Syria

For centuries of territorial invasions, the area was perceived as a daunting conquest for armies invading from the Mediterranean in the direction of Jerusalum. It is the land where a dragon slayer allegedly held court and yet served as a land bridge, also known as Canaan, between the Fertile Cresent Mesopotamia and Egypt. "Among early times waves of Semitic triabes drifted or swarmed into Canaan and settled to create a prebiblical civilization of city-states that were eventually conquered and absorbed by the nomadic Hebrew tribes. It bore witness to the scourging armies of Assyria and Babylon, of Egypt andn Persia, of Greece and Rome. It was the pale of the ill-fated Hebrew Tribe of Dan and the home of the errant Jewish judge, Samson. It saw the great Jewish revolt against the Greeks, and here Judah, 'the Hammerrer, assembled his Maccabees for the assualt to liberate Jersualem." It bore witness to the scourging armies of Assyria and Babylon, of Egypt and Persia of Greece and Rome. In times since, millions of pairs of feet of devout Jews, Christians and Muslims passed here on their pilgramage. Muhammed was followed by the armies that swept out of the desert under the banner of Islam to evict the Christian from the Holy Land. The most recent legions of conquest were the Ottomans, who stormed out of Turkey to devor the Middle East in the sixteenth century. Total cruelty, corruption, and perncious feudalism spelled out the infamous rule of the Turks where a few of the influential Palestinian Arab families did the dirty business for the Ottamans one of whom the Kabir family who held large land grants in the Palestine district. As a minor backwater district to the Syrian Province, Palestine had been devalued to bastardy and orpanhood. Neither the Ottomans nor the Kabirs put anything into the land for centuries, neither schools, roads, hospitals or new farming methods. Ottoman rule was in no way exclusive, the Arab tribal authorities of the day included the Bedouin. Most distinguished among them were the Wahhabis who traveled from the area near Gaza and would loot fields and rob pilgrims. The Bedouin tribesman had been a driving force in the spread of Islam through conquest and as the armies at the side of Mohammad in the eight century. A hierarchy of order existed which despite it's destitution, the Bedouin remained the Arab ideal as a traveling warrior where the law of the desert was absolute. The cityman Arab was considered of a lower order and the fellahin who farmed the land in the villages was the lowest of the social order. The Bedoins payed no taxes, they merely existed and took as they pleased. The appointed overseer of the more organized villages and cities was the responsibility of the Kadir families and others. To offer an accord to the unrelenting nature of the Bedouin tribes, the shiek of the Soukori group was offered legitimacy in 1800 to occupy the Greater Syrian Valley and act as land agent in collecting taxes. This helped keep collection in check with Ottoman demands and instilled some order on an otherwise unruly clan of nomads. Hostility though persisted amongst other Bedouin's, particulalry the Wahhabis, against such an agreement. For fifty years land feuds ensued until the various sects of tribes came to jointly inhabit the region but the Soukori"s suceeded one another as the mukhtars for over a hundred years.

Fawzi Kabir, a remnant of cooperative power between the Turks and wealthy Palestinean family's held a powerful sway among the region through the 1920's. Damascas was made the capital of the region and appointments of the new posts by the Kabirs was common place. The collection of taxes though had languished as the period of Turkish control subsided. The European handle on power by the French and English in the early 20th century largely altered the position of governance. Taxing authorities became more strictly imposed and to deal with the financial burden of overseaing such large tracts of land in the face of colonial imperialism, much of the land was sold. The Jews who had been encouraged by the wave of Zionism to return to their homeland provided an ideal buyer of property. The Kabir family had little concern in negotiating with the Jews that would allow him to collect annual payments to balance terms with the French in Syria and Lebanan . The Brittish Palestine mandate though was a different story and to the dismay of Fawzi Kabir, his land owning advesary, Haj Amin al Heusseini, had returned from exile and appointed by the Brittish as the Mufti of Jerusalem. At this time also the Brittish crowned Abdullah emir of the newly formed Trans-Jordan madate. With the Jewish settlements sprouting accross Palestine and outside of Damascas, the land became much more tenable, with cultivation prospering, and European development helped to improve infrastructure. Fawzi Kabir partitioned off almost the entire stretch of his land and secured his stake with investments in the newly devloped region including hotels, an oil pipeline and industrial projects. The feelings of al Heusseini were intolerant of the transformations taking place and he sought a German alliances that was remaining from the lengthy rule by the Turks. For these reasons and in effort to save his own fate from the wrongdoings of managing the financial deals of the Jerusalem territory, he befriended German emmisaries. The Germans had long developed a prescence in the area and Jesusalem had become a city of quarters where each of four different nationalities held a stake including the Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and small Armenian district. Beyond the city all sects developed neighborhoods as did the Germans that included public benefits such as an orphanage for Syrian children, a German Colony with homes on residential streets, and German Lutheran Church. As the alliance between al Heusseini and the Duetch government grew stronger with a shared motive of anitsemiticsm and overthrow of the other occupying European powers, the use of propaganda became effective in rallying most Muslims to defy the Jewish presence. Rumors were spread that mosques were being defaced and Muslims were being victimized. The outtbreak of war in Europe commenced and the haj al Heusseini fled from Damascas to Iraq where a less consipicous strategizing could be worked out that in what appeared as an inevitable victory by Germany, al Heusseini could still exert power in a newly entrenched Arab German land. Mainland France fell in the war and their holdings in Syria and Lebanon quickly became German possessions. The important land that had been coeveted by the colonial powers for several decades were not about to sieze the contol easily to the Germans. The Arab region became and extension of a proxy battle that ran into Africa also against the Mussolini Italian forces that had been in Libya. The British were able to hold ground in the Egyptian territory and protect the vital Suez Canal. In Lebanon, Palestine and Syria the Brittish with assitance from Jewish soldiers were able to reign some command over that land and on into Iraq. The Brittish assaults in Iraq forced al Hesusseini from his holding in Bagdad and by way of Iran relocated him to Germany where his call for Arab solidarity continued.