Violence has escalated rapidly since the Syrian population rose up against President Assad's regime in early 2011. Who is fighting whom and why exactly is getting more and more complicated. The best way to understand it is to delve into the country's history, as the conflict has ancient roots.
Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, these are the names of cities that you see so often on the news and in the newspapers lately because of the struggle in Syria. Each and every one of these places has a history that goes back centuries – often well before Christ. That applies to the whole country. Syria is located in the heart of the Fertile Crescent, the area where agriculture is believed to have first emerged around 10,000 BC.
The name of the country Syria comes from the ancient Greek word Syrioi, which the Greeks use to designate all the different peoples that lived within the ancient Assyrian Empire. The current country of Syria is only a small part of what is also referred to as the Syria region. The area has been strategically important over the centuries for several reasons.
The region forms a bridge between Europe, Asia and Africa. Those who wanted to become rich in ancient times on the most important trade route to Asia, the famous Silk Road, had to cross the area with their caravan. The imposing commercial city of Palmyra, which flourished during the time when the Romans controlled the area, bears witness to this.
The region is also the area where two important monotheistic religions originated, Judaism and Christianity. In the first centuries AD, Syria was the center of the Christian world, way before Rome became. The first large Christian communities arose in Jerusalem and Antioch (which is today in Turkey). The “rock church”:in Antioch is one of the oldest churches in the world.
Sunnis and Shiites
In the seventh century the Christian dominance in the area came to an end. A few hundred miles south of Damascus, in the Arab cities of Mecca and Medina, a third great monotheistic religion arose around 620-30. Islam is based on revelations to the prophet Muhammad. Mohammed united the many rival tribes in the Arabian Peninsula and founded an Islamic empire ("caliphate"), of which he himself became the first leader.
The first successors of Mohammed, the so-called Rightly Guided Caliphs, did not come to power by succession. They were appointed by their predecessor. This created a conflict within the young Islam. There was a small minority, the Shiites (literally:followers of Ali) who believed that Muhammad had designated his cousin Ali (the fourth caliph) as his successor. The Shiites saw the first three caliphs appointed as false. The majority of Muslims, the Sunnis, believed that Muhammad had never designated a successor himself. The age-old split within Islam between Shiites and Sunnis is of great importance in the Syrian conflict.
The Islamic empire soon expanded by force and within decades the Arab armies had conquered Syria as well. From 661 the dynasty of the Ommajads reigned. Under these kings, the Islamic empire experienced a peak in cultural prestige and military might. Syria became Islamic, but Christianity remained a tolerated minority.
Under the Ummayads, Damascus became the capital of the new Islamic world. The Ummayads were Sunnis, as are the vast majority of the Syrian population today. They therefore see the time of the Ummayads as a 'golden time' and an inspiration to resist oppression.
Crusaders and Ottomans
The Ummayads were driven out by the Abassids in the eighth century. These in turn were defeated by the Seljuk Turks, a Turkic-speaking people from Central Asia. Although the caliphs were allowed to remain in their posts for a while, the Islamic caliphate effectively came to an end. Knights from Western Europe, summoned in 1095 by Pope Urban II to conquer the holy city of Jerusalem from the Muslims, managed to drive out the Seljuks and founded some crusader states in what is now Israel, Lebanon and western Syria.
Initially, the Islamic hinterland (ruled by an emir from Damascus) maintained friendly ties with the crusaders, especially those in the crusader state of Jerusalem. That changed when the knights of the Second Crusade, at the behest of the French king, made an unexpected attempt to take wealthy Damascus. The attempt failed miserably and in 1181 Damascus even fell into the hands of the Egyptian conqueror Saladin. Saladin swore revenge on the Crusaders and managed to recapture Jerusalem in 1187. Saladin is seen in Syria and many other Arab countries as a hero and source of inspiration for resistance against foreign rule. He was also a Sunni.
The Ayyubid dynasty founded by Saladin did not last very long. Soon, new foreign conquerors appeared in strategically important Syria. The Turkish knighthood of the Mamluks ruled it until 1516. They were, in turn, driven out by the Turkish-speaking Ottomans, who turned almost the entire Middle East into a province of their powerful empire.
Germs for civil war
Ottoman rule brought relative stability to Syria for centuries. The ruling Ottoman sultans adhered to the Sunni version of Islam. But all kinds of minorities in their vast empire—Christians, Shiites, Alawites, Jews—were free to practice their religion. Partly because of this policy of tolerance, the Ottoman Empire was a success. Decay only came towards the end of the nineteenth century.
After the Ottomans chose the 'wrong side' during World War I (joining the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1914), the French and British signed a treaty in 1916 on how to divide the country after the war . French negotiator Georges Picot and Briton Mark Sykes drew a line on the map with pencil and ruler, cutting the Middle East in two almost arbitrarily.
The area that is now Syria was now under French mandate. The split between Shia and Sunni and the brutal way the French controlled the area sowed the seeds of the civil war that has been tearing the country for two and a half years now…