♜ Politics & governance

Syria has known nearly every form of government. It began with city-kingdoms — Ebla, Mari, and Aram-Damascus — where local kings ruled a city and its hinterland, making treaties with one another. The land then became a province of great empires: an Assyrian province, an Achaemenid Persian satrapy, the Seleucid kingdom with its capital at Antioch, a Roman province, then a Byzantine territory.

In 661 CE the pattern reversed: Muawiya ibn Abi Sufyan made Damascus the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate, stretching from Iberia to Central Asia — Syria turned from province into the centre of the world. After the Umayyads it was ruled from afar again: Abbasid Baghdad, Mamluk Cairo, then Ottoman Istanbul for four centuries (1516–1918) within the provinces of Damascus and Aleppo.

Milestones of modern governance:

• 1920: the Arab Kingdom of Syria under Faisal I — overthrown after the Battle of Maysalun
• 1920–1946: the French Mandate under a League of Nations resolution
• 1946: independence and the republic, followed by decades of coups beginning with Husni al-Za'im's in 1949
• 1958–1961: union with Egypt in the United Arab Republic, then secession
• 1963: the Baath coup and one-party rule, consolidated under Hafez al-Assad (1970–2000) and Bashar al-Assad (2000–2024)
• December 2024: the fall of the Assad regime, followed by a transitional government that issued a constitutional declaration in March 2025

Few countries have passed through all these forms — and in every phase the question remained the same: who governs Damascus, and by what legitimacy?