Syria

The region located along the eastern

Mediterranean coast and bordered by southeastern Anatolia in the north, northern Palestine in the south, and northwestern Mesopotamia in the east. This remarkably strategic location made Syria a busy and influential crossroads of trade, commerce, folk migrations, artistic and literary developments, and military conquests throughout ancient times. In the area of trade alone, the region was pivotal because it connected the commercial centers of Mesopotamia and Iran to European-Mediterranean markets. And all the great Near Eastern powers of the third, second, and first centuries b. c., including the Assyrians, Babylonians, Hittites, and Egyptians, coveted and vigorously fought for possession and control of Syria.

Syria’s importance as a good place for human habitation and commerce was established very early. Its warm, pleasant climate, dense forests, rich soil, and long seacoast attracted settlers in the Stone Age. The area around Damascus, near the border with Palestine, and other sites in Syria supported thriving agricultural villages at least by 9000 b. c.. The region was part of the so-called Fertile Crescent, where many basic farming techniques first developed. In the centuries that followed, the inhabitants of Syria made increasingly extensive contacts with peoples living in Anatolia and Palestine, and a number of Syrian towns grew larger, richer, and culturally more sophisticated.

These trends culminated in the emergence of a small but prosperous and influential Syrian nation-state in the third millennium B. C. It was centered on the city of Ebla (modern Tell Mardikh) in northern Syria. The locals, who spoke an early Semitic tongue, engaged in lucrative trade with towns in Anatolia in the north and Akkad and Sumer in the east and southeast. The Ebla state was overrun by the Akkadians circa 2250 b. c., but it rose to prominence again in the mid-second millennium B. C.

Meanwhile, that millennium witnessed increased attempts by various Near Eastern states to exploit and, when possible, control Syria’s location and resources. The Canaanites of Palestine and the Phoenicians, vigorous traders who established thriving towns on the coasts of Syria and Palestine, became middlemen in far-reaching trade for Syrian timber, cattle, and other valuable products. The cedar forests of the Syrian hills were particularly sought after by the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians, who had few native woodlands. In an effort to exploit these resources, in about 1800 b. c. the Assyrians established the town of Shubat-Enlil (now Tell Leilan) in northeastern Syria. Assyrian influence in the area soon declined, however, as Babylonia’s King Hammurabi brought large parts of Syria into his own empire in the 1700s b. c. Not long afterward, in the late 1500s b. c., many of the same portions of Syria that Hammurabi had occupied were seized by migrating Hurrians and became part of the kingdom of Mitanni.

Thus, in the second half of the second millennium b. c., Syria found itself ringed, and in a sense hemmed in, by a group of competing great powers. These included the Hittites, who had become masters of most of Anatolia, in the north; the Egyptians in the south; and the Mitannians, Assyrians, and Babylonians in the east and southeast. The Egyptians eventually decided that mere trade for Syrian products was not enough for them, and they launched military expeditions into Syria, turning a number of the city-states there into vassals. The rival Hittites did the same, which brought them into conflict with the Egyptians. The climax of this rivalry was the Battle of Kadesh, fought circa 1274 b. c. near that important Syrian city. Both sides claimed victory, but in truth the outcome was indecisive, and Syria remained a bone of contention for the great powers.

Then a watershed event abruptly changed the fortunes of both Syria and the great powers. In the early twelfth century b. c., much of the eastern Mediterranean region, including Syria and Anatolia, underwent destructive upheavals; the culprits appear to have been swarms of invaders from southeastern Europe, often called the Sea Peoples, who defeated local military garrisons and sacked city after city. Only the Egyptians and the Assyrians escaped the disaster relatively unscathed. That allowed the Assyrians to overrun large parts of Syria in the centuries that followed. After the fall of the Assyrian Empire in the late seventh century b. c., the Neo-Babylonians briefly controlled Syria. But shortly afterward they were supplanted by the Persians, who had conquered most of the Near East, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Anatolia, by the late 500s b. c.

The next great historical watershed for Syria came in the 330s and 320s b. c., when the Macedonian Greek king Alexander III, later called “the Great,” swiftly conquered the Persian Empire. It was in northern Syria, at Issus, that Alexander first defeated the last Persian king, Darius III. Thus began Syria’s long and largely prosperous Greco-Roman phase. Following Alexander’s death in 323 b. c., one of his generals, Seleucus, transformed large sections of the Near East, including Syria, into the Seleucid Empire. Seleucus established a new city, Antioch, located near Syria’s coast, which rapidly grew into the third most populous and prosperous city in the Mediterranean world (after Rome in Italy and Alexandria in Egypt). Antioch became the central depot for trade between Europe and the Near East. The city was so rich and Syria’s commercial and strategic importance was so great that another Greek-ruled kingdom, Ptolemaic Egypt, frequently tried to take the region away from the Seleucids. It was Rome, however, that eventually benefited from this incessant infighting among the Greeks. Having decisively defeated the Seleucids and reduced Egypt to a third-rate power, in 64 B. c. the Romans occupied Syria and turned the region into a province of their empire. The Romans built roads, temples, bathhouses, stadiums, and other structures across Syria, which became increasingly populous and richer than ever before. In the centuries that followed Rome drew large numbers of soldiers, as well as slaves, from the region.

It was also during the early years of Syria’s Roman period that christianity

Began to take root in nearby Palestine. In the 40s and 50s a. d. the early Christians— then a group of Jews called the People of the Way—set up communities in Syria, including at Damascus and Antioch. It was on the road to Damascus that, according to the Old Testament, Saul of Tarsus, later called St. Paul, had a vision of Jesus Christ and converted to the faith. Paul and the Syrian branch of the church became instrumental in spreading Christianity to Gentiles (non-Jews), thereby ensuring that the faith would survive and grow.

When western Rome fell to “barbarian” tribes in the late fifth century, the eastern Roman realm centered at Constantinople, which became the Byzantine Empire, held onto Syria for a while. But then the region was overrun by Muslim Arab armies in the 630s, ending Syria’s ancient history and bringing it into what modern observers call medieval times.

See Also: Battle of Kadesh; Ebla; Egypt; Hittites; Mitanni; Palestine; Phoenicians; Romans; Seleucid Empire