# بلاد الشام - the Levant



## shihab-alain

Hey all, it's been a while since I've been on here,

I've often heard Jordan, Lebanon and Syria referred to as " بلاد الشم" or "بلاد الشمس"(I'm not sure which). Which one is correct, and where do they come from/what do they mean? If it's "بلاد الشمس" I could see it meaning "sun countries" but it seems like it make make more sense to call the gulf countries that.

Thanks,
Sam


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## elroy

Hi, Sam - welcome back! 

The answer to your question is "neither nor."   Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria - as well as Palestine/Israel - can be collectively referred to as بلاد) الشام), although الشام more commonly refers to just Syria (and I think that within Syria it refers to just Damascus).

The adjective form, which is used to refer to the family of dialects spoken in these countries, is شامي.

The corresponding English terms are "Levant" (noun) and "Levantine" (adjective).

For more information, you can check out the Arabic Wikipedia article or the English one.

According to the Arabic article, there are several theories as to the etymology of the name.  Let me know if you need any translation help.


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## xebonyx

I think it can also be referred to as المشرق العربي (lit.The Arab East)


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## shihab-alain

Elroy -
Thanks so much for the info... It's one of those things I had always been curious about but never remembered to ask.

xebonyx -
"المشرق العربي" seems like it would translate into the Arabic East... I think the direct translation of Middle East is "الشرق الاوساط" (pardon my spelling).

thanks,
Sam


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## xebonyx

shihab-alain said:


> Elroy -
> Thanks so much for the info... It's one of those things I had always been curious about but never remembered to ask.
> 
> xebonyx -
> "المشرق العربي" seems like it would translate into the *Arabic* East...



No, because Arabic means the language itself. 



> I think the direct translation of Middle East is "الشرق الاوساط" (pardon my spelling).


Actually, it's "الشرق الاوسط " without the long alif. I know this is the translation for the Middle East, but notice that this wasn't what I was pointing out.


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## shihab-alain

xebonyx,
Oops you are totally right... I misread your post and for some reason thought you said Middle East. My bad...

-Sam


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## Mahaodeh

shihab-alain said:


> Elroy -
> Thanks so much for the info... It's one of those things I had always been curious about but never remembered to ask.
> 
> xebonyx -
> "المشرق العربي" seems like it would translate into the Arabic East... I think the direct translation of Middle East is "الشرق الاوساط" (pardon my spelling).
> 
> thanks,
> Sam


 
The best translation of المشرق العربي is "the Eastern Arab Lands" which includes Iraq, Al Sham, KSA, all the Gulf states and Yemen; it is the opposite of المغرب العربي which includes Moritanian, Morocco, Algeria, Tunis and Lybia.

Egypt and Sudan are sometimes included here and sometimes there depending on the point the speaker wishes to make .


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## Sidjanga

elroy said:


> (...) For more information, you can check out the Arabic Wikipedia article or the English one. (...)


Interestingly, when from the English article on the "Levant" you click on the link to its Arabic version, you are taken to بلاد الشام; but when, from that article, you click - not "back" - but on the link to the supposedly corresponding English version of that article, you are not taken back to the English article on "Levant", but rather the one on "Greater Syria" - which, reading your comments here, doesn't necessarily seem to be a contradiction, though it at least doesn't sound quite "politically correct", or is it?


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## elroy

That's weird.  I would never call the Levant "Greater Syria."  That implies that it's all Syria, which it's not.


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## djara

The names we choose to apply to geographical areas are not immune to political considerations. Some of us may be tempted to mix history (the past) with geography (the present). الشام is a historical concept used by our forefathers. Provided it is not part of a political agenda (the future), there should be no harm in using it to refer the region's history. It is as obsolete as "French North Africa", "Al Andalus", Yugoslavia, or the Soviet Union, etc.


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## Faylasoof

Djara you are right. The term بلاد الشام is loaded and carries quite a  historical burden. 

One only has to read the works of our <classical> historians writing in Arabic, such as Jarir at-Tabari, al-Balazuri (ansaab-ul-asraaf), al-Mas'udi (murooj az-zahab) etc., or travel writers like Ibn Batutah and Ibn Jubayr and so on, who refer to this area as بلاد الشام. But it is now just a relic of history in the sense of <Greater Syria>.


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## clevermizo

elroy said:


> That's weird.  I would never call the Levant "Greater Syria."  That implies that it's all Syria, which it's not.



The term Greater Syria emerged I believe because the region was one province (district?) under the Ottomans, with its capital in Damascus.


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## Faylasoof

Hi Clevermizo,

 I quote below a passage from Ansaab-ul-Ashraaf  (أنساب الأشراف) by al-Balazuri (البلاذري), volume 2 (الجزء الثاني).
ثم قدم على رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم في سنة سبع من الهجرة بعد فتح خيبر فاعتنقه رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم وقال: "لست أدري أي الأمرين أسرّ إلي أفتح خيبر أم قدوم جعفر".وقدم معه المدينة، ثم وجهه في جيش إلى مؤتة في بلاد الشام فاستشهد وقطعت يداه في الحرب، فقال رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم: "لقد أبدله الله بهما جناحين يطير بهما في الجنة". فسمي ذا الجناحين، وسمي الطيار في الجنة.​ 
Here *al-Balazuri* is describing the arrival of Ja’far bin Abi Talib from Abyssinia (Ehtiopia) where the Christian King / Emperor (the Negus) Ashama bin Abjar,had given the early Muslims refuge from persecution by the pagan Quraysh.

Ja’far's arrival back in the Hejaz coincided with the end of the campaign at Khyber and the Prophet expressed his joy saying: “I do not know which gives me greater happiness, the success at Khyber or the arrival of Ja’far (قدوم جعفر).” But this joy was short-lived as Ja’far bin Abi Talib was sent with an army to *Mu’tah*, in present-day Jordan near the city of *Karak*, to confront a large advance guard sent by the then Byzantine ruler Heraclius, where he was killed /martyred (فاستشهد). (His tomb and those of two other commanders, Zayd bin 7aarithah and Abdullah in Rawaa7ah can till be seen at Mu’tah.)

As you’ll note, Balazuri (d. 892 CE) specifies *Mu’tah* being in <Greater Syria> (مؤتة في بلاد الشام). So the term is very much older than the Ottoman period. Other “classical” writers also use this term. However, as I said earlier this term is now just a relic from the past.

[As an aside, after this incident Ja’far bin Abi Talib came to be known as Ja’far at-Tayyar, something al-Balazuri explains.]


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## clevermizo

Pardon - I meant the term "Greater Syria" in _English_. بلاد الشام is very old indeed.


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## Faylasoof

I believe Antoun Saadeh (d. 1949) had dreams of a* <*Greater Syria> which would have included Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Cyprus. He later included even Iraq! 

I think the term emerged _after_ the Ottoman defeat in the 1914-1918 war. Not sure if it was ever used in this sense during the Ottoman period even in English. The Ottoman Syrian province /district was much smaller than the region usually associated with this term. The  Hashemites though originally stationed in the Hijaz also had sought to include <Greater Syria> minus Cyprus, in their dealings with the British after the Great War. The Sykes-Picot accord of 1916 put an end to all this. 

Anyway, most sources seem to say that <Greater Syria> was not exactly synonymous with the Levant.


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## A-class-act

Since I'm not sure I won't give details to not seem like a....,but I think that it has a relationship with سام and حام,I'll let an Arabic who knows better than I do,explain.


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## Mahaodeh

There is a page on it in Wikamoos. This is the etymology:

أصلها شَأَام على وزن فَعَال خففت بحذف عينها وهي الهمزة. مشتقة من شَأَمَ، ضد يَمَنَ التي اشتق منها اليَمِين واليَمَن. قيل سميت الشام شاما لأنها نحو يسار مَكَة حيث المسجد الحرام، وقيل لأنها في شمال الجزيرة العربية.


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## Faylasoof

Very useful reference Mahaodeh! 

I had always wondered about the etymology of الشام since, I believe, Syria (from which we get the Arabic السوريّة) is a much older name. I started looking and the earliest one can go back to for the name <Syria> is Herodotus (480-425 BC). He visited the area and wrote his well-known book called <Histories>. This is what he says:

<… οὗτοι δὲ ὑπὸ μὲν Ἑλλήνων καλέονται Σύριοι, ὑπὸ δὲ τῶν βαρβάρων Ἀσσύριοι ἐκλήθησαν.> (7: 63)

Which means:

_<…These are called Syrians (__Σύριοι) by the Hellenes (i.e. Greeks), but by the Barbarians (i.e. all non-Greeks) they have always been called Assyrians (__Ἀσσύριοι)>_

However, some eminent Semitic scholars like Franz Rosenthal were / are of the opinion that names Syria and Assyria are of different origins. This controversy is still not resolved. 

Rosenthal, an expert in Aramaic, was also  an Arabic scholar ofgreat merit, so it'll be worth finding out what he really had to say about all this including perhaps anything about the name الشام. Unfortunetly he wrote a lot more in German, a language that I don't know, than in English.


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## WadiH

elroy said:


> That's weird.  I would never call the Levant "Greater Syria."  That implies that it's all Syria, which it's not.



What the Arabs call بلاد الشام was known as "Syria" in antiquity.  In fact, most European languages used the term "Syria" for the Levant until modern times.  For example, I read a case from an  American court in the early 20th century that involved "Jaffa, Syria."  The Lebanese-American historian Philip Hitti has a famous book called "A History of Syria including Palestine and Lebanon."  The Syrian nationalist movement was started by a Lebanese thinker (Antoine Saadeh), and the famous Lebanese writer Gibran Khalil Gibran usually referred to himself as "Syrian."  In fact, it's not uncommon to see historians use the word "Syria" and "Syrian" for بلاد الشام when discussing Arab and Islamic history even today.  The idea of restricting the term "Syria" to the area of the modern Syrian Arab Republic is a new one.  The term "Greater Syria" was coined to avoid confusion between this new sense of the word "Syria" and the older, broader meaning.


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## WadiH

Mahaodeh said:


> There is a page on it in Wikamoos. This is the etymology:
> 
> أصلها شَأَام على وزن فَعَال خففت بحذف عينها وهي الهمزة. مشتقة من شَأَمَ، ضد يَمَنَ التي اشتق منها اليَمِين واليَمَن. قيل سميت الشام شاما لأنها نحو يسار مَكَة حيث المسجد الحرام، وقيل لأنها في شمال الجزيرة العربية.



This is undoubtedly the correct etymology.  شام is just the opposite of يمن, so it either means "north" or "left."  To this day in the Hejaz the northern sections of some tribes are called شامية or الشام, even though they dwell thousands of miles away from Damascus.

All the other theories, including the alleged connection with the Biblical Shem, are spurious.


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## Ali Smith

It seems that Elroy is right; in MSA الشام has only two meanings:

1. Syria
2. Damascus

But in classical Arabic الشام meant "the Levant (present-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine)". That's why some people decided to translate الدولة الإسلامية في العراق والشام as "the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)" while others chose the more accurate translation "the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)".


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## DWill

Ali Smith said:


> But in classical Arabic الشام meant "the Levant (present-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine)".


The Sinai Peninsula of modern-day Egypt, the northern regions of Iraq, and border regions of Turkey are also part of الشام.


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## WadiH

Actually, classical Arabic works often extend الشام to include what's now northern Saudi Arabia (e.g. Tabuk all the way to وادي القرى, near Al-Ula today).


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