Syria 1945-1986 (RLE Syria)

Politics and Society

Derek Hopwood

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415734981
• eBook ISBN: 9781317818410
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Syria has often lacked sympathetic observers. This book tries to interpret the country and its people in terms of how they see their own history and of what they are trying to achieve. More than a political or diplomatic history, it discusses the economy, society, education and culture to help the reader understand and explain modern Syria.

A description of the country deals with the physical and other factors which have influenced Syria's development. An historical survey concentrates mainly on the period after the Second World War and explains why a knowledge of Syrian history is important and why Syrians look at their history in the way they do. The achievements, problems and failures of President Asad are fully discussed. Further chapters explain the ideological factors which have been of vital importance in Syrian politics, the development of education, the economy and society. The author looks at examples of contemporary Syrian literature and the way in which writers view the problems of their society and culture.

This is a clear, succinct and readable account of modern Syria which will be essential for all those studying the Middle East, the developing world or international relations.

1

Syria and the Syrians

Our idealism is the optimistic spirit which is confident in itself, its nation and its future. (M. Aflaq)

The Land

Syria is both a country and a concept. The Arabic name for the region in the eastern Mediterranean between Egypt and Turkey is Sham which the dictionary defines as ‘the northern region, the north, Syria, Damascus’. For the early Arabs looking at the world from their Arabian homeland Sham was a term applied to a largely undefined place across the deserts to their north. They did not use the word Syria which was the Greek and Roman name for the province in that area, a name that probably derives from the Babylonian suri. To the Arabs it was Sham and usually remained so until the twentieth century when there came into being in a part of that region the modern state of Syria - named thus both by its Arab inhabitants and European statesmen. Sham is still used to signify the whole area - greater Syria - and to underline that, despite political frontiers, there still exists the concept of unity. This greater area is today divided into the states of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and the West Bank of the Jordan under Israeli occupation.

It can be roughly defined geographically. In the north stretch the Taurus mountains in Turkey; to the west is the Mediterranean coast; to the east and south are deserts in which man-made boundaries have been drawn and which now march with those of Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. From north to south the region stretches over 800 kilometres and at its widest is 480 kilometres. The state of Syria comprises over half of the total area. It is triangular in shape with a portion taken out in the south-west where Lebanon is formed. The country is divided into a coastal zone, with a narrow double range of mountains and a large eastern area that includes mountains and vast deserts.

On the Mediterranean there are 160 kilometres of coastline which offer only sheltered coves and no large natural harbour.Behind the narrow coastal plane the Nusairiya mountain range rises to 1500 metres and continues down to the Anti Lebanon mountains where a gap allows access from the coast to the inland city of Homs. The slopes of the mountains facing the sea benefit from moistureladen winds and are more fertile and heavily populated than those facing the desert which receive only hot dry winds. The mountains are rather rugged with several deep valleys and ravines and steep cliffs which are difficult to traverse. On the tops of some of the hills still stand the imposing ruins of ancient Crusader castles, built to dominate the coastal plain. The Homs gap provides the only easy way to the interior from the coast and for centuries has been a favourite invasion and trade route. Today the railway and road from Tripoli in Lebanon run through it.

Behind the coastal mountains there is a lower and more extensive eastern chain which stretches from the Kurdish uplands in the north to the lofty mount Hermon (2800 metres), one of the most majestic peaks in Syria, on the border with Lebanon, known in Arabic as Jabal al-Shaikh - the grey-haired mountain. It drops southward into the plateaux of the Hauran and the Jaulan Heights.¹ The Hauran, treeless with few springs but abundant wheat and pasture, rises again in the east to become the Druze mountain, a high volcanic region.

Between the two long ranges of mountains lies a rift valley. Through it runs one of Syria’s few rivers, the meandering Orontes, which rises in Lebanon and reaches the sea near Antioch in Turkey after a journey of 270 kilometres. On its way it waters the fertile Ghab region to the north of the Homs gap. Damascus itself is watered by the Barada river, rising in Lebanon and expiring in the desert. It has created the Ghuta oasis south of the city which was the basis of Damascus’ prosperity.

Fertile Crescent

The Fertile Crescent is the name given to a large area of cultivable land stretching from the northern Arabian desert round to the Gulf. The western section lies in Syria and includes the fringes of the desert at the foot of the eastern mountain chain, the Hauran, Damascus oasis, the plains of Homs, Hama and Aleppo, and the area known as the Jazira (the ‘island’), a fertile area in northeastern Syria lying between the two rivers, the Tigris and theEuphrates. It forms part of the larger area now mostly in Iraq, formerly known as Mesopotamia - ‘between two rivers’ in Greek. The Euphrates with tributaries is the longest and most important river in Syria (670 kilometres) and represents more than 80 per cent of the country’s water resources. It rises in Turkey, passes through Syria and flows into the Gulf at Basra.

The rest of Syria is desert, largely uncultivable and home for the Bedouin. It ranges from barren, waterless and stony wastes to areas where shrubs and thistles grow providing scanty grazing for the flocks of nomadic or semi-nomadic tribes. Despite the barrenness, scattered oases and wells make travel across parts of the desert relatively easy.

Climate

The two main influences on the Syrian climate are the sea and the desert. The contrasts between the two influences are modified by the ranges of mountains running parallel to the coast. There are high rainfall and humidity by the sea and high temperatures which reach 30°C in the summer. Heat and humidity can make life unpleasant in the Mediterranean coastal towns. In Lebanon where the mountains rise above Beirut, many city dwellers enjoy the drier, cooler air of mountain villages as a relief from the city. In Syria the mountains are much less accessible to the urban population.

The desert affects inland Syria. Less rain falls - in some areas none at all - and the temperatures rise to the mid-40s. Hot, dust-laden winds blow over the cities and make life difficult when the heat and dust irritate and fray tempers. In the central rift valley a typical ‘Syrian’ climate prevails - hot, almost cloudless summers and relatively cold winters. The spring, sudden and short, lasts for a few weeks in March and April when even the deserts are covered with flowers and grass. The long hot summers are of the type that prevail throughout the Middle East and to which life styles are adjusted. This is relentless summer; temperatures exceed 35°C in the shade and the glaring light accentuates the shadows. Homes are shuttered, markets covered, and the streets lively with pedestrians in the evening when the daytime heat has slightly subsided. Outdoor cafés are full until late at night and shopkeepers sit gossiping and waiting for custom outside their shops. In November the first heavy showers wash the dust from the leaves; it is autumn.

Water

The Nile is life to Egypt, the Tigris-Euphrates to Iraq. There is no single element in Syria which draws the country together in a similar fashion. Nevertheless, water resources have to be carefully used and economically exploited. Rainfall is badly distributed and varies from year to year. Sixty per cent of the land receives less than 25 centimetres of rain and only 10 per cent has enough rain to maintain regular cultivation. The rivers do not on the whole lend themselves to irrigation. The Euphrates has swift currents and until recently water was only used locally on its banks. The Tabqa Dam now completed has changed this age old picture (see page 108). On the Orontes river huge wooden wheels were used for centuries to raise water for irrigation. They were a Roman invention and, powered by the current of the river, irrigated fields and orchards near Homs and Hama. A guide book of 1875 described them as having ‘an odd look, and an odder sound, turning lazily, emptying their shallow buckets, and moaning all the while as if in agony’.² They have slowly fallen into disuse, however, their agony silenced as a new dam on the river has lowered the water level and cut off the power to turn them. Modern motor pumps are taking over.

The Barada near Damascus has been extensively used to irrigate the fields and orchards of the city. The water is allocated over the land through an intricate system of channels and dams. Elsewhere in Syria scarce water supplies are carefully preserved and exploited, usually through wells or skilfully built underground irrigation canals.

Towns and Cities

Just as there is no single river uniting Syria, so the towns and cities have served as focuses for regional rather than national loyalty. Damascus, the capital, is one of a number of cities competing for loyalty. Each town (or agro-city - that is, the urban area and its agricultural hinterland from which it draws its food and to which it sells a part at least of its manufactures) has remained important as the framework for social, economic and political participation in society. The weight of local feeling cannot be overstressed in trying to understand the complex of Syrian politics. There are nine such agro-cities, some larger and more important than others. Each includes a city of at least 50,000 people, several towns and perhaps hundreds of villages. In the south is Qunaitra in the Jaulan area, Suwaida in the Druze region, Deraa in the Hauran. These three are smaller than the others but nevertheless stand as centres for a different network of villages. To their north lies Damascus; in the more densely populated north-west are Horns, Hama and on the coast the main port of Latakia. Aleppo in the north is Syria’s second city in size and importance to Damascus. Rather remote from other urban areas is Dair al-Zur, far to the east on the river Euphrates, a centre for the fertile lands to the north and the desert area to the south.

Damascus rightly claims to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Known in the days of Abraham it appears in the Old Testament and was in the eighth century BC a dependency of the Assyrians. Alexander the Great conquered the area in 333 BC, and it remained Greek until 64 BC when Pompey proclaimed Syria a Roman province with Antioch to the north (now in Turkey) as its capital. It was under Roman rule when the apostle Paul experienced his conversion on the road to Damascus. The present day visitor is still shown the house where he is said to have rested and the (far from original) window from which he was let down in a basket. Christianity flourished in the city under the Byzantines until AD 643 when invading Arab armies from central Arabia conquered the city once and for all in the name of Islam.

The Greeks and Romans gave the ancient city its basic street plan which remained the skeleton of the medieval one. Large rectangular walls were built on the bank of the Barada, pierced by seven gates. Remains of these walls and gates can still be seen today. Two long parallel streets crossed the walled enclosure, one forming the basis of the Street called Straight (although it lies buried several feet below the present day thoroughfare). The Muslims built on the existing city, often utilizing existing materials and buildings. The glory of the city was (and is) the Great Mosque of the Umayyads, built on the site of the church of St John the Baptist. Other Muslim buildings gradually changed Damascus from a Graeco-Roman city into an Islamic one, facing towards the desert and the Semitic world. The Mosque was erected as a ‘symbol of the political supremacy and moral prestige of Islam’. For a time Damascus was the capital of the whole Islamic world, a period of glory and authority never to be repeated. After AD 750 it became a provincial town when imperial authority passed to Baghdad. Damascus fell under the rule of various foreign and local dynasties, some members of which added to the buildings of the city, but who more often caused damage.

Because of the uncertainty of the times (until the twelfth century) the population began to seek more security and the face of the city changed. Each district barricaded itself behind walls and gates into watertight compartments which were virtually self-sufficient. Christians, Jews and Muslims lived in their separate areas. This development gave the old city its ‘Middle Eastern’ appearance -small lanes, blind alleys, houses turned in on themselves. When more settled conditions returned, new areas were developed. New religious buildings were put up and the city walls and towers were strengthened or rebuilt. This was during the period of the Crusades although the city itself was not attacked. The Muslim leader Saladin was buried in Damascus to the north of the Great Mosque in a tomb which nearly eight hundred years later assumed a new historical significance.

During this long era the city gradually expanded into the surrounding areas. Each period left its mark in buildings and developments. By the nineteenth century, under the Ottoman Empire European influence was beginning to make itself felt. European consuls, merchants and missionaries took up residence in new houses in the Christian quarter while the old town began to empty and new quarters grew up, particularly on the slopes of the Kasiyun Hill where the Turkish aristocracy built their beautiful houses surrounded by gardens. In 1863 French contractors made a road from Damascus through the mountains to Beirut on the coast to enable travellers to make by stage coach the journey which had previously been on horse or donkey. A railway was added in 1894, also built by a French company. In 1908 a German firm built the famous narrow gauge Hijaz railway from the city to Medina in Arabia to take Muslims on the pilgrimage to Mecca in greater comfort. (This was the railway attacked by the Arabs with Lawrence of Arabia several times during the First World War.)

After 1920 Damascus found itself a colonial city in French hands and as elsewhere the occupiers began to try to impose their own identity on the area. A French town planner and an architect drew up a city development plan which was put into operation in collaboration with the Syrian services. New suburbs, often with tree-lined roads, were developed and, as in other cases, the old city was left almost untouched. Whereas on the whole the French did not live in the old city, Syrians and French mixed in the new areas. Since independence Damascus has continued to expand as the capital of the Syrian Arab Republic, becoming a centre of industry, culture and development and attracting more and more immigrants. In the 1980s its population had reached more than one million.

Aleppo rivals Damascus in antiquity and history and no other place which is still inhabited and flourishing can boast of a comparable history. It dominates its surrounding area and inspires a loyalty which has traditionally been opposed to Damascus. It developed as an important city in the Greek and Roman empires and fell to the Arabs in AD 636. Several dynasties struggled to rule the city and it was at one time (1100) under attack by the Crusaders. Under the descendants of Saladin, Aleppo became one of the most beautiful and active cities in the Middle East. Dominated by its splendid citadel, it was adorned with mosques, markets and schools. From its position on the borders of Anatolia and on the routes to inner Asia, Aleppo became an important trading centre, importing from and exporting to Europe. The Ottomans continued to adorn the city so that today it possesses the most beautiful markets in the Muslim world. European merchants settled there and added to the varied nature of the population.

Under the Ottoman government Aleppo was a province in its own right. Often its links through trade were with Anatolia, the coast and upper Mesopotamia rather than Damascus to the south. It was only after 1918 that Aleppo was incorporated into Syria and developed as the flourishing second city of the republic. This did not mean, however, that it lost its own feeling of separate identity or its independence of thought. The modern city has now spread in an unplanned fashion into the outskirts.

Both Horns and Hama on the road between Damascus and Aleppo are towns dating back to antiquity. Horns is the centre of an intensively cultivated area in the Orontes valley and is now an important city. Hama grew up as a market mainly for the Bedouin from the surrounding districts and has expanded into another modern urban complex. The two towns have been the bases of important families in Syrian politics and therefore are also rivals to Damascus.

Islam

The towns and cities of Syria have tended to underline regional rather than national feelings. Sectarian loyalties also have a tendency to work against national loyalty. Although Syria is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, members of the various minority sects have played and continue to play important roles in the country.

The religion of Islam was first proclaimed by the Prophet Muhammad in the early years of the seventh century AD in the towns of Mecca and Medina in present day Saudi Arabia. His message was a simple faith - obedience to God (Allah) and his Prophet, strict observance of the practices and rituals of the community as laid down in God’s word - the Quran - and exemplified in the life and acts of Muhammad, which together are called the sunna - ‘practice’ or ‘usage’. Muslims who follow this path are consequently named Sunni which is usually translated as ‘orthodox’. By force of circumstances Muhammad became the leader of the citizens of Medina for whom he had to establish a system of government, of laws and institutions. Islam became a total way of life, regulating public and private activity. For thirteen centuries this religion has been at the root of life and society in Syria. First and foremost Syria is a Muslim country. The Great Mosque in Damascus has been the focus of religious life and learning and is considered to be the fourth holiest place in the Islamic world after Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. No visitor to Damascus can fail to be struck by the number of mosques, the calls to prayer and the celebration of Muslim festivals, especially during and after the fast of Ramadan. Islam is deeply rooted and is valued (even by Christians) as an essential part of the country’s heritage. As in the West, religious festivals may be observed with scant conviction but in Syria Islam is widely and sincerely observed and there are now clear signs of a re-appreciation of Islam as the centre of many people’s lives. In Damascus the scholarly tradition has maintained its leading position through the prestige of the Great Mosque. In the poorer quarters of the city, in some provincial towns and villages a less intellectual, more popular form of religion, often connected with local saints, has been prevalent.

Many Syrians would recognize Islam as a bond in their life and as a factor uniting them, although there have been and still are those who question the place of religion in society and have tried to find ameans of reconciling religion with the scientific, social and economic ideas of the twentieth century; and there are those who have abandoned the attempt and have turned to secularism. On ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Maps
• Maps
• Preface
• 1. Syria and the Syrians
• 2. The Emerging State
• 3. Independence 1945-1970
• 4. Syria under Asad 1971-1986
• 5. Politics and Ideologies
• 6. The Search for Economic Progress
• 7. The Pursuit of Education
• 8. The Growth of Culture
• 9. People and Society
• 10. Conclusion
• Chronology of Events
• Important Personalities
• Bibliography
• Index