Syriaسوريا

Bronze Age kingdoms at Ebla and Mari and the port of Ugarit, whose scribes used one of the earliest alphabets, flourished in what is now Syria. Aramaeans, Assyrians, Persians and Alexander's successors followed; the Seleucids founded Antioch and Apamea. Under Rome, the caravan city of Palmyra grew rich on desert trade and, under Queen Zenobia, briefly defied the empire in the 270s. Christianity spread early — Paul's conversion is placed on the road to Damascus — and the north-west still holds hundreds of abandoned Byzantine-era 'Dead Cities'.

Arab armies took Damascus in 634, and from 661 to 750 it was capital of the Umayyad caliphate, which built its Great Mosque on the site of a Roman temple and a church. Later centuries brought Abbasids, Fatimids, Seljuks, Crusaders (whose castles such as Krak des Chevaliers survive), Saladin's Ayyubids, the Mamluks and Timur, who sacked Damascus in 1401. The Ottomans ruled from 1516 to 1918.

After a short-lived Arab kingdom under Faisal in 1920, France took a League of Nations mandate, split off Lebanon and ceded Alexandretta (Hatay) to Türkiye in 1939. Independent from 1946, Syria saw repeated coups until the Baath party seized power in 1963. Hafez al-Assad took control in 1970 and built a security state that crushed an Islamist uprising at Hama in 1982; Israel had taken the Golan Heights in 1967. His son Bashar succeeded him in 2000.

Peaceful protests in 2011 were met with force and turned into civil war. Rebels, jihadist groups, Kurdish forces and ISIS fought the government and each other; Russia, Iran and Hezbollah backed Assad, while the US, Türkiye and Gulf states backed various opponents. Chemical weapons were used, cities such as Homs and eastern Aleppo were largely destroyed, and over 100,000 people disappeared in detention. On 8 December 2024 a rebel offensive led by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham reached Damascus and Assad fled to Russia. Ahmed al-Sharaa became transitional president in January 2025; sanctions were largely lifted, but massacres of Alawites on the coast in March 2025 and fighting in Suwayda that July showed how fragile the transition is (check the current state).

Syria's mosaic is old and regional. Sunni Arabs are the majority across the interior and the east. Alawites, followers of an offshoot of Shia Islam, live mainly in the coastal mountains and dominated the army and security services under the Assads, which has made them targets of reprisal since 2024. Druze live in the Jabal al-Arab around Suwayda and in villages near the Golan; Ismailis around Salamiyah; Twelver Shia in a few towns and around the Sayyida Zaynab shrine near Damascus.

Christians — Greek Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox and Catholic, Armenian, Melkite, Maronite and others — were about a tenth of the population before 2011 and far fewer now (check). In Maaloula and nearby villages some still speak Western Neo-Aramaic, a living descendant of the language of Jesus' time. Kurds, most of them Sunni, live along the Turkish border and in the north-east, where Kurdish-led forces built their own administration during the war.

The war displaced about half the population. Millions of refugees in Türkiye, Lebanon, Jordan and Europe weigh whether to return to destroyed homes, missing property records and uncertain security; families are still searching for relatives who disappeared in detention.

UNESCO lists the Ancient Cities of Damascus, Aleppo and Bosra, Palmyra, the Crac des Chevaliers and Qal'at Salah El-Din, and the Ancient Villages of Northern Syria; all six have been on the List of World Heritage in Danger since 2013.

War damage is severe. Aleppo's Umayyad Mosque lost its 11th-century minaret in 2013 and its covered souks burned; ISIS blew up Palmyra's temples of Bel and Baalshamin and its arch in 2015 and murdered the site's retired antiquities chief, Khaled al-Asaad. Crac des Chevaliers was shelled. Looting of archaeological sites, especially in the east, fed a black market in antiquities.

Restoration has begun in parts of old Aleppo and Homs, often with international funding, and the Umayyad Mosque's minaret in Aleppo was rebuilt (check). Many sites remain mined or inaccessible.

Friday is the day off, with many offices closing Saturday too. Electricity from the grid arrives for a few hours a day in many areas, so families rely on generators, batteries and solar panels; water is often trucked in. Prices are quoted in Syrian pounds, but savings and big purchases are in dollars.

Syrian food is one of the region's great cuisines: Aleppo's kebab with cherries, kibbeh in dozens of forms, fatteh, muhammara, and Damascus sweets such as ma'moul and booza, the stretchy ice cream pounded with mastic. Old Damascus courtyard houses with fountains and citrus trees have become cafés and guesthouses where they survive.

Since 2024, public talk is freer than under Assad and exiles return to visit, but checkpoints, sectarian fear and economic hardship define much of daily life, and the question of justice for past crimes remains open.