Place

Syria

Overview

Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north and northwest, Iraq to the east and southeast, Jordan to the south, and Israel and Lebanon to the southwest. It is a republic under a provisional government and comprises 14 governorates. Damascus is Syria's capital and largest city. With a population of 26 million across an area of 185,180 square kilometres (71,500 sq mi), it is the 56th-most populous and 87th-largest country.

The name "Syria" historically referred to the region of Syria, or known as Greater Syria and Syria-Palestine. The modern state encompasses the sites of several ancient kingdoms and empires, including the Eblan civilization. Damascus was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate and a provincial capital under the Mamluk Sultanate. The modern Syrian state was established in the mid-20th century after centuries of Ottoman rule, as a French Mandate. The state represented the largest Arab state to emerge from the formerly Ottoman-ruled Syrian provinces. It gained de jure independence as a parliamentary republic in 1945 when the First Syrian Republic became a founding member of the United Nations, an act which legally ended the French Mandate. French troops withdrew in April 1946, granting the nation de facto independence. The post-independence period was tumultuous, with multiple coups and coup attempts between 1949 and 1971. In 1958, Syria entered a brief pan-Arab union with Egypt, which was terminated following a 1961 coup d'état. The 1963 coup d'état carried out by the military committee of the Ba'ath Party established a one-party state, which ran Syria under martial law from 1963 to 2011. Internal power-struggles within Ba'athist factions caused further coups in 1966 and 1970, the latter of which saw Hafez al-Assad come to power. Under Assad, Syria became a hereditary dictatorship. Assad died in 2000, and he was succeeded by his son, Bashar.

During the Arab Spring in 2011, Syrian youth and the local coordination committees organized protests to voice their dissatisfaction with Assad's government in what became known as the Syrian Revolution. Following the government's response to the protests with lethal violence, the Free Syrian Army was formed and the revolution descended into a multifaceted and destructive civil war lasting 13 years with the involvement of several countries, leading to a refugee crisis in which more than 6 million refugees were displaced from the country. Syrian rebels had taken over half of the country within two years, but progress was rapidly undone after the emergence of the Islamic State which overran rebel positions and by May 2015 occupied two thirds of the country. In response to these rapid territorial gains, several countries led a campaign which, combined with rebel and government counteroffensives, led to the territorial defeat of the Islamic State in 2017.

The Free Syrian Army struggled with internal division throughout its existence, and after suffering its heaviest defeat after the four-year Battle of Aleppo, it fragmented and struggled. Thereafter, three political entities, which were the Syrian Interim Government, Syrian Salvation Government, and the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, remained in Syrian territory to challenge Assad's rule. By 2020, the Syrian civil war became a frozen conflict, and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) consolidated the remaining rebel groups in its stronghold of controlled areas in Idlib, Aleppo, and Latakia governorates. HTS then led a series of offensives alongside a coalition of other opposition forces, which led to the fall of Damascus and the fall of the Assad regime.

By 2025, the Syrian civil war had killed over 600,000, left much of Syria's infrastructure in ruin, and its economy in a poor state following years of international sanctions that were later eased. In March 2025, the Syrian transitional government replaced the Syrian caretaker government under Ahmed al-Sharaa, the new president of Syria.

A country of fertile plains, high mountains, plateaus, and deserts, Syria is home to diverse ethnic and religious groups. Levantine Arabs are the largest ethnic group, and Sunni Muslims are the largest religious group.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Philosophers who discussed Syria

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