The Syrian Social Nationalist Party

by Salim Mujais

  The Fourth Basic Principle: The Syrian nation is the product of the ethnic unity of the Syrian people which developed throughout history, clarifies that the Syrian nation is the product of a historical process that facilitated the emergence of unity through interaction and participation in national life. “Thus, the principle of Syrian nationhood is not based on race or blood, but rather on the natural social unity derived from homogeneous intermixing. Through this principle the interests, the aims, and the ideals of the Syrian nation are unified and the national cause is guarded against disharmony, disintegration, and strife that result from primitive loyalties to blood ties. The alleged racial purity of any nation is a groundless myth. It is found only in savage groups, and even there it is rare. The Syrian nation consists of a mixture of Canaanites, Akkadians, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Arameans, Hittites, and Mitanni as the French nation is a mixture of Gauls, Ligurians, Franks, etc… and the Italian nation of Romans, Latins, Etruscans, etc… the same being true of every other nation.”

  It also explicitly defines the basis of citizenship. “This principle would redeem Syria from the blood bigotries, which are apt to cause the neglect of national interests. For those Syrians who believe or feel that they are of Aramaic extraction would no longer be actuated to fan Aramaic blood loyalty, so long as the principle of Social Nationalist unity and the equality of civic, political and social rights and duties are guaranteed, and no ethnic or racial discrimination in Syria is made. Similarly, those Syrians who claim to descend from a Phoenician (Canaanite), Arab, or Crusader stock, would no longer have allegiance but to their Syrian community. Thus, would genuine national consciousness arise. The unity of the Syrian nation arose from the elements, which have formed in the course of history the Syrian people and the mental and spiritual traits of the Syrian nation.” Assimilation of various ethnic elements through participation in national life has governed the emergence of the Syrian nation historically and determines the approach to new current or future elements. “There are large settlements of immigrants in Syria, such as the Armenians, Kurds, and Circassians, whose assimilation is possible given sufficient time. These elements may dissolve in the nation and lose their special loyalties.” A critical pre-requisite for this assimilation is the adoption by these new groups of the principle of Syrian nationhood and unfettered participation in national life. Elements that maintain exclusive racial and/or ethnic loyalties would not fulfill the prerequisite for incorporation in Syrian nationhood.

  Saadeh marshals in his writings various evidence in support of the development of unity of life within the confines of the Syrian homeland. He was to dedicate a specialized book Nushu’ al-Umma as-Suriya (The Emergence of the Syrian Nation) for expounding the evidence in a systematic comprehensive work. The initial draft of the work was confiscated by the authorities during the second wave of arrests by the French Mandate in 1936 and never returned to its owner. Saadeh had resumed preparations to write the book in 1949, but his premature death intervened. His extant writings, however, are replete with information on the process and timeline of the emergence of the Syrian nation.

  The unification tendencies in the confines of the Fertile Crescent became manifest in the development of economic ties, cultural interactions, and population mixing all antecedent to the earliest political forms of unity. The unity of the life cycle within the Fertile Crescent has preceded the political unity of the first territorial empire by the Akkadian rulers in the 24th to 23rd centuries BC. The unity of life has persisted when political unity was lacking. The territorial empires arising in Syria have contributed to the maintenance and promotion of the unity of life. Thus the Babylonian empire of Hammurabi, the Assyrian empire, the Neo-Babylonian state, the Seleucid rule etc... have given political and administrative facilitatory forms to the unity of life prevalent within the confines of the Syrian homeland. “The history of the ancient Syrian states (Akkadian, Chaldean, Assyrian, Hittite, Canaanite, Aramean, Amorite) point to one and the same trend: the political, economic, and social unity of the Syrian Fertile Crescent. This fact should enable us to view the Assyrian and Chaldean wars, aimed at dominating the whole of Syria, in a new light. These were internal wars, a struggle for supremacy among the powerful groups and dynasties within the nation which was still in the making and which later attained its maturity.”

  The Syrian territory is defined in the Fifth Basic Principle: The Syrian homeland is that geographic environment in which the Syrian nation evolved. It has distinct natural boundaries and extends 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 38 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 Syrian Fertile Crescent). “The secret of Syria’s persistence as a distinct nation despite the numerous invasions to which it succumbed, lies in the geographic unity of its homeland. It was this geographic unity that ensured the political unity of this country even in ancient times when it was still divided among the Canaanites, the Arameans, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Assyrians, and the Chaldeans…”

  Map of Greater Syria

  What are the reasons for the divergence in the definition of Syria among historians? In particular, if the name Syria is derived from Assyria,39 why do many accounts of the expanse of Syrian territory exclude the land east of the Euphrates the original home to the Assyrians?

  Saadeh ascribed the failure of historians in general to grasp the historical unity of Syria as defined in the principles of the SSNP to the enduring influence of Greek and Roman historians. A similar opinion has been independently advanced recently by the British historians Amelie Kuhrt and Susan Sherwin-White: “Traditional approaches to the study of the Hellenistic East after Alexander have been mainly hellenocentric and have selected as of prime importance the establishment and spread of Greek culture... This is a serious lack which stems from the overriding significance attached to the classical tradition in which most scholars of the ancient world have been educated. One of the results of this is that where there is no clear Greek evidence a political, social and cultural vacuum is assumed. Another distorting factor has been the preoccupations of Roman historians who have tended (not unnaturally) to concentrate almost exclusively on those regions of the Seleucid empire which by the first century B. C. had become part of the Roman empire. This approach has led them to [ignore] the central importance of the vast territories controlled by the Seleucid east of the Euphrates.” 40

  The question of limiting the term ‘Syria’ to the western part of the Fertile Crescent has also intrigued the historian Fergus Millar: “By Syria I mean anywhere west of the Euphrates and south of the Amanus mountains — essentially therefore the area west of the Euphrates where Semitic languages were used. This begs a question about Asia Minor (and especially Cilicia), from which Aramaic documents are known, and a far more important one about northern Mesopotamia and about Babylonia. Should we not, that is, see the various Aramaic-speaking areas of the Fertile Crescent as representing a single culture, or at any rate closely connected cultures, and therefore not attempt to study the one area without the others?” 41

  Historical events may have also reinforced the lack of appreciation. “Syria’s loss of sovereignty because of the major foreign invasions resulted in its partition into arbitrary political units. In the Perso-Byzantine period, the Byzantines extended their rule over western Syria and applied the name “Syria” to that part only, while the Persians dominated the eastern part, which they called “Irah”, later Arabicized as Iraq… The partitioning of Syria between the Byzantines and the Persians into Eastern and Western Syria and the creation of barriers between them, retarded considerably, and for a long period, the national growth and the development of the social and economic life cycle of the country. This division resulted also in distorting the truth about the boundaries of Syria… Similarly, after the
First World War the condominium of Great Britain and France over Syria resulted in the partition of the country according to their political aims and interests and gave rise to the present political designations: Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Cilicia, and Iraq. Natural Syria consists of all those regions, which constitute one geographic-economic-strategic unit. The Syrian Social Nationalist cause will not be fulfilled unless the unity of Syria is achieved.”

  The Syrian homeland has played a major role in the shaping of the Syrian nation and its character. The internal elements of the Syrian environment provide means of interaction between the various regions. Indeed, if one considers the waterways of Syria, its rivers and streams, one can view the contribution of the physical environment to the formation of one society. Considering that the major part of the history of any human society revolved until recently predominantly around agriculture, the continuity of agricultural space would inevitably invite lines of interaction between human elements within the environment. The courses of the great Syrian rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, are natural couriers of life between western and eastern Syria, and between the northern and southern regions of eastern Syria. The Orontes links the plains of central and northern regions of western Syria while the Litani and Jordan rivers link the central and southern parts. The Mediterranean littoral spreads without interruption over fertile coastal lands from the gulf of Alexandretta to the early shores of the Sinai Peninsula.

  These internal elements favoring unity of life are paralleled by natural borders that define, albeit relatively, the confines of the society forming herein. The borders of the Syrian Fertile Crescent have limited the extension of continuous life and thus shaped the formation of the nation. These borders, however, were never exclusive. They were in various historical periods overrun in both directions. Syrian commercial colonies from the Assyrian periods have been identified in Anatolia and from the Phoenician periods over much of the Mediterranean. The military might of Assyria extended beyond the Zagros and Taurus mountains to the north and east, and over the Sinai into Egypt. Conversely, the Egyptians often coveted the Syrian coast and the intrusions of the Pharaonic state into western Syria were recurrent. The Gutians, the Kassites, and the Persians crossed the eastern borders when the military preparedness of eastern Syrian states faltered. The Hittites, the Greeks, the Romans and the Ottomans crossed the northern borders.

  For the last two centuries, Syria had been the target of cultural colonialism by Christian missionaries as well as secular organizations from France, Britain, the United States and Russia. To combat this cultural colonialism, the SSNP Seventh Basic Principle holds that The Syrian Social Nationalist movement derives its inspiration from the talents of the Syrian nation and its cultural political national history. “This principle asserts the spiritual independence of the nation in which its national character, qualities, and aims are grounded. The Party believes that no Syrian revival can be effected save through the agency of the inborn and independent Syrian character.” Like all national liberation movements, the SSNP imbues national consciousness with its national history, and in this context, Syrian cultural history. The literature of the SSNP is replete with material detailing the contributions of Syria to human cultural achievements. Strengthening the Syrian ethos is a necessary endeavor to resist cultural colonialism.

  It is instructive to examine briefly the list of Syrians mentioned by Saadeh as illustrative of the contributions of Syria to human civilization. The first mentioned was Zeno of Citium (c. 334 – c. 262 BC, founder of the Stoic school in philosophy). This is symbolic of the admiration Saadeh had for the philosophical school of stoicism, and the fact that a major school of ‘Western’ philosophy is a Syrian school. Bar Salibi (died 1171 AD, the great spokesman of the Jacobite church in the 12th century), St John Chrysostom (c. 349 – 407 AD), and Ephraim (c. 306 – 373 AD) are prominent Fathers of the Christian church. Ephraim Syrus (the Syrian) was the first great theologian of the Syrian church and a sacred poet instrumental in introducing monasticism. The two Fathers that represent the Aramaic element in the Syrian Church (Bar Salibi and Ephraim) flank the Father that represents the Hellenistic element (John Chrysostom).

  Syrian thought in the Seleucid, Roman and early Byzantine periods found its expression in a polylinguistic form: Greek and Aramaic (Syriac). By choosing these prominent Syrians, Saadeh is illustrating the contributions of Syria to Christian thought. Next, Saadeh lists two poets of differing standing: al-Maari (December 973 – May 1057 AD), and Deek-el-Jin (777–849 AD) of Emessa. Considering the wealth of poets in Syria, the choice is intriguing yet instructive. Abu Al-Ala’ al-Maari was a philosopher poet of great intellectual depth. The poetry of Deek-el-Jin of Emessa is sincere and esthetically refined. Saadeh was thus highlighting aspects of literary contributions that are of greater import than the popular “classical” Arabic poets. al-Kawakibi (1849-1902 AD) and Gibran (1883-1931 AD) are more modern writers notable for their involvement in social and political aspects of Syrian life and their adherence to principles of Syrian revival and renaissance. Four of the military leaders that Saadeh lists are direct descendants (Sargon 722-704 BC, Sennecharib 704-681 BC, Esarhaddon 680-669 BC, and Assurbanipal 669-627 BC) and represent the rulers of the Assyrian state at its best. It is a period of Syrian history notable for the crowning of the social, economic and cultural unity of Syria with political administrative unity.

  Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 BC) and Tiglat-pilasser Ill (745-727 BC) are rulers that established major expansion and centralization in the government of Syria. There are several Hanno-named Carthaginian leaders, among them is the famous Hanno who was the first to sail around the western shores of Africa. It is easy to understand the choice of Hannibal to be included in this roster. Of equal significance is Yusuf Azmeh who as the defense minister of the Syrian state that arose in Damascus at the end of the First World War led the only organized armed resistance to French colonial forces in the battle of Maysaloun. It is clear that the choice of these notable Syrians is to illustrate aspects of Syrian history, in all the diverse ways in which a civilization can express itself, that are noteworthy of study and inspiration for modern Syrians.

  The SSNP aims to show the Syrians that the realities of their history are reasons for pride, self-respect and eagerness to restore Syria to its creative role in human civilization. In his scientific, philosophical and ideological writings, Saadeh constantly illustrated doctrinal issues with examples from Syria’s historical record. What is even more crucial is his directives to Party intellectuals to seek their inspiration in the events of this history. In a sense, Saadeh is responsible for the modern wave of intellectuals in Syria whose poetry, novels, and theater are imbued with topics and influences from Syria’s cultural heritage.

  The implication of this principle on national struggle is clear. A nation needs to be self-consistent, its civilization continuous, and its character preserved. A nation needs to be intellectually independent to contribute in a creative way to human development.

  SOCIAL JUSTICE AND HUMAN RIGHTS

  The Sixth Basic Principle: The Syrian Nation is One Society, is concerned with social justice and the essence of modern citizenship. Saadeh clearly states “Real independence and real sovereignty will not be fulfilled and will not endure unless they rest upon this genuine social unity which is the only sound basis for a national state and Social Nationalist civil legislation. This unity forms the basis for citizenship and the guarantee of the equality of rights for all citizens.” On this principle are based the reform principles of the separation of church and state and the elimination of social barriers between the various sects and creeds. “This principle is the basis of genuine national unity, the mark of national consciousness, and the guarantee of the life and endurance of the Syrian character. One Nation-One Society. The unity of society is the basis of the community of interests and consequently the basis of the community of life. The absence of social unity entails the absence of common interests, and no resort to tem
porary expediency can make up for this loss. Through social unity, the conflict of loyalties and negative attitudes will disappear to be replaced by a single healthy national loyalty ensuring the revival of the nation. Similarly, all religious bigotries and their nefarious consequences will cease and in their stead national collaboration and toleration will prevail. Moreover, economic cooperation and a sense of national concord and unity will be fulfilled and pretexts for foreign intervention will be abolished.”

  This principle establishes the legal and legislative homogeneity of the society as a basis for a sound nationalist state. While the SSNP recognizes that in Syria today exist many religious and ethnic distinctions distributed over much of the Syrian homeland, these distinctions should not be brought into the realm of the legislation of the Syrian state. Furthermore, national loyalty should surpass and supersede religious and ethnic loyalties and affiliations. Generalized and absolute equality of rights is a basic principle of Syrian nationalism.