Until the 20th century and the founding of the French mandate of Syria, the term 'Syrian' referred exclusively to Levantine Christians. The term 'Shami' was used to refer to Levantines (Excluding Bedouin) and in particullar Sunni Levantines in general. These included todays Palestinians, Jordanian non Bedouin and with the exception of Maronites and Druzes, Lebanese along with Syrians.
This is the blog haven of Syrian author Ammar Abdulhamid, the place where he gets to express his thoughts and vent his frustration with regard to the ever so pretentious march of human folly.
Indeed, in the early 90s, the Syrian authorities destroyed much of the old dwellings encroaching upon the old dwellings encroaching on the walls of the Umayyad mosque, including the cloister of the famous medieval philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazali.
The Syrians of the Golan have the prospect of poverty and fleecing to look forward to when peace finally prevails, that is, if the Assads are the ones to be rewarded with it.
Their nemeses are not the Syrian soldiers who man checkpoints throughout the country, nor the plainclothes intelligence officers who monitor every public political gathering, but the 1.4 million penniless Syrian workers who have flooded into Lebanon in recent years and swept away the promise of a brighter future by virtually monopolizing many unskilled professions.
Syrian workers had been a significant part of Lebanon's expatriot workforce prior to the outbreak of the civil war in 1975, but their presence had been strictly subject to Lebanese laws.
In December 1996, a van carrying three Syrian workers from North Lebanon to Beirut was attacked by an armed gunman in a passing vehicle, killing the driver and injuring one of the passengers.
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