Silk is the chief article of manufacture—at Aleppo, Beyroot, Damascus, etc.—but cot ton and woolen fabrics, gold and silver thread-stuffs, glass, earthenware, leather, soap, etc., are also manufactured in different parts of the country. The want of roads is a great hindrance to industrial activity. The first carriage-road was opened in 1863, be tween Beyroot and Damascus. The other roads, with the exception of one or two short carriage-ways in mount Lebanon, are mere mule and camel tracks. In 1871 Syria. exported grains, seeds, cotton, galls, wool, etc., to the value of £717,404; and imported cottons, woolens, copper, tin, iron, coals, indigo, pepper, coffee, etc., to the value of £1,338, 750.
The religious sects of Syria are numerous. Most of the people are Mohammedans,. of the Greek church number 180,000; Maronites (q.v.) and Roman Catho- lies, 310,000; Jews, 40,000; Druses (q.v.), 00,000; lesser sects, about 30,000. The in habitants are in some sense a mixed people, for the country has experienced many politi cal vicissitudes, but by far the greatest number, whether Christians or Mohammedans, are of Shemitic origin, either Phenician, Aramaean, or Arabic. Their Turkish rulers, however, and such Turkomans and Kurds as we find settled in the n. of Syria, belong to the Turanian race. Arabic is everywhere spoken, and may be considered the national language, since the old Syriac or Aramaic tongue is wholly dead, except among the Nes torians of Kurdistan.
The history of Syria stretches far back into remote antiquity. In the time of Abra ham (2,000 u.c.) Damascus was a city; in the oldest literature of Greece Sidon figures as the capital of a rich, populous, and civilized state; and in the Hebrew Scriptures,.
Canaan or Palestine is crowded with towns at the period of its conquest by Joshua; but, like most other so-called nations in early times, Syria did not form a single state; it was. rather a cpngeries of independent states whose inhabitants belonged to the same race. Every important city had its king, whose normal occupation was fighting with his neighbors. Under David and Solomon something like political unity was achieved; yet it does not appear that these great rulers dispossessed of their territories the princes whom they subdued, but only made them tributary, and after their death things reverted to their previous condition. Rezin, a slave, then made himself master of Damascus, and extended the Damascene monarchy over all northern and central Syria; hut the conquests of Tiglath-Pileser resulted in its becoming a province of the Assyrian empire. Sub sequently the whole land, including Palestine, became part of the successive empires of Babylonia, Media, Persia, and Macedonia. Then followed the dynasty of the Seleu cidie (q.v.). After their fall Syria passed into the hands of the Romans, who retained it, though not continuously—for on several occasions the Persian Sassanidm (q.v.) man aged to wrest it from them—until the Arab conquest (7th c. A.D.). During the crusades (q.v.) of the middle ages several Christian principalities were established here, but en dured only for a short period. Syria now became a possession of the sultans bf Egypt, in whose time it was frightfully devastated by the Mongols. In the 16th c. it was con quered by the Turks, and has ever since formed part of the Turkish empire.