The
Arameans appear to have displaced the earlier Semitic
Amorite (Aḫlamū) populations of ancient Syria during the period from 1100 BC to 900 BC, which was a
Dark Age for the entire
Near East,
North Africa,
Caucasus,
Mediterranean regions, with great upheavals and mass movements of people. The early history of the Arameans is tied to that of the
Aḫlamū and
Sutû who were already known in the Late Bronze Age and who seem to have played a role in the period's demise. The
Arameans rose to be the prominent group amongst the Ahlamu, and from c. 1200 BC on, the Amorites disappeared from the pages of history and the term Ahlamu underwent a semantic shift, becoming an accepted term for
Aramean. From then on, the region that they had inhabited became known as Aram and
Eber-Nari. The Arameans emerged in a region which was largely under the domination of the
Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1050 BC) and quickly posed a threat to the Assyrian polity which was largely located west of the Euphrates. In order to nullify this threat,
Tiglath-Pileser I (1115–1077 BC) of
Assyria performed many campaigns in Aramean territory, although the numerous campaigns that the Assyrian records recorded that he took indicate that Assyrian military campaigns were unsuccessful at exercising power or dominance over the Arameans. Some scholars believe that the Arameans took
Nineveh in this time. In the 11th century BC, Assyria fell into decline, which may have been caused by the incursions of the emerging Arameans, allowing the Arameans to establish a string of states across the Levant and make notable expansions into Assyrian territory, such as in the
Khabur Valley. During the period 1050 – 900 BC, Arameans came to dominate most of what is now Syria, but was then called
Eber-Nari and
Aramea. Two medium-sized
Aramaean kingdoms,
Aram-Damascus and
Hamath, along with several smaller kingdoms and independent city-states, developed in the region during the early first millennium BCE. The most notable of these were
Bit Adini,
Bit Bahiani,
Bit Hadipe,
Aram-Rehob,
Aram-Zobah,
Bit-Zamani,
Bit-Halupe and
Aram-Ma'akah, as well as the Aramean tribal polities of the
Gambulu,
Litau and
Puqudu. There was some synthesis with neo
Hittite populations in northern
Syria and south central
Anatolia, and a number of small so called
Syro-Hittite states arose in the region, such as
Tabal. The east
Mediterranean coast was largely dominated by
Phoenician city states such as
Tyre,
Sidon,
Berytus and
Arvad. With the advent of the
Neo Assyrian Empire, the region was invaded on several occasions, since the middle of the 9th century, and finally fell under the control of Assyrian kings during the second half of the 8th century BCE. Large numbers of people living in the region were deported into Assyria,
Babylonia and elsewhere. A few
steles that name kings of this period have been found, such as the 8th-century
Zakkur stele. The Assyrians and Babylonians themselves adopted a Mesopotamian form of Aramaic, known as
Imperial Aramaic in the 8th century BC, when
Tiglath-pileser III made it the
lingua franca of his vast empire. The
Neo Aramaic dialects still spoken by the
indigenous Assyrians and
Mandeans of northern Iraq, south east Turkey, north east Syria and north west Iran, descend from this language. The Neo Assyrian Empire was riven by unremitting civil war from 626 BC onward, weakening it severely, and allowing it to be attacked and destroyed by a coalition of its former vassals between 616 and 605 BCE. The region of Aram was subsequently fought over by the
Neo-Babylonian Empire and
Egyptians, the latter of whom had belatedly come to the aid of their former Assyrian overlords. The Babylonians prevailed and Aram became a part of the Neo-Babylonian Empire (612–539 BC) where it remained named
Eber-Nari. The
Persian Achaemenid Empire (539–332 BC) overthrew the Babylonians and conquered the region. They retained the Imperial Aramaic introduced by the Assyrians, and the name of Eber-Nari. In 332 BC the region was conquered by the
Greek ruler,
Alexander the Great. Upon his death in 323 BC this area became part of the
Greek Seleucid Empire, at which point Greek replaced the Assyrian introduced
Imperial Aramaic as the official language of Empire, as were the names
Eber-Nari and Aramea. This area and other parts of the former Assyrian Empire to the east (including Assyria itself) were renamed
Syria (
Seleucid Syria), a 9th-century BC
Hurrian,
Luwian and
Greek corruption of Assyria (see
Etymology of Syria and
Name of Syria), which had for centuries until this point referred specifically to the land of
Assyria and the
Assyrians, which in modern terms actually covered the northern half of
Iraq, north east
Syria, south east
Turkey and the north western fringes of
Iran, and not the bulk of
modern Syria and
Lebanon and its largely
Aramean and
Phoenician inhabitants. It is from this period that the later
Syria vs Assyria naming controversy arises, the Seleucids confusingly applied the name not only to the
Mesopotamian land of Assyria itself, but also to the lands west of
Euphrates which had never been part of Assyria itself, but merely Aramean, Phoenician,
Neo-Hittite and
Sutean inhabited colonies. When they lost control of Assyria itself to the
Parthians, the name
Syria survived but was dislocated from its original source, and was applied only to the land west of
Euphrates that had once been part of the Assyrian empire, while Assyria-proper went back to being called Assyria (and also
Athura/
Assuristan). However, this situation led to both Assyrians and Arameans being dubbed
Syrians and later
Syriacs in
Greco-Roman culture. This area, by now called
Syria, was fought over by
Seleucids and
Parthians during the 2nd century BCE, and later still by the
Romans and
Sassanid Persians.
Palmyra, a powerful
Aramean kingdom arose during this period, and for a time it dominated the area and successfully resisted Roman and Persian attempts at conquest. The region eventually came under the control of the
Byzantine Empire.
Christianity began to take hold from the 1st to 3rd centuries AD, and the Aramaic language gradually supplanted
Canaanite in
Phoenecia and
Hebrew in
Palestine. In the mid-7th century AD the region fell to the
Arab Islamic conquest.
Aramaic survived among a sizable portion of the population of Syria, who resisted
Arabization. However, the native
Western Aramaic of the Aramean Christian population of Syria is spoken today by only a few thousand people, the majority having now adopted the
Arabic language.
Mesopotamian Eastern Aramaic, which still contains a number of loanwords from the
Akkadian, as well as structural similarities, still survives among the majority of ethnically distinct
Assyrians, who are mainly based in northern
Iraq, north-eastern
Syria, south-eastern
Turkey and north-western
Iran. ==Culture==