This article is about Syrians as the majority inhabitants of the country of Syria. For other uses, seeSyrian (disambiguation). For Syrians outside of Syria, seeSyrian diaspora.
Syrians (Arabic:سوريون) are the majority inhabitants ofSyria, indigenous to theLevant, most of whom haveArabic, especially itsLevantine andMesopotamian dialects, as a mother tongue. Thecultural and linguistic heritage of the Syrian people is a blend of both indigenous elements and the foreign cultures that have come to rule the land and its people over the course of thousands of years. By the seventh century, most of the inhabitants of the Levant spokeAramaic. In the centuries after theMuslim conquest of the Levant in 634, Arabic gradually became the dominant language, but a minority of Syrians (particularly theAssyrians andSyriac-Arameans) retainedAramaic (Syriac), which is still spoken in itsEastern andWestern dialects.
The national name "Syrian" was originally an Indo-European corruption of Assyrian and applied to Assyria in northernMesopotamia, however byantiquity it was used to denote the inhabitants of the Levant. Following the Muslim conquest of the Levant, Arab identity gradually became dominant among many Syrians, and the ethnonym "Syrian" was used mainly byChristians in Levant, Mesopotamia and Anatolia who spoke Syriac. In the 19th century, the name "Syrian" was revived amongst the Arabic speakers of the Levant. Following the establishment of theArab Kingdom of Syria in 1920, the name "Syrian" began to spread amongst its Arabic speaking inhabitants. The term gained more importance during theMandate for Syria and the Lebanon, becoming the accepted national name for the Arabic speakers of the Syrian Republic.
Most Arabic-speaking Syrians identify as Arabs and are described as such by virtue of their modern-day language and bonds toArab cultureand history. But they are, in fact, genetically a blend of the variousSemitic-speaking groups indigenous to the region.[67][68][69][70] There is no contradiction between being an Arab and a Syrian since the Syrian Arab identity is multi-layered and being Syrian complements being Arab. In addition to denoting Syrian Arabs, the term "Syrian" also refer to all Syrian citizens, regardless of their ethnic background. In 2018, Syria had an estimated population of 19.5 million, which includes, aside from the aforementioned majority,Kurds,Assyrians,Turkmen,Armenians and others.
Various sources indicate that the nameSyria itself is derived fromLuwian term "Sura/i", and the derivativeancient Greek name:Σύριοι,Sýrioi, orΣύροι,Sýroi, both of which originally derived from theAkkadian word Aššūrāyu (Assyria) in northernMesopotamia, modern-day Iraq.[73][74] However, during theSeleucid Empire, this term was also applied toThe Levant, and henceforth the Greeks applied the term without distinction between theAssyrians of north Mesopotamia andArameans of the Levant.[75][76]
The Greeks used the terms "Syrian" and "Assyrian" interchangeably to indicate the indigenousArameans,Assyrians and other inhabitants of theLevant andMesopotamia,Herodotus considered "Syria" west of theEuphrates. Starting from the 2nd century BC onwards, ancient writers referred to the ruler of theSeleucid Empire as theKing of Syria or King of the Syrians.[77] The Seleucids designated the districts ofSeleucis andCoele-Syria explicitly as Syria and ruled the Syrians as indigenous populations residing west of the Euphrates (Aramea) in contrast to Assyrians who had their nativehomeland inMesopotamia east of the Euphrates.[78] However, the interchangeability between Assyrians and Syrians persisted during theHellenistic period.[78]
In one instance, thePtolemaic dynasty of the Hellenistic kingdom ofEgypt applied the term "Syrian Village" as the name of a settlement inFayoum. The Ptolemies referred to all peoples originating from Modern Syria andPalestine as Syrian.[79]
The termSyrian was imposed upon Arameans of modernLevant by theRomans.Pompey created the province ofSyria, which included modern-day Lebanon and Syria west of the Euphrates, framing the province as a regional social category with civic implications.[80] In Roman usage, the term could refer narrowly to people of Aramean descent, but it was also applied more broadly to all inhabitants of the province, among them descendants of Greek and Italian settlers.[81] Authors varied in their descriptions:Plutarch described the indigenous people of this newly created Roman province as "Syrians",[82][better source needed] so didStrabo, who observed that Syrians resided west of the Euphrates in Roman Syria,[80] and he explicitly mentions that those Syrians are the Arameans, whom he callsAramaei, indicating an extant ethnicity.[83][better source needed]Posidonius noted that the people called Syrians by the Greeks refer to themselves as Arameans.[84]Tacitus also portrayed Syrians as a distinct ethnic group or race.[81]
InThe Jewish War,Josephus, aHebrew historian native to the Levant, mentioned the Syrians as the non-Hebrew, non-Greek indigenous inhabitants of Syria.[85]
Syrians are mainly descended from the variousancient Semitic-speaking peoples of theancient Near East.[86][87][88][page needed] The Seleucids ruled the indigenous peoples of the Levant, whom they named "Syrians", as a conquered nation; Syrians were not assimilated into Greek communities, and many local peasants were exploited financially as they had to pay rent for Greek landlords. OutsideGreek colonies, the Syrians lived in districts governed by local temples that did not use the Greek civic system ofpoleis and colonies.[89] The situation changed after the Roman conquest in 64 BC; Semitic-speaking Syrians obtained the citizenship of Greekpoleis, and the line separating the Greeks and the natives blurred. The idioms Syrian and Greek were used by Rome to denote civic societies instead of separate ethnic groups.[90]
Ancient Syria of the first millennium BC was dominated by the Aramaeans;[91] they originated in the Northern Levant as a continuum of theBronze Age populations of Syria.[92] The Aramaeans assimilated most of the earlier Levantine populations through their language.[91] With the adoption of a common religion,Christianity, most of the inhabitants turned into Syrians (Aramaeans). Islam and the Arabic language had a similar effect where the Aramaeans themselves became Arabs regardless of their ethnic origin following theMuslim conquest of the Levant.[91] The presence of Arabs in Syria is recorded since the 9th century BC,[93] and Roman period historians, such asStrabo,Pliny the Elder, andPtolemy, reported that Arabs inhabited many parts of Syria,[94] which according to modern historians indicate either an ethnic group or a nomadic way of life.[note 2][95][96] Theurheimat of the Arab ethnos is unclear; the traditional 19th century theory locates this in the Arabian Peninsula,[97] while some modern scholars, such as David Frank Graf, note that the epigraphic and archaeological evidence render the traditional theory inadequate to explain the Arabs' appearance in Syria.[note 3][99] The Arabs mentioned in Syria by Greco-Roman writers were assimilated into the newly formed "Greco–Aramaean culture" that dominated the region, and the texts they produced were written in Greek and Aramaic.[102]Old Arabic, the precursor ofClassical Arabic, was not a literary language; its speakers used Aramaic for writing purposes.[103]
On the eve of theRashidun Caliphate conquest of the Levant, 634 AD, Syria's population mainly spoke Aramaic as theLingua franca,[104] while Greek was the language of administration.Arabization andIslamization of Syria began in the 7th century, and it took several centuries for Islam, the Arab identity, and language to spread;[105] the Arabs of the caliphate did not attempt to spread their language or religion in the early periods of the conquest, and formed an isolated aristocracy.[106] The Arabs of the caliphate accommodated many new tribes in isolated areas to avoid conflict with the locals; caliphUthman ordered his governor,Muawiyah I, to settle the new tribes away from the original population.[107] Syrians who belonged toMonophysitic denominations welcomed the Muslim Arabs as liberators.[108]
TheAbbasids in the eighth and ninth centuries sought to integrate the peoples under their authority, and the Arabization of the administration was one of their methods.[109] Arabization gained momentum with the increasing numbers of Muslim converts fromChristianity;[105] the ascendancy of Arabic as the formal language of the state prompted the cultural and linguistic assimilation of Syrian converts.[110] Some of those who remained Christian also became Arabized, while others stayed Aramean,[111][109] it was probably during the Abbasid period in the ninth century that Christians adopted Arabic as their first language; the first translation of the gospels into Arabic took place in this century.[112] Many historians, such asClaude Cahen and Bernard Hamilton, proposed that the Arabization of Christians was completed before theFirst Crusade.[113] By the thirteenth century, the Arabic language achieved complete dominance in the region, with many of its speakers having become Arabs.[105]
Garshuni sample
Those who retained the Aramaic language are divided among two groups:
TheEastern AramaicSyriac-speaking group, followers of theWest Syriac Rite of theSyriac Orthodox Church and theSyrian Catholic Church; kept the pre-IslamicSyrian (Syriac) identity throughout the ages, asserting their culture in face of the Arab dominance. Linguists, such asCarl Brockelmann andFrançois Lenormant, suggested that the rise of theGarshuni writing (using theSyriac alphabet to write Arabic) was an attempt by the Syriac Orthodox to assert their identity.[114] Syriac is still the liturgical language for most of the different Syriac churches in Syria.[115] The Syriac Orthodox Church was known as the Syrian Orthodox Church until 2000, when the holy synod decided to rename it to avoid any nationalistic connotations; the Catholic Church still has "Syrian" in its official name.[116]
TheWestern Neo-Aramaic-speaking group, that is, the inhabitants ofBakh'a,Jubb'adin andMa'loula. The residents of Bakh'a and Jubb'adin converted to Islam in the eighteenth century (retaining their Aramean identity),[117] while in Ma'loula, the majority are Christians, mainly belonging to theMelkite Greek Catholic Church,[118] but also to theGreek Orthodox Church of Antioch,[119] in addition to a Muslim minority, who speaks the same Aramaic dialect of the Christian residents.[117] The people of those villages use Arabic intensively to communicate with each other and the rest of the country; this led to a noticeable Arabic influence on their Aramaic dialect where around 20% of its vocabulary is of Arabic roots. Bakh'a is steadily losing its dialect; by 1971, people aged younger than 40 could no longer use the Aramaic language properly, although they could understand it. The situation of Bakh'a might eventually lead to the extinction of its Aramaic dialect.[120]
The Arabs in Arabia called theregion of Syria regional-Sham (Arabic:بِـلَاد الـشَّـام,romanized: Bilād al-Šām,lit.'the country of Sham') which became the dominant name of the Levant under theRashidun Caliphate and its successors. The geographic designation "Syria" returned in 1864 whenOttoman Syria was reorganized and the name was used for a vilayet encompassing generally the southern Levant.[121] The use of the national designation "Syrian" however has its origin in the tense relationship between the Arabic-speaking Muslims and Christians of the Levant, where Christians wanted to distance themselves from the Muslims.[122] Already in the 1830s, the Lebanese traveler As'ad Khayyat identified with the term Syria, but it took till the 1880s for the name to begin to be widely used by the inhabitants to refer to themselves.[122] Both Muslims and Christians agreed that the Muslims were not Syrians because they belonged to the Arabs while the Christians retained the Syrianism of antiquity.[122] The spread of the Syrian "idea" amongst the Muslims can be traced to the efforts ofRashid Rida who contributed to the formulation of the Syrian Union Party's manifesto in 1918, demanding that Syria, in the aftermath of World War I and the Ottoman withdrawal from the region, become an independent state and not part of larger Arab one ruled by theHashemites of theKingdom of Hejaz.[123] Rida did not reject the Arab identity but recognized a Syrian uniqueness and advocated the idea of a Syrian state.[123] In the end, Syria did become a separate state but under the Hashemite kingFaisal. He entered Damascus in 1918 in the aftermath of the Ottomans' evacuation of the Levant at the end of World War I. His entry ignited the Syrian national consciousness after he declared an Arab government in the Levant centred in Damascus with him as prince.[124] In June 1919, theSyrian National Congress, which included representatives from Palestine and Lebanon, demanded the full independence of Syria, within borders that encompass more or less the Levant; this helped to further strengthen the development of the Syrian national consciousness.[124] Initially, most inhabitants were against the establishment of Syria as they considered this a step against Arab unity, but gradually, Faisal's Syria, which was declared an independent kingdom in 1920, prompted the Syrians to begin exploring the notion of Syrianism instead of pan-Arabism.[note 4][126][127] Faisal was deposed by the French who established amandate in 1920, but the formation of a Syrian consciousness amongst the members of the Syrian Arab national movement solidified and spread amongst the Muslims as well as the Christians.[128]
Arabian Peninsula/East African ancestral components Levantine ancestral component Other ancestral components
Genetic tests on Syrians were included in many genetic studies.[68][129][69] Thegenetic marker which identifies descendants of the ancientLevantines is found in Syrians in high proportion.[130] Modern Syrians exhibit "high affinity to the Levant" based on studies comparing modern and ancient DNA samples.[131] Syrians cluster closely with ancient Levantine populations of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages.[132] A Levantine ancestral genetic component was identified; it is estimated that the Levantine, the Arabian and East African ancestral components diverged 23,700–15,500 years ago, while the divergence between the Levantine and European components happened 15,900–9,100 years ago.[133] The Levantine ancestral component is the most recurrent in Levantines (42–68%); the Peninsular Arabian and East African ancestral components represent around 25% of Syrian genetic make-up.[134][135]
The paternal Y-DNA haplogroup J1, which reaches its highest frequencies in Yemen 72.6% and Qatar 58.3%, accounted for 33.6% of Syrians.[136] The J2 group accounted for 20.8% of Syrians; other Y-DNA haplogroups include theE1B1B 12.0%,I 5.0%,R1a 10.0% andR1b 15.0%.[69][137] The Syrians are closest to other Levantine populations: theLebanese, thePalestinians andJordanians;[138] this closeness can be explained by the common Canaanite ancestry and geographical unity which was broken only in the twentieth century with the advent of British and French mandates.[139] Regarding the genetic relation between the Syrians and the Lebanese based on Y-DNA, Muslims from Lebanon show closer relations to Syrians than their Christian compatriots.[140] The people of Western Syria show close relations with the people of Northern Lebanon.[141]
Mitochondrial DNA shows the Syrians to have an affinity with Europe; main haplogroups areH andR.[142] Based on Mitochondrial DNA, the Syrians, Palestinians, Lebanese and Jordanians form a close cluster.[143] Compared to the Lebanese, Bedouins and Palestinians, the Syrians have noticeably more Northern European component, estimated at 7%.[144] Regarding theHLA alleles, Syrians, and other Levantine populations, exhibit "key differences" from otherArab populations;[145] based onHLA-DRB1 alleles, Syrians were close to eastern Mediterranean populations, such as theCretans andLebanese Armenians.[146] Studying the genetic relation betweenJews and Syrians showed that the two populations share a close affinity.[147] Apparently, the cultural influence of Arabian expansion in theEastern Mediterranean in the seventh century was more prominent than the genetic influx.[148] However, the expansion of Islam did leave an impact on Levantine genes; religion drove Levantine Muslims to mix with other Muslim populations, who were close culturally despite the geographic distance, and this produced genetic similarities between Levantine Muslims and Moroccan and Yemeni populations. Christians andDruze became a genetic isolate in the predominantly Islamic world.[149]
The Syrian people's beliefs and outlooks, similar to those of most Arabs and people of the wider Middle-East, are a mosaic of West and East. Conservative and liberally minded people will live right next to each other. Like the other countries in the region, religion permeates life; the government registers every Syrian's religious affiliation.
A typical Syrian breakfast is ameze. It is an assortment platter of foods with cheeses, meats, pickles, olives, and spreads. Meze is usually served with Arab-style tea – highly concentrated black tea, which is often highly sweetened and served in small glass cups. Another popular drink, especially with Christians and non-practicing Muslims, is thearak, a liquor produced from grapes or dates and flavored withanise that can have an alcohol content of over 90% ABV (however, most commercial Syrian arak brands are about 40–60% ABV).
^Most numbers, aside from these of South American countries, represent all Syrian citizens including ethnic minorities such as theKurds,Assyrians andArmenians
^What antiquity's writers meant by the designation "Arab" is debated; the historian Michael Macdonald suggested that the term is an ethnic designation based on an "ill-defined complex of linguistic and cultural characteristics",[95] while according to academic consensus, "Arab", in addition to it being an ethnic name, had a social meaning describing a nomadic way of life.[96]
^Regarding the urheimat of the Arab ethnos: the traditional theory, which dates to the 19th century and became dominant in the middle of the 20th century, holds that Arabs were a Semitic wave from the Arabian peninsula who infiltrated Syria. The traditional theory does not explain the early presence of the Arabs in the Levant as it lacks the evidence for when and how they allegedly arrived from Arabia.[97] Macdonald noted that there is no evidence proving that the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula, especially modern Yemen, in the early Hellenistic period (fourth century BC), used the designation "Arab", and that it took several centuries for this ethnic name to be adopted by the majority of the peninsula's inhabitants.[98] The historian David Frank Graf considered the traditional theory inadequate for explaining the Arab presence in the Near East. Graf noted the 4th century BC evidence fromEdom, south of the historical region of Syria, represented in a collection of ostraca, which show that the population was either "Arabized Edmoites" or "Edomite Arabs", and that this population was an integral part of the demography of southern Palestine and not a recent infiltration.[99] The historian Robert Hoyland, noting the earliest attestation of Arabs in Assyrian sources in the Syrian desert in the 9th century, followed by their earliest attestation in Southern Arabian inscriptions in the seventh/sixth century BC, suggested that north and central Arabia was the homeland of Arabs.[100] Macdonald refused the paradigm of infiltration from Arabia, and considered the Syria/Arabia division a Western concept that would have been unrecognizable for Arabs who were supposedly migrating.[101]
^Even under Faisal, it was clear that the Arabic speakers in Syria considered themselves Syrians first and Arabs second; this is apparent in the response to the presence of Iraqi and other non-Syrian officials in Faisal's army and government. Syrians complained that they were becoming strangers in their own country, and slogans such as "Syria for Syrians" appeared in newspapers. The Syrian youth, an anti-Iraqi organization, was established declaring its desire to protect the rights of Syrians against non Syrians.[125]
^Jordan, Levi."Syria Steps into Latin America". Americas Society Council of the Americas.Archived from the original on 16 January 2017. Retrieved15 January 2017.Syria hopes will serve as an avenue to attract investment dollars from the one-million-strong community of Venezuelans of Syrian descent
^Nachawati, Leila (March 2013)."Cómo será recordado Chávez en Siria" (in Spanish). ElDiario.es.Archived from the original on 16 January 2017. Retrieved15 January 2017.Se calcula que cerca de un millón de habitantes del país tiene origen sirio, personal o familiar.
^Gomez, Diego (February 2012)."EL LEVANTE Y AMÉRICA LATINA. UNA BITÁCORA DE LATINOAMÉRICA EN SIRIA, LÍBANO, JORDANIA Y PALESTINA".distintaslatitudes.net (in Spanish).Archived from the original on 6 May 2019. Retrieved15 January 2017.de acuerdo con el Instituto de Estadística de Venezuela, cerca de un millón de venezolanos tienen orígenes sirios y más de 20 mil venezolanos están registrados en el catastro del consulado sudamericano en Damasco.
^abAndrade, Nathanael (2023). "Syria". In Pagán, Victoria Emma (ed.).The Tacitus Encyclopedia. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. p. 1052.ISBN978-1-4443-5025-8.
^Commins et al. 2018. Quote:"The Syrian people evolved from several origins over a long period of time. The Greek and Roman ethnic influence was negligible in comparison with that of the Semitic peoples of Arabia and Mesopotamia—Aramaeans, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Canaanites."
^Shehadeh, Lamia Rustum (2011). "The name of Syria in ancient and modern usage". In Beshara, Adel (ed.).The Origins of Syrian Nationhood. Routledge. p. 22.
^abcGroiss, Arnon (2011). "Communalism as a factor in the rise of the Syria idea in the 1800s and the early 1900s". In Beshara, Adel (ed.).The Origins of Syrian Nationhood. Routledge. pp. 37–38.
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^Ma'os, Moshe (2011). "The Emergence of Modern Syria". In Ma'os, Moshe; Yanic, Avner (eds.).Syria Under Assad: Domestic Constraints and Regional Risks. Routledge. p. 14.
^Perry 2007. Quote:"The marker, known as the J2 haplogroup, was found in an unusually high proportion among Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians tested by Zalloua during more than five years of research. He tested 1,000 people in the region."
^Marshall et al. 2016. Quote:"The mixed Near Eastern–Middle Eastern localisation of the Druze, shown using both modern and ancient DNA data, is distinct from that of neighboring Syrians, Palestinians and most of the Lebanese, who exhibit a high affinity to the Levant."
^Marshall et al. 2016. Quote:" Druze exhibited genetic similarity to Chalcolithic and Bronze Age Armenians and a Chalcolithic Anatolian. In that study, Druze clustered remotely from all Bronze Age and Neolithic Levantines, whereas Jews, Assyrians, Syrians and a few Lebanese clustered with Levantine populations."
^Haber et al. 2013. Quote:"Our estimates show that the Levantine and the Arabian Peninsula/East African components diverged ~23,700–15,500 y.a., while the Levantine and European components diverged ~15,900–9,100 y.a."
^Haber et al. 2013. Quote:1-"ADMIXTURE identifies at K = 10 an ancestral component (light green) with a geographically restricted distribution representing ~50% of the individual component in Ethiopians, Yemenis, Saudis, and Bedouins, decreasing towards the Levant, with higher frequency (~25%) in Syrians, Jordanians, and Palestinians, compared with other Levantines (4%–20%). The geographical distribution pattern of this component (Figure 4A, 4B) correlates with the pattern of the Islamic expansion, but its presence in Lebanese Christians, Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews, Cypriots and Armenians might suggest that its spread to the Levant could also represent an earlier event." 2-"Besides this component, the most frequent ancestral component (shown in dark blue) in the Levantines (42–68%) is also present, at lower frequencies, in Europe and Central Asia."
^Fernandes et al. 2015. Quote:1-"In the Near East, we included Iraq, Jordan, Israel/Palestine, Turkey, Lebanon and Syria." 2-"Here it is already possible to distinguish between a Southwest Asian/Caucasian and an Arabian/North African component; these two components have similar proportions of ~30% each in Yemen and UAE, but the Arabian/North African proportion increases to 52–60% in Saudi and Bedouin. In Near Eastern populations, correspondingly, the Southwest Asian/Caucasian component rises to ~50% and the Arabian/North African cluster decreases to ~20–30%, even in Palestinians (similar to the Samaritans and some of the Druze), highlighting their primarily indigenous origin, with the most extreme values for the Druze, carrying the Southwest Asian/Caucasian component at ~80%."
^El‐Sibai et al. 2009. Quote:"J1 frequencies in Syria, Akka and Jordan were more comparable to Lebanon than to the remaining Arabic countries (58.3% in Qatar and 72.5% in Yemen; Fig. 2G")
^Hajjej et al. 2018. Quote:"Using genetic distances, correspondence analysis and NJ trees, we showed earlier [61, 62] and in this study that Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese and Jordanians are closely related to each other."
^Hajjej et al. 2018. Quote:"The strong relatedness between Levant Arab populations is explained by their common ancestry, the ancient Canaanites, who came either from Africa or Arabian Peninsula via Egypt in 3300 BC [97], and settled in Levant lowlands after collapse of Ghassulian civilization in 3800–3350 BC [98]. The relatedness is also attributed to the close geographical proximity, which constituted one territory before 19th century British and French colonization."
^Haber et al. 2013. Quote:"Lebanese Christians and all Druze cluster together, and Lebanese Muslims are extended towards Syrians, Palestinians, and Jordanians."
^Haber et al. 2011. Quote:"Syria is contained within the range of variation of the Lebanese samples. West Syrian samples lie closest to LN Sunnis, and not far from LN, LB, and LM Maronites."
^Badro et al. 2013. Quote:"The haplogroups' geographical distribution shows affinity between the Northern Levant (modern day Lebanon and Syria) and Europe with clear distinctions between the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula with regards to Africa (Fig. 1, Table 1). The main mtDNA haplogroups for both Europe and the Northern Levant are H and R*."
^Badro et al. 2013. Quote:"Yemenis and Saudis both associate strongly with Egyptians, whereas the Jordanian, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Syrian populations clustered together."
^Marshall et al. 2016. Quote:"Druze and Syrians possess a significantly larger amount of the Northern European component (X = 7%) when compared with their neighbouring populations, such as Palestinians (X = 5%) and Lebanese and Bedouins (X = 2%)."
^Hajjej et al. 2018. Quote:"On the contrary, key differences were noted between Levant Arabs (Lebanese, Palestinians, Syrians), and other Arab populations, highlighted by high frequencies of A*24, B*35, DRB1*11:01, DQB1*03:01, and DRB1*11:01-DQB1*03:01 haplotype in Levantine Arabs compared to other Arab populations."
^Hajjej et al. 2018. Quote:"Syrians are genetically close to Eastern Mediterranean, as Cretans (−0.0001) and Lebanese Armenians (0.0050)."
^Hammer et al. 2000. Quote:"This Jewish cluster was interspersed with the Palestinian and Syrian populations, whereas the other Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations (Saudi Arabians, Lebanese, and Druze) closely surrounded it."
^Hajjej et al. 2018. Quote:1-"The extent of gene Arab exchange with these autochthonous groups is undetermined but is thought to be lower than religious/cultural influence." 2-"On the other hand, Levant Arabs are distant from Saudis, Kuwaitis, and Yeminis, an indication that the contribution of the Arabian Peninsula populations to Levantine gene pool is low, probably due to the absence of the demographic aspect of 7th century invasion."
^Haber et al. 2013. Quote:1-"We show that religious affiliation had a strong impact on the genomes of the Levantines. In particular, conversion of the region's populations to Islam appears to have introduced major rearrangements in populations' relations through admixture with culturally similar but geographically remote populations, leading to genetic similarities between remarkably distant populations like Jordanians, Moroccans, and Yemenis. Conversely, other populations, like Christians and Druze, became genetically isolated in the new cultural environment. We reconstructed the genetic structure of the Levantines and found that a pre-Islamic expansion Levant was more genetically similar to Europeans than to Middle Easterners." 2-"The predominantly Muslim populations of Syrians, Palestinians and Jordanians cluster on branches with other Muslim populations as distant as Morocco and Yemen." 3-Lebanese Christians and all Druze cluster together, and Lebanese Muslims are extended towards Syrians, Palestinians, and Jordanians, which are close to Saudis and Bedouins."
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