The Jordan–Syria border is 362 km (225 m) in length and runs from the tripoint with Israel in the west to the tripoint with Iraq in the east.
The Jordan–Syria border is 362 km (225 m) in length and runs from the tripoint with Israel in the west to the tripoint with Iraq in the east.
Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north and northwest, Iraq to the east and southeast, Jordan to the south, and Israel and Lebanon to the southwest. It is a republic under a provisional government and comprises 14 governorates. Damascus is the capital and largest city. With a population of 26 million across an area of 185,180 square kilometres (71,500 sq mi), it is the 56th-most populous and 87th-largest country.
The name "Syria" historically referred to a wider region. The modern state encompasses the sites of several ancient kingdoms and empires, including the Eblan civilization. Damascus was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate and a provincial capital under the Mamluk Sultanate. The modern Syrian state was established in the mid-20th century after centuries of Ottoman rule, as a French Mandate. The state represented the largest Arab state to emerge from the formerly Ottoman-ruled Syrian provinces. It gained de jure independence as a parliamentary republic in 1945 when the First Syrian Republic became a founding member of the United Nations, an act which legally ended the French Mandate. French troops withdrew in April 1946, granting the nation de facto independence. The post-independence period was tumultuous, with multiple coups and coup attempts between 1949 and 1971. In 1958, Syria entered a brief pan-Arab union with Egypt, which was terminated following a 1961 coup d'état. The 1963 coup d'état carried out by the military committee of the Ba'ath Party established a one-party state, which ran Syria under martial law from 1963 to 2011. Internal power-struggles within Ba'athist factions caused further coups in 1966 and 1970, the latter of which saw Hafez al-Assad come to power. Under Assad, Syria became a hereditary dictatorship. Assad died in 2000, and he was succeeded by his son, Bashar.
The Battle of the Yarmuk (also spelled Yarmouk; Arabic: معركة اليرموك) was a major battle between the army of the Byzantine Empire and the Arab Muslim forces of the Rashidun Caliphate, and a crucial point in the Muslim conquest of the Levant. The battle consisted of a series of engagements that lasted for six days in August 636, near the Yarmouk River (called the Hieromykes River by the Greeks), along what are now the borders between Syria and Jordan and Syria and Israel, southeast of the Sea of Galilee. The result of the battle was a decisive Muslim victory that ended Roman rule in Syria after about seven centuries. The Battle of the Yarmuk is regarded as one of the most decisive battles in military history, and it marked the first great wave of early Muslim conquests after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, heralding the rapid advance of Islam into the then-Christian/Roman Levant.
To check the Arab advance and to recover lost territory, Emperor Heraclius had sent a massive expedition to the Levant in May 636. As the Byzantine army approached, the Arabs tactically withdrew from Syria and regrouped all their forces at the Yarmuk plains close to the Arabian Peninsula, where they were reinforced, and defeated the numerically superior Byzantine army. The battle is widely regarded to be Khalid ibn al-Walid's greatest military victory and to have cemented his reputation as one of the greatest tacticians and cavalry commanders in history.
Daraa (Arabic: دَرْعَا, romanized: Darʿā, Levantine Arabic: [ˈdarʕa]) is a city in southwestern Syria, 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) north of the border with Jordan. It is the capital of Daraa Governorate in the Hauran region. Located 90 kilometres (56 mi) south of Damascus on the Damascus–Amman highway, it serves as a way station for travelers. Nearby localities include Umm al-Mayazen and Nasib to the southeast, al-Naimah to the east, Ataman to the north, al-Yaduda to the northwest and Ramtha, Jordan, to the southwest.
According to the Syrian Central Bureau of Statistics, Daraa had a population of 97,969 in the 2004 census. It is the administrative center of a nahiya (subdistrict) which contained eight localities with a collective population of 146,481 in 2004. Its inhabitants are predominantly Sunni Muslims.
Sweida (Arabic: ٱلسُّوَيْدَاء, romanized: as-Suwaydāʾ), also known as Suwayda, is a mainly Druze city located in southern Syria, close to the border with Jordan, with small Christian and Sunni Muslim Bedouin minorities.
It is the capital of Suwayda Governorate, one of Syria's 14 governorates, bordering Jordan in the South, Daraa Governorate in the West and Rif Dimashq Governorate in the north and east.