Syrians

Syrians(Arabic:سوريون) are the majority inhabitants ofSyria, indigenous to theLevant, who haveArabic, especially itsLevantineandMesopotamiandialects, as a mother tongue. Theculturaland linguistic heritage of the Syrian people is a blend of both indigenous elements and the foreign cultures that have come to rule the land and its people over the course of thousands of years. By the seventh century, most of the inhabitants of the Levant spokeAramaic. In the centuries after theMuslim conquest of the Levantin 634, Arabic became the dominant language, but a minority of Syrians retainedAramaic (Syriac), which is still spoken in itsEasternandWesterndialects.
The national name "Syrian" was used inantiquityto denote the inhabitants of the Levant. Following the Muslim conquest of the Levant, Arab identity became dominant and the ethnonym "Syrian" was used mainly by Christians who spoke Syriac. In the 19th century, the name "Syrian" was revived amongst the Arabic speakers of the Levant. Following the establishment of theArab Kingdom of Syriain 1920, the name "Syrian" began to spread amongst its Arabic speaking inhabitants. The term gained more importance during theMandate for Syria and the Lebanon, becoming the accepted national name for the Arabic speakers of the Syrian Republic.
Most Arabic-speaking Syrians identify as Arabs and are described as such by virtue of their modern-day language and bonds toArab cultureand history. But they are, in fact, genetically a blend of the variousSemitic-speaking groups indigenous to the region.There is no contradiction between being an Arab and a Syrian since the Syrian Arab identity is multi-layered and being Syrian complements being Arab. In addition to denoting Syrian Arabs, the term "Syrian" also refer to all Syrian citizens, regardless of their ethnic background. In 2018, Syria had an estimated population of 19.5 million, which includes, aside from the aforementioned majority,Kurds,Assyrians,Turkmen,Armeniansand others.
Even before theSyrian Civil War, there was quite a largeSyrian diasporathat had emigrated to North America (United StatesandCanada),European Union member states(including Sweden, France, and Germany), South America (mainly inBrazil,Argentina,Venezuela, andChile), theWest Indies,Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.Six millionrefugees of the Syrian Civil Waralso live outside Syria now, mostly inTurkey,Egypt,Jordan,Lebanon,Germanyas well asSweden.
Various sources indicate that the nameSyriaitself is derived fromLuwianterm "Sura/i", and the derivativeancient Greekname:Σύριοι,Sýrioi, orΣύροι,Sýroi, both of which originally derived from theAkkadianword Aššūrāyu (Assyria) in northernMesopotamia, modern-day Iraq.However, during theSeleucid Empire, this term was also applied toThe Levant, and henceforth the Greeks applied the term without distinction between theAssyriansof north Mesopotamia andArameansof the Levant.
The Greeks used the terms "Syrian" and "Assyrian" interchangeably to indicate the indigenousArameans,Assyriansand other inhabitants of theLevantandMesopotamia,Herodotusconsidered "Syria" west of theEuphrates. Starting from the 2nd century BC onwards, ancient writers referred to the ruler of theSeleucid Empireas theKing of Syriaor King of the Syrians.The Seleucids designated the districts ofSeleucisandCoele-Syriaexplicitly as Syria and ruled the Syrians as indigenous populations residing west of the Euphrates (Aramea) in contrast to Assyrians who had their nativehomelandinMesopotamiaeast of the Euphrates.However, the interchangeability between Assyrians and Syrians persisted during theHellenistic period.
In one instance, thePtolemaic dynastyof the Hellenistic kingdom ofEgyptapplied the term "Syrian Village" as the name of a settlement inFayoum. The Ptolemies referred to all peoples originating from Modern Syria andPalestineas Syrian.
The termSyrianwas imposed upon Arameans of modernLevantby the Romans.Pompeycreated the province ofSyria, which included modern-day Lebanon and Syria west of the Euphrates, framing the province as a regional social category with civic implications.Plutarchdescribed the indigenous people of this newly created Roman province as "Syrians",so didStrabo, who observed that Syrians resided west of the Euphrates in Roman Syria,and he explicitly mentions that those Syrians are the Arameans, whom he callsAramaei, indicating an extant ethnicity.Posidoniusnoted that the people called Syrians by the Greeks refer to themselves as Arameans.
In his bookThe Great Roman-Jewish War,Josephus, aHebrewnative to the Levant, mentioned the Syrians as the non-Hebrew, non-Greek indigenous inhabitants of Syria.
Syrians are mainly descended from the variousancient Semitic-speaking peoplesof theancient Near East.The Seleucids ruled the indigenous peoples of the Levant, whom they named "Syrians", as a conquered nation; Syrians were not assimilated into Greek communities, and many local peasants were exploited financially as they had to pay rent for Greek landlords. OutsideGreek colonies, the Syrians lived in districts governed by local temples that did not use the Greek civic system ofpoleisand colonies.The situation changed after the Roman conquest in 64 BC; Semitic-speaking Syrians obtained the citizenship of Greekpoleis, and the line separating the Greeks and the natives blurred. The idioms Syrian and Greek were used by Rome to denote civic societies instead of separate ethnic groups.
Ancient Syria of the first millennium BC was dominated by the Aramaeans;they originated in the Northern Levant as a continuum of theBronze Agepopulations of Syria.The Aramaeans assimilated most of the earlier Levantine populations through their language.With the adoption of a common religion,Christianity, most of the inhabitants turned into Syrians (Aramaeans). Islam and the Arabic language had a similar effect where the Aramaeans themselves became Arabs regardless of their ethnic origin following theMuslim conquest of the Levant.The presence of Arabs in Syria is recorded since the 9th century BC,and Roman period historians, such asStrabo,Pliny the Elder, andPtolemy, reported that Arabs inhabited many parts of Syria,which according to modern historians indicate either an ethnic group or a nomadic way of life.Theurheimatof the Arab ethnos is unclear; the traditional 19th century theory locates this in the Arabian Peninsula,while some modern scholars, such as David Frank Graf, note that the epigraphic and archaeological evidence render the traditional theory inadequate to explain the Arabs' appearance in Syria.The Arabs mentioned in Syria by Greco-Roman writers were assimilated into the newly formed "Greco–Aramaean culture" that dominated the region, and the texts they produced were written in Greek and Aramaic.Old Arabic, the precursor ofClassical Arabic, was not a literary language; its speakers used Aramaic for writing purposes.
On the eve of theRashidun Caliphateconquest of the Levant, 634 AD, Syria's population mainly spoke Aramaic as theLingua franca,while Greek was the language of administration.ArabizationandIslamizationof Syria began in the 7th century, and it took several centuries for Islam, the Arab identity, and language to spread;the Arabs of the caliphate did not attempt to spread their language or religion in the early periods of the conquest, and formed an isolated aristocracy.The Arabs of the caliphate accommodated many new tribes in isolated areas to avoid conflict with the locals; caliphUthmanordered his governor,Muawiyah I, to settle the new tribes away from the original population.Syrians who belonged toMonophysiticdenominations welcomed the Muslim Arabs as liberators.
TheAbbasidsin the eighth and ninth centuries sought to integrate the peoples under their authority, and the Arabization of the administration was one of their methods.Arabization gained momentum with the increasing numbers of Muslim converts fromChristianity;the ascendancy of Arabic as the formal language of the state prompted the cultural and linguistic assimilation of Syrian converts.Some of those who remained Christian also became Arabized, while others stayed Aramean,it was probably during the Abbasid period in the ninth century that Christians adopted Arabic as their first language; the first translation of the gospels into Arabic took place in this century.Many historians, such asClaude Cahenand Bernard Hamilton, proposed that the Arabization of Christians was completed before theFirst Crusade.By the thirteenth century, the Arabic language achieved complete dominance in the region, with many of its speakers having become Arabs.
Those who retained the Aramaic language are divided among two groups:
The Arabs in Arabia called theregion of Syriaregional-Sham(Arabic:بِـلَاد الـشَّـام,romanized:Bilād al-Šām,lit.'the country of Sham') which became the dominant name of the Levant under theRashidun Caliphateand its successors. The geographic designation "Syria" returned in 1864 whenOttoman Syriawas reorganized and the name was used for a vilayet encompassing generally the southern Levant.The use of the national designation "Syrian" however has its origin in the tense relationship between the Arabic-speaking Muslims and Christians of the Levant, where Christians wanted to distance themselves from the Muslims.Already in the 1830s, the Lebanese traveler As’ad Khayyat identified with the term Syria, but it took till the 1880s for the name to begin to be widely used by the inhabitants to refer to themselves.Both Muslims and Christians agreed that the Muslims were not Syrians because they belonged to the Arabs while the Christians retained the Syrianism of antiquity.The spread of the Syrian "idea" amongst the Muslims can be traced to the efforts ofRashid Ridawho contributed to the formulation of the Syrian Union Party's manifesto in 1918, demanding that Syria, in the aftermath of World War I and the Ottoman withdrawal from the region, become an independent state and not part of larger Arab one ruled by theHashemitesof theKingdom of Hejaz.Rida did not reject the Arab identity but recognized a Syrian uniqueness and advocated the idea of a Syrian state.In the end, Syria did become a separate state but under the Hashemite kingFaisal. He entered Damascus in 1918 in the aftermath of the Ottomans' evacuation of the Levant at the end of World War I. His entry ignited the Syrian national consciousness after he declared an Arab government in the Levant centred in Damascus with him as prince.In June 1919, theSyrian National Congress, which included representatives from Palestine and Lebanon, demanded the full independence of Syria, within borders that encompass more or less the Levant; this helped to further strengthen the development of the Syrian national consciousness.Initially, most inhabitants were against the establishment of Syria as they considered this a step against Arab unity, but gradually, Faisal's Syria, which was declared an independent kingdom in 1920, prompted the Syrians to begin exploring the notion of Syrianism instead of pan-Arabism.Faisal was deposed by the French who established amandatein 1920, but the formation of a Syrian consciousness amongst the members of the Syrian Arab national movement solidified and spread amongst the Muslims as well as the Christians.
Genetic tests on Syrians were included in many genetic studies.Thegenetic markerwhich identifies descendants of the ancientLevantinesis found in Syrians in high proportion.Modern Syrians exhibit "high affinity to the Levant" based on studies comparing modern and ancient DNA samples.Syrians cluster closely with ancient Levantine populations of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages.A Levantine ancestral genetic component was identified; it is estimated that the Levantine, the Arabian and East African ancestral components diverged 23,700–15,500 years ago, while the divergence between the Levantine and European components happened 15,900–9,100 years ago.The Levantine ancestral component is the most recurrent in Levantines (42–68%); the Peninsular Arabian and East African ancestral components represent around 25% of Syrian genetic make-up.
The paternal Y-DNA haplogroup J1, which reaches its highest frequencies in Yemen 72.6% and Qatar 58.3%, accounted for 33.6% of Syrians.The J2 group accounted for 20.8% of Syrians; other Y-DNA haplogroups include theE1B1B12.0%,I5.0%,R1a10.0% andR1b15.0%.The Syrians are closest to other Levantine populations: theLebanese, thePalestiniansandJordanians;this closeness can be explained by the common Canaanite ancestry and geographical unity which was broken only in the twentieth century with the advent of British and French mandates.Regarding the genetic relation between the Syrians and the Lebanese based on Y-DNA, Muslims from Lebanon show closer relations to Syrians than their Christian compatriots.The people of Western Syria show close relations with the people of Northern Lebanon.
Mitochondrial DNAshows the Syrians to have an affinity with Europe; main haplogroups areHandR.Based on Mitochondrial DNA, the Syrians, Palestinians, Lebanese and Jordanians form a close cluster.Compared to the Lebanese, Bedouins and Palestinians, the Syrians have noticeably more Northern European component, estimated at 7%.Regarding theHLA alleles, Syrians, and other Levantine populations, exhibit "key differences" from otherArabpopulations;based onHLA-DRB1alleles, Syrians were close to eastern Mediterranean populations, such as theCretansandLebanese Armenians.Studying the genetic relation betweenJewsand Syrians showed that the two populations share a close affinity.Apparently, the cultural influence of Arabian expansion in theEastern Mediterraneanin the seventh century was more prominent than the genetic influx.However, the expansion of Islam did leave an impact on Levantine genes; religion drove Levantine Muslims to mix with other Muslim populations, who were close culturally despite the geographic distance, and this produced genetic similarities between Levantine Muslims and Moroccan and Yemeni populations. Christians andDruzebecame a genetic isolate in the predominantly Islamic world.
Arabicis the mother tongue of the majority of Syriansas well as the official state language. The Syrian variety ofLevantine Arabicdiffers fromModern Standard Arabic.Western Neo-Aramaic, the only survivingWestern Aramaicdialect, is still spoken in three villages (Maaloula,Bakh'aandJubb'adin) in the Anti-Lebanon Mountains by both Muslim and ChristianArameans (Syriacs).Syriacsin the northeast of the country are mainlyTuroyo-Aramaicspeakers but there are also some speakers ofSuret-Aramaic, especially in theKhabour Valley.Classical Syriacis also used as a liturgical language bySyriac Christians. English, and to a lesser extent French, is widely understood and used in interactions with tourists and other foreigners.
Religious differences in Syria have historically been tolerated,and religious minorities tend to retain distinct cultural, and religious identities.Sunni Islamis the religion of 74% of Syrians. TheAlawites, a variety ofShia Islam, make up 12% of the population and mostly live in and aroundTartusandLatakia.Christiansmake up 10% of the country. MostSyrian Christiansadhere to theByzantine Rite; the two largest are theAntiochian Orthodox Churchand theMelkite Greek Catholic Church.TheDruzeare a mountainous people who reside inJabal al-Druzewho helped spark theGreat Syrian Revolt. The Ismailis are an even smaller sect that originated in Asia. Many Armenian and Assyrian Christians fledTurkeyduring theArmenian genocideand theAssyrian genocideand settled in Syria. There are also roughly 500,000Palestinians, who are mostly descendants of refugees from the 1948 Israeli-Arab War. The community ofSyrian Jewsinside Syria once numbered 30,000 in 1947, but has only 200 today.
The Syrian people's beliefs and outlooks, similar to those of most Arabs and people of the wider Middle-East, are a mosaic of West and East. Conservative and liberally minded people will live right next to each other. Like the other countries in the region, religion permeates life; the government registers every Syrian's religious affiliation. However, the number of non-believers in Syria is increasing but there is no credible source or statistics to support this information.
Syrian cuisine is dominated by ingredients native to the region.Olive oil,garlic,olives,spearmint, andsesame oilare some of the ingredients that are used in many traditional meals. Traditional Syrian dishes enjoyed by Syrians include,tabbouleh,labaneh,shanklish,wara' 'enab,makdous,kebab,Kibbeh,sfiha,moutabal,hummus,mana'eesh,bameh, andfattoush.
A typical Syrian breakfast is ameze. It is an assortment platter of foods with cheeses, meats, pickles, olives, and spreads.  Meze is usually served with Arab-style tea – highly concentrated black tea, which is often highly sweetened and served in small glass cups. Another popular drink, especially with Christians and non-practicing Muslims, is thearak, a liquor produced from grapes or dates and flavored withanisethat can have an alcohol content of over 90% ABV (however, most commercial Syrian arak brands are about 40–60% ABV).
Media related toPeople of Syriaat Wikimedia Commons