Middle Bronze age ( 2150 BC – 1600 BC ) :
* A new golden age for much of Northern Syria with a flourishing international trade.
* The Amorites moved from the Syrian Desert into the settled land of the Fertile Crescent which resulted in the urban civilisation of many towns in that area.
* The Kingdom of Yamkhad (Aleppo) became a major power in this period absorbing Ebla into its orbit.
* Mari was razed by Hammurabi, the Babylonian leader, around 1759 BC.
Late Bronze Age ( 1600 BC – 1200 BC ) :
* The Hittites (Indo-Europeans by origin) had installed themselves in central Anatolia and brought an end to Babylonian power in 1595 BC.
* Egypt was thrown into chaos for two or more centuries by the secondary effects of this movement.
* Mitanni people soon arrived to blend with the Hurrians to form the kingdom of Mitanni (16 – 14 C BC)
* The triangle of powers that fought for dominance in Syria in the 15th – 14th centuries was Egypt, Hittites and Mitanni.
* Egypt had sought tentatively to extend its influence in Syria, and especially to cultivate the coastal cities for the access they gave to important inland sources of timber for shipbuilding.
* The Egyptians led by Ramses were ambushed by the Hittite army under Hattusilis II at Qadesh in 1286 BC.
* The Mediterranean coast enjoyed a more prosperous life based on the sea trade routes built up by the Phoenician peoples who had moved into the region at the beginning of the second millennium. and had established a culture that blended Mesopotamian, Anatolian, Aegean and Egyptian influences. In this zone of relative prosperity, the port cities of Ugarit, Gabala (Jeble) and Arwad were left to get on with the business of making money.
Iron Age (1200 BC – 539 B.C.) :
* The Sea Peoples’ invasion brought an end to the apogee of Ugarit as well as to the Hittite Empire.
* The rise of the Arameans who settled in Northern Syria.
* On the coast, the Phoenician cities survived the dark age that followed the Sea Peoples’ invasions and continued to serve as a conduit for products and ideas between Greece, Egypt and the Asian mainland.
* The Assyrian empire (1000 – 612); under Shalmaneser took permanent control of parts of Northern Syria and Phoenicia from 856 and was confronted by a coalition of Aramean states at the Battle of Qarqar in 853.
Persian Period (539 BC – 333 B.C.) :
* The Achaemenid Persians annexed much of Syria as a consequence of their move westwards and their defeat of the Neo-Babylonians with the capture of Babylon by Cyrus in 539.
* Syria was made a province with its capital at Damascus.
* In their efforts to find a sphere of influence in the Eastern Mediterranean, the struggle for supremacy between the Persians and the Greeks was focused in Syria throughout the 6th and 5th centuries BC, bringing a uniquely Persian element to the land.
Hellenistic Period (333 BC – 64 B.C.) :
* The Greek/Persian contest was decided in the great battles (the first at Issus in SE Turkey in 333) in which Alexander the Great of Macedon defeated the forces of Darius III.
* After Alexamder’s death at Babylon in 323, Syria was contested, with Northern Syria falling to Seleucus I Nicator, who had already been assigned Mesopotamia. The south (including Damascus) and the regions of Lebanon and Palestine were seized by Ptolemy I Soter, who had already been given command of Egypt.
* The Seleucid hold on Syria weakened in the 2nd century. The Ptolemies lost control of southern Syria by 198 BC when it fell to the Seleucid King, Antiochus III Megas.
* By the beginning of the first century BC, Seleucid Syria was fraying badly at the edges with inroads by the Armenians to the north, the Parthians to the east and the Arab Nabateans to the south.
Roman Period (64 B.C. – A.D. 395) :
* In 64 BC, the Roman legate, Pompey, formally abolished the Seleucid kingdom and created the Roman province of Syria with its headquarters at Antioch.
* Syria became one of the principal provinces of the empire, remaining under the Emperor’s jurisdiction.
* Damascus and the trading hub of Palmyra flourished and benefited greatly during this period.
* The Nabateans were dislodged from Damascus and retreated to a semi-independent status of Petra in Southern Jordan.
* Economically, Syria flourished and became not only an East-West major trade center but a major agricultural area whose grain and wine supplied a good share of the Roman market.
To service this commerce, trade routes were systematised through the building of roads, including the north-south and the east-west route through Palmyra that saved considerable time and effort over the northern route following the Euphrates.
* Visits by several Emperors brought particular privileges to cities such as Bostra (capital of the new province of Arabia), Damascus (raised to metropolis by Hadrian, 117) and Palmyra (renamed Palmyra Hadriana in 129).
* Syria’s eastern borders took on an increasingly strategic significance to the Romans to meet the perceived threat from the Parthians, whose presence east of the Euphrates had resulted in successive Roman attempts to dominate the Parthian heartland since the late first century BC.
* Septimius Severus’ marriage in 187 to Julia Domna, the daughter of the High Priest of Emesa (Homs), brought a line of “Syrian” Emperors : Caracalla, Elagabalus, and Alexander Severus.
* By the late 2nd century the Parthian wars were a dominant preoccupation, with Parthia the only organised power able to conduct a centralised campaign against the Empire’s might anywhere along its frontiers. The challenge began to affect the prosperity even of such a flourishing centre as Palmyra.
* The sporadic confrontation with Parthia became more persistent by the end of the 2nd century and turned into a more aggressive and focused Sasanian threat following the takeover of Persia after 224 by Ardashir and particularly under his successor, Shapur I.
* Philip the Arab, a Syrian Emperor (244-249).
* The fall of Dura Europos in 256 and the capture in 260 of the Emperor Valerian by Sasanian forces at Edessa in SE Turkey. The humiliation of Valerian’s capture, his torture and subsequent death were telling blows to Roman pride but symbolic of the general loss of authority at many points within the bounds by the mid 3rd century.
* A Palmyrene Prince, Odenathus, campaigned on Rome’s behalf deep into Sasanian territory but was murdered in 266. His wife, Zenobia, carried on but had a rather different view of the relative power of Rome and Palmyra. She sent forces to Egypt and tried to engineer the takeover of Antioch in 271. The Emperor Aurelian clearly felt the challenge to central authority had gone too far and took to the field to check Zenobia. She was captured by the Romans in her attempt to cross the Euphrates river, and she was led off to Rome to grace Aurelian’s triumph.
* Emperor Constantine gave official recognition to Christianity after 313, increasingly encouraging it as the state religion. In-house churches took on the form and scale of Roman public buildings.
Byzantine Period (395 – 636) :
* The transfer of the Roman capital to the East in 395 was considered the start of the Byzantine era.
* It was a time of continued prosperity in the more settled parts of Syria. The area of limestone country west of Aleppo continued to prosper, based on its olive oil exports
* The church and monastic projects abounded and Syrian builders developed a repertoire of styles that adapted metropolitan and neo-classical models and blended them with elements from the East, often achieving a local mix whose remains are richly evident. In fact, no area of the Mediterranean world contains such a wealth of evidence of this period as can be found in the many churches, village and monastic remains of Syria.
* By the early 7th century, Syria was virtually incapable of putting up serious resistance to the prolonged occupation by Chosroes II.
Umayyads Period (661 – 750) :
* One of the most fertile and inventive periods of Syrian History. The Umayyads readily absorbed ideas from Syria’s rich mixture of cultures and selectively blended Byzantine, Persian, Mesopotamian and local elements.
* A period of great intellectual curiosity which flourished in an atmosphere of moderate political leadership.
* Damascus became a major centre (the Umayyads’ realms eventually stretched from the Indus to Spain), a focus of political, religious and artistic creativity.
* Moawiya’s reign (661 – 81) provoked the split between the Umayyads and the followers of Ali led by his son Hussein.
* Hussein was killed by Pro-Yazid forces (Moawiya’s son) at Kerbala (Southern Iraq) on 10 Muharram 61 AH (AD 680). The tragedy of Kerbala was to rankle for centuries. Eventually it would perpetuate the division between orthodox followers of the Umayyad Caliphate
* Umayyad Mosque was built by Al-Waild Bin Abd Al-Malik ( 705-715).
Abbasids Period (750 – 1258) :
* The Abbasid transferred the Caliphate to Iraq (Kufa, until the founding of Baghdad in 762) and Syria became merely a neglected backwater, punished for its adherence to the Umayyads.
* Harun al-Rashid (786 – 809) gave the Caliphate a wider status. He attracted an embassy from Charlemange, the latter gaining from his gesture the right to protect Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem.
* In the mid 9th century the Abbasid domains were fragmenting, through independent dynasties assuming power in provinces such as Egypt (Tulunids after 868; Fatimids after 905) and Persia (Sasanids after 874).
* Aleppo was controlled by the Hamdanid dynasty (944 – 1003), and then became a protectorate of the Byzantines and later of the Fatimids.
* The Seljuq Turks extorted a mandate from the theoretical Abbasid Caliph to govern Northern Syria, in 1070.
* A treaty was signed in 997 to give the Fatimid supremacy in Syria.
* Damascus experienced in the 9th – 11th centuries a time of anarchy, with a period of rule in the 9th century by the Cairo-based Ikhshidid dynasty. After 961, the Farimids, a Shi’ite dynasty, supplanted them in Cairo. Though the Ikhshidids paid nominal allegiance to the Abbasid Caliphs in Baghdad, the Fatimids set up a rival Caliphate. The significance of this Baghdad – Cairo polarisation was to make Syria a battleground for tensions, a situation which prevailed until one centre of power was effective in uniting the Middle East.
* The rise of the Seljuqs brought the struggle for Syria to a new phase. The Supremacy of the Seljuq Turks was sealed at the Battle of Manzikert in Eastern Turkey in 1071, which saw their victory over the Byzantine forces of Romanus IV Diogenes. They went on to take most of Syria, including Damascus in 1075 and by 1078 were in Jerusalem.
* The Seljuq supremacy began to ring alarm bells in Europe, particularly given the apparent weakness of the Byzantines, and were in large part the stimulus that led to the crusading movement which called for the recovery of the Holy Places by Christian arms. The Crusades brought to Syria another of the great clashes of worlds which have marked its history.
* The Christian army that poured into Syria in 1097 found that the Seljuq leadership had disintegrated and that the land lacked any unified command for resistance.
* After the brutal taking of Antioch, the Crusaders armies divided. Baldwin of Boulogne headed east to set up a separate principality at Edessa (Eastern Turkey) while Raymond, Count of Toulouse set out for Jerusalem with what remained of the largely rabble army.
Their taking en route of Maarat Al-Numan produced another savage massacre slaughtering 20000 Muslim people including women and children.
* The Muslims-Crusaders confrontation ran on for almost two centuries. To the Muslims, the Crusaders’ religious pretext for intervention was never credible, Christian subjects of the Islamic states rarely suffering any distinct disadvantages and Christian pilgrims having long been accepted in the Holy Land. The Crusaders’ presence was thus seen as a straight invasion in which religion was a veil cast over territorial motives.
* The Zengids led by Zengi and his son Nur al-Din continued the Seljuq policy of restoring Sunni orthodoxy, rolling back to gains made by Shi’ism under Fatimid encouragement. The Zengids complemented this consolidation of the spiritual defences of their realms with a consolidation of their physical preparedness. They regained the Crusader outpost at Edessa (1144) and by 1154 they had brought Damascus under their control, uniting for the first time the resistance to the Crusaders in Syria into a single front.
* The consolidation of orthodoxy and the encirclement of the Crusader forces took most of the century to complete before Muslim forces in Egypt and Syria were linked under one
command.
* Saladin ended the Fatimid era in Cairo by nominally restoring the authority of the Abbasid Caliphate. He initiated the line of Ayyubids (1176 – 1260) which later took the form of separate dynasties in Damascus and Cairo. He completed the unification of Syria, and by 1187 lured King Guy of Jerusalem into the disastrous battle at Hattin in Galilee which saw the mass destruction of the Christian army and brought the fall of Jerusalem to the Muslim forces.
* In 1258, the Mongols destroyed Baghdad, thus ending nominal Abbasid Caliphate.
Mamelukes Period (1260 – 1516) :
* By the mid 13th c, the focus of the Muslim/Crusader struggle had moved to Egypt, which was the object of the later Crusades. From Cairo came the second great Muslim revival with the rise of the Mamelukes.
* The first of the Mongol invasions of Syria, under Hulaga, inspired the Mamelukes to rally the flagging forces of Islam (Battle of Ain Jalud – “Goliath’s Fountain”- 1260) and to take over Damascus from the Ayyubids.
* The leadership of the Mameluke Sultan Baibars gave renewed momentum to the anti-Crusader cause . The Crusaders were routed in successive attacks by Sultan Baibars and Sultan Qalaun from strongholds in Antioch (1268), the Krak (1271), Marqab (1285), Latakia (1287), Tripoli (1289) and Tartus (1291).
* The Mamelukes rapidly built themselves networks of alliances with the principal families and religious establishments of the main Syrian cities. Under their guidance and with the aid of the endowments often funded by their governors, the early Mameluke period was another golden age for Damascus.
* After the last, and most disastrous, Mongol invasion of 1400 – 1 under Timur (Tamerlaine), the Mameluks never quite recovered their stride.
* In the end, Mameluke rule collapsed as much from its unpopularity as from the swift inroads of a new Turkish incursion, this time in the form of the Ottoman military.
Ottomans Period (1516 – 1918) :
* The Ottoman Turks moved in on Syria in 1516. Under the long reign of Suleiman (1520 – 1566), the administration of Syria was systematised and its revenues stabilised.
* The early Ottoman period (16th -17th centuries) brought a new incentive to the development of the three Syrian provinces – Damascus, Aleppo, and Raqqa. The role played by the Syrian provinces in the administration and provisioning of the annual pilgrimage (haj) to Mecca did much to advance the economy and external trade.
* By the 18th century, the Turkish rule was stagnating and the economic fortunes of Syria began to diminish with more intense competition from trade routes via the north or via the sea to Asia.
* The 19th century was a troubled period for Syria. Muhammad Ali set up his own power base in Egypt in defiance of Ottoman authority. Ibrahim Pasha, the Son of Muhammad Ali, governed Syria temporarily (1831 – 1840).
* In the second half of the 19th century Syria was considerably more open to foreign influence and many European educational institutions began to operate.
* Although Damascus was slow in adopting the Arab nationalist sentiments that were encouraged at that time, however the disappointment at the continuation of Turkish rule and the imposition of ‘Turkification’ policies gave new stimulus to Arab nationalism.
* In 1914, Damascus was made the general headquarters of German and Turkish forces in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. Damascus became a base for rising Arab feeling against Turkish domination.
* The First World War was a time of extreme privation in Syria and Lebanon. Food shortages, starvation, and serious epidemics were a result of Turkish apathy and maladministration.
Arab Kingdom of Syria (1918 – 1920) :
* Allied and Arab nationalist forces entered Damascus on 1 October 1918, the city having been abandoned the day before by its Turkish garrison. Elections to a National Syrian Government the next year and the appointment of Feisal as King cut across British and French ambitions and were overturned by the establishment under the provisions of the Versailles Conference of a French Mandate in Syria along with a corresponding French Mandate in an enlarged Lebanon and British Mandates in Palestine and Trans-Jordan.
French Mandate (1920 – 1946) :
* The Mandate was imposed by force of arms in 1920. But not for long, France faced a hostile population and wearying resistance. In 1925, a serious revolt broke out in the Hauran and spread to Damascus, where the French resorted to the first mass bombardment of the city.
* Having tried to break Syria up into separate states, the French gave in to rising nationalist
* The Mandate formally ended in April 1945 with Syria’s admission to the United Nations, though that outcome did not constrain French forces from a final bombardment of Damascus the next month. French forces finally withdrew in late 1946.
