Syria

Jack M. Sasson reads the letters of Shamsi-Adad and describes his humanity, patriarchal wisdom and easy sense of humour.

J.J. Saunders continues the story of the first, and perhaps the greatest, of Islam’s Commanders of the Faithful. The Caliph Omar, after triumphantly laying the foundations of the Arab Empire, fell to a Persian Christian assassin in the year 644.

Bashar al-Assad is a child of the Cold War and the Arab-Israeli conflict. These events underpin Syria’s authoritarian regime and its horrific actions.

G. Goossens recalls the Assyrian monarchs, noted for their ferocity, great libraries, and achievements in agriculture and engineering.

During the seventh century the Arabs invaded North Africa three times, bringing not just Islam but a language and customs that were alien to the Berber tribes of the Sahara.

The quest for spiritual virtue through personal austerity drove many Eastern Christians to lead solitary lives as hermits surviving in the wilderness. Andrew Jotischky describes how indifference to food became an integral part of the monastic ideal in the Byzantine era, one revived in the West in the 11th and 12th centuries.

Among the enterprises of Tudor England was a powerful Company, whose purpose was to “traffic with the dominions of the Grand Seignior.”

Running after foreign gods - Richard Stoneman explains how Rome's Syrian rival, the city of Palmyra, and her formidable queen Zenobia influenced the religion and mores of the later Empire - and brought us in the process Christmas Day.

Terence Mirabelli investigates why Syria is losing an archaeological site.