Damascus History Unfolded

Carbon-14 dating analysis carried out at Tell Ramad, situated near Damascus, suggests that the site could have been populated since the latter part of the seventh millennium BC, around 6300 BC.

As per the accounts of the first-century historian Joseph ben Matityahu, the establishment of Damascus is attributed to Uz, a son of Aram, who is in turn the son of Shem, descended from Noah.

The earliest reference to the town's name, 'ta-ms-qu,' is discovered on a wall at the Karnak Temple in Luxor, inscribed during the reign of Thutmose II. This same spelling is also evident in a fourteenth-century list attributed to Amenophis II.

The names 'Dimaski' or 'Dimasqa' later appear in the Tell al-Amarna tablets on three occasions. Around 1260 BC, the Damascus region, like the rest of Syria, became a battleground between the Hittites from the north and the Egyptians from the south.

During the era of Alexander the Great, Damascus occupied a pivotal position as the most significant city in Syria and, remarkably, managed to largely avoid the ravages of war.

In the second and first millennia BC, Damascus emerged as a major city within a series of kingdoms.

In 635 AD, Damascus fell under the conquest of the formidable Muslim-Arab general Khalid ibn al-Walid. Twenty-seven years after the city's capture, Muawiyah, the first khalifah of the Umayyad, designated it as the seat of his government and the capital of the Arab-Muslim Empire from 661 to 750.
Damascus History Unfolded

Ancient history of Latakia (Syria)

Latakia is an ancient seaport and a strategic gateway between East and West: built by Seleucus I Nicator in the second century BC on the site of a Phoenician settlement.

Like most other cities of the Levantine coast, Latakia was occupied by all of Syria’s conquerors, playing a role in the Arab Conquest and in the Crusades. It only came to prominence in the wake of Alexander the Great conquest, when it was transformed into a major city of the Seleucid empire.

In the late Bronze Age of the second millennium BC the site was small Phoenician settlement called Ramitha, one of fifty prosperous Phoenician coastal colonies along the Mediterranean coast.

Initially, the settlement was dependent on the nearby city of Ugarit, a powerful metropolis and the first international port. With the arrival of the marauding tribes, known as the Sea Peoples at the beginning of the Iron Age, around 1200 BC the region was thrown onto chaos but the Phoenician colonies survived.

The original settlement became part of the Assyrian Empire, later falling to the Persians, who incorporated it into their fifth satrapy Abar Nahara.

It was taken in 333 BC by Alexander the Great, just after the great battle with the Persians at Issus not far to the north. After the death of Alexander in Babylon in 323 BC, Northern Syria fell under the control of Seleucus I Nicator.

Seleucus built the town of Latakia under the name of Laodicea, in honor of his mother.

In 638 AD, Latakia was lost to Byzantium after the Arab armies swept into Syria. The Byzantines mounted a devastating road in 705 but it was not until 968hat they reasserted their control in the area.
Ancient history of Latakia 

History of Chalcedon

Chalcedon was a city of the ancient Kingdom of Bithynia. Chalcedon was built by the colonist from Megara near Corinth (Megarians) around 700 BC. It was opposite to the site upon which Byzantium arose seventeen years afterwards.

Chalcedon became one of a dozen Greek fishing colonies along the shores of the Propontis.

Persian attacks on Asia Mino0r occasionally aimed at Constantinople. When they did, they inevitably imperiled Chalcedon.

A wealthy trading town, Chalcedon was incorporated into the Persian Empire around 516 BC. In the following century it became part of the Athenian empire.

In the aftermath of the Greek Ionian rebellion against Persian rule, Chalcedon was put to the torch by the Persian in 494 BC after their populations had abandoned the city.

The city later rebuilt and Chalcedon became a member of the Athenian Confederacy.

In the first state of Peloponnesian War of 431-404 BC Chalcedon was still loyal – in 424 the general Lamachus and his army were able to seek assistance there after their ships were destroyed in a flash flood in an estuary.

The Athenians placed pressure on the citizens of Chalcedon by recovering all the property that they had stored for safekeeping with neighboring Bithynians and then constructed a wooden blocking the city off from help on the landward side.

In 387 BC, Chalcedon again came under Persian control, where it remained its liberation by Alexander the Great in 334 BC.

Chalcedon was the site of a major church council on October or 451 AD in which the dual nature of Christ’s divinity and humanity was accepted.

Chalcedon was attacked by the Arabs in the 7th century. In 1350 it was conquered by the Ottomans.
History of Chalcedon