Capital: Damascus
Area: 185 180 km²
Population: 16 729 000
Currency: 1 US$ =
GDP: 116 / 3 250$
HDI : 111 / 0.663 
CPI  :  na / na

2001 data

Español = copiar texto de 2003

Around 2500 BC, migrating Semitic tribes from the Arabian desert occupied northern Syria where they became known as Amorites(the westerners). From 2000 to 1800 BC, the Amorites established a multitude of small principalities over most of Mesopotamia before expanding westward as far as the Nile delta where they established the Hyskos kingdom around 1700 BC. Finally, Atmose I, who founded the 18th Egyptian dynasty expelled them around 1550 BC.

Syria was then successively dominated by the Hurrians, by the related Mitanni, by the Hittites from Anatolia, by the Assyrians and finally by Aramaean tribes whose language, Aramaic, became the lingua franca of the fertile crescent for centuries, surviving the invasion of Persian, Greek and Roman influences before being replaced by Arabic in the 7th century AD.

In 661, Damascus became the capital of the first great Muslim dynasty the Umayyads whose armies conquered North Africa and Spain in the west and lands as far as India. Corruption led to their replacement by the Abbasids who moved the capital to Baghdad in 750 and further extended Islam eastward. The next moment of glory came in 1190 when the Kurd Saladin defeated the invading crusaders to found the Ayyubid dynasty that ruled the Muslim empire from Egypt until 1260. Then came the Mameluks, the Mongols, the Ottoman Empire in 1516 and, in 1920, the French who held on tightly until 1945.