Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XV.djvu/574

546 SYRIA The inhabitants are of a great variety of races and religions. The ruling race are the Osmanli Turks, though they are but an insignificant por- tion of the Mohammedan population, who are mostly Arabs ; they are bigoted and hostile to Christians, and are strict in their adherence to the Sunna or orthodox Islamism. There are four sects usually considered Mohammedan dissenters, though not all of them can properly be reckoned as Mohammedans. The Metua- lis are the followers of Ali, the son-in-law of Mohammed, and are allied to the Shiahs of Persia; they number about 30,000, and are found "W. of the Orontes and on the S. part of the Lebanon range. The Ansaries or Nos- sairians, inhabiting the mountains extending from the N. extremity of Ccele-Syria to the gorge of the Orontes at Antioch, and number- ing about 30,000, keep their religious views a secret. The Ismaelians, occupying the moun- tains W. of Hamah, are few, and were origi- nally Shiahs ; they are the descendants of the people known in the time of the crusades as Assassins. The fourth sect is the Druses, in the Lebanon and Anti-Libanus, numbering about 70,000, and the most fanatical of all. The largest of the nominally Christian sects is that of the Maronites, who are found chief- ly in the Lebanon, though they have small communities in all the principal towns from Aleppo to Nazareth. Their number in 1874 was about 140,000. (See ANS ARIES, ASSAS- SINS, DRUSES, and MARONITES.) The orthodox Greeks (Greeks in religion, but not generally in blood), numbering about 150,000, are scat- tered throughout the cities and more level por- tions of Syria, and engage in agriculture and trade; they have their worship in their own language. There are dissenters also from the Greek church, the Syrians or Jacobites, a mere handful, dwelling mostly N. and N. E. of Da- mascus. The Greek Catholic and Syrian Cath- olic churches acknowledge the pope, though in some particulars they approach more nearly to the Greek than the Roman church ; they are about 50,000 in all, and embrace a large number of the more wealthy Christians in Syria. The Armenians are 50,000 or 60,000 in number. There are about 25,000 Jews in Syria; those in Palestine are immigrants from foreign countries, while those of Aleppo and Damascus are descendants of Jewish families who have resided there for many centuries. There are Mohammedan schools in the cities, and the Christian sects also maintain some schools. The children of the wealthy are fre- quently sent to France or England for educa- tion, but the great mass of the people are very illiterate. Of late years, however, great im- provements have been made in education by means of schools established by Greeks, Cath- olics, and especially by Protestant missionaries. The central part of Syria is designated in the Hebrew Scriptures as Aram Dammesek, or the Aram of which Damascus was the cap- ital. The empire of the kings of Damascus gradually extended eastward over a part of the plain of Mesopotamia and westward to the mouth of the Orontes. It was finally over- thrown by the Assyrians under Tiglath-pileser, about 740 B. C. From the head waters of the Orontes southward, all of Palestine W. of the Jordan, and probably Gilead and the Hauran E. of it, were peopled by the Canaanites. The Phoenicians settled mainly along the coast of the Mediterranean, and became the earliest commercial nation of the world. Sidon, their first metropolis, is said by tradition to have been founded by Sidon, the oldest son of Ham ; and colonies from it went forth to Tyre and Arvad (Aradus), and thence to all por- tions of the Mediterranean and beyond. Phoe- nicia attained its greatest power about 1050 B. C., and it enjoyed uninterrupted prosperity for full 300 years, but was at last conquered by the Assyrians, and subsequently by the Babylonians and Persians. The southern parts of western and portions of eastern Palestine were inhabited by a tall race, the Anakim and Rephaim, traces of whose cities yet remain in the Hauran. The S. W. coast was occupied by the Philistines, and the region adjoining the Dead sea to the east by the Semitic Ammo- nites and Moabites. (See PALESTINE.) The equally Semitic Israelites emigrated from Egypt to Palestine about 1500, or according to some authorities about 1300 B. C., and thencefor- ward for about 1,500 years exerted a powerful influence in its history. (See HEBREWS.) The theocracy under which they existed for several centuries was terminated by the election of Saul as king early in the llth century B. C., and the kingdom was divided (about 975) in the reign of Rehoboam, the grandson of his successor David. The ten tribes, or Israel as they were distinctively termed, were conquered and carried into captivity by the Assyrians in 721, and their place was supplied by 'colonists from Babylonia, Hamath, and elsewhere, who became the Samaritans of a subsequent era, and a few families of whom still exist on their ancient site. The kingdom of Judah fell be- fore Nebuchadnezzar 133 years later, but after a 70 years' captivity the people were restored to their own land, and the second temple was built. Syria from this period, until Grecian power became paramount there, was governed by a Persian satrap resident at Damascus. The battle of Issus, in 333, led to the subjec- tion of Syria proper, Phoenicia, and Palestine to Alexander the Great. On his death, and after a long struggle of succession on the par- tition of his empire, the Ptolemies in Fgypt received Palestine and Ocele-Syria, and So- leucus Nicator northern Syria. He founded Antioch, near the mouth of the Orontep, and made it his capital; and for several centuries it was the greatest of oriental cities. The kingdom of Syria continued flourishing un- der the Seleucidae till the beginning of the 2d century B. C. Antiochus the Great wrested Palestine and Coele-Syria from Egypt. The