Syro-Lebanese in Egypt Omar Sharif (born Michel Chalhoub) and Egyptian film director Youssef Chahine. The relations between Egypt and the Levant go back to ancient times. However, the earliest instance of modern Levantine migration to Egypt happened after 1724, when a schism in the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch resulted in a separate branch of Levantine Christians attached to Rome known as the Melkite Greek Catholics. Once the Syrian and Lebanese Greek Orthodox community was split, a migratory flow resulted in which Melkite Greek Catholics began leaving cities such as Damascus, Aleppo, Zahle, and Sidon to move to Egypt. Regarding an early Maronite
Claude Chalhoub composed and arranged the latest of Majida El Roumi's albums 'Ghazal'. After many years in Beirut working among others as Dean of the chamber music department at the Lebanese National Higher Conservatory of Music he now lives in Vienna, Austria. A film biography on Chalhoub’s life and career called ‘Singing on the Violin’ by German director Boris Penth (2007) has been broadcast internationally, among others on TV channels WDR, 3Sat, Bayerischer Rundfunk, ABC1, Arte, Euro arts, www.medici.tv, etc. Claude Chalhoub Claude Chalhoub () born in Qaa, Lebanon in 1974, from a Christian musical family of 11 children, attended the Lebanese