were established in the period between 1870 and 1896. [2] These were also the first specialized publications in the Arab world. [2] In 1927 there were 121 magazines in Lebanon. [3] The Lebanese magazines reinforced the improvement and modernization of Arabic literature and liberal thought in the first half of the 20th-century. [4]
As of 2012, there were Arabic language, English language and French language magazines in the country. [5] In 2015 there were 192 political magazines in Lebanon which were 16% of the magazines published the Middle East and North Africa. [6] There are also editions of international magazines, including Marie Claire , in Lebanon. [5]
The following is an incomplete list of current and defunct magazines published in Lebanon.
Ali Ahmad Said Esber, also known by the pen name Adonis or Adunis, is a Syrian poet, essayist and translator. He led a modernist revolution in the second half of the 20th century, "exerting a seismic influence" on Arabic poetry comparable to T.S. Eliot's in the anglophone world.
Butrus al-Bustani was a writer and scholar from present day Lebanon. He was a major figure in the Nahda, which began in Egypt in the late 19th century and spread to the Middle East.
Levantine Arabic, also called Shami, is an Arabic variety spoken in the Levant: in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, and southern Turkey. With over 44 million speakers, Levantine is, alongside Egyptian, one of the two prestige varieties of spoken Arabic comprehensible all over the Arab world.
Ahlam Mosteghanemi, born 13 April 1953, is a notable Algerian writer who is known for being the first Algerian woman to publish fiction in Arabic.
The Nahda, also referred to as the Arab Awakening or Enlightenment, was a cultural movement that flourished in Arab-populated regions of the Ottoman Empire, notably in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Tunisia, during the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century.
Ameen Rihani (Amīn Fāris Anṭūn ar-Rīḥānī), was a Lebanese American writer, intellectual and political activist. He was also a major figure in the mahjar literary movement developed by Arab emigrants in North America, and an early theorist of Arab nationalism. He became an American citizen in 1901.
The Mahjar was a related to Romanticism migrant literary movement started by Arabic-speaking writers who had emigrated to the Americas from Ottoman-ruled Lebanon, Syria and Palestine at the turn of the 20th century and became a movement in the 1910s. Like their predecessors in the Nahda movement, writers of the Mahjar movement were stimulated by their personal encounter with the Western world and participated in the renewal of Arabic literature, hence their proponents being sometimes referred to as writers of the "late Nahda". These writers, in South America as well as the United States, contributed indeed to the development of the Nahda in the early 20th century. Kahlil Gibran is considered to have been the most influential of the "Mahjari poets".
Elia Abu Madi was a Lebanese-born American poet.
Afifa Karam was a Lebanese-American journalist, novelist, and translator. A writer for the New York City-based Arabic-language daily newspaper Al-Hoda, Karam authored three original Arabic novels as well as a number of Arabic translations of novels from English and French. She was an advocate for women's rights in the Mahjar, or Arab diaspora, and of Arab Feminism.
Al Riyadh is a Riyadh-based, pro-government Saudi daily newspaper. Its sister paper was Riyadh Daily that was in circulation between 2003 and 1 January 2004. Al Riyadh is one of the dominant papers in Nejd.
Lisan al-Hal or Lissan ul-Hal was a Lebanese Arabic language daily newspaper established by Khalil Sarkis in 1877 and is the oldest Lebanese publication still published in Lebanon.
Al-Hilal is a monthly Egyptian cultural and literature magazine founded in 1892. It is among the oldest magazines dealing with arts in the Arab world.
Al Amal is a long-running Arabic Lebanese newspaper affiliated with the Kataeb Party. It is published in Arabic and in French on a weekly basis in Beirut, Lebanon.
Khawla S. Al-Kuraya is a Saudi physician and cancer specialist. She is a professor of pathology and directs the King Fahad National Center for Children's Cancer and Research.
Sawt al-Bahrain was a monthly political magazine published in Manama, Bahrain, between 1950 and 1954. It was the first independent publication by the Bahraini intellectuals. The magazine laid the basis for the High Executive Committee which was a cross-sectarian nationalist political movement in Bahrain founded in 1955 and inspired other publications including Al Isha which was a cultural journal.
Shi'r was an avant-garde and modernist monthly literary magazine with a special reference to poetry. The magazine was published in Beirut, Lebanon, between 1957 and 1970 with a three-year interruption. The founders were two leading literary figures: Yusuf al-Khal and Adunis. It was named after Harriet Monroe’s Chicago-based magazine, Poetry.
Al Adab was an Arabic avant-garde existentialist literary print magazine published in Beirut, Lebanon, in the period 1953–2012. It was restarted in 2015 as an online-only publication. Encyclopædia Britannica describes it as one of the leading publications founded in the Arab countries in the latter half of the 20th century. Although the magazine was headquartered in Beirut, it was distributed all over the Arabic-speaking regions.
Al Ustadh was an Arabic satirical, literary and political journal that was established by Abdullah Al Nadim in Cairo, Egypt, and published for eleven months in the period August 1892–June 1893. Although it was a short-lived publication, it played an important role in the development of short story genre in Arabic.
Al Nahla was a weekly political magazine which existed between 1870 and 1880 with one-year interruption. It was first published in Beirut and then in London. The magazine was one of the early examples of private journalism in Lebanon. It was also one of the earliest Arabic publications in London.
Al Arz was an Arabic language newspaper which was published in Jounieh, Ottoman Lebanon. It was in circulation between 1895 and 1916.