The Malta - Lebanon connection

World news coverage was dominated yesterday by the shocking car explosion that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in an assassination in west Beirut. It brings to mind the historical and cultural relationship between Lebanon and Malta, two peoples that have a lot in common.

Raymond Dibb's curiosity about the Maltese language, which started in a New York lift, prompted him to conduct research about the historical links between Malta and lebanon. His enthusiasm for Pheonician history led him to set up a Malta - Lebanon friendship society with a view to enhance ties between the Maltese and Lebanese People, to explore their common heritage, and encourage research, exchanges, and visits between the two Mediterranean countries. To discover his own Pheonician roots he visited Malta for the first time in the summer of 2002. He made a number of discoveries:

The Maltese are Phoenicians who came from Lebanon some 3,000 years BC. Some Phoenicians also arrived Malta from Carthage years later, during or after the Punic Wars with the Romans. These were warriors as opposed to the original Phoenicians who were just peaceful traders. The Maltese have little or no idea (or interest) in their roots. In fact very little of their history is recorded, or preserved before the Knights of Malta.

The Maltese think their language is a mix of "Arabic" and Italian. I tried very hard to explain to the ones I met, that it is not really Arabic; rather it is Phoenician having similar roots to Arabic.
They still speak the Phoenician language of the "old, old" days. It is very hard to understand by some Phoenician like me, whose language has been mixed with classical Arabic. Theirs was mixed (10%) with the Sicilian dialect.

Their spoken language sounds more like the language of the Lebanese mountains and remote Lebanese-Syrian villages, where they have not learned to sophisticate their speech with classical Arabic pronunciations. I had hard time understanding the Maltese speech, but was at ease with the written words. For example "Jelleb ta'l Carrob" means "Debs el-Kharnoub". I loved the "Jelleb" part, but it seemed they had no clue about our use of the word "Jelleb". It was very hot, and at every place I went to for refreshment, I kept asking if they had "Jelleb" over ice. I must have sounded like an alien since they do not know the Lebanese way of drinking Jelleb.

They have some very familiar family names such as "Abu Hagar" (Abou Hajar), Micallef, Mintoff, and, believe it or not "Saliba". I was amazed to learn that my cousin "John Saliba" practiced law in Malta. Any way, there are some 375,000 people living in Malta, divided into only 895 family names (and that include some English Colonial, as well as old emigrant Sicilian, and possibly some remnant Knights family names). Their phone book is very interesting; each family name takes up many pages. I guess these were a "few" Phoenician clans who migrated centuries, or millennia ago, and just kept on inter-breeding.

The National Geographic reports on a study by The American University of Beirut proving a DNA link between Pheonicians and Maltese.