The Levant is the area in Southwest Asia, south of the Taurus Mountains, bounded by the Mediterranean Sea in the west, the Arabian Desert in the south, and Mesopotamia in the east. It stretches roughly 400 mi (640 km) north to south, from the Taurus Mountains to the Sinai desert and Hejaz, and east to west between the Mediterranean Sea and the Khabur river. The term is often used to refer to the following regions or modern states: Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan. The term sometimes include Cilicia, Cyprus and the Sinai Peninsula.
The Levant is a term used to define the historical and geographical subregion that borders the Eastern Mediterranean sea to the west and core West Asia, or by the political term, Middle East, to the east. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is equivalent to Cyprus and a stretch of land bordering the Mediterranean Sea in western Asia: i.e. the historical region of Syria, which includes present-day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Palestinian territories and most of Turkey southwest of the middle Euphrates. Its overwhelming characteristic is that it represents the land bridge between Africa and Eurasia. In its widest historical sense, the Levant included all of the Eastern Mediterranean with its islands; that is, it included all of the countries along the Eastern Mediterranean shores, extending from Greece in Southern Europe to Egypt and Cyrenaica in Northern Africa.
The Fertile Crescent is a crescent-shaped region in the Middle East, spanning modern-day Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, together with northern Kuwait, south-eastern Turkey, and western Iran. Some authors also include Cyprus and northern Egypt.
The Orontes or Nahr al-ʿĀṣī, or simply Asi is a 571 kilometres (355 mi) long river in Western Asia that begins in Lebanon, flowing northwards through Syria before entering the Mediterranean Sea near Samandağ in Hatay Province, Turkey.
The Southern Levant is a geographical region encompassing the southern half of the Levant. It corresponds approximately to modern-day Palestine, Israel, and Jordan; some definitions also include southern Lebanon, southern Syria and/or the Sinai Peninsula. As a strictly geographical description, it is sometimes used by archaeologists and historians to avoid the religious and political connotations of other names for this area.
Near Eastern archaeology is a regional branch of the wider, global discipline of archaeology. It refers generally to the excavation and study of artifacts and material culture of the Near East from antiquity to the recent past.
Over recorded history, there have been many names of the Levant, a large area in the Near East, or its constituent parts. These names have applied to a part or the whole of the Levant. On occasion, two or more of these names have been used at the same time by different cultures or sects. As a natural result, some of the names of the Levant are highly politically charged. Perhaps the least politicized name is Levant itself, which simply means "where the sun rises" or "where the land rises out of the sea", a meaning attributed to the region's easterly location on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea.
The Syrian Desert, also known as the North Arabian Desert, the Jordanian steppe, or the Badiya, is a region of desert, semi-desert, and steppe, covering about 500,000 square kilometers of West Asia, including parts of northern Saudi Arabia, eastern Jordan, southern Syria, and western Iraq. It accounts for about 85% of the land area of Jordan and 55% of Syria. To the south, it borders and merges into the Arabian Desert. The land is open, rocky or gravelly desert pavement, cut with occasional wadis, or river valleys, generally dry riverbeds.
Idlib is a city in northwestern Syria, and is the capital of the Idlib Governorate. It has an elevation of nearly 500 meters (1,600 ft) above sea level, and is 59 kilometers (37 mi) southwest of Aleppo.
Aleppo Governorate is one of the fourteen governorates of Syria. It is the most populous governorate in Syria with a population of more than 4,867,000, almost 23% of the total population of Syria. The governorate is the fifth in area with an area of 18,482 km2 (7,136 sq mi), or 18,498 km2, about 10% of the total area of Syria. The capital is the city of Aleppo.
In the archaeology of Southwest Asia, the Late Neolithic, also known as the Ceramic Neolithic or Pottery Neolithic, is the final part of the Neolithic period, following on from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic and preceding the Chalcolithic. It is sometimes further divided into Pottery Neolithic A (PNA) and Pottery Neolithic B (PNB) phases.
The Ḥarrat al-Shām, also known as the Harrat al-Harra, Harrat al-Shaba, Syro-Jordanian Harrah, and sometimes the Black Desert in English, is a region of rocky, basaltic desert stretching from southern Syria starting at the Hauran region all the way down to the northern Arabian Peninsula. It covers an area of some 40,000 km2 (15,000 sq mi) in the modern-day Syrian Arab Republic, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Vegetation is characteristically open acacia shrubland with patches of juniper at higher altitudes.
The Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) represents the early Neolithic in the Levantine and upper Mesopotamian region of the Fertile Crescent, dating to c. 12,000 – c. 8,500 years ago,. It succeeds the Natufian culture of the Epipalaeolithic Near East, as the domestication of plants and animals was in its formative stages, having possibly been induced by the Younger Dryas.
Ottoman Syria is a historiographical term used to describe the group of divisions of the Ottoman Empire within the region of Levant, usually defined as being east of the Mediterranean Sea, west of the Euphrates River, north of the Arabian Desert and south of the Taurus Mountains.
The Assyrian conquest of Aram concerns the series of conquests of largely Aramean, Phoenician, Sutean and Neo-Hittite states in the Levant by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. This region was known as Eber-Nari and Aram during the Middle Assyrian Empire and the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
Syria, also known as Greater Syria or Syria-Palestine, is a historical region located east of the Mediterranean Sea in West Asia, broadly synonymous with the Levant. The region boundaries have changed throughout history. However, in modern times, the term "Syria" alone is used to refer to the Syrian Arab Republic.
Abdashtart I was a king of the Phoenician city-state of Sidon who reigned from 365 BC to 352 BC following the death of his father, Baalshillem II.
Ain ez Zarqa is a natural artesian karst spring located south of Hermel in the Beqaa Governorate, in central Lebanon. Producing an average of 3,435 gallons per second, it is the main source of the Orontes River. Because of its heavy flow, it is characterized as a first-magnitude spring. It sits beneath the caves at Deir Mar Maroun, an ancient monastery carved into the cliffs that surround the spring. Melting snow from these nearby heights supplements the spring's large groundwater reservoir, in the Jurassic and Cretaceous strata. It is estimated that the spring's phreatic zone reservoir contains as much as 10 billion cubic metres of storage. As a result, its flow has been less affected by overpumping and drought than other springs in the Orontes river basin.
The Hittite Navy was the main naval force of the Hittites from ca. 16th–12th century BC. The navy took part in three land and sea military campaigns of the Hittite Kingdom against the Kingdom of Alashiya between 1275 and 1205 BC. It was also one of the main adversaries of the Egyptian Navy.
The Temple of the Obelisks, also known as the L-shaped Temple and Temple of Resheph was an important Bronze Age temple structure in the World Heritage Site of Byblos. It is considered "perhaps the most spectacular" of the ancient structures of Byblos. It is the best preserved building in the Byblos archaeological site.
