MAPS OF HISTORY · HISTORY OF · Syria

ONE LAND · 7 ATLASES

Syria, on the map of history

What was Syria before it was Syria? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History collection — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.

Syria · The Rise and Fall of Rome, 264 BC – AD 476

Seleucid heartland, annexed by Pompey in 64 BC without a major battle — the Republic absorbing a great monarchy by paperwork. Antioch became the empire’s third city and the eastern command center; Palmyra’s Zenobia ruled the whole east from its edge in 270–272. Contested with Persia for four centuries; the frontier both empires bled for.

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Syria — Aleppo, Damascus & the states between · The Crusades, 1095–1291

Syria was the arena. Its rival emirates of Aleppo and Damascus were the powers the crusaders played against one another — until Zengi, Nur al-Din and finally Saladin united them into the ring that strangled Outremer. The crusader principalities of Antioch, Edessa and Tripoli were all carved from its coast and northern marches, and all were reclaimed from it.

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Ayyubid Syria · The Mongol Empire, 1206–1294

Ayyubid Syria was the tide’s westernmost reach: Aleppo stormed and Damascus occupied in early 1260, then everything reversed at Ain Jalut that September. For sixty years afterward Syria was the Ilkhan–Mamluk war’s frontier, raided and retaken — the map’s clearest example of a conquest that became a border.

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Syria · The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848

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Syria (Ottoman Empire) · The Great War, 1914–1918

Ottoman Syria endured the war as famine — the blockade, locusts and requisition killed perhaps half a million in greater Syria — then greeted Faisal’s Arab army and the promise of independence in 1918 (Ch. 10). The French mandate arrived instead, by force, at Maysalun in 1920: Sykes–Picot (Ch. 7) outlived every promise that contradicted it.

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Syria · The War Room — WW2, 1936–1945

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Syria · The Cold War, 1945–1991

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