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France was historically very interested in the Near and Middle East, though colonially somewhat less successful than the UK; Napoleon sailed to Egypt in 1799, a
by inglor_cz 5mo ago
France was historically very interested in the Near and Middle East, though colonially somewhat less successful than the UK; Napoleon sailed to Egypt in 1799, and later the French Republic protected Lebanese and Syrian Christians, up to some point in history. People from the Levant still like to study in France (incl. Nassim Nicholas Taleb). Hence, France is considered a strong and culturally developed country in the region.
And unlike the UK and US, they had no historic bad blood with Iran (Mossadegh et al.)
- SSLy 5mo agoAnd French is still language of educated class in some places in Levant, esp. Liban.
- Triphibian 5mo agoWhen I lived in Tehran in the late '70s people said "merci" to express thanks.
- tralarpa 5mo agoThey still do.
- jagaerglad 5mo agoYes, it's kind of the standard word for it in Iranian Persian
- armenarmen 5mo agoArmenia as well
- lstodd 5mo agoyup. shnorhakalutyun is a bit of mouthful :)
- armenarmen 5mo agoճիշտ ես!
- rjsw 5mo agoA more recent influence came from the Sykes-Picot Agreement [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement
- inglor_cz 5mo agoYes, but there are more. For example, French engineers built the Suez Canal.