Syria occupies a strategic position of incomparable value. It bears the traces of many caravan routes, Roman roads, pilgrimage trails and superhighways that testify to its role as a corridor for east/west trade.

Through Roman and Byzantine times Syria became the focal point in efforts to maintain a universal empire. To the east, Euphrates is the highway into Mesopotamia that has never bothered potential aggressors. To the southeast, the Great Arabian Dessert has historical funneled its excess energies in the direction of Syria, causing population changes that have marked several of its major historical eras. The northern plains have likewise been a magnet for the disaffected, marginalized by successive changes in Turkey.

But beyond the natural chokepoint in the north west, Syria is an open land without doors. It learned to survive on its wits – by trading and statecraft rather than closing itself off as a fortress land. It has learnt to transmit rather than to block – to absorb the first ethnic waves from the steppes and desert to the south; to pass on the great themes and ideas that have moved between east and west; to provide a footing between the religious currents that have swept the region.

Settling, Agriculture and the Beginning of civilization 9000BC:

This is where civilization began. The development of agriculture in Syria meant settled communities. Tribes and peoples began to prefer agriculture to hunting and with the appearance of bronze and copper tools, agriculture developed quickly. Along with the development in agriculture came a development in trade, as urbanized communities began to engage in various economic activities.

Syria during Early, Middle and Late Bronze Ages (3100 – 1200 BC)

When the earliest written records emerge in the Early Bronze Age (3^rd millennium BC), Syria shared in the development of city states that arose in the Sumerian lands to the east. Though of different origins to the Sumerians, the population of the mid-Euphrates city, Mari, based its social structure on analogous systems. Literacy, through the development of a system of cuneiform writing, stimulated complex legal and trading practices, the local monarchs' power depending on the effectiveness of their control of irrigation and trade. The rise of the first truly imperial power in the region, the Akkadian Empire (2340 – 2150), ended Mari's phase. Under the subsequent rule of the Dynasty of Ur, Mari retained a degree of importance, while Ebla became a subsidiary state.

By 2100, the early experiments in urban societies were disturbed by new population movements that brought Amorite people from the Syrian desert into the settled lands of the Fertile Crescent. This period of urban decay and disruption initially brought an end to much of the pattern of regional trade on which Ebla had thrived and the city fell into decline. The Kingdom of Yamkhad (Aleppo) became a major power in this period, absorbing Ebla into its orbit. Mari enjoyed some independence 19^th – 18^th centuries BC as an Amorite city. The Babylonian leader to the south, Hammurabi, ruled with reformist zeal at home (he promulgated a codified system of law in his name) but this did not distract him from developing an appetite for conquests which caused him to raze Mari around 1759 BC. The Amorite Kingdoms of the north managed to resist direct Babylonian rule but traded extensively to the east.

The next major change to the regional power game came from the north west. The Hittites (Indo-Europeans by origin) had installed themselves in central Anatolia and brought an end to Babylonian power c1595 BC. A non-Semitic people called the Hurrians had been moving into Syria in large numbers from the north. A second analogous wave, the Mitanni people, soon arrived to blend with the Hurrians to form a federation of Hurrian principalities, the Kingdom of Mittani (16^th – 14^th BC), centered on the present North East Province around the Khabur River with links to the "land of Ammuru" to the east. At about the 13^th century to the south, the tribe of the Israelites was moving into Palestine from the east with consequences still to be resolved 3000 years later. The Mediterranean coast as a whole enjoyed a more prosperous and untroubled life based on the sea trade routes built up by the Phoenicians – peoples of Semitic origin who had moved into the region at the beginning of the second millennium and had established a culture that blended Mesopotamian, Anatolian, Aegean and Egyptian influences.

Syria during Iron Age (1200 – 539 BC):

Syria's ethnic and political chess board was again scattered by the arrival of the Sea Peoples around 1200. The Sea Peoples' invasion brought an end to the apogee of Ugarit as well as to the Hittite Empire. Further Semitic population movement arrived from the south in the from of the Arameans, a Bedouin people who concentrated particularly in the north where around twenty so-called "Neo-Hittite" principalities had arisen – Halab (Aleppo), Arpad, Tell Barsib, Tell Halaf, Hattina and Hamath (Hama). The arrival of the Arameans from the desert further scrambled the mix. The art of northern Syria post 900 reflects this diversity of origins in a clumsy attempt to rival the monumentality of their Assyrian adversaries to the east. In the south, the city-state of Aram-Damascus led a coalition of forces that checked the ambitions of the kingdoms of Israel and Judeah. On the coast, the Phoenician cities survived the Dark Age that followed the Sea Peoples' invasions and continued to serve as a conduit for products and ideas between Greece, Egypt and the Asian mainland. The Assyrian Empire (1000 – 612 BC) took permanent control of parts of northern Syria and Phoenicia from 853. The Assyrians pushed even more firmly into Syria, ending Damascus' independence in 732. Even centers such as Arwad and Sidon could not escape the vehemence of the late Assyrians' ambitions though Sidon resisted even when Assurbanipal came down on it "like a wolf on the fold" in 668. Eventually it fell, not to the Assyrians, but in 587 to Nebuchadnezzar, one of the first of the Chaldean rulers whose short-lived dominance in Syria (605 – 539) followed their defeat of the Assyrians after a long period of rivalry in their common home territory in Northern Mesopotamia.

Syria during Persian Period (539 – 333 BC)

The Achaemenid Persians annexed much of Syria as a consequence of their move westwards and their defeat of the Neo-Babylonians with the capture of Babylon by Cyrus in 539. Syria was made their fifth satrapy or province with its capital possibly at Damascus. They recognized the pervasive spread of the Arameans language and its Neo-Phoenician script by adopting it as the lingua franca of their empire, ensuring its survival well into the Roman period. The Persians brought a regular and comparatively benevolent system of administration to their 23 provinces but above all the integration of the Syrian coast into the network of exchanges across the east Mediterranean to Greece heralded the first of the great east/west clashes that have focused on Syria.

Syria during Hellenistic Period (333 – 64 BC)

This Greek-Persian contest was decided in the great battles (the first at Issus in 333) in which Alexander the Great defeated the forces of Darius III. Syria was contested, with northern Syria falling to Seleucos II Nicator after his victory over Antigonus at the battle of Ipsus in 301. The south (including Damascus) and the regions of Lebanon and Palestine were seized by Ptolemy I Soter who had already been given command of Egypt. The Seleucid Kingdom began on an ordered and rational basis but never succeeded in welding Syria into a secure of the Macedonian dynasty. New satrapal headquarters were established – Antioch, Seleucia (at the mouth of the Orontes in Turkey), Apamea, and Laodicea (Latakia) were the major centers. Subsidiary centers settled included Cyrrhus, Chalsis ad Belum (Qinnesrin), Beroia (Aleppo), Arados (Arwad), Hierapolis (Membij), and Dura Europos, the two main Seleucid domains, Syria and Mesopotamia. The Ptolemies lost control of southern Syria by 198 BC when it fell to the Seleucid King, Antiochos III Megas. This marked the beginning of a temporary resurgence of the Seleucid dynasty. By the beginning of the first century BC, Seleucid Syria was fraying badly at the edges with inroads by the Armenians to the north, the Parthians to the east and the Arab Nabateans to the south.

Roman Syria (64 BC – 395 AD):

The Romans, who since their conquest of Greece had shown interest in the fate of Syria, became increasingly involved. In 64 BC, the Roman legate, Pompey, formally abolished the Seleucid Kingdom and created the Roman province of Syria with its principle city (metropolis) at Antioch. For a time, Syria became part of the setting for the great leadership struggle that brought an end to the Roman Republic. Antioch had become the third imperial city after Rome and Alexandria but other centers such as Damascus, Beroia, and the trading hub of Palmyra, also benefited greatly. Economically, Syria flourished and became not only an entrepot zone of central importance in the east/west trade in luxuries (from China, India and Trans-Oxiana) but a major agricultural area whose grain and wine supplied a good share of the Roman market.
To service this commerce, trade routes were systematized through the building of roads, including the north/south Via Maris and Via Nova Traiana and the ease/west route through Palmyra that saved considerable time and effort over the northern route following the Euphrates. Thus Damascus was given a more monumental appearance through the provision of a widened and arcaded axial thoroughfare (later to be immortalized as the New Testament as Straight Street) and a vastly enhanced sacred precinct for the Temple of Jupiter/Hadad (Damascus – Umayyad Mosque). Other cities such as Apamea, Palmyra, Laodicea-ad-Mare (Latakia), Canatha (Qanawat) and Bostra (Bosra) were given similar treatment. The latter two were re-planned by Trajan’s more aggressive policy of direct control resulted in the annexation of the Hauran in 106 and the creation of the province of Arabia. Rome regarded Syria as a prized province and the position of legate was a valued appointment.
By the late second century, the Parthian wars were a dominant pre-occupation with Parthia the only organized power able to conduct a centralized campaign against the Empire’s might anywhere along its frontiers. At this period, Palmyra had successfully lived off its ability to act as a go-between in trade across hostile frontiers. Palmyra came under direct Roman rule and the sleepy local garrison at remote Dura Europos on the mid-Euphrates was reinforced with imperial forces. Successive Emperors over four centuries were to pit themselves against the Sasanian determination directly to challenge Rome’s presence. By the mid third century, the situation of the east frontiers of Syria was parlous, the low points being the fall of Dura Europos in 256 and the capture in 260 of the Emperor Valerian in person by Sasanian forces at Edessa, in spite of the presence of a Roman force of 70,000.