Syria – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Posted By admin on May 12, 2015
Syria (i// SIH-ree-; Arabic: or , Sriy or Sryah), officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest. Its capital Damascus is among the oldest continuously-inhabited cities in the world.[7] A country of fertile plains, high mountains, and deserts, it is home to diverse ethnic and religious groups, including Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds, Circassians,[8]Mandeans[9] and Turks. Religious groups include Sunni, Christians, Alawite, Druze religion, Mandeanism and Yezidi. Sunni Arabs make up the largest population group in Syria.
In English, the name "Syria" was formerly synonymous with the Levant (known in Arabic as al-Sham) while the modern state encompasses the sites of several ancient kingdoms and empires, including the Eblan civilization of the 3rd millennium BC. In the Islamic era, Damascus was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate and a provincial capital of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt.
The modern Syrian state was established after World War I as a French mandate, and represented the largest Arab state to emerge from the formerly Ottoman-ruled Arab Levant. It gained independence in April 1946, as a parliamentary republic. The post-independence period was tumultuous, and a large number of military coups and coup attempts shook the country in the period 19491971. Between 1958-61, Syria entered a brief union with Egypt, which was terminated by a military coup. The Arab Republic of Syria came into being in 1963, transforming from the Republic of Syria in the Ba'athist coup d'tat. Syria was under Emergency Law from 1963 to 2011, effectively suspending most constitutional protections for citizens, and its system of government is considered to be non-democratic.[10]Bashar al-Assad has been president since 2000 and was preceded by his father Hafez al-Assad, who was in office from 1970 to 2000.[11]
Syria is a member of one international organization other than the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement; it is currently suspended from the Arab League[12] and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation,[13] and self-suspended from the Union for the Mediterranean.[14] Since March 2011, Syria has been embroiled in an uprising against Assad and the Ba'athist government as part of the Arab Spring, a crackdown which contributed to the Syrian Civil War and Syria becoming among the least peaceful countries in the world.[15] The Syrian Interim Government was formed by the opposition umbrella group, the Syrian National Coalition, in March 2013. Representatives of this government were subsequently invited to take up Syria's seat at the Arab League.[16]
The name Syria is derived from the 8th century BC Luwian term "Sura/i", and the derivative ancient Greek name: , Srioi, or , Sroi, both of which originally derived from and specifically and originally meant Aryu (Assyria) in northern Mesopotamia.[17][18] However, from the Seleucid Empire (323-150 BC), this term was also applied to The Levant, and from this point the Greeks applied the term without distinction between the Assyrians of Mesopotamia and Arameans of the Levant.[19][20] Mainstream modern academic opinion strongly favours the argument that the Greek word related to the cognate , Assyria, ultimately derived from the Akkadian Aur.[21] In the past others believed that it was derived from Siryon, the name that the Sidonians gave to Mount Hermon.[22] However, the discovery of the ineky inscription in 2000 seems to support the theory that the term Syria derives from Assyria, whose ancient homeland was located in modern northern Iraq.
The area designated by the word has changed over time. Classically, Syria lies at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, between Arabia to the south and Asia Minor to the north, stretching inland to include parts of Iraq, and having an uncertain border to the northeast that Pliny the Elder describes as including, from west to east, Commagene, Sophene, and Adiabene.[23]
By Pliny's time, however, this larger Syria had been divided into a number of provinces under the Roman Empire (but politically independent from each other): Judaea, later renamed Palaestina in AD 135 (the region corresponding to modern-day Israel, the Palestinian Territories, and Jordan) in the extreme southwest, Phoenicia corresponding to Lebanon, with Damascena to the inland side of Phoenicia, Coele-Syria (or "Hollow Syria") south of the Eleutheris river, and Iraq.[24]
Since approximately 10,000 BC, Syria was one of centers of Neolithic culture (known as Pre-Pottery Neolithic A) where agriculture and cattle breeding appeared for the first time in the world. The following Neolithic period (PPNB) is represented by rectangular houses of Mureybet culture. At the time of the pre-pottery Neolithic, people used vessels made of stone, gyps and burnt lime (Vaisselle blanche). Finds of obsidian tools from Anatolia are evidences of early trade relations. Cities of Hamoukar and Emar played an important role during the late Neolithic and Bronze Age. Archaeologists have demonstrated that civilization in Syria was one of the most ancient on earth, perhaps only preceded by those of Mesopotamia.
The earliest recorded indigenous civilisation in the region was the Kingdom of Ebla[26] near present-day Idlib, northern Syria. Ebla appears to have been founded around 3500 BC,[27][28][29][30][31] and gradually built its fortune through trade with the Mesopotamian states of Sumer, Assyria and Akkad, as well as with the Hurrian and Hattian peoples to the northwest, in Asia Minor.[32] Gifts from Pharaohs, found during excavations, confirm Ebla's contact with Egypt.
One of the earliest written texts from Syria is a trading agreement between Vizier Ibrium of Ebla and an ambiguous kingdom called Abarsal c. 2300 BC.[33][34] Scholars believe the language of Ebla to be among the oldest known written Semitic languages after Akkadian, Recent classifications of the Eblaite language have shown that it was an East Semitic language, closely related to the Akkadian language.[35]
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Syria - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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