Hellenistic and Roman periods

The Hellenistic Age

After Alexander’s death in 323 bce his marshals contended for control of the country until, after the Battle of Ipsus (301), Seleucus I Nicator gained the northern part and Ptolemy I Soter gained the southern (Coele Syria). This partition between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies was maintained for 100 years. Their administrative methods varied. In the south the Ptolemies respected the existing autonomous cities, imposed a bureaucratic system on the rest of the country, and established no colonies. The Seleucids divided the north into four satrapies and founded many cities and military colonies—among them Antioch, Seleucia Pieria, Apamea, and Laodicea—drawing on European settlers. Republics replaced kings in the Phoenician coastal cities of Tyre (274 bce), Sidon, Byblos, and Aradus. Further political and cultural changes followed.

In 200 bce (or perhaps as late as 198) Antiochus III (the Great) defeated Ptolemy V Epiphanes at Panium and secured control of southern Syria, where he introduced the satrapal system. His subsequent defeat by the Romans at Magnesia (December 190 or January 189), however, resulted in the loss of both his territory in Asia Minor and his prestige, thereby fundamentally weakening the Seleucid empire, which ceased to be a Mediterranean power. Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–163) stimulated the spread of Greek culture and political ideas in Syria by a policy of urbanization; increased city organization and municipal autonomy involved greater decentralization of his kingdom. His attempted Hellenization of the Jews is well known.

Under the Seleucid kings, with rival claimants to the throne and constant civil war, Syria disintegrated. In the north the Seleucids controlled little more than the areas of Antioch and Damascus. Southern Syria was partitioned by three tribal dynasties: the Ituraeans, the Jews, and the Nabateans. The country was seized later by Tigranes II The Great of Armenia (83); he ruled until his defeat by Pompey, who ended years of anarchy by making Syria a Roman province (64–63).

Roman provincial organization

Pompey in the main accepted the status quo, but he reestablished a number of cities and reduced the kingdom of Judaea; 10 cities of the interior formed a league, the Decapolis. The native client kingdoms of Commagene, Ituraea, Judaea, and Nabataea were henceforth subjected to Roman Syria. Parthian invasions were thrown back in 51–50 and 40–39 bce, and Mark Antony’s extensive territorial gifts to Cleopatra (including Ituraea, Damascus, and Coele Syria) involved only temporary adjustments.

Under the early empire, Syria, which stretched northeast to the upper Euphrates and, until 73 ce, included eastern Cilicia, became one of the most important provinces. Its governor, a consular legate, generally commanded four legions until 70 ce. Administrative changes followed, as Rome gradually annexed the client kingdoms. Ituraea was incorporated (i.e., its territories were assigned to neighbouring cities) partly in 24 bce, partly about 93 ce. Judaea became a separate province in 6 ce, governed by procurators (apart from the short-lived control by Herod Agrippa I, 41–44 ce), until the destruction of Jerusalem in 70. Then the governor was a praetorian legate in command of a legion; next, under Hadrian, he was a consular with two legions, and the province was named Syria Palaestina. Commagene was annexed permanently by Vespasian in 72. The caravan city of Palmyra came under Roman control, possibly during Tiberius’s reign. Finally, Nabataea was made the province of Arabia in 105, governed by a praetorian legate with one legion.

Syria itself was later divided by Septimius Severus into two provinces—Syria Coele in the north with two legions and Syria Phoenice with one. By the beginning of the 5th century it was subdivided into at least five provinces. The frontiers of Syria were guarded by a fortified limes system, which was thoroughly reorganized by Diocletian and his successors (particularly against cavalry attacks) and which endured until the Arab conquest; much knowledge of this system of “defense in depth” has been obtained with the aid of aerial photography.

Economy and culture

Syria’s economic prosperity depended on its natural products (including wine, olives, vegetables, fruits, and nuts), on its industries (including purple dyeing, glassmaking at Sidon, linen and wool weaving, and metalwork), and on its control and organization of trade passing by caravan from the east to the Mediterranean through such centres as Palmyra, Damascus, Bostra, and Petra. Syria remained essentially rural. The urban upper and middle classes might be Hellenized, but the lower classes still spoke Aramaic and other Semitic dialects. Roman influences were naturally weaker than Greek, though the army at first helped the spread of Romanization.

The splendour of Syrian culture is seen in the magnificence of the cities (Antioch, ranking among the greatest cities of the empire, was the residence of the governor and later of the comes Orientis, who governed the diocese of the East). This splendour is also evident in their schools of rhetoric, law, and medicine; in their art; in their literature and philosophy; and in the variety of their religions, both pagan and Christian.

Byzantine Syria

During the three centuries Syria was administered from Constantinople (see Istanbul: Constantinople), its cultural and economic life remained active. Government became more bureaucratic, but it was efficient. In the 4th century, during the campaigns of Constantine I and Julian against Persia, Syria had again become a base of operations and at times endured Persian invasion. The Persian threat subsided during the 5th century, but it blazed up again in the 6th, when Arabs also added to the danger. The Persian Khosrow I captured Antioch itself (540); and in 573 the Persians were back again. The invasion of Khosrow II, which began in 606, was later rolled back by the victories of Heraclius, but the peace of 628 brought no tranquillity to Syria.

Islamic conquest

In the first half of the 7th century, Syria was absorbed into the Caliphate. Arab Muslim forces had appeared on the southern border even before the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, but the real invasion took place in 633–634, with Khālid ibn al-Walīd as its most important leader. In 635 Damascus surrendered, its inhabitants being promised security for their lives, property, and churches, on payment of a poll tax. A counterattack by the emperor Heraclius was defeated at the Battle of the Yarmūk River in 636; by 640 the conquest was virtually complete.

The new rulers divided Syria into four districts (junds): Damascus, Homs, Jordan, and Palestine (a fifth, Qinnasrīn, was later added). The Arab garrisons were kept apart in camps, and life went on much as before. Conversion to Islam had scarcely begun, apart from Arab tribes already settled in Syria; except for the tribe of Ghassān, these all became Muslim. Christians and Jews were treated with toleration, and Nestorian and Jacobite Christians had better treatment than they had under Byzantium. The Byzantine form of administration remained, but the new Muslim tax system was introduced. From 639 the governor of Syria was Muʿawiyah of the Meccan house of the Umayyads. He used the country as a base for expeditions against the Byzantine Empire, for this purpose building the first Muslim navy in the Mediterranean. When civil war broke out in the Muslim empire, as a result of the murder of ʿUthmān and the nomination of ʿAlī as caliph, Syria stood firm behind Muʿawiyah, who extended his authority over neighbouring provinces and was proclaimed caliph in 660. He was the first of the Umayyad line, which ruled the empire, with Syria as its core and Damascus its capital, for almost a century.