SYRIA, an independent State of south-west Asia placed under the mandate of France (1920). The region is bounded west by the Mediterranean, south by Palestine, east by Mesopotamia and north by Turkey. The area of Syria under the French mandate is estimated at 6o,000 sq.m. and the population at under 3,000, 000. Syria has been used as a name to include various expanses of country in south-western Asia. Some early Muslim geographers included all the Hamad in Syria, making its boundaries a blunt headed triangle with a base some 700 m. long resting on the North Arabian Nefud. But Strabo, Pliny and Ptolemy, as well as Muslim geographers, drew the eastern frontier obliquely from the Gulf of Aqaba to Rakka (Raqqa) on the Euphrates and thus placed the Hamad in Arabia.
The name Syria is not found in the original Hebrew of the Scriptures; but it was used by the Septuagint to translate Aram. Homer knows only'Apc,uot, but Herodotus speaks of "Syrians" as identical with Assyrians, the latter being, he thinks, a "barbarian" form, and he applies the name very widely to include, e.g., north Cappadocians ("White Syrians" of Pteria). Syria, however, is probably the Babylonian Suri, used of a north Euphratean dis trict, and a word distinct from Assyria. Generally the ethnic term, Syrian, came to mean in antiquity the Semitic peoples outside the Mesopotamian and Arabian areas ; but neither in pre-Greek nor in Greek times had the word Syria any precise geographical sig nificance, the various lands retaining their distinctive status, e.g., Commagene (Kummukh), Cyrrhestica, Phoenicia, Palestine, etc. It is only under the Graeco-Roman administration that we find a definite district known as Syria and that was at first restricted to the Orontes basin. All that was understood until 1914 by Syria came to be so known officially to the Romans and Byzan tines ; but the only province called simply Syria, without qualifica tion, remained in the Orontes valley.
Syria, under the French mandate, is a section of the great ancient block of which Arabia, Sinai and Africa also form part.
This old block rises steeply from the Mediterranean to about 10,000 ft. and then falls in a series of long steps eastward to the basin of the Upper Euphrates, which flows in a great structural depression between the ancient block and the newer and loftier fold mountains of Kurdistan beyond. In the extreme north of French mandated Syria a section of these fold mountains forms part of the orography.
A marked feature of the old block section is that it is deeply gored by fracture lines, which run mainly in a north to south direction. The 34° N. parallel, which passes near Baalbek, marks a watershed from which jnay be traced the Orontes (Nahr el 'Asi) flowing northward among the fracture lines and the north Litani, in its upper course, flowing southward. The Jordan valley continues the great north to south fault into Palestine whence it may be followed southwards via the Dead sea and the gulf of Aqaba into East Africa. The Orontes, after flowing northwards past the 36° N. parallel, turns abruptly westward and occupies the depression between Jebel Akra and the Amanus mountains. In this valley is Antioch. The southward-flowing Litani repeats this on the south when it turns abruptly westward through the upper Cretaceous of Lebanon and becomes known in its lower course as the Kasimiya. Numerous smaller streams flow westward into the Mediterranean from the mountains of Lebanon (q.v.) and Jebel Nuseiriye. The latter is a high chain of Jurassic limestone with basaltic intrusions, whose peaks rise to io,000 ft. and whose passes do not fall under 6,000 ft. To the east of the Orontes-Litani Jordan fracture is the triple chain of Jebel al Ala in the north defining the Orontes valley on the east. Like its western parallel it springs up to the south into a lofty chain known as Jebel esh Sharqi (Anti-Lebanon) (see LEBANON), which culminates on the south in the outstanding peak of Hermon (8,000 ft.). Thereafter the mountain ranges lose much of their distinctive character.