A History of Modern Syria — the people at the heart of their own story

Daniel Neep’s excellent account corrects the traditional narrative to show a nation surviving and resisting the powers that have vied to dominate it. Syria is as ancient, and as complex, as civilisation itself. Lying between antiquity’s great empires of Egypt and Mesopotamia, it functioned as a bridge, sometimes a wall, between them. Rarely a conqueror, it adapted over millennia to invaders from all points on the compass: Egyptians, Sumerians, Hittites, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, Mongols, Turks and French. All left indelible marks despite their ephemeral presence. On seeing Syria’s historic capital, Damascus, in 1867, Mark Twain reflected, “She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand empires, and will see the tombs of a thousand more before she dies. Though another claims the name, old Damascus is by right the Eternal City.” It was only in 1946 that Syria, albeit in truncated form, governed itself after…