# Syria: A Short History/1

PLACE IN HISTORY
Syria, using the term in its old, geographical sense, occupies a unique place in the annals of the world. Especially because of the inclusion of Palestine and Phoenicia within its ancient boundaries, it has made a more significant contribution to the moral and spiritual progress of mankind than any other comparable land. Small as it appears on a map or a globe, its historical importance is boundless, its influence universal.
As the cradle of Judaism and the birthplace of Christianity it originated two of the great monotheistic religions and prompted the rise and development of the third and last—Islam. The soul of the Christian, the Moslem and the Jew—wherever he may be—turns to some sacred spot in Syria for religious inspiration. Every thoughtful Western man can trace some of his most fundamental values and beliefs to that ancient land.
Closely associated with its religious contribution was the ethical message southern Syria—Palestine—conveyed. Its people were the first to insist that man is created in the image of God and that each is the brother of every other man under God's fatherhood. This doctrine supplied the basis of the democratic way of life. They were the first to emphasize the supremacy of spiritual values and to believe in the ultimate triumph of the forces of righteousness, and thereby they became the moral teachers of mankind.
Not only did the early Syrians furnish the ancient world with its finest and highest thought but they implemented it with the provision of those simple-looking magic-working signs, called alphabet, through which most of the major literatures of the world are preserved. No invention compares in importance with that of the alphabet, developed ​and disseminated by the merchants and scribes of ancient Lebanon. It was from these Phoenicians, who called themselves Canaanites, that the Greeks derived their letters, in turn passing them on to the Romans and Slavs, and hence to all the peoples of modern Europe. The Aramaeans likewise borrowed these symbols and passed them on to the Arabians, who transmitted them to the Persians and Indians and other peoples of Asia, as well as to the inhabitants of Africa. Had the people of Syria rendered no other service, this would have been enough to mark them out among the greatest benefactors of humanity.
Their contribution, however, did not stop there. In their narrow land more historical and cultural events, colourful and dynamic, occurred than in perhaps any area of comparable size—events that have made the history of Syria a replica in miniature of the history of most of the civilized world. In the Hellenistic and Roman periods some of the leading thinkers of the classical age were sons of this land, including teachers, historians and Stoic and Neo-Platonic philosophers. One of the greatest schools of Roman law flourished in Beirut, capital of modern Lebanon, and certain of its professors had their legal opinions embedded in the Code of Justinian, rightly considered the greatest gift of Rome to later generations.
Shortly after the spread of Islam, the Syrian capital Damascus became the seat of the illustrious Umayyad empire, whose conquests extended westward into Spain and France and eastward into India and Central Asia—an empire greater than that of Rome at its zenith. During the Abbasid caliphate at Baghdad, which ensued, the Arab world entered upon a period of intellectual activity, involving translation from Greek, that had hardly a parallel in history. Greek philosophy and thought was the most important legacy that the classical world had bequeathed to the medieval. In this process of transmitting Greek science and philosophy, the Christian Syrians took a leading part; ​their language Syriac served as a stepping-stone by which Greek learning found its way into the Arabic tongue.
In the Middle Ages Syria was the scene of one of the most sensational dramas in the annals of contact between the Moslem East and the Christian West. From France and Flanders, Germany and Italy, Crusading hordes poured into the maritime plain of Syria and the highlands of Palestine, seeking to recover the Holy Land from its Moslem conquerors. Thus began a movement of far-reaching consequences in both Europe and Asia. The Crusades, however, were but an episode in the long and checquered military history of this land which, because of its position at the gateway of Asia on the crossroads of the nations, has been alternately an international battlefield and a busy thoroughfare of trade. Its unrivalled roster of invaders begins with Sargon and Thutmose, includes among others Alexander and Julius Caesar, and continues through Khalid ibn-al-Walid, Saladin and Baybars down to Napoleon and lesser men of recent decades.
In recent years the people of this country, after an eclipse of centuries under Mamluks and Turks, have provided the Arab East with its intellectual leadership. In the nineteenth century the Syrians, those of Lebanon in particular, were the first to establish vital contacts with the West through education, emigration and travel and thus served as the medium through which European and American influences seeped into the Near East. Their modern colonies in Cairo, Paris, New York, São Paulo and Sydney are living evidence of their industry and adventurousness.
The historical importance of Syria does not arise solely from its original contributions to the higher life of man. It results partly from its strategic position in relation to the three historic continents, Europe, Asia and Africa, and its functioning as a bridge for transmitting cultural influences from its neighbouring civilizations, together with commercial wares. As the core of the Near East, which itself ​lay at the centre of the ancient world, Syria early became the principal transmitter of culture. On one side stretched the valley of the two rivers, on the other the valley of the one river. No other region can vie in antiquity, activity and continuity with these three, in which we can observe more or less the same peoples for fifty centuries of uninterrupted history. Their civilization has been a going concern since the fourth millennium before Christ. The early culture of Europe was but a pale reflection of this civilization of the eastern Mediterranean.
Even in prehistory Syria looms high in significance, as recent archaeological investigation indicates that it was the probable scene of the first domestication of wheat and the discovery of copper, which combined with the local invention of pottery to effect a change from a nomadic hunting way of life to a sedentary agricultural pattern. This region, therefore, may possibly have experienced settled life in villages and towns before any other place. Earlier still, as we shall see in our third chapter, it may have served as the nursery of one of our direct ancestors, the emerging modern type of man (Homo sapiens). But before we consider the prehistoric period, let us inspect the land which was to be the stage for great events.