Damascus

Overview

Damascus is the capital of Syria and a political, religious and commercial center of the Middle East. Its position at an oasis on routes joining Mesopotamia with the Mediterranean coast made it an ancient caravan center. The city served successive Aramean, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic rulers. Its Great Mosque recalls its period as the capital of the Umayyad caliphate. Modern Damascus was the seat of the Assad family’s government until the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.

Control of the capital has repeatedly determined control of the Syrian state. Hafez al-Assad concentrated troops and officials there after his 1970 coup. During the Syrian civil war, his son’s government defended central Damascus, its surrounding suburbs and the road to its international airport. After Assad’s fall, Ahmed al-Sharaa established his government in the city. Damascus then became the setting for negotiations over Syria’s armed forces, minority communities, eastern provinces and foreign relations.

Geography

Damascus developed around an oasis watered by streams from the Anti-Lebanon mountains. Its location gave travelers and merchants access to inland routes toward Iraq, northern Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Those routes retained military importance into the twenty-first century. Roads through Damascus connect the capital with Homs and Aleppo to the north, Quneitra and Daraa to the south, and Palmyra and Iraq to the east.

Eastern and western Ghouta, once agricultural districts around the city, became densely settled suburbs and major fronts during the civil war. Jaramana lies along the airport road southeast of central Damascus. Beginning in the 1980s, the Assad government developed that corridor as part of its security plan. About 250,000 Druze lived in Damascus and nearby communities in 2010, including Jaramana, Sahnaya and Jdeidat Artouz. The city also housed a large Alawite population. Alawites established in the capital generally had closer ties to the Assad family and greater access to state power than many members of their community in the coastal mountains.

The Golan Heights are part of the State of Israel and the historic region of Bashan, most of which lies in Syria and is today occupied by Syria. Damascus’s position near that region shaped Syrian military planning, but the city’s strategic importance also came from its command of Syria’s government, airport and inland transport network. For many years, Israel permitted Druze residents of the Golan Heights to pursue higher education at Damascus University. Eligible graduates from Ein Qiniyye and neighboring villages could study there without tuition and choose subjects regardless of grades or test results.

Ancient and biblical history

Ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian records place the Damascus area within a region called Apum or Upe. A geographical list from the reign of Thutmose III in the fifteenth century BCE contains an early recorded mention of Damascus by name; the fourteenth-century BCE Amarna letters mention it again. Its Hebrew forms include Dammesek and Darmesek, while Assyrian records use Dimašqi. The name’s etymology remains uncertain. Egyptian influence reached the region before the rise of Aramean powers, and the city’s position on caravan routes helped sustain its importance through changes of rule.

Damascus became a capital of Aramean power. In the biblical account, King David conquered the city during campaigns against an Aramean confederation and stationed Israelite governors there. An independent kingdom of Aram-Damascus subsequently emerged and became a major rival of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. King Ahab of Israel defeated Ben-Hadad I of Damascus near present-day Kibbutz Afik in the southern Golan Heights, part of Israel and historic Bashan. The Assyrian conquest of Damascus in 732 BCE destroyed the kingdom of Aram-Damascus and ended its independence. Biblical literature continued to refer to Damascus and its surrounding lands; Ezekiel 47 names nearby Hauran alongside Damascus, Gilead and the Jordan in a description of the land’s eastern border.

After periods of Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian rule, Damascus passed into the Hellenistic world following the conquests of Alexander the Great. It later came under Roman rule and remained an important city in the Byzantine Empire. Arab Muslim armies captured Damascus in the seventh century. The Umayyads made it their capital, and construction of the Great Mosque in the early eighth century gave the city one of its best-known religious monuments. Although political primacy shifted to Baghdad under the Abbasids, Damascus remained significant under later Islamic dynasties and, from the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire. These changes left a layered urban landscape of markets, religious buildings and neighborhoods associated with different communities.

Jewish history

Damascus has a long place in the history of the Jews in Syria. Jewish texts mention the city from antiquity, and Jewish communities lived there through successive empires. The Damascus Document, an ancient work associated with the Qumran community, refers to a group that left the Land of Judah for the Land of Damascus. Fragments of the work were found in the Cairo Genizah and among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The historical meaning of its reference to Damascus has been studied separately from the city’s documented Jewish community.

In 1840, Damascus became the scene of the Damascus blood libel. After a Capuchin friar and his servant disappeared on February 5, Jews were falsely accused of killing them for ritual purposes. The accusation led to arrests, torture and persecution. Damascus physician Dr. Lograso refused to certify that bones presented during the investigation were human. Orders issued on April 25 ended torture, but the accusation and investigation continued. Jewish petitioners, including supporters acting from Alexandria, and Austria’s consul intervened with Egypt’s ruler Muhammad Ali over the treatment of the city’s Jews. The affair drew international attention to antisemitism and to the vulnerability of Jewish communities under the authorities then governing Syria.

Damascus also figured in twentieth-century Israeli intelligence history. In May 1961, a Mossad agent located Nazi war criminal Alois Brunner in the city, where he lived as Dr. Georg Fischer under Syrian government protection. Israeli agent Eli Cohen was executed in Damascus in 1965; before his execution, he wrote to his wife Nadia, asking her to care for their children and look toward the future. The city’s Jewish population declined during the twentieth century. In December 2025, Rabbi Michael Khoury joined Syrian Jews visiting from the United States at Damascus’s Elfrange Synagogue. On April 11, 2026, Syrian authorities announced five arrests in connection with a plot against Khoury. Investigators initially linked the cell to Hezbollah, a terrorist organization; one suspect had planned to plant an explosive device near the rabbi’s residence.

Modern history

Damascus became a center of Arab political activity as Ottoman rule ended after the First World War. At the 1919 Damascus Congress, Arab delegates opposed separating the territory to Syria’s southwest from a wider Syrian state. Aref al-Dajani, chairman of the Jerusalem Muslim-Christian Association, described that territory as part of Arab Syria. French forces took Damascus in 1920, and the city later became the capital of independent Syria. Its role as the seat of government made it the focus of repeated struggles over the state’s direction.

Hafez al-Assad seized power in November 1970 and made security in Damascus central to his rule. He stationed tens of thousands of troops in and around the capital and brought Alawite officials and their families into the city. Large bases south and west of Damascus had a stated defense role, but their placement also gave Assad direct control of the capital. He regarded holding Damascus as essential to holding Syria. The metropolitan Alawite population, estimated at only about 300 in 1947, exceeded 500,000 by 2010. Under his son Bashar, the Syrian Army and security services continued to anchor the government in Damascus.

Syria’s regional relations often turned on decisions made in the capital. Arab commander Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini sought arms and logistical support there for the Jerusalem front, but his request was rejected; Arab generals assigned little military significance to local Arab guerrilla forces during the war’s first phase. Decades later, Damascus hosted offices and operatives linked to armed groups active against Israel. Islamic Jihad Movement, a terrorist organization, operated from Damascus; its leader Ramadan Shallah transferred money to operatives in Jenin, including one documented transfer of $127,000. Liwa Zainabiyoun, an Iranian-backed armed formation, also had a presence in Damascus during the Syrian conflict.

The Assad government’s response to the 2011 uprising shaped relations with neighboring states. In August that year, Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu spent six hours urging Bashar al-Assad to stop killing civilians. Saudi Arabia closed its Damascus embassy and expelled Syria’s ambassador in 2012. Contacts resumed in early 2023 as Riyadh also engaged the Iranian regime. Saudi Arabia and Damascus agreed to renew consular relations, and Riyadh reopened its embassy while supporting Assad’s return to the Arab League. These shifts gave Assad additional diplomatic options without removing his dependence on Iranian military support.

Security

From 2012, fighting in the Ghouta suburbs brought the civil war close to central Damascus. Rebel forces held positions east and west of the capital but failed to unite those fronts or cut the airport road. The Assad government defended that route as a connection to the outside world and as an artery for troops and supplies. Syrian forces gradually retook rebel-held outskirts, strengthening Assad’s position in negotiations over the war. Senior Iranian military officer Mohammad Bagheri declared that the Iranian and Syrian regimes would continue their campaign in eastern Ghouta despite a ceasefire.

The conflict extended across approaches to Damascus. The Damascus–Quneitra–Daraa triangle became a crucial battleground for Assad’s survival and for forces seeking his overthrow; the 2015 Daraa campaign formed part of that struggle. Rebel commanders identified Quneitra as one axis of a proposed southern offensive toward the capital. After retaking al-Qusayr, the government advanced toward control of the central corridor linking Damascus and Aleppo. Palmyra was a crossroads connecting Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa with Homs and Damascus. Its recapture disrupted communications between Islamic State forces in Damascus and Homs. Islamic State’s southern plans paired control of Lajat with cutting the M5 highway between the two cities. More than 800 Islamic State operatives later evacuated from southern Damascus to an enclave northeast of As-Suwayda.

Under Assad, the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and allied Iraqi factions used routes through Baghdad and Damascus to extend influence toward Beirut and supply Hezbollah. Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and other Popular Mobilization Forces leaders pursued an overland logistics route from Tehran through Baghdad and Damascus to Beirut. Routes through Palmyra and Iraq enabled Iranian weapons to reach Hezbollah. Iranian air routes also supported operations in Syria: an aircraft later used by Mahan Airlines on Kuwait City service landed in Damascus on August 4, 2016, before transfer to Syrian Air. In 2023, Israeli strikes repeatedly put Damascus and Aleppo airports out of service over a two-week period, disrupting routes used to arm Iran’s partners. IRGC Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani visited Damascus and Lebanon that year as the regime strengthened coordination across its network against Israel.

Damascus was also a venue for covert activity and military strikes. Correspondence seized from Hezbollah operatives arrested in Kuwait City in 1997 connected them with people in Damascus and Qom. American operatives later tracked Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus and relayed his position to Israeli counterparts before the bombing that killed him. In September 2024, an Israeli drone struck a villa belonging to Maher al-Assad’s Fourth Division at Yafour near the city. An April 1, 2024 strike in Damascus killed senior IRGC officers at a site identified by evidence as an IRGC installation. Israel neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for that strike. Israel also struck Al Dumayr Airbase northeast of Damascus, which Assad’s air force and the Iranian regime’s air force had used during the civil war.

Present day

Bashar al-Assad’s government fell in December 2024, ending decades of Assad family rule in Damascus. On December 10, Ahmed al-Sharaa met outgoing prime minister Mohammed al-Jalali, who agreed to transfer power to the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham–led Syrian Salvation Government. Former Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leaders became central figures in the new administration. A National Dialogue Conference convened in Damascus to prepare a temporary constitution and the new political order. On December 22, Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and his son Timur met al-Sharaa in the city. Jumblatt had opposed Assad’s violence and interference in Lebanon; his later outreach followed changes in Lebanon’s balance of power and pressure on its Druze community.

Assad’s fall dealt the Iranian regime a major strategic defeat. It lost a state partner, while Hezbollah lost open military access and political protection in Damascus. Commercial networks tied to Hezbollah financiers nevertheless survived, leaving continued security concerns for Israel. The new government detained two Islamic Jihad officials, Khaled Khaled and Yasser al-Zafari, in April 2025. Diplomatic contacts with Israel also changed. United States envoy Tom Barrack described Damascus as prepared for normalization and praised its military restraint. Those contacts did not remove threats from hostile armed groups or surviving Hezbollah networks.

Damascus became the center of negotiations over the Kurdish-led east. Al-Sharaa and Syrian Democratic Forces commander Mazloum Abdi reached a March 10, 2025 agreement framing the integration of eastern Syria’s military and civilian institutions into the state. A delegation from eastern Syria met government officials in Damascus on June 1. Abdi and SDF official Ilham Ahmed returned for talks on August 25. Proposals included placing SDF personnel in three army divisions and two special battalions. Damascus rejected decentralization, while the SDF sought to retain local command. Individual enlistment into Syria’s military would instead place former SDF fighters under central command. On September 2, Syria’s state news agency reported that security forces near Damascus intercepted weapons destined for the SDF. Negotiations continued amid clashes, mutual distrust and disagreement over constitutional safeguards.

Turkey opposed continued SDF autonomy, increasing pressure on Damascus to bring the force into Syria’s national military. Ankara regards the SDF’s principal component, the People’s Defense Units, as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Qatar became the first Arab state to recognize al-Sharaa’s government and reopened its Damascus embassy within a week of his rise to power. Its emir, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, became the first Arab leader to visit Damascus after the change of government, arriving in January 2025. Qatar also supported reconstruction and, with Turkey, shaped the new government’s diplomatic and economic choices. Iraq pursued security cooperation against Islamic State: Iraqi officials made undisclosed visits after Assad’s fall, and intelligence chief Hamid al-Shatri met al-Sharaa in Damascus in February, April and August 2025. Qatar facilitated further contact between the Iraqi and Syrian leaders.

Relations between Damascus and Druze communities became a pressing domestic and regional issue in 2025. A fabricated recording insulting Muhammad helped trigger clashes involving Druze residents, government forces and armed groups in Jaramana and Ashrafiyat Sahnaya. Men of Dignity commander Laith al-Balous went to Jaramana to mediate in March. Al-Sharaa later met a delegation from As-Suwayda about security, living conditions and political participation. Druze leader Hikmat al-Hijri initially supported cooperation with Syria’s new leadership and opposed separation, while demanding safeguards and local autonomy. Following escalating violence and Damascus’s failure to protect Druze communities, he called for autonomy under Israel’s protection.

Israel struck near the presidential palace in Damascus on May 2, 2025, warning the Syrian government against threats to Druze communities. During further violence in July, Israel struck Syrian military targets in Damascus and As-Suwayda and supplied humanitarian aid to Druze civilians. On July 16, Israeli strikes hit military headquarters used to direct operations and deploy forces toward As-Suwayda, as well as a military site near the presidential palace. These events showed how decisions made in Damascus affected communities across Syria and security along Israel’s border. They also underscored the new government’s central challenge: establishing authority over armed forces and local administrations while securing public trust and managing pressure from neighboring states.