سورية (Sūriyya)¹

How is the land laid out?

Bordering the Mediterranean Sea is a narrow coastal plain. To its east are mountains up to 1500 meters high. Beyond this the land falls deeply into the Orontes Valley. Further east the land again rises, particularly in the south where it rises to nearly 3000 meters. Beyond these parallel features are three large zones. In the east is the Syrian Desert which slopes down towards the Euphrates² Valley; and beyond the river is a dry piece of Mesopotamia.

Who lives there?

This is one of the two areas where a majority--here almost everyone--speaks an Arabic dialect in the Syro-Lebano-Palestinian group, and most understand modern standard Arabic as well.

Virtually everyone is a Moslim--about three in four Sunni, most of the rest Alawi Shi'ites.

Syria's two cities of over a million and its five World Heritage Sites (Ancient City of Aleppo, Ancient City of Bosra, Ancient City of Damascus, Crac des Chevaliers and Qal'at Salah El-Din, and Site of Palmyra) are all found in Syrian cities.

There are oil ports at Ṭarṭūs and Bāniyās and a container port at al-Lādhiqīyah.

Map

Who was there before?

The earliest evidence of canals comes from this area and from Iraq (4000 BCE).³

Semitic speakers arrived from the south and southeast using various languages including Eblaite, named after a city near Aleppo. Later languages included Aramaic as a first language, and Akkaidan⁴ as a common second language. By 2500 years ago the region used Aramaic, except in religion, and Greek became a common second language. Then the Arabs conquered the region and established their current lingusitic ascendency.

Religion had three phases: pre-Christian, Christian and Moslem. Pre-Christian religion during historical times had several well known local religions, and some non-local imports such as Ishtar. The sun worship once centered in Emesa is now only remembered from the futile efforts of one of its priests to impose it as the Roman imperial religion.

In the second phase Christianity arrived, invented south of here. The religion, after many transformations outside the region, and after being adopted as the only allowed religion within the Roman Empire, imposed itself on the region, exterminating paganism⁵. The conquering religion splintered in attempts to reconcile a trinity to monotheism, and the Greek emperors bloodily presecuted this area's Christian dissidents, setting the stage for a new conquering religion.

Islam swept the region in its initial military expansion, converting by the full range of means from gentle to cruel, although not eliminating the Christians.

Around Sūriyya

north
east
south
west

Footnotes

1. Syria in conventional English. Sūriyah is an alternate transliteration from Arabic.
2. al-Furat in conventional transliteration from Arabic.
3. Jack Calloner, gen. ed., 1001 Inventions That Changed the World (Quintessence, 2009).
4. The western dialect is often called Assyrian.
5. Paganism became a Christian term for the non-Judeo-Christian religions of the Roman Empire. It means religions of the country people, although many urban people also followed these religions.