June 2019
Transformation of meanings
A word I came to know while working in the Middle East was "corniche". Clearly a French word, I was surprised I wasn't familiar with it. The "corniche" of any Middle Eastern city was its seaside promenade. The mother of them all was the one in Beirut, Lebanon.
Take note:
A corniche is a road on the side of a cliff or mountain, with the ground rising on one side and falling away on the other. The word has been absorbed into English from the French term route à corniche or "road on a ledge", itself derived from the Italian cornice, for "ledge".
(Wikipedia)
The etymology was all wrong for its use in the region. In the Middle East, a corniche was uniquely along the sea (in Cairo the Corniche is along the Nile), so those walkways were associated with water not cliff-edge roadways. What an odd transformation of meaning.
Meanwhile, the Corniche in Beirut was beautiful. The whole setting of the city is lovely, so it's not surprising that its corniche would be glorious. On my brief visit with WMF we took several strolls along its length. It started by an old bombed out hotel and ended just after the American University of Beirut (which actually owns its own private beach just below that famous esplanade). The Corniche in Beirut was where you could see muscle guys working out like they had made a wrong turn from Venice Beach, Los Angeles or young Arab couples where women were completely covered in black from head to toe right out of Saudi Arabia or Iran. There were female joggers in shorts and short sleaves and long-bearded men reading the Quran toward the sea. Beirut's Corniche showed itself to be a place of great tolerance in that melting-pot city on the Mediterranean. I could see why people literally waxed lyrical about it.
The most ironic thing about the name "corniche" was that Abha had just built a "mamsha" [see: the "mamsha"] along the edge of its escarpment, giving dizzying views to the twisting road down through the Hejaz Mountains. The "Mamsha Ad Dabab" was in fact a real "corniche" in the French meaning of the world. I remember joking with my friends that Abha's Corniche was the Mamsha Ad Dabab. Little did I know at the time that I was right (at least about the history of the word). Mamsha Ad Dabab was not such a place of diversity as the one in Beirut, but it was a place where everyone came to walk and enjoy the natural beauty of the location.
So, in the Middle East a corniche is along the sea, not in the mountains. They are the ultimate places to stroll in cities with any kind of waterfront. Every one that I visited was locally famous and they all, by some measure, were copying that most successful original in Beirut. Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, inland cities needed comfortable places for people to stroll in the early evening and the "mamsha" were born. Little Abha where I lived for five years clings to the edge of a cliff in the Hejaz Mountains. There a mamsha was built for people to enjoy the hazy view across the mountains. Little did they know, they had actually built a true corniche.
Maybe some day a French diplomat will set them all straight?