Syria Geography, Facts, and History

Syria Geography, Facts, and History Capital and Major Cities Capital: Damascus, populace 1.7 million Significant Cities: Aleppo, 4.6 million Homs, 1.7 million Hama, 1.5 million Idleb, 1.4 million al-Hasakeh, 1.4 million Dayr al-Zur, 1.1 million Latakia, 1 million Dara, 1 million Legislature of Syria The Syrian Arab Republic is ostensibly a republic, however in fact, it is controlled by a tyrant system headed by President Bashar al-Assad and the Arab Socialist Baath Party. In the 2007 races, Assad got 97.6% of the vote. From 1963 to 2011, Syria was under a State of Emergency that permitted the president exceptional forces; despite the fact that the State of Emergency has formally been lifted today, polite freedoms remain abridged. Alongside the president, Syria has two VPs - one accountable for household strategy and the other for international strategy. The 250-seat lawmaking body or Majlis al-Shaab is chosen by mainstream vote in favor of four-year terms. The president fills in as the leader of the Supreme Judicial Council in Syria. He likewise names the individuals from the Supreme Constitutional Court, which supervises decisions and rules on the legality of laws. There are mainstream offers courts and courts of the primary occurrence, just as Personal Status Courts that utilization sharia law to control on marriage and separation cases. Dialects The official language of Syria is Arabic, a Semitic language. Significant minority dialects incorporate Kurdish, which is from the Indo-Iranian part of Indo-European; Armenian, which is Indo-European on the Greek branch; Aramaic, another Semitic language; and Circassian, a Caucasian language. Notwithstanding these first languages, numerous Syrians can communicate in French. France was the League of Nations obligatory force in Syria after World War I. English is additionally developing in notoriety as a language of global talk in Syria. Populace The number of inhabitants in Syria is roughly 22.5 million (2012 gauge). Of those, about 90% are Arab, 9% are Kurds, and the remaining 1% is comprised of little quantities of Armenians, Circassians, and Turkmens. What's more, there are around 18,000 Israeli pioneers possessing the Golan Heights. Syrias populace is developing rapidly, with yearly development of 2.4%. The normal future for men is 69.8 years, and for ladies 72.7 years. Religion in Syria Syria has a mind boggling exhibit of religions spoke to among its residents. Roughly 74% of Syrians are Sunni Muslims. Another 12% (counting the al-Assad family) are Alawis or Alawites, an off-shoot of the Twelver school inside Shiism. Roughly 10% are Christians, generally of the Antiochian Orthodox Church, yet in addition including Armenian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, and Assyrian Church of the East individuals. Around three percent of Syrians are Druze; this one of a kind confidence consolidates Shia convictions of the Ismaili school with Greek way of thinking and Gnosticism. Little quantities of Syrians are Jewish or Yazidist. Yazidism is a syncretic conviction framework for the most part among ethnic Kurds that joins Zoroastrianism and Islamic Sufism. Geology Syria is arranged on the eastern finish of the Mediterranean Sea. It has an all out region of 185,180 square kilometers (71,500 square miles), isolated into fourteen managerial units. Syria shares land fringes with Turkey toward the north and west, Iraq toward the east, Jordan and Israel toward the south, and Lebanon toward the southwest. Albeit a lot of Syria is desert, 28% of its property is arable, thanks in enormous part to water system water from the Euphrates River. The most elevated point in Syria is Mount Hermon, at 2,814 meters (9,232 feet). The absolute bottom is close to the Sea of Galilee, at - 200 meters from the ocean (- 656 feet). Atmosphere Syrias atmosphere is very changed, with a moderately muggy coast and a desert inside isolated by a semiarid zone in the middle. While the coast midpoints just about 27Â °C (81Â °F) in August, temperatures in the desert routinely outperform 45Â °C (113Â °F). Additionally, precipitation along the Mediterranean midpoints 750 to 1,000 mm for every year (30 to 40 inches), while the desert sees only 250 millimeters (10 inches). Economy Despite the fact that it has ascended into the center positions of countries as far as the economy over ongoing decades, Syria faces financial vulnerability because of political agitation and worldwide authorizations. It relies upon agribusiness and oil trades, the two of which are declining. Debasement is additionally an issue.on agribusiness and oil sends out, the two of which are declining. Defilement is additionally an issue. Around 17% of the Syrian workforce is in the agribusiness area, while 16% are in industry and 67% in administrations. The joblessness rate is 8.1%, and 11.9% of the populace live underneath the destitution line. Syrias per capita GDP in 2011 was about $5,100 US. As of June 2012, 1 US dollar 63.75 Syrian pounds. History of Syria Syria was one of the early focuses of Neolithic human culture 12,000 years prior. Significant advances in agribusiness, for example, the improvement of household grain assortments and the subduing of domesticated animals, likely occurred in the Levant, which incorporates Syria. By around 3000 BCE, the Syrian city-province of Ebla was the capital of a significant Semitic domain that had exchange relations with Sumer, Akkad and even Egypt. The intrusions of the Sea Peoples interfered with this development during the second thousand years BCE, nonetheless. Syria went under Persian control during the Achaemenid time frame (550-336 BCE)Â and then tumbled to the Macedonians under Alexander the Great after Persias rout in the Battle of Gaugamela (331 BCE). Throughout the following three centuries, Syria would be administered by the Seleucids, the Romans, the Byzantines, and the Armenians. At long last, in 64 BCE it turned into a Roman provinceâ and remained so until 636 CE. Syria rose to noticeable quality after the establishing of the Muslim Umayyad Empire in 636 CE, which named Damascus as its capital. At the point when the Abbasid Empire dislodged the Umayyads in 750, in any case, the new rulers moved the capital of the Islamic world to Baghdad. The Byzantine (Eastern Roman) tried to recover command over Syria, more than once assaulting, catching and afterward losing significant Syrian urban communities somewhere in the range of 960 and 1020 CE. Byzantine goals blurred when the Seljuk Turks attacked Byzantium in the late eleventh century, likewise vanquishing pieces of Syria itself. Simultaneously, be that as it may, Christian Crusaders from Europe started building up the little Crusader States along the Syrian coast. They were restricted by hostile to Crusader warriors including, among others, the well known Saladin, who was the king of Syria and Egypt. Both the Muslims and the Crusaders in Syria confronted an existential danger in the thirteenth century, as the quickly growing Mongol Empire. The Ilkhanate Mongols attacked Syriaâ and met furious opposition from adversaries including the Egyptian Mamluk armed force, which crushed the Mongols sufficiently at the Battle of Ayn Jalut in 1260. The adversaries battled on until 1322, however in the in the interim, the pioneers of the Mongol armed force in the Middle East changed over to Islam and became acclimatized into the way of life of the zone. The Ilkhanate became dull of presence in the mid fourteenth century, and the Mamluk Sultanate set its grasp on the region. In 1516, another force assumed responsibility for Syria. The Ottoman Empire, situated in Turkey, would govern Syria and the remainder of the Levant until 1918. Syria turned into a moderately little-respected backwater in the tremendous Ottoman regions. The Ottoman king tragically aligned himself with the Germans and Austro-Hungarians in World War I; when they lost the war, the Ottoman Empire, otherwise called the Sick Man of Europe, self-destructed. Under management by the new League of Nations, Britain and France isolated the previous Ottoman terrains in the Middle East between themselves. Syria and Lebanon became French commands. An enemy of pioneer revolt in 1925 by a brought together Syrian masses terrified the French so much that they turned to fierce strategies to put down the defiance. In a review of French arrangements a couple of decades later in Vietnam, the French armed force drove tanks through the urban communities of Syria, thumping down houses, immediately executing speculated revolts, and in any event, bombarding regular people from the air. During World War II, the Free French government announced Syria autonomous from Vichy France, while maintaining whatever authority is needed to veto any bill passed by the new Syrian lawmaking body. The last French soldiers left Syria in April of 1946, and the nation increased a proportion of genuine freedom. All through the 1950s and mid 1960s, Syrian legislative issues were ridiculous and disorderly. In 1963, an upset put the Baath Party into power; it stays in charge right up 'til today. Hafez al-Assad took over both the gathering and the nation in a 1970 coupâ and the administration went to his child Bashar al-Assad following Hafez al-Assads passing in 2000. The more youthful Assad was viewed as a likely reformer and modernizer, yet his system has demonstrated degenerate and heartless. Starting in the spring of 2011, a Syrian Uprising looked to oust Assad as a feature of the Arab Spring development.