Syria (region)

Syria, also known as Greater Syria or Syria-Palestine, is a historical region located east of the Mediterranean Sea in West Asia, broadly synonymous with the Levant. Historically, the term "Syria" referred to the area between the Taurus Mountains in the north, Sinai in the south-west, and Arabia in the south-east; however, in modern times it is used to refer solely to the Syrian Arab Republic.
The term is originally derived from Assyria, an ancient Semitic-speaking civilization centered in northern Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq. During the Hellenistic period, the term Syria was applied to the entire Levant as Coele-Syria. Under Roman rule, the term was used to refer to the province of Syria, later divided into Syria Phoenicia and Coele Syria, and to the province of Syria Palaestina. Under the Byzantines, the provinces of Syria Prima and Syria Secunda emerged out of Coele Syria. After the Muslim conquest of Syria, the term was superseded by the Arabic equivalent Shām, and under the Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, and Fatimid caliphates, Bilad al-Sham was the name of the metropolitan province encompassing most of the region. In the 19th century, the name Syria was revived in its modern Arabic form to denote the whole of Bilad al-Sham, either as Suriyah or the modern form Suriyya, which eventually replaced the Arabic name of Bilad al-Sham.
After World War I, the boundaries of the region were last defined in modern times by the proclamation of and subsequent definition by French and British mandatory agreement, as laid out in the Sykes–Picot Agreement. Following the Arab Revolt and Franco-Syrian War, the area was divided and passed to French and British League of Nations mandates. Subsequently, five states — Greater Lebanon, the State of Damascus, the State of Aleppo, the State of Alawites, and the State of Jabal Druze — were established by the French, while the British controlled Mandatory Palestine and the Emirate of Transjordan. The term Syria itself was applied to several mandate states under French rule and the contemporaneous but short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria. The Syrian-mandate states were gradually unified as the State of Syria and finally became the independent Syrian Republic in 1946. Throughout this period, pan-Syrian nationalists advocated for the creation of a Greater Syria, sometimes as a step toward achieving a broader pan-Arab state.

Etymology and evolution of the term

Several sources indicate that the name Syria itself is derived from Luwian term "Sura/i", and the derivative ancient Greek name: Σύριοι, ', or Σύροι, ', both of which originally derived from Aššūrāyu in northern Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq and greater Syria For Herodotus in the 5th century BC, Syria extended as far north as the Halys and as far south as Arabia and Egypt. For Pliny the Elder and Pomponius Mela, Syria covered the entire Fertile Crescent.
In Late Antiquity, "Syria" meant a region located to the east of the Mediterranean Sea, west of the Euphrates River, north of the Arabian Desert and south of the Taurus Mountains, thereby including modern Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, and parts of Southern Turkey, namely the Hatay Province and the western half of the Southeastern Anatolia Region. This late definition is equivalent to the region known in Classical Arabic by the name ash-Shām. After the Arab conquest of Byzantine Syria in the 7th century CE, the name Syria fell out of primary use in the region itself, being superseded by the Arabic equivalent Shām, but survived in its original sense in Byzantine and Western European usage, and in Syriac Christian literature. In the 19th century, the name Syria was revived in its modern Arabic form to denote the whole of Bilad al-Sham, either as Suriyah or the modern form Suriyya, which eventually replaced the Arabic name of Bilad al-Sham. After World War I, the name Syria was applied to the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon and the contemporaneous but short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria.

Geography

In the most common historical sense, 'Syria' refers to the entire northern Levant, including Alexandretta and the Ancient City of Antioch or in an extended sense the entire Levant as far south as Roman Egypt, including Mesopotamia. The area of "Greater Syria" ; also called "Natural Syria" or "Northern Land", extends roughly over the Bilad al-Sham province of the medieval Arab caliphates, encompassing the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Mesopotamia. The Muslim conquest of the Levant in the seventh century gave rise to this province, which encompassed much of the region of Syria, and came to largely overlap with this concept. Other sources indicate that the term Greater Syria was coined during Ottoman rule, after 1516, to designate the approximate area included in present-day Israel, Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon.
The uncertainty in the definition of the extent of "Syria" is aggravated by the etymological confusion of the similar-sounding names Syria and Assyria. The question of the etymological identity of the two names remains open today. Regardless of etymology, both were thought of as interchangeable around the time of Herodotus. However, by the time of the Roman Empire, 'Syria' and 'Assyria' began to refer to two separate entities, Roman Syria and Roman Assyria.
Killebrew and Steiner, treating the Levant as the Syrian region, gave the boundaries of the region as such: the Mediterranean Sea to the west, the Arabian Desert to the south, Mesopotamia to the east, and the Taurus Mountains of Anatolia to the north. The Muslim geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi visited the region in 1150 and assigned the northern regions of Bilad al-Sham as the following:

In the Levantine sea are two islands: Rhodes and Cyprus; and in Levantine lands: Antarsus, Laodice, Antioch, Mopsuhestia, Adana, Anazarbus, Tarsus, Circesium, Ḥamrtash, Antalya, al-Batira, al-Mira, Macri, Astroboli; and in the interior lands: Apamea, Salamiya, Qinnasrin, al-Castel, Aleppo, Resafa, Raqqa, Rafeqa, al-Jisr, Manbij, Mar'ash, Saruj, Ḥarran, Edessa, Al-Ḥadath, Samosata, Malatiya, Ḥusn Mansur, Zabatra, Jersoon, al-Leen, al-Bedandour, Cirra and Touleb.

For Pliny the Elder and Pomponius Mela, Syria covered the entire Fertile Crescent. In Late Antiquity, "Syria" meant a region located to the east of the Mediterranean Sea, west of the Euphrates River, north of the Arabian Desert, and south of the Taurus Mountains, thereby including modern Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, the State of Palestine, and the Hatay Province and the western half of the Southeastern Anatolia Region of southern Turkey. This late definition is equivalent to the region known in Classical Arabic by the name ash-Shām, which means the north . After the Islamic conquest of Byzantine Syria in the seventh century, the name Syria fell out of primary use in the region itself, being superseded by the Arabic equivalent Bilād ash-Shām, but survived in its original sense in Byzantine and Western European usage, and in Syriac Christian literature. In the 19th century, the name Syria was revived in its modern Arabic form to denote the whole of Bilad al-Sham, either as Suriyah or the modern form Suriyya, which eventually replaced the Arabic name of Bilad al-Sham. After World War I, the name 'Syria' was applied to the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon, and the contemporaneous but short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria.
The region has multiple rivers, including the Yarmuk, Khabur, Queiq, Daysan, Balikh, Jordan, Orontes, Litani, and Barada. As well as multiple bodies of water, including the Sea of Galilee, Lake Assad, Lake Qattinah, Dead Sea, Lake Homs, Sabkhat al-Jabbul, Sabkhat al-Mouh, and Sabkhat al-Mouhajjarah. Mountain chains include the Lebanon, Taurus, anti-Lebanon, Nusayri, Carmel, Nur, and Jordanian highlands.
Today, the largest metropolitan areas in the region are Amman, Tel Aviv, Damascus, Beirut, Aleppo and Gaza City.

Rank	City	Country	Metropolitan Population	City Population	Image
1	Amman	Jordan
2	Tel Aviv	Israel
3	Damascus	Syria
4	Beirut	Lebanon
5	Aleppo	Syria
6	Gaza City	Palestine

Etymology

Syria

Several sources indicate that the name Syria itself is derived from Luwian term "Sura/i", and the derivative ancient Greek name: Σύριοι, ', or Σύροι, ', both of which originally derived from Aššūrāyu in northern Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq However, during the Seleucid Empire, this term was also applied to The Levant, and henceforth the Greeks applied the term without distinction between the Assyrians of Mesopotamia and Arameans of the Levant.
The oldest attestation of the name 'Syria' is from the 8th century BC in a bilingual inscription in Hieroglyphic Luwian and Phoenician. In this inscription, the Luwian word Sura/i was translated to Phoenician ʔšr "Assyria." For Herodotus in the 5th century BC, Syria extended as far north as the Halys and as far south as Arabia and Egypt.
The name 'Syria' derives from the ancient Greek name for Assyrians, , which the Greeks applied without distinction to various Near Eastern peoples living under the rule of Assyria. Modern scholarship confirms the Greek word traces back to the cognate, .
The classical Arabic pronunciation of Syria is Sūriya. That name was not widely used among Muslims before about 1870, but it had been used by Christians earlier. According to the Syriac Orthodox Church, "Syrian" meant "Christian" in early Christianity. In English, "Syrian" historically meant a Syrian Christian such as Ephrem the Syrian. Following the declaration of Syria in 1936, the term "Syrian" came to designate citizens of that state, regardless of ethnicity. The adjective "Syriac" has come into common use since as an ethnonym to avoid the ambiguity of "Syrian".
Currently, the Arabic term Sūriya usually refers to the modern state of Syria, as opposed to the historical region of Syria.
Before 1918, the term 'Syria' described the geographical region of Bilad Ash-Shām. With the introduction of the Mandate System and the emergence of the modern state Syria, the term 'Greater Syria' emerged to distinguish between Bilad Ash-Shām and Syria.