Southern Syria
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the newspaper, see Southern Syria (newspaper).
Southern Syria is the southern region of modern-day Syria. It includes the region of Hauran, and the governorates of Daraa, As Suwayda, and Quneitra.
Historically, the term "Southern Syria" in Arabic (سوريا الجنوبية, Suriyya al-Janubiyya) could imply support for the Greater Syria nationalism associated with the kingdom promised to the Hashemite dynasty of the Hejaz by the British during World War I. After the war, the Hashemite prince Faisal attempted to establish such a Greater Syrian or pan-Mashriq state (i.e. a united kingdom that would comprise all of what later became Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq, so that Palestine and Jordan would be a province of "Southern Syria"), but he was stymied by conflicting promises made by the British to different parties (see Sykes-Picot Agreement), leading to the French creation of the mandate of Syria in 1920.