Syria

Discovering the Rich History of Syria

Syria is a country in West Asia, bordered by the Mediterranean Sea, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, and Lebanon. It’s a republic under a transitional government with Damascus as its capital. The modern state was established in the mid-20th century after centuries of Ottoman rule, gaining de jure independence in 1945.

But where does the name ‘Syria’ come from? It’s derived from the Luwian term ‘Sura/i,’ which comes from Assyria in northern Mesopotamia. The country has a diverse ethnic and religious makeup, with Arabs being the largest group and Sunni Muslims the largest religious group.

From ancient civilizations to modern-day conflicts, Syria’s history is a tapestry of empires, cultures, and peoples. Let’s dive into its rich past and present.

The Ancient Roots

Classically, Syria lies at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, between Arabia to the south and Asia Minor to the north. By Pliny’s time, it had been divided into several provinces under the Roman Empire: Judaea, Phoenice, Coele-Syria, and others.

The Natufian culture was one of the earliest sedentary cultures in Syria around 11th millennium BC. The Neolithic period saw the emergence of civilizations such as Hamoukar and Emar. The Kingdom of Ebla was an early recorded indigenous civilization in the region, founded around 3500 BC. It had trade connections with Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Asia Minor.

The Akkadian Empire conquered Syria in the first half of the 23rd century BC. By the 21st century BC, Hurrians settled in northern Syria, while the rest was dominated by the Amorites. The Northwest Semitic Amorite language is the earliest attested of the Canaanite languages.

Ugarit arose around 1800 BC and had a distinct alphabet. Yamhad (modern Aleppo) dominated northern Syria for two centuries, with eastern Syria occupied in the 19th and 18th centuries BC by Old Assyrian and Babylonian empires. Yamhad was described as the mightiest state in the near east, with more vassals than Hammurabi.

Yamhad was conquered and destroyed by the Hittites along with Ebla around 1600 BC. Syria became a battleground for various foreign empires, including the Hittite Empire, Mitanni Empire, Egyptian Empire, Middle Assyrian Empire, and Babylonia. The Egyptians initially occupied the south, while the Hittites and Mitanni occupied the north.

However, Assyria eventually gained control, destroying the Mitanni Empire and annexing large areas previously held by the Hittites and Babylon.

The Rise of Christianity

Around 14th century BC, Semitic people such as Suteans and Arameans appeared in the area, subjugated by Assyria and the Hittites for centuries. The Egyptians fought the Hittites for control over western Syria, reaching its peak in 1274 BC with the Battle of Kadesh.

The west remained part of the Hittite empire until its destruction c. 1200 BC. With the decline of Assyria in the late 11th century BC, the Aramean tribes gained control of much of the interior, founding states such as Bit Bahiani and Hamath. The region became known as Aramea or Aram.

A synthesis between Semitic Arameans and Indo-European Hittites led to the founding of Syro-Hittite states in north central Aram and south central Asia Minor. The Phoenicians dominated the coasts of Syria from the 13th century BC, founding city-states such as Amrit and Simyra.

They eventually spread their influence throughout the Mediterranean, including building colonies in Malta, Sicily, and North Africa. The Neo Assyrian Empire (911 BC – 605 BC) introduced Imperial Aramaic, which remained dominant in Syria and the Near East until after the Islamic conquest.

The Roman and Byzantine Periods

The Assyrians were followed by the Neo-Babylonian Empire (605 BC – 539 BC), which saw Syria as a battleground between Babylonia and Egypt. The Babylonians defeated Egypt, and the region was conquered by the Achaemenid Persians in 539 BC.

The Macedonian Empire, ruled by Alexander the Great, later conquered Syria, establishing it as Coele-Syria province of the Seleucid Empire (323 BC – 64 BC). Thus in the Greco-Roman world both the Arameans of Syria and the Assyrians of Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) to the east were referred to as ‘Syrians’ or ‘Syriacs,’ despite these being distinct peoples in their own right, a confusion which would continue into the modern world.

Eventually parts of southern Seleucid Syria were taken by the Jewish Hasmonean dynasty upon the slow disintegration of the Hellenistic Empire. Syria briefly came under Armenian control from 83 BC, with the conquests of the Armenian king Tigranes the Great, who was welcomed as a savior from the Seleucids and Romans by the Syrian people.

However, Pompey the Great, a general of the Roman Empire, rode to Syria and captured Antioch and turned Syria into a Roman province in 64 BC, thus ending Armenian control over the region which had lasted two decades. Syria prospered under Roman rule, being strategically located on the Silk Road, which gave it massive wealth and importance.

The Islamic Conquest and Beyond

Palmyra, a rich and sometimes powerful native Aramaic-speaking kingdom, arose in northern Syria in the 2nd century; the Palmyrene established a trade network that made the city one of the richest in the Roman Empire.

In the late 3rd century the Palmyrene king Odaenathus defeated the Persian emperor Shapur I and controlled the entirety of the Roman East while his successor and widow Zenobia established the Palmyrene Empire, which briefly conquered Egypt, Syria, Palestine, much of Asia Minor, Judah and Lebanon, before being finally brought under Roman control in 273.

The northern Mesopotamian Assyrian kingdom of Adiabene controlled areas of north east Syria between 10 and 117, before it was conquered by Rome. The Aramaic language has been found as far afield as Hadrian’s Wall in Roman Britain, with an inscription written by a Palmyrene emigrant at the site of Fort Arbeia.

Control of Syria eventually passed from the Romans to the Byzantines with the split in the Roman Empire. The largely Aramaic-speaking population of Syria during the heyday of the Byzantine Empire was probably not exceeded again until the 19th century.

The Modern Era

Prior to the Arab Islamic Conquest in the 7th century, the bulk of the population were Arameans, but Syria was also home to Greek and Roman ruling classes, Assyrians still dwelt in the north east, Phoenicians along the coasts, and Jewish and Armenian communities were also extant in major cities.

Syriac Christianity had taken hold as the major religion, although others still followed Judaism, Mithraism, Manicheanism, Greco-Roman Religion, Canaanite Religion and Mesopotamian Religion. Syrians held considerable power during the Severan dynasty. The matriarch of the family and empress of Rome as wife of emperor Septimius Severus was Julia Domna, a Syrian from the city of Emesa (modern day Homs), whose family held hereditary rights to the priesthood of the god El-Gabal.

By 640, Syria was conquered by the Rashidun army led by Khalid ibn al-Walid. Arabic became the dominant language under Umayyad rule, replacing Greek and Aramaic. The Tulunids and Ikhshidids ruled Egypt-based empires that annexed Syria from the Abbasids.

During the Crusades, sections of Syria were held by French, English, Italian, and German overlords. The Nizari Ismailis (Assassins) occupied parts of the region. Salah ad-Din conquered Syria in 1175-1185 after a century of Seljuk rule.

The Mongols invaded but were defeated by the Mamluks in the Battle of Ain Jalut. The Mamluks took control of Damascus, and Qalawun became its leader. The Ottomans conquered Syria in 1516 and incorporated it into their empire.

The Modern Republic

The Ottoman system allowed for peaceful coexistence among ethnic and religious minorities. Each community had its own millet with a religious head administering personal status laws and civil functions. Ibrahim Pasha’s short-term rule attempted to change the demographics, but was eventually surrendered back to the Ottomans.

Tanzimat reforms were applied from 1864, creating provinces and the Mutasarrifate of Mount Lebanon. During World War I, the Ottoman Empire suffered defeat and lost control of the Near East to British and French empires. The conflict also led to genocide against indigenous Christian peoples in the form of the Armenian and Assyrian genocides.

In 1920, a short-lived independent Kingdom of Syria was established under Faisal I, but it ended after several months. France occupied Syria and implemented a French mandate. In 1925, Sultan al-Atrash led a revolt against the French, which lasted until 1927. The French sentenced al-Atrash to death, but he escaped.

In 1936, Syria and France negotiated a treaty of independence, but it never came into force due to French legislative refusal. After France’s fall in 1940, Syria was occupied by Vichy France and later the British. In 1946, Syrian nationalists forced the French to evacuate their troops, leaving the country with a republican government.

From independence through the late 1960s, Syrian politics were dominated by upheaval. In 1948, Syria invaded Palestine, attempting to prevent Israel’s establishment. The Syrian government recruited former Nazis to build up their armed forces and military intelligence capabilities. Defeat led to several military coups, including those by Colonel Husni al-Za’im, Colonel Sami al-Hinnawi, and Colonel Adib Shishakli in 1949.

Shishakli abolished multipartyism, was overthrown in 1954, and power became concentrated in the military and security establishment. The parliamentary system was restored, but by this time, power was increasingly concentrated in the military and security establishment.

The Ba’athist Era

Nasserism and other ideologies gained influence due to unrest and mismanagement of the economy. Syria signed a pact with the Soviet Union in 1956, leading to communist influence within the government. Shukri al-Quwatli announced the merging of Syria and Egypt into the United Arab Republic in 1958.

The Syrian Ba’ath Party formed a secret Military Committee in response to the union’s fragility. Syria seceded from the union with Egypt in 1961, after a coup. Land reform measures were introduced, which allowed for more progress in land redistribution than any other reforms in Syria’s history since independence.

Agrarian reform programs regulated relationships between agriculture laborers and landowners, governed private and state domain land use, and reorganized agricultural production under state control. The 1963 Ba’athist coup marked a ‘radical break’ in modern Syrian history, establishing a one-party state and shaping the socio-political order.

The coup led to the schism within the original pan-Arab Ba’ath Party, with Syria becoming a distinct ba’ath movement. In the first half of 1967, a low-key state of war existed between Syria and Israel. Conflict escalated into the Six-Day War, resulting in Israel’s capture of two-thirds of the Golan Heights.

A power struggle within the Ba’athist party led to Hafez al-Assad’s military coup in 1970. Assad transformed Syria into a dictatorship, installing loyalists in key positions and fostering a cult of personality around himself and his family. The country participated in the Yom Kippur War, but suffered initial gains reversed by the Israel Defense Forces.

In the late 1970s, an Islamist uprising was violently suppressed, resulting in the Hama massacre. Syria later joined the Gulf War and engaged in negotiations with Israel and other Arab states, including a failed attempt to establish direct talks with Israel after the Madrid Conference of 1991.

The country ended its military presence in Lebanon in 2005, following Hafez al-Assad’s death in 2000, which led to his son Bashar al-Assad’s election as president without opposition. Assassination of Rafic Hariri led to Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, forcing Assad regime to end military occupation.

International condemnation followed Operation Orchard against North Korean nuclear reactor. The Syrian civil war began in January 2011 as protests demanding Assad’s resignation and overthrow. The government deployed the Syrian Army, but civilians and army defectors formed fighting units under Free Syrian Army banner. Insurgency campaign continued despite limited leadership.

The Current Situation

Rebel factions took control of Aleppo in December 2024, prompting retaliatory airstrikes. NATO called for protection of civilians and critical infrastructure. Rebels continued their advance into Hama province following capture of Aleppo. On December 4, fierce clashes erupted in Hama province between the Syrian army and rebel forces, resulting in widespread displacement and over 600 casualties.

Rebel forces captured the city on December 5 and began a three-day battle for Homs, which they also captured by December 8. The opposition then advanced northwards to encircle Damascus, leading to the collapse of the Assad regime. Opposition forces captured the capital on December 8, toppling Bashar al-Assad’s government and ending his 53-year-long rule.

Following the fall of the regime on December 8, 2024, a transitional government led by Mohammed al-Bashir was formed to govern the country until March 1, 2025. The Syrian constitution and parliament were suspended for the duration of the transitional period, and Ahmed al-Sharaa was appointed as president for the transitional period.

The Syrian Arab Republic had a presidential state system with an extensive secret police apparatus, and the ruling Ba’ath Party governed Syria as a police state through its control of the Syrian military and security apparatus. The country’s political system was centered around a comprehensive cult of personality focused on the al-Assad family.

Conclusion

Syria is a complex nation with a rich history, diverse culture, and a tumultuous present. From ancient civilizations to modern-day conflicts, its journey has been marked by empires, religions, and political upheavals. As it moves forward under the transitional government, the path ahead will be challenging but hopeful.