Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0358/03580.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 32.4 KB | 544 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03580}
$Pretitle{247}
$Title{Syria
Chapter 1A.   Historical Setting}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Afaf Sabeh McGowan}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{syria
greater
century
syrian
muslim
damascus
empire
established
aleppo
east}
$Date{1987}
$Log{Gold Tablet*0358002.scf
Hand Held Tablet*0358003.scf
Roman Columns*0358006.scf
Mummy*0358008.scf
}
Country:     Syria
Book:        Syria, A Country Study
Author:      Afaf Sabeh McGowan
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1987

Chapter 1A.   Historical Setting

[See Gold Tablet: Courtesy Embassy of Syria, Washington DC]

[See Hand Held Tablet: Courtesy Embassy of Syria, Washington DC]

     Present-day Syria constitutes only a small portion of the ancient
geographical Syria. Until the twentieth century, when Western powers began to
carve out the rough contours of the contemporary states of Syria, Lebanon,
Jordan, and Israel, the whole of the settled region at the eastern end of the
Mediterranean Sea was called Syria, the name given by the ancient Greeks to
the land bridge that links three continents. For this reason, historians and
political scientists usually use the term Greater Syria (see Glossary) to
denote the area in the prestate period.

     Historically, Greater Syria rarely ruled itself, primarily because of its
vulnerable position between the Mediterranean Sea and the desert. As a
marchland between frequently powerful empires on the north, east, and south,
Syria was often a battlefield for the political destinies of dynasties and
empires. Unlike other parts of the Middle East, Greater Syria was prized as a
fertile cereal-growing oasis.  It was even more critical as a source of the
lumber needed for building imperial fleets in the preindustrial period.

     Even though it was exploited politically, Greater Syria benefited
immeasurably from the cultural diversity of the peoples who came to claim
parts or all of it and who remained to contribute and participate in the
remarkable spiritual and intellectual flowering that characterized Greater
Syria's cultures in the ancient and medieval periods. Incorporating some of
the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Greater Syria was in a
unique position to foster intellectual activities. By 1400 B.C., Damascus
(Dimashq), Aleppo (Halab), Hamah (Hamath), Byblos (Gubla), Joffa (Joppa),
Homs, Gaza, Tyre (Sur), and Sidon already had been established; some of these
cities had flourished for many centuries. Because Greater Syria was usually
ruled by foreigners, the inhabitants traditionally identified themselves with
their cities, and in contemporary Syria each city continues to have a unique
sociopolitical character.

     A recurrent theme of Greater Syria's history has been the encounters
between Eastern and Western powers on its soil. Even in the ancient period, it
was the focus of a continual dialectic, both intellectual and bellicose,
between the Middle East and the West. During the medieval period this
dialectic was intensified as it became colored by diametrically opposed
religious points of view regarding rights to the land. The Christian
Byzantines contended with Arabs, and later the Christian Crusaders competed
with Muslim Arabs, for land they all held sacred.

     The advent of Arab Muslim rule in A.D. 636 provided the two major themes
of Syrian history: the Islamic religion and the world community of Arabs.
According to traditionalist Muslims, the greatest period of Islamic history
was the time of the brief rule of Muhammad--the prototype for the perfect
temporal ruler--and the time of the first four caliphs (known as rashidun,
rightly guided), when man presumably behaved as God commanded and established
a society on earth unequaled before or after. During this period religion and
state were one and Muslims ruled Muslims according to Muslim law. The
succeeding Umayyad (661-750) and Abbasid (750-1258) caliphates were extensions
of the first period and proved the military and intellectual might of Muslims.
The history of Greater Syria in the early medieval period is essentially the
history of political Islam at one of its most glorious moments--the period of
the Umayyad caliphate when the Islamic empire, with its capital at Damascus,
stretched from the Oxus River to southern France.

     A different view of Syrian history denies that the greatness of the Arab
past was a purely Islamic manifestation. The history of the Arabs began before
the coming of Muhammad, and what Arabs achieved during the Umayyad and Abbasid
empires was evidence not only of the rich inheritance from Greek and Roman
days but also of the vitality of Arab culture.

     Since independence in 1946, Syria's history has been dominated by four
overriding factors. First is the deeply felt desire among Syrian Arabs--
Christian and Muslim alike--to achieve some kind of unity with the other Arabs
of the Middle East in fulfillment of their aspirations for regional
leadership. Second is a desire for economic and social prosperity (see
Introduction, ch. 3). Third is a universal dislike of Israel, which Syrians
feel was forcibly imposed by the West and which they view as a threat to Arab
unity (see Foreign Policy, ch. 4). The fourth issue is the dominant political
role of the military.

Ancient Syria

[See Roman Columns: Courtesy Embassy of Syria, Washington DC]

     The first recorded mention of Greater Syria is in Egyptian annals
detailing expeditions to the Syrian coastland to log the cedar, pine, and
cypress of the Ammanus and Lebanon mountain ranges in the fourth millennium.
Sumer, a kingdom of non-Semitic peoples that formed the southern boundary of
ancient Babylonia, also sent expeditions in the third millennium, chiefly in
pursuit of cedar from the Ammanus and gold and silver from Cilicia. The
Sumerians most probably traded with the Syrian port city of Byblos, which was
also negotiating with Egypt for exportation of timber and the resin necessary
for mummification.

     An enormous commercial network linking Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, the
Aegean, and the Syrian coast was developed. The network was perhaps under the
aegis of the kingdom of Ebla ("city of the white stones"), the chief site of
which was discovered in 1975 at Tall Mardikh, 64 kilometers south of Aleppo
(see fig. 2). Numerous tablets give evidence of a sophisticated and powerful
indigenous Syrian empire, which dominated northern Syria and portions of lower
Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Iran. Its chief rival was Akkad in southern
Mesopotamia, which flourished circa 2300 B.C.. In addition to identifying
another great cultural and political power for the period--and an independent
Syrian kingdom at that--the discovery of Ebla has had other important
ramifications. The oldest Semitic language was thought to have been Amorite,
but the newly found language of Ebla, a variant of Paleo-Canaanite, is
considerably older. Ebla twice conquered the city of Mari, the capital of
Amurru, the kingdom of the Semitic-speaking Amorites. After protracted tension
between Akkad and Ebla, the great king of Akkad, Naram Sin, destroyed Ebla by
fire in either 2300 or 2250. Naram Sin also destroyed Arman, which may have
been an ancient name for Aleppo.

     Amorite power was effectively eclipsed in 1600 when Egypt mounted a full
attack on Greater Syria and brought the entire region under its suzerainty.
During the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries, the area was in tremendous
political upheaval because of the growing Assyrian power pressing from the
east and invasions from the north of Hittites who eventually settled in north
and central Syria.

     Another Semitic-speaking people, the Canaanites, may have been part of
the same migration that brought the Amorites into Syria from northern Arabia
in approximately 2400. The Amorites came under the influence of Mesopotamia,
whereas the Canaanites, who had intermarried with indigenous Syrians of the
coast, were probably under the initial influence of Egypt.

     The descendants of the intermarriages between Canaanites and coastal
Syrians were the Phoenicians, the greatest seafaring merchants of the ancient
world. The Phoenicians improved and developed iron tools and significantly
advanced the art of shipbuilding. Their mastery of the seas allowed them to
establish a network of independent city-states; however, these entities were
never united politically, partially because of the continual harassment from
Hittites to the north and Egyptians to the south. The name given to their
land--Canaan in Hurrian, Phoenicia in Greek--refers to the fabulously valued
purple dye extracted from mollusks found at that time only on the Syrian
coast. From this period purple became the color of the robes of kings because
only they and other small groups of the ancient Middle Eastern elite could
afford to purchase the rare dye. The wealth derived in part from the dye trade
sparked the economic flame that made it possible for Greater Syrian
city-states to enjoy a wide measure of prosperity.

     Many of Greater Syria's major contributions to civilization were
developed during the ancient period. Syria's greatest legacy, the alphabet,
was developed by Phoenicians during the second millennium. The Phoenicians
introduced their 30-letter alphabet to the Aramaeans, among other
Semitic-speaking people, and to the Greeks, who added vowel letters not used
in Semitic grammatical construction.

     The Phoenicians, somewhat pressed for space for their growing population,
founded major colonies on the North African littoral, the most notable of
which was Carthage. In the process of founding new city- states, they
discovered the Atlantic Ocean.

     The Aramaeans had settled in Greater Syria at approximately the end of
the thirteenth century B.C., the same time at which the Jews, or Israelites,
migrated to the area. The Aramaeans settled in the Mesopotamian-Syrian
corridor to the north and established the kingdom of Aram, biblical Syria. As
overland merchants, they opened trade to Southwest Asia, and their capital
Damascus became a city of immense wealth and influence. At Aleppo they built a
huge fortress, still standing. The Aramaeans simplified the Phoenician
alphabet and carried their language, Aramaic, to their chief areas of
commerce. Aramaic displaced Hebrew in Greater Syria as the vernacular (Jesus
spoke Aramaic), and it became the language of commerce throughout the Middle
East and the official language of the Persian Empire. Aramaic continued to be
spoken in the Syrian countryside for almost 1,000 years, and in the 1980s
remained in daily use in a handful of villages on the Syrian-Lebanese border.
A dialect of Aramaic continues to be the language of worship in the Syrian
Orthodox Church.

     The plethora of city-states in Greater Syria could not withstand the
repeated attacks from the north by the powerful Assyrian Empire, which under
the leadership of Nebuchadnezzar finally overwhelmed them in the eighth
century. Assyrian aggressors were replaced by the conquering Babylonians in
the seventh century, and the then mighty Persian Empire in the sixth century.
Under Persian aegis, Syria had a measure of self- rule, as it was to have
under a succession of foreign rulers from that time until independence in the
twentieth century. When Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire in
333, local political powers--which probably would have continued to contest
for control of Greater Syria- -were effectively shattered, and the area came
into the strong cultural orbit of Western ideas and institutions.

     At Alexander's death, the empire was divided among five of his generals.
General Seleucus became heir to the lands formerly under Persian control,
which included Greater Syria. The Seleucids ruled for three centuries and
founded a kingdom with the capital at Damascus, which later became referred to
as the Kingdom of Syria. Seleucus named many cities after his mother,
Laodicea; the greatest became Latakia, Syria's major port.

     Enormous numbers of Greek immigrants flocked to the Kingdom of Syria.
Syrian trade was vastly expanded as a result of the newcomers' efforts,
reaching into India, the Far East, and Europe. The Greeks built new cities in
Syria and colonized existing ones. Syrian and Greek cultures synthesized to
create Near Eastern Hellenism, noted for remarkable developments in
jurisprudence, philosophy, and science.

     Replacing the Greeks and the Seleucids, Roman emperors inherited already
thriving cities--Damascus, Tadmur (once called Palmyra), and Busra ash Sham in
the fertile Hawran Plateau south of Damascus. Under the emperor Hadrian, Syria
was prosperous and its cities, major trading centers; Hawran was a
well-watered breadbasket. After making a survey of the country, the Romans
established a tax system based on the potential harvest of farmlands; it
remained the key to the land tax structure until 1945. They bequeathed Syria
some of the grandest buildings in the world, as well as aqueducts, wells, and
roads that were still in use in modern times.

     Neither the Seleucids nor the Romans ruled the area without conflict. The
Seleucids had to deal with powerful Arab peoples, the Nabataeans, who had
established an empire at Petra (in present-day Jordan) and at Busra ash Sham.
The Romans had to face the Palmyrenes, who had built Palmyra, a city even more
magnificent than Damascus and the principal stop on the caravan route from
Homs to the Euphrates.

     By the time the Romans arrived, Greater Syrians had developed irrigation
techniques, the alphabet, and astronomy. In A.D. 324 the Emperor Constantine
moved his capital from Rome to Byzantium, renaming it Constantinople (modern
Istanbul). From there the Byzantines ruled Greater Syria, dividing it into two
provinces: Syria Prima, with Antioch as the capital and Aleppo the major city;
and Syria Secunda, ruled frequently from Hamah. Syria Secunda was divided into
two districts: Phoenicia Prima, with Tyre as the capital; and Phoenicia
Secunda, ruled from Damascus. (Most of Phoenicia Prima is now Lebanon.) The
ruling families of Syria during this period were the Ghassanids, Christian
Arabs loyal to Byzantium, from whom many Syrians now trace descent.

     Byzantine rule in Syria was marked by constant warfare with the Persian
Sassanian Empire to the east. In these struggles, Syria often became a
battleground. In 611 the Persians succeeded in invading Syria and Palestine,
capturing Jerusalem in 614. Shortly thereafter, the Byzantines counterattacked
and retook their former possessions. During the campaign the Byzantines tried
to force Greek orthodoxy on the Syrian inhabitants, but were unsuccessful.
Beset by financial problems, largely as a result of their costly campaigns
against the Persians, the Byzantines stopped subsidizing the Christian Arab
tribes guarding the Syrian steppe. Some scholars believe this was a fatal
mistake, for these tribes were then susceptible to a new force emanating from
the south--Islam.

     The Byzantine heritage remains in Syria's Christian sects and great
monastic ruins. In the fourth century A.D., Roman Emperor Theodosius destroyed
the temple to Jupiter in Damascus and built a cathedral in honor of John the
Baptist. The huge monastery at Dayr Siman near Aleppo, erected by Simeon
Stylites in the fifth century, is perhaps the greatest Christian monument
built before the tenth century.

Muslim Empires

     During the first decades of the seventh century, Muhammad, a merchant
from Mecca, converted many of his fellow Arabs to a new religion, Islam, which
was conceived as the continuation and fulfillment of the Judeo- Christian
tradition (see Islam, ch. 2). By 629 the religious fervor and pressures of an
expanding population impelled Muslim Arab tribes to invade lands to the north
of the Arabian Peninsula. They called these lands bilad al sham, the country
or land of Sham--the name Arabs often used to designate Damascus. The word
sham derives from the Arabic word for dignity, indicating the high regard most
Arabs have had for Damascus. Arabs, including Syrians, have referred to Syria
by this name ever since, and call Syrians Shammis.

     In 635 Damascus surrendered to the great Muslim general, Khalid ibn al
Walid. Undermined by Persian incursions, religious schisms, and rebellions in
the provinces caused by harsh rule, Byzantium could offer little resistance to
Islam.

     In succeeding centuries, Muslims extended and consolidated their rule in
many areas, and by 1200 they controlled lands from the Atlantic to the Bay of
Bengal, from central Russia to the Gulf of Aden. Wherever they went, they
built mosques, tombs, forts, and beautiful cities. The ruins of such
structures are found widely in Greater Syria, a heartland of Islamic and Arab
culture.

     Muhammad made Medina his first capital, and it was here that he died.
Leadership of the faithful fell to Abu Bakr (632-634), Muhammad's father-
in-law and the first of the four orthodox caliphs, or temporal leaders of the
Muslims. Umar followed him (634-644) and organized the government of captured
provinces. The third caliph was Uthman (644-656) under whose administration
the compilation of the Quran was accomplished. Among the aspirants to the
caliphate was Ali, Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, whose supporters felt he
should be the Prophet's successor (fig. 3). Upon the murder of Uthman, Ali
became caliph (656-661). After a civil war with other aspirants to the
caliphate, Ali moved his capital to Mesopotamia and was later assassinated at
Al Kufah. Ali's early followers established the first of Islam's dissident
sects, the Shia (from Shiat Ali, party of Ali). Those who had accepted the
before and after Ali successions remained the orthodox of Islam; they are
called Sunnis--from the word sunnia meaning orthodox.

Umayyad Caliphate

[See Mummy: Courtesy Embassy of Syria, Washington DC]

     After Ali's murder in 661, Muawiyah--the governor of Syria during the
early Arab conquests, a kinsman of Uthman, and a member of the Quraysh lineage
of the Prophet--proclaimed himself caliph and established his capital in
Damascus. From there he conquered Muslim enemies to the east, south, and west
and fought the Byzantines to the north. Muawiyah is considered the architect
of the Islamic empire and a political genius. Under his governorship Syria
became the most prosperous province of the caliphate. Muawiyah created a
professional army and, although rigorous in training them, won the undying
loyalty of his troops for his generous and regularly paid salaries. Heir to
Syrian shipyards built by the Byzantines, he established the caliphate's first
navy. He also conceived and established an efficient government, including a
comptroller of finance and a postal system.

     Muawiyah cultivated the goodwill of Christian Syrians by recruiting them
for the army at double pay, by appointing Christians to many high offices, and
by appointing his son by his Christian wife as his successor. His sensitivity
to human behavior accounted in great part for his political success. The
modern Syrian image of Muawiyah is that of a man with enormous amounts of
hilm, a combination of magnanimity, tolerance, and self-discipline, and of
duha, political expertise--qualities Syrians continue to expect of their
leaders. By 732 the dynasty he founded had conquered Spain and Tours in France
and stretched east to Samarkand and Kabul, far exceeding the greatest
boundaries of the Roman Empire (see fig. 4). Thus, Damascus achieved a glory
unrivaled among cities of the eighth century.

     The Umayyad Muslims established a military government in Syria and used
the country primarily as a base of operations. They lived aloof from the
people and at first made little effort to convert Christians to Islam. The
Umayyads administered the lands in the manner of the Byzantines, giving
complete authority to provincial governors.

     In the administration of law, the Umayyads followed the traditions set by
the Hellenistic monarchies and the Roman Empire. The conqueror's law- -in this
case Muslim law (sharia)--applied only to those of the same faith or
nationality as the conquerors. For non-Muslims, civil law was the law of their
particular millet (separate religious community, also called milla); religious
leaders administered the law of the millet. This system prevailed throughout
Islam and has survived in Syria's legal codes (see Islam, ch. 2; see
Constitutional Framework, ch. 4).

     During the 89 years of Umayyad rule, most Syrians became Muslims, and the
Arabic language replaced Aramaic. The Umayyads minted coins, built hospitals,
and constructed underground canals to bring water to the towns. The country
prospered both economically and intellectually. Foreign trade expanded, and
educated Jews and Christians, many of them Greek, found employment in the
caliphal courts, where they studied and practiced medicine, alchemy, and
philosophy.

Succeeding Caliphates and Kingdoms

     Under later dissolute caliphs, the Umayyad dynasty began to decline at a
time when both Sunni and Shia Muslims in Iran began to press against Umayyad
borders. By 750 the Abbasids, whose forces originated in Khorasan (in
northeast Iran), had conquered the Umayyads and established the caliphate in
Baghdad. As a result, Syria became a province of an empire.

     Abbasid rule over Syria, however, was precarious and often challenged by
independent Muslim princes. The greatest of these was Abu Ali Hasan, who
founded a kingdom known as the Hamdani. A Shia, he established his capital at
Aleppo, and the Abbasids recognized him as Sayf ad Dawlah (sword of the
state). The Hamdanid dynasty ruled throughout the tenth century and became
famous for its achievements in science and letters. In Europe it was known for
its persistent attacks against Byzantium. The Hamdanid kingdom fell in 1094 to
Muslim Seljuk Turks invading from the northeast.

     During the same period, the Shia Fatimids established themselves in Egypt
and drove north against Syria. The Fatimids were less tolerant of subject
peoples than their predecessors. Intolerance reached its height under caliph
Abu Ali Mansur al Hakim (966-1021), who destroyed churches and caused
Christians to flee to the mountains. When he announced his divinity, his
mother murdered him. In the secluded valleys of Mount Hermon in Syria, his
followers found tribesmen to adopt his religion, the ancestors of Syria's
present-day Druzes (see Druzes, ch. 2).

     Muslim rule of Christian holy places, overpopulation, and constant
warfare in Europe prompted the Crusades, the first major Western colonial
venture in the Middle East. Between 1097 and 1144 Crusaders established the
principalities of Edessa (in northeast modern Syria), Antioch, Tripoli, and
the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. The politically fragmented area was an easy
conquest for the Europeans. The first Muslim threat to European entrenchment
came not from within Greater Syria but from Zangi, the amir (see Glossary) of
Mosul (in modern Iraq). Zangi took Edessa in 1144 and his son, Nur ad Din
(light of the faith), secured Damascus, extending the realm from Aleppo to
Mosul. When the last Shia Fatimid caliph died, Nur ad Din secured Egypt as
well. Eliminating Sunni-Shia sectarianism, the political rivalry that had so
aided the European venture, he invoked jihad, holy war, as a unifying force
for Arabs in Greater Syria and Egypt.

     The jihad was to liberate Jerusalem, the third holiest city to Muslims,
who call it Bayt Quds (the house of holiness) in memory of Muhammad's stopping
there on his night journey to heaven. It fell to Nur ad Din's lieutenant,
Saladin (Salah ad Din al Ayubbi--rectitude of the faith), to recapture
Jerusalem. Saladin, a Kurd, unified Syria and Egypt, a necessary preliminary,
and after many setbacks, captured Mosul, Aleppo, and the string of cities from
Edessa to Nasihin. In 1187 Saladin took Al Karak, a Crusader fort on the route
between Homs and Tripoli held by the infamous Reginald of Chatillon, who had
broken treaties, molested Saladin's sister, and attacked Mecca with the aim of
obtaining the Prophet's body and exhibiting it at Al Karak for a fee. Saladin
besieged Jerusalem on September 20, 1187, and 9 days later Jerusalem
surrendered. Saladin's behavior and complete control of his troops earned him
the respect of all Jerusalemites and the epithet, "flower of Islamic
chivalry."

     Saladin inflicted Islam's mightiest blows against the Crusaders, raised
Muslim pride and self-respect, and founded the Ayyubid dynasty, which governed
Egypt until 1260. During his lifetime, he created harmony among Muslims in the
Middle East and gained a position of affection and honor among them that
remains strong to the present, particularly in Syria.

     When Saladin died of malaria in 1192, his rule extended from the Tigris
River to North Africa and south to the Sudan. Saladin's death brought this
unity to an end. His Ayyubid successors quarreled among themselves, and Syria
broke into small dynasties centered in Aleppo, Hamah, Homs, and Damascus. By
the fourteenth century, after repelling repeated invasions by Mongols from the
north, the Mamluk sultans of Egypt, successors to the Ayyubids, ruled from the
Nile to the Euphrates. Their great citadels and monuments still stand. In 1516
the Ottoman sultan in Turkey defeated the Mamluks at Aleppo and made Syria a
province of a new Muslim empire.

Ottoman Empire

     The Ottomans were nomadic Muslim Turks from central Asia who had been
converted to Islam by Umayyad conquerors in the eighth century. Led by Uthman
(whence the Western term Ottoman), they founded a principality in 1300 amid
the ruins of the Mongol-wrecked Seljuk Empire in northwest Turkey. Fifty years
later Uthman's successors invaded Europe. They conquered Constantinople in
1453 and in the sixteenth century conquered all of the Middle East. From 1300
to 1916, when the empire fell, 36 sultans, all descendants of Uthman, ruled
most of the Muslim world. Europeans referred to the Ottoman throne as the
Sublime Porte, a name derived from a gate of the sultan's palace in Istanbul.

     From 1516 the Ottomans ruled Syria through pashas, who governed with
unlimited authority over the land under their control, although they were
responsible ultimately to the Sublime Porte. Pashas were both administrative
and military leaders. So long as they collected their taxes, maintained order,
and ruled an area not of immediate military importance, the Sublime Porte left
them alone. In turn the pashas ruled smaller administrative districts through
either a subordinate Turk or a loyal Arab. Occasionally, as in the area that
became Lebanon, the Arab subordinate maintained his position more through his
own power than through loyalty. Throughout Ottoman rule, there was little
contact with the authorities except among wealthier Syrians who entered
government service or studied in Turkish universities.

     The system was not particularly onerous to Syrians because the Turks
respected Arabic as the language of the Quran and accepted the mantle of
defenders of the faith. Damascus was made the major entrepot for Mecca, and as
such it acquired a holy character to Muslims because of the baraka (spiritual
force or blessing) of the countless pilgrims who passed through on the hajj,
the pilgrimage to Mecca (see Islam, ch. 2).

     Ottoman administration often followed patterns set by previous rulers.
Each religious minority--Shia Muslim, Greek Orthodox, Maronite, Armenian, and
Jewish--constituted a millet. The religious heads of each community
administered all personal status law and performed certain civil functions as
well.

     The Syrian economy did not flourish under the Ottomans. At times attempts
were made to rebuild the country, but on the whole Syria remained poor. The
population decreased by nearly 30 percent, and hundreds of villages virtually
disappeared into the desert. At the end of the eighteenth century only
one-eighth of the villages formerly on the register of the Aleppo pashalik
(domain of a pasha) were still inhabited. Only the area now known as Lebanon
achieved economic progress, largely resulting from the relatively independent
rule of the Druze amirs.

     Although impoverished by Ottoman rule, Syria continued to attract
European traders, who for centuries had transported spices, fruits, and
textiles from the Middle East to the West. By the fifteenth century Aleppo was
the Middle East's chief marketplace and had eclipsed Damascus in wealth,
creating a rivalry between the two cities that continues.

     With the traders from the West came missionaries, teachers, scientists,
and tourists whose governments began to clamor for certain rights. France
demanded the right to protect Christians, and in 1535 Sultan Sulayman I
granted France several "capitulations"--extraterritorial rights that developed
later into political semiautonomy, not only for the French, but also for the
Christians protected by them. The British acquired similar rights in 1580 and
established the Levant Company in Aleppo. By the end of the eighteenth
century, the Russians had claimed protective rights over the Greek Orthodox
community.

     The Ottoman Empire began to show signs of decline in the eighteenth
century. By the nineteenth century European powers had begun to take advantage
of Ottoman weakness through both military and political penetration, including
Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, subsequent British intervention, and French
occupation of Lebanon. Economic development of Syria through the use of
European capital--for example, railroads built largely with French
money--brought further incursions.

     Western penetration became decidedly political after the Druze uprising
in the Syrian province of Lebanon in 1860. The revolt began in the north as a
Maronite Christian peasant uprising against Christian landlords. As the revolt
moved southward to the territories where the landlords were Druzes, the
conflagration acquired an intersectarian character, and the Druzes massacred
some 10,000 Maronites. France sent in troops and removed them a year later
only after the European powers had forced the Sublime Porte to grant new laws
for Lebanon. By the Statute of 1861, for the first time Mount Lebanon was
officially detached from Syria, and its administration came increasingly under
the control of France.

     Because of European pressure as well as the discontent of the Syrian
people, the Ottoman sultans enacted some reforms during the nineteenth
century. The Egyptian occupation of Syria from 1831 to 1839 under the nominal
authority of the sultan brought a centralized government, judicial reform, and
regular taxation. But Ibrahim Pasha, son of the Egyptian ruler, became
unpopular with the landowners because he limited their influence, and with the
peasants because he imposed conscription and taxation. He was eventually
driven from Syria by the sultan's forces. Subsequent reforms of Turkish Sultan
Mahmud II and his son were more theoretical than real and were counteracted by
reactionary forces inside the state as well as by the inertia of Ottoman
officials. Reforms proved somewhat successful with the Kurds and Turkomans in
the north and with the Alawis around Latakia, but unsuccessful with the
Druzes-- who lived in the Jabal Druze (now known as Jabal al Arab), a rugged
mountainous area in southwest Syria--who retained their administrative and
judicial autonomy and exemption from military service.

     Although further reform attempts generally failed, some of the more
successful endure. Among them are the colonization of Syria's frontiers, the
suppression of tribal raiding, the opening of new lands to cultivation, and
the beginnings of the settlement of the beduin tribes. Attempts to register
the land failed, however, because of the peasants' fear of taxation and
conscription.

     Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1876-1909), sometimes known as Abdul Hamid the
Damned, acquired a reputation as the most oppressive Ottoman sultan. Opponents
died quickly; taxes became heavy. Abdul Hamid tried to earn the loyalty of his
Muslim subjects by preaching pan-Islamic ideas and in 1908 completing the
Hijaz Railway between Istanbul and Medina. However, the sultan's
cruelty--coupled with that of his deputy in Acre, known in Syria as The
Butcher--and increasing Western cultural influences set the stage for the
first act of Arab nationalism; World War I opened the next.