and devotees prayed together in a zawiyah, or Sufi
lodge. Up until the 18th century even the smallest
Syrian village had its own zawiyah. sUFism had a
precipitous decline as a practice in the 19th cen-
tury. As Syria’s urban population began to rapidly
increase and the Ottoman authorities in istanbUl
exerted centralizing reforms on its arab provinces,
institutionalized Sunni Islam prevailed over more
heterodox popular forms of religious expression.
Most of the more than 1 million war refugees who
have fled iraq for Syria since 2003 are Shii. The
shrine of Sayyida Zaynab south of Damascus is a
major pilgrimage site for Iraqi, Iranian, and Leba-
nese Shiis. Zaynab was the daughter of the Shii
martyr Ali and the granddaughter of the prophet
Muhammed. Many Iraqi Shiis now live in the
crowded slum areas adjacent to the shrine.
Christianity has flourished in Syria from the
earliest times and Christians now make up about
10 percent of the population. Aramaic was the lan-
guage of early Christianity in Syria and is still used
in liturgy in the ancient village of Maaloula with
its Mar Sergius Church dating back to the third
century c.e. Syria was part of the Byzantine Empire
from 395 to 632 c.e. during which time most of
the population converted. The Byzantines imposed
their own Greek-speaking clergy on the local popu-
lation, creating a schism. Syrians adopted Islam
gradually and the majority of the population may
not have become Muslim until the 10th or 11th
centuries. The main Christian denominations in
Syria today are Greek Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox,
Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Catholic, Armenian
Catholic, Maronites, and a variety of smaller Prot-
estant sects. Damascus, Aleppo, and Kamishli near
the border with tUrkey still have very small Jewish
communities. The Jewish quarter in the old city of
Damascus dates back to pre-Christian times.
In the modern period, Syria has suffered
from foreign domination and colonialism. From
1516 to 1916, Syria was a province of the Otto-
man Empire. The last years of the empire were
particularly harsh. The Ottoman sultan Abdul
Hamid II (1876–1909) stepped up forced con-
scription—even among Syria’s Christians, who
had formerly been exempt from military ser-
vice. An economic recession and the collapse of
traditional handicraft industries caused by the
flooding of local markets with cheap European
industrial goods created a wave of peasant and
urban lower-class migration to South America
and the United states. The repressive policies
of Abdul Hamid gave rise to a growing opposi-
tion movement among Syria’s newly educated
professional class who sought promotion of the
Arabic language in the educational system and
government administration. After Abdul Hamid
was deposed by the Young Turk Movement in
1909, some members of the Syrian opposition
began calling for complete independence. The
nascent Arab nationalist movement was ruth-
lessly crushed by the Turkish military authorities
during World War I. In 1915 and 1916, 33 Arab
nationalists were publicly hanged in the main
squares of Beirut and Damascus.
Syria’s present borders are the result of colo-
nial partition sponsored by the British and French
in the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. Under the
terms of the agreement, Syria was placed under
French role as a mandate of the League of Nations.
arab armies led by Faysal Husayn, son of the
Sharif of mecca, entered Damascus in 1918 and
declared an independent Arab kingdom. At the
same time, French military forces landed in Syria
and Lebanon. Faysal’s government was militarily
defeated by the French in 1920, and the country
was placed under foreign military rule. The ruth-
lessness of French military and economic policies
radicalized the Syrian population. In 1925 and
1926, the Syrians rose in a massive revolt begin-
ning in the Druze mountainous areas in the south,
then encompassing much of the countryside and
eventually reaching the urban centers of Damas-
cus and Aleppo. To crush the armed revolt, the
French employed their foreign legion, aerial bom-
bardment, and even the use of napalm. Almost a
third of the Syria population became homeless.
The French mandate left a legacy of a bifur-
cated body politic that plagued Syria for the rest
of the 20th century. The French relied on large
absentee landowners, wealthy merchants, and
urban notables as their collaborators in admin-K 648 Syria