Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/902

* SYRIA. coast the Philistine cities were united in a pow- erful confederacy. After the disruption of the Hebrew realm Damascus became the seat of a powerful independent kingdom. This was de- .stroyed in the second half of the eighth century B.C. by the Assyrians, who imposed their yoke upon the Philistine cities, and put an end to the kingdom of Israel, while the Phoenician cities paid them tribute. About this time the last of the Hittite principalities were swallowed up by the same enemy. At the beginning of tlie sixth century B.C. Syria came under the rule of Baby- lon, which was succeeded in B.C. 538 by that of Persia. In u.c. 333-332 Alexander of'Macedon established his sway. At the close of the century Upper Syria was appropriated by Seleucus. one of Alexander's generals, who founded Antioch as the seat of his kingdom. The Ptolemies and the Seleucida; (q.v.) contended for the possession of the rest of the country, which finally passed to the latter, whose realm, which embraced a large part of Western Asia, came to be known as the Kingdom of Syria. A number of Greek cities were founded by this dynasty. In B.C. 1(37-141 Palestine threw off the" yoke of the Seleucidie. In B.C. 64 Syria was made a Roman province and in the following year Judea was made tributary to the Romans. In the third century a.d. the Kingdom of Pal- myra, on the eastern borders of Syria, enjo.ved a short-lived splendor. After the "close oif "the fourth century Syria formed part of the Byzan- tine Empire, from which it was wrested in" 034- 30 by the Saracens. In 001 Damascus became the seat of the caliphs, but about a century later it was supplanted by Bagdad. In the "second half of the eleventh century the Seljuks occupied the country. In 1009 the' Crusaders took Jeru- salem, which was made the capital of a king- dom. At the same time was founded the Princi- pality of Antioch. In the middle of the next century the Christian power in Syra was shat- tered by the assaults of Sultan Niireddin, whose seat was at Aleppo. In 1174-87 Saladin, Sultan of Egypt, wrested Syria from the successors of >Jureddin and overthrew the Kingdom of Jerusa- lem. In the thirteenth century" Khwaresmians and Mongols swept over Syria." In 1201 Acre, the last stronghold of the Christians on the Syrian coast, was taken by the ilanieluke ruler of EgA-pt and Syria. In 1510 Svria was conquered by the Ottoman Turks. In 1831-32 Mehemet Ali of Egypt made himself master of the country, but was forced to relinquish it to the Sultan in 1841. In 1800 there were massacres of the Maronites by the Druses and a frightful slaugh- ter of Christians at Damascus. BiBLioGEAPHT. De Vogiie, Syrie. Palestine, Mont Athos (Paris, 1879); Sachu. Reise in Hjinenund Mcsopotnmien (Leipzig, 1883) : Hull, Memoir of the Ccalor/i/ ami Gconrapht/ of Arabia Petrwa, Palestine, and the Adjoininq Districts (London, 1880) ; Post, Essai/s on the Sects and NaiionaUtics of l^j/ria and Palestine (ib.. 1890) ; Miller, Alone Throngh Stjria (ib.. 1891); Charmes, Voyar/e en fiyrie (Paris, 1891) : Post', Flora of Siiria. Palestine, and Sinai (Beirut, 1806) ; Petrie, Syria and Egypt from the Tcl-cl- Amarn-a Letters (New York, 1898) ; Deverell, My Tour in Palestine and Syria (London, 1899) ; Burton and Drake, Unexplored St/ria (ib., 1872) ; Lady Burton, Inner Life of Syria 788 SYRIAC LANGUAGE. (ib., 1875) ; Salverte, La Syrie avant 1860 (Paris, ISOl). SYRIAC LANGUAGE AND LITERA- TURE. The Aramaic dialect ancientlv spoken in Edessa and Western Mesopotamia ("see Aba- MAic), in which many literary productions have been preserved. This name is derived from the Greek Xupia, which is either an abbreviation of 'Aaavpia, or a survival of the old designation Suri found in cuneiform inscriptions. Before the in- troduction of Christianity the natives of Mesopo- tamia called themselves Aramaeans. Subsequently this term was used especially for the pagans, while the Christians were designated by Greeks and Persians as 'Syrians' and seem to some ex- tent to have adopted the name themselves. The Syriac language shows in its earliest documents a remarkably fixed type, and must therefore have been long spoken in Jlesopotamia. Character- istic of this dialect are the n of the preformative in the inqierfect of the verb and the loss of the determinative force of the emphatic ending a in the noun. There was probably an extensive pagan litera- ture both in Edessa and in Harran ; but no speci- men of it lias yet been recovered. The earliest document in this language is the translation of the Old Testament, which was probably made by Je^^■s. It may belong to the first Cliristian cen- tury', though it was subsequently revised in some books with the aid of the Greek version. Two recensions of the oldest translation of the Xew Testament have been preserved in part in a Sinaitic manuscript of the Ciospels and a Nit- rian manuscript publi,shed bv Cureton. contain- ing fragments of the Gospels." This latter version mav have been made in the middle of the second century. A compilation of the four Gospels, called the Dintessaron, was made by Tatian (q.v.), or translated by him from a Greek work of the same kind about 180. This Diatessaron is lost and is known chiefly through Ephraem Syrus (q.v.) : the Arabic translation of this work published by Ciasca seems to belong to the eleventh cen- tury, and has manifestly been made conformable to the standard text. This compilation of the Gospels, after being long in use in the Mesopo- tamian churches, was finally sujiplanted by the Syriac Vulgate or Pcshitto' (see Bible, heading Versions), apparently in the fifth century. The shorter Catholic Epistles (II. Peter, II. and III. John. Jude) and the Apocalypse, which were not found in the old Syriac Bible, were later supplied from the versions of Philoxenus (508) and Thomas of Heraclea (616). In addition to the canonical books, Ecclesiasticus (q.v.) was also translated from the Hebrew and the other Apoc- rypha, including IV. Maccabees and a part of Josephus's Jewish War called V. Maccabees, were translated from the Greek, as well as several Pseudepigrapha, such as the Apocalvpses of Baruch and Ezra. A translation of the Greek text adopted by Origen called the Syro-Hexaplaric ver.sion was made by Paul of Telia" in 617 : and a revision of the New Testament was made by Jacob of Edessa at the end of the seventeenth century. As early as any of the New Testament trans- lations are the works of Bardesanes, the Gnostic (q.v.), who flourished in the second century and was a poet, philosopher, astronomer, and his-