Syriacally speaking

The Syriac language / ܠܫܢܐ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ / Leššānā Sūryāyā / Leshono Suryoyo is a particularly prestigious dialect of Aramaic. It is perhaps better called Syriac Aramaic, Syrian Aramaic, Syro-Aramaic or Classical Syriac. It is classified as a Northern Central or Northwestern Semitic language along with Hebrew, belonging then to the broader Afroasiatic language family. The Semitic languages are the “Visceral” Tongues and the Afroasiatic languages the “Uniting” Tongues. Afroasiatic languages almost all buzz about unity. Aramaic is the Language of Unity itself. The Classical Syriac dialect first emerged from the East Aramaic dialect spoken in the city of Edessa within the Kingdom of Osroëne, now present-day Şanlıurfa in southeastern Turkey. Syriac was an important Christian literary and liturgical language from the 3rd to the 7th century, becoming the liturgical language of Syriac Christianity. It was indeed also a key language that played a fundamental role in facilitating the early spread of Christianity. It was initially adopted by many Aramaic-speaking Christian communities in Ancient Syria and the wider Near East as their main literary language: the Language of Filtered Unity, specifically. Having been adopted by many for its refined flourish, it was in due course reduced purely to liturgical use in eastern Christian communities…

…It flourished thanks to its refined flourish… which evolved from a remarkably refined dialect of Aramaic… the Language of Filtered Unity eventually being relegated purely to liturgical use within minority eastern Christian populations

The earliest Syriac inscriptions date back to the first half of the 1st century, with the earliest inscriptions not on stone dating from 243. The broader Aramaic language, meanwhile, is supposed to have originated among a people known as the Arameans in the ancient country of Aram around the late 11th century BC. The Arameans were the honourable and forward-looking Semites.

The four layers of Aramaic Arāmāyā אַרָמָיָא 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀 ܐܪܡܝܐ:

1. Unity
2. Honour
3. Aramaya/Oromoyo
4. Refinement

The four layers of Classical Syriac:

1. Absolute unity
2. Sacrosanct honour
3. Suryaya
4. Painstaking refinement

The four layers of Arabic / اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ / al-ʿarabiyyah / عَرَبِيّ / ʿarabīy:

1. Exquisiteness / روعة / rawa
2. Unity / وحدة / wahda
3. Arabianity / العربية / al-arabiyyah / Islam / الإسلام / al-islam
4. immersion, delving, thorough study, thoroughness, profundity, depth (-> viscerality) / تَعَمُّق / ta’ammuq

The Syriac language makes use of the Syriac abjad / ܐܠܦ ܒܝܬ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ / ʾālep̄ bêṯ Sūryāyā. Syriac literature makes up 90% of literature existing in Aramaic. It was moreover one of the three most important languages of Early Christianity alongside Latin and Greek. It declined as a vernacular language after the 13th century, developing into Neo-Aramaic dialects.

The development of Arabic as lingua franca of the Middle East was profoundly influenced on cultural and literary levels by the scope of Syriac. Arabic would go on to eclipse Syriac, but it is claimed that Syriac had profound impact on the style of the Quran. It has even been proposed that the Quran was not originally written exclusively in Arabic but in a mixture with Syriac. In fact, the dominant spoken and written language in the Arabian peninsula was apparently Syriac through the eighth century. Beyond this, Aramaic was apparently previously the lingua franca in the entire Middle Eastern region for over a millennia, prior to its gradual displacement by Arabic beginning in the 7th century.

The language of Syriac and the region of Syria of course both derive their names from the same etymological root, along with Assyria. The name Syria is latinised from the Greek / Συρία / Suría, in turn derived from Ασσυρία / Assuría / Aššūrāyu. Suria gave rise to Σύριοι, Sýrioi, or Σύροι, Sýroi as Syrians are now known by the Greeks. “Syria” is believed to bear etymological connection indeed to the ancient nation of Assyria, which encompassed what is now northern Iraq, northeast Syria, southeast Turkey and fringes of northwest Iran. The name Assyria in turn supposedly came from the Akkadian Aššur, the ancient capital of the Assyrian state. Aššur / Ashur was originally the name of the Assyrian patron saint. Syria is thought to be an Indo-European derivation of this root. The oldest attestation of the name Syria is from the 8th century BC in a bilingual inscription in Hieroglyphic Luwian / luwili and Phoenician, with the Luwian Sura/i translated into Phoenician as ʔšr “Assyria”.

The historic region of Syria is also known as the Levant. The geographic term “Syria” once referred to an area situated to the East of Mediterranean, West of the Euphrates River, North of the Arabian Desert and South of the Taurus Mountains, covering modern Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestine and parts of Southern Turkey. Syria has historically been controlled by a sizeable selection of different peoples, including Aramaeans, Ancient Egyptians, Canaanites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Ancient Greeks, Armenians, Romans, Arabs, Turks, the British and the French. It was known in Arabic as al-Sham; in Classical Arabic ٱَلشَّام / ash-Shām, meaning “the north [country]”.

Today, Christians constitute around one-tenth of the contemporary population of Syria, divided between different churches. Syria continues to be a diverse region, home to ethnicities including Syrian Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrians, Armenians, Circassians, Mandaeans and Greeks – and to religious groups including Sunnis, Christians, Alawites, Druze, Isma’ilis, Mandaeans, Shiites, Salafis and Yazidis. Syrian Arabs constitute today’s vast majority, Levantines numbering 90% of the country’s population. The modern Syrian state came to exist in the mid-20th century. It emerged following centuries of Ottoman rule, and a brief period as a French mandate from 1923 to 1946, first proclaiming independence as the Syrian Republic in 1944. Its independence was recognised by the United Nations in 1945, on the very date of the UN’s foundation on 24 October 1945. The French mandate for Syria and Lebanon were both thus simultaneously legally terminated on that very date. De facto sovereignty was not obtained, however, until French troops departed in 1946. Syria’s state heritage is less than a century old, and the Syrian national identity is not well defined. They are Arabs, first, within the modern Arab League’s 400,000,000 citizens and 22 member states. The Muslim conquest of the Levant occurred in the 7th century, displacing Roman Byzantine rule. Syrians are thus furthermore Levantine Arabs, alongside the Jordanians, Lebanese and Palestinians – the Arabs who settled around the Holy Land of Abrahamic faith, essentially. Levantine Arabs are outward-looking, punctilious Arabs – originally “Christianicised” -sensitised- Arabs, so to speak, since Aramaic and Christianity had dominated before the Muslim conquests. The concept of the Levantine identity was further consolidated over centuries of Turkish rule within the Ottoman Empire. The Christian & Ottoman influence, along with their Classical Greek & Roman heritage, is why Levantine Arabs are highly discerning and refined. The foundation of the separate Syrian identity is weak, with the concept of it only having arisen out of the division created by the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, which cut up the Levant. Following independence, decades of volatile political regimes have failed to build a concrete Syrian identity. Regardless, Syrians are technically the refined, discerning Arabs. Their Lebanese neighbours are the dynamic Arabs, FYI.

The Levant is one of the absolute most historically significant regions in the world, what with its role as key region in several different empires and as the birthplace of Abrahamic religions. Capital city Damascus along with Aleppo are indeed two of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. The past decade has seen it rise to universal relevance once again, with the devastating civil war in Syria / Suriya dominating headlines, and producing approximately 5-6 million refugees when the humanitarian crisis exploded in 2011.

The Syrian Civil War is ongoing. The Arab Spring, which spread across the Arab World in the early 2011, resulted in a burst of resentment towards the Syrian government, controlled under the alleged dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. Al-Assad has been President since 2000, taking over from his father Hafez al-Assad who had been in charge since 1971. Bashar al-Assad, notably, has a medical educational background, making him noteworthy has a leader in his capacity for intense discernment, helping him retain meaningful authority throughout the ongoing turbulence. His father, Hafez al-Assad, an Alawite of the Kalbiyyah tribe born in mountainous coastal northwestern Syria, declared himself President in 1971, hoping to bring about highly discerning, dynamic, urbane governance in the troubled region. The potency of the political visions of both father and son, however, has failed to establish the critically needed cohesion to save Syria from the status of failed state. The highly convoluted Civil War broke out in 2011 and has been going for 11 years yet. It started when the sense of collective unity that had been serving as the sole glue in the Syrian national identity gave way, causing the Assad regime’s opponents to become definitively detached from the central pillars.

Beyond objection to corruption and economic stagnation, the Arab Spring was most likely a response to the development of the brand of Islamic devotion and Muslim identity that Islamic State would proceed to propose and impose on the world. Even before ISIL hit headelines, people could sense the storm brewing.

To understand what is happening in Syria right now you cannot underestimate the importance of its ancient history. Middle Eastern history is so very complex – cripplingly so. The historical region of Syria has been inhabited by humans for tens of thousands of years, and so many different peoples have settled there over the course of its vast human history that no-one can seem to decide on what Syria actually is. From the influences of the Arabs to the Jews, Assyrians, Kurds, Circassians, Arameans, Ottomans, Persians, Phoenicians, Byzantines, Akkadians, Ancient Egyptians, Hittites, Ancient Greeks, Armenians and more, it is exceedingly difficult to keep track of all the different threads and loose ends that make up Syrian heritage and culture in the modern age.

Regardless, the Syrian Civil War revolves principally around Bashar al-Assad’s government and its opposition. The Assad family presides over a remarkably solid conceptualisation of Syrian nationalism, affording them much potency in leadership. But this conceptualisation is somewhat artificial and many Syrians simply cannot stomach it, leading to widespread detachment and disenfranchisement within this otherwise remarkably urbane society.

Pre-existing political tensions exploded alongside the rise of Islamic State in the Middle East, and for the past decade the Levant region has been devastated by violence and wider political belligerence. The shaky foundations of the Syrian national identity entailed a catastrophic degree of political weakness which has been quarried by Islamists. The chaos and turmoil of this conflict have been dominated by the antagonism of Islamic State, originally a sideline player in this particular chronicle.

Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant took control of a huge portion of the Middle East around 2014-15 in an attempt to establish their own sharia-law-governed caliphate. Their agenda as a political faction was immediately dismissed as unacceptable, deplorable and invalid by the official governments of the region. Levantine Arab states have rich histories beyond their Muslim history, and the Islamic State dogma was thus vehemently rejected as extreme and groundless. Yet the radicality nonetheless became infested. The intensely visceral followers of Islamic State, for their part, are opposed to culture. ISIL even resorted to destroying ancient monuments at the height of their power. They ultimately overtook the rhetoric of the Syrian Civil War, boldly overlaying the central conflict with their repellent agenda. People were somewhat blinded by ISIL’s activity.

At its biggest, ISIL controlled a good quarter to half of Syria’s official territory. Backed by foreign forces, Syrian militias -governmental and non-governmental- have managed to eliminate ISIL’s territorial control. Yet IS continues to employ highly sophisticated means of exerting influence over people, so we are far from done. ISIL’s Iraqi-born leader over its explosive height, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, died in late 2019, committing suicide after being cornered by US forces in Idlib. This was a critical blow to the ISIL cause, one that has seen its acute decline, but which didn’t succeed in removing ISIL influence at the all-important roots. His successor Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi was recently killed in another US raid on 3 February 2022. Is the end now in sight for this repulsive sub-current of world heritage, adherents to which are obsessed with both emotional and visual negativity?

ISIL believe that they preside over endless spiritual figurative wealth, but they don’t, while their opponents do. Their ideology is merely a trashy spin-off within Islamic extremism that instead disfigures the Semito-African ideal of radicality they so intensely seek to magnify. The “Semito-African” languages are a grouping I propose, a primary language family of the world consisting of all the indigenous languages of Africa and stretching to include the Semitic languages of the Middle East. They are the “Radical” Tongues, derived from the original template of human language (and culture and society) from “Proto-Africa”. Remaining faithful to one’s Semito-African and therefore human roots is the whole overriding idea. Arabic is then an Afroasiatic language, a “Uniting” Tongue, more specifically a Semitic language, a “Visceral” Tongue. Islamic State draws heavily from this lineal current, but has missed the bat entirely in being faithful to its key mores as is essential for existential legitimacy of such a Semito-African entity, arguably thus constituting the most horrendous aberration in world history.

Yes, Islamic State seek/sought to magnify their distorted ancestral ideals… to magnify them in order to be able to compete with the Indo-Europeanised world where people speak… the “Glorious” Tongues

Syriacally speaking… the Islamic State agenda and worldview etc. does come up utterly distasteful and abhorrent. The contrasts that arise within the Syrian identity, between Christian integrity and Arab viscerality, for example, are overwhelming. Muslims & Arabs are characteristically profound, and some take this value too far -to extremes- and stop being able to look past viscerality. A literal love of bloodshed is literally what drives terrorists. But the rest of them are earnestly insightful and are as disgusted by it all as we are. The intricacies of Syrian nationalism were abruptly spoiled by Islamic State. And even though Islamic State has been very successful in defending certain tenets of Islamic tradition in its authentic raw shadowy visceral glory… Syriacally speaking… it’s not worth it, is it?