The Umayyads of Syria

The early Umayyad period was one of strength and expansion. The army, mainly Arab and largely Syrian, extended the frontiers of Islam. It carried the war against Byzantium into Asia Minor and besieged Constantinople; eastward it penetrated into Khorasan, Turkistan, and northwestern India; and, spreading along the northern coast of Africa, it occupied much of Spain. This vast empire was given a regular administration that gradually acquired an Arab Muslim character. Syrians played an important part in it, and the country profited from the wealth pouring from the rich provinces to the empire’s centre. The caliphs built splendid palaces and the first great monuments of Muslim religious architecture: the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the Great Mosque of Damascus, constructed by the Umayyads. The religious sciences of Islam began to develop, while Christian culture still flourished. Except under ʿUmar II Christians were treated with favour, and there were Christian officials at court.

Under the later Umayyads the strength of the central government declined. There were factions and feuds inside the ruling group: the Arabs of Iraq resented the domination of Syria; the non-Arab converts to Islam (mawālī) resented the social gap between them and the Arabs; and devout Muslims regarded the Umayyads as too worldly in their lives and policies. After the defeat and death of ʿAlī’s son Ḥusayn at the Battle of Karbalāʾ in 680, sentiment in favour of the family of ʿAlī was still strong. The later Umayyads could not control these discontents. Their rule was finally overthrown and the family virtually destroyed by the new ʿAbbāsid Caliphate in 750. Among these it was ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, a member of the ruling family, who survived the assault and fled westward to reestablish the Umayyads in Al-Andalus (see Spain: Muslim Spain).

The ʿAbbāsids

The end of the Umayyad dynasty meant a shift in power from Syria to Iraq. Syria became a dependent province of the Caliphate. Its loyalty was suspect, for Umayyad sentiment lingered on, and the last pro-Umayyad revolt was not crushed until 905. The Christian population was treated with less favour; discriminatory legislation was applied to it under some caliphs, and the process of conversion to Islam went on. Closely connected with it was the gradual adoption of Arabic in place of Greek and Aramaic, although the latter survived in a few villages.

From the 9th to the 12th century

As the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate disintegrated in its turn, Syria drifted out of the sphere of influence of Baghdad. In 877 it was annexed by the Ṭūlūnid dynasty of Egypt, and this began a political connection that was to last with intervals for more than six centuries. In northern Syria the Ṭūlūnids were succeeded by a local Arab dynasty, the Ḥamdānids of Aleppo, founded by Sayf al-Dawlah (944–967); they engaged in war with Byzantium, in which their early successes were followed by the Greek recovery of Antioch (969). In central and southern Syria another Egyptian dynasty, the Ikhshīdids, established themselves (941–969); their successors, the Fāṭimid caliphs of Cairo, later absorbed the whole country.

In spite of political disturbances, the 10th and 11th centuries were a period of flourishing culture. Around the court of the Ḥamdānids lived some of the greatest Arabic writers: the poets al-Mutanabbī and al-Maʿarrī, the philosopher al-Fārābī, and the anthologist Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣbāhanī. It was a period of ferment in Islamic thought, when the challenge to Sunni Islam from Shīʿism and its offshoots reached its height. The Fāṭimids were themselves Shīʿites. At the end of the 10th century Syria was threatened by the Qarmatians, adherents of an extreme form of Shīʿism who had established a state in the Persian Gulf. The danger was beaten back, but it returned as an esoteric doctrine spread by the Ismāʿīlīs from their centre at Salamiyyah in northern Syria.

In the second half of the 11th century Syria fell into the hands of the Seljuq Turks, who had established a sultanate in Asia Minor. They occupied Aleppo and then Damascus. But after the death of the sultan Malik-Shāh in 1092 the Seljuq empire fell to pieces, and between 1098 and 1124 the Crusaders occupied Antioch, Jerusalem, Al-Karak in Transjordan, and the coast.

The Crusaders organized their conquests into four states owing allegiance to the king of Jerusalem. Their situation was precarious. The Crusaders were always a minority in their states, and they never penetrated far into the interior. They could maintain their position only so long as the Muslim states surrounding were weak and divided. Zangī, the Turkish ruler of Mosul, occupied Aleppo in 1128 and recovered Edessa from the Crusaders in 1144. His son Nūr al-Dīn united inner Syria and annexed Egypt. After his death his kingdom was rebuilt and strengthened by his viceroy in Egypt, Saladin, who ended the Fāṭimid Caliphate, created a strong kingdom of Egypt and Syria, and defeated the Crusaders at the great Battle of Ḥaṭṭīn (1187). He recovered all Palestine and most of the inland strongholds of the Crusaders. Soon afterward, however, the Third Crusade recaptured part of the coast.

The Ayyūbids and Mamlūks

After Saladin’s death his kingdom was split up among members of his family, the Ayyūbids, who established principalities in Aleppo, Ḥamāh, Homs, Damascus, Baʿlabakk (Baalbek), and Transjordan and ruled them until 1260. The period of Nūr al-Dīn, Saladin, and their successors was of great importance. Owing largely to the establishment of Italian trading centres on the coast and better security, economic life recovered and Syria reached a level of prosperity such as it had not enjoyed for centuries. The Ayyūbid rulers stimulated culture and architecture. Following the Seljuqs, they created a new land system based on the grant of rights over land in return for military service. They were champions of Sunni Islam against the Shīʿite sects that had gained ground in the previous era. They built colleges of a new type, the madrasah, as centres of learning. Their efforts to stamp out Shīʿite sects were not completely successful. The Nizārīs (Assassins), a subsect of the Ismāʿīlīs, kept their strongholds in the mountains and had some political importance.

Although strong internally, the state was still in danger from the Bedouin tribes of the desert and from the Mongols, who invaded Syria for the first time in 1260 and sacked Aleppo. They were driven back not by the local rulers but by a new Egyptian military power, the Mamlūks, a self-perpetuating elite of slaves and freedmen, mainly of Turkish and Circassian origin, who had replaced the Ayyūbids as rulers of Egypt in 1250. In 1260 they defeated the Mongols at the Battle of ʿAyn Jālūt in Palestine; the victorious Mamlūk general, Baybars I, made himself sultan of a reunited kingdom of Syria and Egypt, which he ruled until his death in 1277. This state continued to exist for more than two centuries. In 1291 it won back Acre and other coastal towns from the Crusaders, who were expelled; and a few years later it took the last Crusading stronghold, the island of Ruad (Arwād). The Mamlūks reorganized the Ayyūbid principalities as six provinces, of which Damascus was the largest and most important. Political power was in the hands of the Mamlūk elite, who held land in virtual ownership in return for military service in the cavalry. But there was a local element in the government, the civil servants being drawn mainly from Syrian Arab families with their tradition of religious learning.

Like the Ayyūbids, the Mamlūks favoured Sunni Islam. Religious culture flourished and produced a number of great scholars, such as the Ḥanbalī jurist Ibn Taymiyyah. For religious and political reasons, the Mamlūks dealt severely with the religious minorities living in the coastal mountain ranges: Druze, Maronite Christians, Ismāʿīlīs, and ʿAlawites (or Nuṣayrīs; adherents of another creed derived from Shīʿism and living in the Al-Anṣariyyah Mountains). One of the principal reasons for this severity was the Mamlūks’ fear that these minorities might cooperate with the Crusaders, should they attempt to return.

In the early Mamlūk period, Syria remained prosperous; the rulers constructed public works, and Venetian merchants carried on their coastal trade. But in 1401 came a blow to economic life: a new Mongol invader, Timur (Tamerlane), sacked Aleppo and Damascus. His empire did not long survive his death in 1405, but the damage had been done. The cities had been burned, a large part of their population killed, and many craftsmen taken away to Central Asia.