Media and publishing

The majority of Syria’s publishing industry is concentrated in Damascus. Magazines and journals are run mostly by official or semiofficial bodies. Daily, weekly, and fortnightly newspapers are published, and all newspapers are subject to government restrictions. Leading dailies include Tishrīn, Al-Baʿth, and the government publication Al-Thawrah. The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) is the country’s official, state-run news bureau.

Radio and television broadcasting in Syria is overseen by the Directorate-General of Radio and Television. Syrian radio broadcasting began in 1945 and grew to become a powerful rival of the local press. Radio broadcasts are mainly in Arabic but also in English, French, Turkish, Russian, Hebrew, and German, and they reach almost every Syrian home. The country’s first private radio station, Al-Madina FM, was launched in 2005.

The Syrian Television Service, which was established in 1960, reaches a large audience throughout the country. Television broadcasting includes educational and cultural programs, drama, music, news, and sports. Syrian television series are becoming increasingly popular throughout the Arab world. Government control once shaped and limited the public’s perception of current events, but, as satellite dishes became more common, Syrians gained access to a broader selection of Middle Eastern and European programming.

Early history

History begins with the invention of writing, which took place in southern Babylonia perhaps about 3000 bce, the script being an original picture character that developed later into cuneiform. Modern research, however, suggests that clay tokens found at numerous ancient Middle Eastern sites from as early as 8000 bce may have been used as an archaic recording system and ultimately led to the invention of writing.

By the mid-3rd millennium bce, various Semitic peoples had migrated into Syria-Palestine and Babylonia. Knowledge of this period has been enormously enhanced by the excavations at Tall Mardīkh (ancient Ebla), south of Aleppo. The palace has yielded more than 17,000 inscribed clay tablets, dated to about 2600–2500 bce, which detail the social, religious, economic, and political life of this thriving and powerful Syrian kingdom. The language of Ebla has been identified as Northwest Semitic.

About 2320 bce Lugalzaggisi, the Sumerian ruler of Erech (Uruk), boasted of an empire that stretched to the Mediterranean. It was short-lived; he was defeated by the Semite Sargon of Akkad, who became the greatest conqueror and most famous name in Babylonian history. Sargon led his armies up the Euphrates to the “cedar mountain” (the Amanus) and beyond. Ebla was destroyed either by Sargon at this time or perhaps by his grandson, Naram-sin (c. 2275 bce), and the region of Syria became part of the Akkadian empire. But the dynasty of Akkad was soon overthrown as its centre and superseded by the dynasties first of Guti and then of Ur.

Nothing certain is known about the authority (if any) that the kings of Ur exercised in Syria, so far away from their capital. The end of their dynasty, however, was brought about chiefly by the pressure of a new Semitic migration from Syria, this time of the Amorites (i.e., the westerners), as they were called in Babylonia. Between about 2000 and 1800 bce they covered both Syria and Mesopotamia with a multitude of small principalities and cities, mostly governed by rulers bearing some name characteristic of the Semitic dialect that the Amorites spoke. The period of Amorite ascendancy is vividly mirrored in the Mari Letters, a great archive of royal correspondence found at the site of Mari, near the modern frontier with Iraq. Among the principal figures mentioned are the celebrated lawgiver Hammurabi of Babylon (himself an Amorite) and a king of Aleppo, part of whose kingdom was the city of Alalakh, on the Orontes near what was later Antioch. Around 1600 bce northern Syria, including the cities of Alalakh, Aleppo, and Ebla in its Amorite phase, suffered destruction at the hands of the aggressive Hittite kings, Hattusilis I or Mursilis I, from central Anatolia.

Earlier, in the 18th century bce, a movement of people from Syria had begun in the opposite direction. This resulted in the Hyksos infiltration and eventual seizure (c. 1674 bce) of regal authority in northern Egypt, which was subject to this foreign domination for 108 years. The mixed multitude of the Hyksos certainly included Hurrians, who, not being Aryans themselves, were under the rule and influence of Aryans and learned from them the use of light chariots and horses in warfare, which they introduced into Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia. The Hurrians established the kingdom of Mitanni, with its centre east of the Euphrates, and this was for long the dominant power in Syria, reaching its height in the 15th century bce. Documentary evidence for the Mitanni period comes from excavations made in the 1970s at Tall Hadidi (ancient Azu), at the edge of Lake Al-Assad.

But other nations were growing at the same time, and in the 14th century Syria was the arena in which at least four great competitors contended. The Hurrians were first in possession, and they maintained friendly relations with Egypt, which, after expelling the Hyksos, had established a vast sphere of influence in Palestine and Syria under the kings of the 18th dynasty. Third of the powers disputing Syria in the 14th century were the Hittites, who finally, under their greatest warrior, Suppiluliumas (c. 1350 bce), not only defeated the kingdom of Mitanni but established a firm dominion of their own in northern Syria with its principal centres at Aleppo and Carchemish. Fourth was the rising kingdom of Assyria, which became a serious contender in the reign of Ashur-uballit I.

This was the period of the Amarna Letters, which vividly illustrate the decline of Egyptian influence in Syria (especially under Akhenaton), the distress or duplicity of local governors, and the rivalry of the aforesaid powers. Egyptians and Hittites continued their struggle into the 13th century; the Battle of Kadesh (c. 1290 bce) led to a treaty maintaining equal balance. Assyria had already swept away the remains of Mitanni but itself soon fell into decline, and the Hittites were not long afterward driven from their centre in Asia Minor by the migration of “peoples of the sea,” western invaders from the isles of the Aegean and from Europe. The dislocation of peoples at this time apparently also led to the migration into northern Syria of a related Indo-European group from Anatolia, the so-called Neo-Hittites. They established a number of principalities, and the area became known as “Hatti-land.”

As early as the 14th century various documents mention the Akhlame, who were forerunners of another vast movement of Semitic tribes called, generically, Aramaeans. By the end of the 13th century these had covered with their small and loose principalities the whole of central and northern Syria. The Assyrians, however, were able to guard their homeland from this penetration, and henceforth much of the warfare of Assyrian kings was aimed at the Aramaean states of Syria. At about the same time as the Aramaean invasion, the exodus of Israelite tribes from Egypt was proceeding. As the Israelites toward the end of the 11th century established a kingdom centred upon Jerusalem, the Aramaeans set up their principal kingdom at Damascus; the wars between kings of Judah or of Israel and kings of Aram make up much of Old Testament history.

But the most formidable enemies of the Aramaeans and often of the Hebrews were the great military kings of the Assyrians. In the 9th and 8th centuries bce the Assyrian empire was established over the west. At the Battle of Karkar in 853 bce, Shalmaneser III of Assyria was opposed by Bar-Hadad I (Hebrew Ben-hadad I; throne name Hadadezer; Akkadian Adad-idri) of Damascus, Ahab of Israel, and 12 vassal monarchs. In 732 Damascus, the Syrian capital, was at length captured by Tiglath-pileser III. But campaigns against the Aramaeans and Neo-Hittites of northern Syria had to be undertaken by the Assyrians until almost the end of the Assyrian empire. Culturally, the most important achievement of the Aramaeans was the bringing of the alphabet into general use for public and private business.

Before the close of the 8th century bce a massive southward movement of people, partly of Aryan descent, began from the north and west. Pressure of this movement upon the Assyrian dominions and homeland became ever more severe, and it deeply affected Syria also. In the 7th century there came the invasion of the Cimmerians, followed by the Scythians. To these and to the Medes Assyria finally succumbed with the fall of Nineveh in 612 bce. Nebuchadrezzar II, crown prince of Babylon, finally defeated the attempted rescue of Assyria by Necho II, king of Egypt, and annihilated his army at Carchemish in 605 bce. In 597 he captured Jerusalem and carried its people into exile. Thereafter, Syria was for half a century under the rule of Nebuchadrezzar’s successors on the throne of Babylon.

But another and greater power, the Persians, then came to the fore. Under the leadership of Cyrus II they extended their conquests into Asia Minor and then came to a final collision with Babylon, which Cyrus occupied in 539 bce. He sent back the exiled Jewish community to Jerusalem, encouraging them to rebuild their Temple. In Darius I’s great organization of the Persian dominions, Syria, with Palestine and Cyprus, was the fifth satrapy, bearing the name of “Across the River” (i.e., the Euphrates), with tribute fixed at 350 talents of silver. Damascus and the Phoenician cities were still the chief centres of Syria under the Persians, and in Sidon was the core of the Phoenician revolt against Artaxerxes III, which ended with the destruction of that city in 345 bce. But by this time, the end of the Persian domination was at hand, and the Macedonians under Alexander the Great were about to bring the whole Middle East under Greek rule and influence.

Alexander invaded Asia Minor in 334 bce, and his victory over the Persians at Issus in 333 was followed by the capture and enslavement of Tyre and Gaza. With the Battle of Gaugamela and the destruction of Persepolis, the downfall of Persia was complete.