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Abstract The status of women in Syria has undergone great change in the last century and particularly in the decade leading up to the Syrian Arab Spring. Despite this advancement, [...]

The population of Syria is so inharmonious a gathering of widely different races in blood, in creed, and in custom, that government is both difficult and dangerous. --Sir Mark Sykes, [...]

The Mesopotamia and Syriac heritage play a very important role in the development of dignity of individual and peoples that is often differentiated in different categories of human rights.

Paleolithic archaeologists frequently overlook explanations of site location in their concentration on site chronology and artifact assemblages. The issue of why a particular location was chosen for occupation forced its way into my consciousness while working at the site of Jerf al-Ajla, a cave located in the desert of central Syria. The lack of water in the vicinity was evident as I watched while the younger of the two wives of the Bedouin family camped in front of the cave clambered up the sloping rock surface of Jebel M'qeittaa, the ridge in which the cave was located. With a huge bag on her back, she was searching for water that, after a fall rain, was captured in pockets of Jebel M'qeittaa. The pockets were typically filled with wind blown debris along with the detritus of passing flocks. This raised a question of not just why the site was occupied at all but why it was visited for tens and indeed hundreds of thousands of years, albeit irregularly.

PRISON IS JUST PART of the deal when you start writing in some places and during some periods of history. It is not that the act of lifting the pen [...]

The origins and evolution of Arab nationalism have been the subject of historical inquiry for more than fifty years. During that time, however, most historians of the 'Arab movement' have [...]

An account is presented on the Kurds of Syria whose very existence is officially denied, display unprecedented confidence in disclosing their grievances towards the Government. All forms of opposition are encouraged in Syria by the weakened position of the government feeling many pressures.

In the fall of 1995, I went to Syria to study women's writings. I had little idea what I might find. Even specialists of Arabic literature did not know much [...]

Edmond Rabhath's book gives the first nationalist history of Syria, which had serious religious differences. Although an apparent merging of Muslim middle class with the locals took place, it did not reduce the role of Islam in defining the parameters of political legitimacy.