Greater Syria

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Bilad al-Sham during the second Abbasid dynasty of the Caliph , in the 9th century.

Greater Syria ( Arabic سوريا الكبرى, DMG Sūriyā al-kubrā , also called Bilad asch-Scham  /بلاد الشام / Bilād aš-Sam called) was a persecuted, especially in the first half of the 20th century political concept of pan-Arabism or the Pansyrismus . The area, which historically, even before the division of the Arab East by the British and French colonial powers, was called Syria, comprises the entire western branch of the Fertile Crescent , as the German Zionist Arthur Ruppin wrote in 1916:

“Syria in the broader sense of the word, in which it also includes Palestine, extends from the Egyptian border and the Arabian desert in the south (31st and 30th parallel) to the north to Amanus (37th parallel), which it from Asia Minor separates. In the west the Mediterranean is the border, in the east the Syrian desert and the Euphrates. The north-south extension of this area is 700 to 800 km, the west-east 100 to 300 km, the total area around 200,000 km². "

Conceptual criticism and delimitation

Maximum expansion of the "natural Syria" in the imagination of an extreme wing of the SSNP : Syria and Lebanon (black), the other states of the " Fertile Crescent " (red) and border regions of other states (white)

Greater Syria is a non- Arabic word creation, especially common in the western world (analogous to Greater Armenia , Greater Israel , etc.), which does not actually result from the analogous Arabic equivalent of Bilad asch-Scham . Bilad ash-Sham refers literally only once from Damascus (old name: shame ) from managed countries and provinces, using numerous publications instead rather the term Syrian Palestinian space or Syrian- Palestinian region or generally Levante . A literal Arabic equivalent for the term "Greater Syria" (سوريّة الكبرى / Sūriyya al-kubra ) is rather uncommon. The term "Syria" (Suriyya) or "natural Syria" (سوريّة الطبيعية / Sūriyya at-tabīʿīya ), but its historical or “natural” borders then mean a significantly larger area than the territory of today's Syria .

"Greater Syria" is not identical to the region of the Fertile Crescent . The political conception of a united fertile crescent, which originated mainly from Iraq in the middle of the 20th century, spans a geographical arc from Iraq to Syria and Jordan to Lebanon and Palestine, most of the Greater Syria concepts, however, do not include Iraq. Some extreme variants, however, extend over the entire area of ​​today's states Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Cyprus, the Palestinian territories and parts of Turkey ( Hatay ), Egypt (Sinai), Saudi Arabia ( Syrian Desert , Jauf ) and Iran ( Khuzestan ).

History of ideas

At the beginning of the 20th century in the Ottoman Empire , especially as a defensive response to the Young Turk Pan-turanism of pan-Arabism emerged. One of the centers of liberal intellectual pan-Arabism in the Ottoman Empire was Damascus, and in Damascus pan-Arab intellectuals developed the vision of a union of all the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire west of the Euphrates into an independent Arab nation-state .

Kingdom of Syria

During the First World War , when the Turks imposed martial law in Syria and had numerous pan-Arab activists executed, the Hashemite Grand Sherif Husain ibn Ali also envisioned a “kingdom of the Arab countries” in distant Mecca , rose up against the Turks with British help and left proclaim himself king on November 2, 1916. According to British promises, his kingdom should include all areas of the Ottoman Empire south of the 37th parallel, in addition to Greater Syria also Iraq as well as the Hejaz, Asir and Yemen. The planned capital was Damascus , which was already the capital of the caliphate under the Umayyads .

Instead, the colonial powers Great Britain and France divided the territories among themselves with the Sykes-Picot Agreement . Husain was only recognized as king of the Hejaz, his son Faisal I, who was proclaimed king in Damascus, was expelled by the French and British in 1920. Faisal was given a replacement throne in Iraq as early as 1921, but the division of the Arab territories between Great Britain (Iraq, Palestine) and France (Syria) and the associated demarcation was perceived by Arab nationalists as just as arbitrary and unnatural as the separation operated by the French of Greater Lebanon from Syria and the British separation of Transjordan from Palestine (1920/21/22/23).

Neophoenician Pan-Syrism

In the fight against French rule and for the unity of Lebanon with Syria, Antun Sa'ada founded the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) in 1932 . However, his Pan-Syrism differed from the previous ideas of the Arab nationalists and the dynastic interests of the Hashemites. Sa'ada was influenced by the "Phoenician movement" ( Phoenicianism ) of Syrian-Christian and Lebanese-Christian intellectuals (Charles Qurm, Michel Šīḫā , Sa'id 'Aql, Émile Eddé ). Instead of pan-Arab unity, he sought the unity of all Semitic peoples ( Phoenicians , Canaanites , Arameans , Assyrians , Chaldeans and Akkadians ) that had only been Arabized since the Islamization of the 7th century - and thus their racial demarcation from the actual (Muslim) Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula . Sa'ada's goal was the renaissance of these peoples of the "Greater Syrian Nation" in a Syria that would extend from the Taurus Mountains to the Sinai Peninsula or from the Mediterranean to the Tigris . The minimum goal was the (re) unification of Lebanon with Syria. In fact, however, the SSNP's influence never extended beyond Lebanon and Syria; There were no branches in Jordan or Iraq.

Hashemite dynastic pan-Arabism

Greater Syria in Abdallah's imagination : Jordan (green) with Syria, Lebanon, Palestine (each red). Then it should form an Arab Union with Iraq (white).

Sa'ada's conception of Greater Syria rivaled British Hashemite ideas, and the Hashemites also had rival ideas about Greater Syria. Since 1921/23 Husain's son Abdallah ruled Transjordan (Jordan), while Abdallah's brother Faisal ruled Iraq. Husain himself and his eldest son Ali ibn Hussein had been expelled from Mecca and the Hejaz by the Saudis in 1925, whereupon Hashemite striving for consolidation and influence was directed more towards the Fertile Crescent than the Arabian Peninsula. During the Second World War, first Abdallah in 1941 and then in 1943 Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri as-Said proposed a concept for the unity of the Fertile Crescent on behalf of the British. Iraq and a Greater Syria ruled by Abdallah were to form an Arab Union , but Syria and Lebanon were to merge with Jordan first.

After the end of the war, the opportunity seemed favorable: the French withdrew from Syria and Lebanon, and Transjordan was at least formally granted independence by Great Britain in 1946. In Palestine, the British were also preparing to leave. Abdallah had become king of Transjordan, but now wanted to become king of Syria too. It received support from some nationalist circles in Syria, Lebanon and even Palestine, as well as Alawite and Druze leaders, but encountered resistance from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the newly formed Arab League and France. In a “Manifesto to the Syrian People and Parliament” in November 1946, Abdallah called on Syrian politicians to unite Syria and Jordan within their “natural” borders. As early as November 26, 1946, the Lebanese parliament rejected Abdallah's plan for Greater Syria, and shortly afterwards also Syria. Abdallah then called a Pan-Syrian national congress in Amman in 1947 with Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese notables, but he was just as unable to gain decisive influence on the republican regimes or military rulers of Syria and Lebanon as was Antun Sa'ada. With the withdrawal of the British from the League of Nations mandate Palestine , Abdallah hoped to at least be able to annex this area, and was therefore the only Arab ruler to agree to the UN partition plan in 1947, which isolated him within the Arab world. As a result of the Arab defeat in the Palestine War , he was only able to win East Palestine ( West Bank ) and East Jerusalem in 1949 .

In Lebanon, an attempted coup by the SSNP had failed after the Arab defeat. Sa'ada had fled to Syria, but was extradited by the Syrian government and executed in Lebanon. After the military overturns in Syria, the rulers in Damascus held unification talks with the Hashemites in Baghdad, not with Abdallah, from 1949 onwards. With the deaths of Sa'ada (1949) and Abdallah (1951), the Greater Syrian idea was de facto dead, even if talks between Iraqi Hashemites and Syrian republicans took place until 1954 (" Unity of the Euphrates Valley "), in 1958 the Hashemite kingdoms of Jordan and Iraq merged but still (but without Syria) merged into a short-lived Arab Union ( Arab Federation ), the Hashemites and SSNP reconciled in 1958 and the SSNP tried a coup in Lebanon again in 1961.

Neo-Catholic "Eastern Front" strategy

A united Arab “Eastern Front” (light green) against Israel as part of Syrian-Baathist pan-Arabism

Unlike the SSNP, the Syrian Ba'ath Party advocated All-Arab unity, but various unification projects such as the United Arab Republic from 1958 to 1961 with Egypt and the United Arab Republic from 1963 with Egypt and Iraq failed. After several inner-Baathist palace revolts and “ corrective movements ”, a military faction of the Neo-Ba'ath Party ruled by the Alevite Assad clan came to power in Syria in November 1970. Initially, Hafiz al-Assad also relied on pan-Arab unification projects, but successively the Federation of Arab Republics with Libya and Egypt (1971/73), the United Political Leadership with Jordan (1975/76), the United Political Leadership with Egypt and Sudan ( 1976/77), the Charter of Joint National Action (1978/79) with Iraq and the Union with Libya (1980/81).

The widespread view that since the mid-1970s the Assad regime had only sought dominance over the neighboring countries Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine instead of all-Arab unity, is based primarily on the claims of the US political scientist Daniel Pipes . Pipes, who primarily draws attention to himself through his anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and Islamic positions, claims in his work "Greater Syria" that Assad's regime has adapted the pan-Syrism of the SSNP, but at the same time has to admit that the Syrian regime uses the designation " Greater Syria ”has never used or always consciously avoided. Instead, the Syrian regime repeatedly propagated the need for a United Arab Eastern Front against Israel and pushed claims that it was striving for a Baathist Greater Syria, primarily at US and Israeli propaganda.

"Pan-Arabism provided a cover that allowed the regime to deny that Greater Syria represents its ultimate goal. Asad and his aides almost never explicitly referred to Pan-Syrian goals but always presented Pan-Syrianism within the context of Pan-Arabism. One country , Southern Syria and other references compatible with Pan-Arabism turned up in Syrian rhetoric; but a specifically Pan-Syrian and anti-Pan-Arab term such as Greater Syria did not. In this way the Asad regime fit Pan-Syrian practice within Pan-Arab ideology. Further, it showed no intention of wanting formally to annex Lebanon, Jordan or Palestine. "

- Daniel Pipes : Greater Syria

literature

Web links

Commons : Greater Syria  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Arthur Ruppin : Syria as an economic area . In: Der Tropenpflanzer; Supplement 3/5. 1916 . Berlin 1916, p.  179 - 555 , urn : nbn: de: hebis: 30: 1-129200 ( Digital Judaica Collection of the University of Frankfurt [accessed October 5, 2014]).
  2. ↑ a b Lothar Rathmann : History of the Arabs - From the beginnings to the present , Volume 4 (The Arab liberation movement in the fight against imperialist colonial rule), pages 367f and 377f. Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1974
  3. ↑ Elias Farah : The Arab Fatherland after the Second World War , page 43f. Baghdad / Varese 1977
  4. ^ A b Lothar Rathmann : History of the Arabs - From the beginnings to the present , Volume 5 (The collapse of the imperialist colonial system and the formation of sovereign Arab nation states), pages 11 and 71. Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1981
  5. ↑ Lothar Rathmann : History of the Arabs - From the beginnings to the present , Volume 6 (The struggle for the development path in the Arab world), page 7f. Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1983
  6. ^ Pipes, page 190ff