Syrian Arab Republic
Western Asia
Ancient · Historic · Resilient
Syria (officially Syrian Arab Republic) is a country located in Western Asia. Its capital city is Damascus, with other major cities including Aleppo and Homs. With a population of approximately 21.3M, the main language spoken is Arabic. The country covers an area of 185,180 km². The official currency is the Syrian pound (£). Traffic drives on the right side.
Damascus is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on Earth, with evidence of settlement going back 11,000 years.
Damascus serves as the political, cultural and economic heart of Syria, positioned in Western Asia. As the seat of government and often the most populous city, it concentrates the country's main institutions, universities and cultural landmarks. Beyond the capital, major cities include Aleppo, Homs, Latakia — each a hub of regional culture, economy and history. Damascus is among the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities, with settlement dating to the 3rd millennium BCE, and the Umayyad Mosque — built in 705 CE over a Byzantine cathedral that had replaced a Roman temple — compresses the city's layered history into a single building still in active use.
With a population of approximately 21.3M, Syria is a vibrant society with a rich mix of traditions and communities. The official language is Arabic, which reflects the country's cultural heritage and connects it with a wide international community. Internationally, Syria is reached via the dialling code +963. Syrian craftspeople in the old souks of Damascus and Aleppo produced damask fabric, a weaving technique so identified with the city that the English language preserves the name — and the brocaded silk patterns developed there influenced European textile production for centuries after Crusader-era trade routes opened.
Syria spans 185,180 km², in the Western Asia subregion of Asia. Geographically centred around 35.0°N, 38.0°E, the country offers a diverse range of landscapes shaped by its location, climate and geology. Road traffic follows the right-hand rule, in line with surrounding Asia convention.
The official currency is the Syrian pound (£), used for everyday transactions and commerce throughout the country. Syria's economy is shaped by its geography, natural resources and trade relationships. Business and daily life operate under UTC+02:00, aligning the country with its regional neighbours.
The emblematic dish of Syria is Kibbeh. Kibbeh — bulgur wheat casing around spiced lamb — is described as the national dish of several Levantine countries, but Syrian preparation, particularly the stuffed fried version from Aleppo and the raw kibbeh nayyeh of the coastal mountains, represents a technique refined over centuries in a region where grinding wheat and lamb together predates recorded cookbooks.
Football holds a special place in the heart of Syria's national identity. Syrian football club Al-Wahda Damascus, founded in 1928, has won the Syrian Premier League over 30 times and provided the backbone of a national team that reached the 2022 World Cup qualification play-offs — a competitive achievement made extraordinary by the fact that the squad trained across multiple countries during a decade of civil war.
The highest point in Syria is Mount Hermon, rising to 2,814 metres above sea level. The Syrian Desert's Palmyra oasis, surrounded by 520,000 square kilometres of steppe and sand, sustained one of the ancient world's most important caravan cities precisely because water existed where none should — a geological accident that built an empire and whose destruction by ISIS in 2015 made the fragility of deep history viscerally apparent.