Greater Syria

Greater Syria, as claimed by Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP)

Greater Syria, also known (in a historic context) as Syria, or Bilad ash-Sham (Arabic: بلاد الشام) is an irredentist term that denotes a historic region in the Middle East bordering the Mediterranean. It is generally considered to comprise roughly the modern states of Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, the Palestinian Territories,Kuwait, portions of Iraq, the settled areas of Jordan, the Sinai and Hatay Province in Turkey.

In the Syrian nationalist ideology developed by the founder of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, Antun Saada (March 1, 1904-July 8, 1949), Greater Syria is seen as the geographic environment in which the Syrian nation state evolved. Initially considered co-terminous with historic Syria as described above, Saada later expanded it to include Iraq, Kuwait and Cyprus. He pointed to what he considered to be the region's distinct natural boundaries, and described it as extending from the Taurus range in the northwest and the Zagros Mountains in the northeast to the Suez Canal and the Red Sea in the south and includes the Sinai Peninsula and the Gulf of Aqaba, and from the Syrian Sea in the west, including the island of Cyprus, to the arch of the Arabian Desert and the Persian Gulf in the east. (This region is also known as the Fertile Crescent.)

See also