RUM, THE GREEK PEOPLE OF SYRIA AND THE LEVANT

From  the  early  days of history, the Greeks have asserted themselves as one  of   the most adventurous peoples.  Even from before the first millenium  BCE, they  set off from their homeland in modern day Greece, to explore and settle across all of the known world. Over the next centuries, they would leave their cultural  impact throughout the world,  from the coast of Spain up until India. Many of those Greeks that settled foreign lands were lost to history- however, there still exist many communities outside of the modern Greek world that still maintain   their roots and their Greek identity.  One such  case is that of the Rum, the Greek inhabitants of present-day Lebanon and Syria. These distinctly Greek people have been forgotten by the Western world, and their plight  throughout history, and   especially during the Syrian civil war, has gone unnoticed.

A Brief Historical Overview

The history of the Greeks in the Levant begins very early, from the 8th century BCE, when settlers from Euobeia founded present- day  Al-Mina. However, large   scale migration of Greeks into the region did not start until Alexander’s  conquest of  the  Persian empire,  at which  point Syria and the Levant became parts of the  Greek Kingdom of  the Seleucids. Throughout the next centuries, many settlers   from mainland Greece arrived in this region, and  many of  the indigenous  inhabitants were quickly Hellenized and adopted  the Greek culture. By the time of the  Roman conquests, Greek had become the lingua franca of  the region, and Greek was the dominant culture. This was also one of  the first regions to be christianized, with most of  the inhabitants adopting Christianity, and Syria was   one of the core regions of Christianity before the spread of Islam.

Culture and Demographics

It is important to note here the origin of the name Rum. It comes from the days when all of the Greek world was conquered by the Romans. When the Roman Empire was split into a Latin West and Greek East, the Greeks of the Eastern Roman Empire, subsequently termed Byzantine Empire by historians, continued to call themselves Romioi (Ρωμιοί, i.e. Romans).When the Ottomans conquered the  Eastern Roman  Empire, they adopted the word Rum, meaning Roman, to refer   to  all their Christian subjects. In mainland Greece, this characterization   gradually fell out of use  to the characterization Greek, however in the Levant and Syria the term persisted and continues to be used by the Christian Greeks in the area. Most Rum belong to the Greek Orthodox denomination, though in 1724 a   part of them formed the Greek Catholic Melkite denomination. These Christian denominations have only minor differences, and they both use Koine Greek as   their liturgical language, and are baptized with Greek names. This contrasts them to the other Christian people of Syria and the Levant, that is the Roman Catholic Maronites, the Oriental Orthodox Armenians, and the

Syriac Christian Assyrians. The adherence of the Rum to the Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic church has preserved their Greek heritage throughout centuries of foreign rule .There is little information on the numbers of the Rum, but an estimation based on statistical data from 2011 gives about 4.3 million Greek Orthodox and 1.5 million Greek Catholic Rum. Of those, 1.3 million live in Syria, 0.8 million live in Lebanon, while the rest have scattered all over the world.

Present Situation

Ever since the start of the Syrian civil war, the Rum, along with the rest of the Christians of Syria, have been  persecuted relentlessly. Operation Antioch, an  independent group of activists who aim to raise awareness on the plight of the Rum, states in an interview on Al Masdar News that the Rum “have undergone a genocide in the hands of islamist terrorists ,funded and supported by Turkey and Saudi Arabia, as well as Western allies.” In their words, “The continuing war in Syria has destroyed our people. Ever since the  conflict started, we have been characterized as friendly to the regime and infidels by the islamists, and we have been targeted for extermination by terrorist organizations such as FSA, Al-Nusra,   and Daesh. Many Rum villages in Syria have been abandoned by our brothers who are forced to flee, afraid for their lives. 

Our religious leaders have been   abducted  and murdered, our churches desecrated and destroyed. Even the cultural sites of our ancestors, dated to the time of the Greeks, have been targeted for destruction. Those of us with the courage to stay are forced to live in constant fear. Forced to live under inhuman conditions, without food or water, our people are forced to rely on humanitarian support from the government of Syria and International Organizations. Our only refuge is the region of  Wadi  al-Nasara, as  our people are becoming the victim of a coordinated persecution against all   Syrian Rums, Assyrians,  Aramaians, and Armenians. For us, our own existence is at stake.”

According to TheGreek Observer, when these events started, thousands of Greek Christians hurried to the Greek Consulate authorities and applied for the Greek citizenship- however, those applications remained unanswered as the Greek embassy in Damascus had to cease operations in 2012 due to security concerns. The Rum priest, Father  Antonios Malouf, in an event for Syria in Greece  in   2019,  stated in perfectly fluent  Greek:  “The  Christians  in  Syria lived without  discrimination, equal among equals…Unfortunately this spiritual and social development stopped abruptly, because of the war…the Christian population decreased from 22% to just 1%. Christians are refugees in the whole world…Rockets keep falling on the houses of those that stayed and on the schools of their children…They don’t want to leave their homeland. In the beginning of the war they were told  that ships  were waiting for them at  the port  to save them, as   was said  in the destruction of Smyrna. The jihadists attack cities and towns, destroy monuments and cultural sites…An entire village on the border with Lebanon was massacred and the dead bodies were thrown into a well until it was filled. Those that stayed and were beheaded constitute the new martyrs of the Church,  those   that  didn’t  betray  their  faith. 

Everyone talks  about refugees, but who talks of the Christians of Syria?”Those same people that are persecuted  are  not very  different  from modern-day  Greeks. Even though they lost their Greek language in the 16th century, the Rum continue to adhere to Greek Orthodoxy and Greek Catholicism, and use Greek as their liturgical language. Their churches and  monasteries  are Greek, built during the Byzantine times. They are baptized with Greek names. They uphold Greek traditions. And most importantly, they feel Greek. It is important that the rest of the Greeks and the world realize who they are and what they are going through and raise awareness of the  crisis  they are facing, so these ancient  people, that have withstood so many wars and conquests, will not perish.

SOURCE  Ilias MeletopoulosStudent, National Technical University of Athens, Anthony Kriezis, Student, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

HELIOPOLIS ~ BAALBEK ~ LEBANON

Baalbek or Heliopolis (Greek: Ἡλιούπολις, "Sun city")  is a town in the northern Bekaa valley,

As a site of human occupation, Baalbek is extremely old. Archaeological soundings in the Great Court of the temple of Zeus revealed ceramics from a settlement from the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age (i.e., the 4th and 3rd millenniums BCE), as well as architectural remains from the Middle Bronze Age (about 1950-1600 BCE). This first settlement had been on the hilltop, and it is likely that this place remained the focus of some kind of worship, because even after many centuries, the builders of the temple of Zeus took great care to build the small altar on the Great Court exactly on the summit, while a large terrace was built to make sure that the sanctuary was at the same level as the ancient hilltop.

The name Baalbek may offer a clue about the nature of the original cult: the word probably is a shortening of Semitic Ba'al Nebeq, "lord of the source". We should be careful, though: the name is not attested prior to the 5th century CE. Nevertheless, there is, indeed, a well some 800 meters southeast of the sanctuary, nowadays called Ras al-Ain ("head of the source"). The Greek topographer Strabo  refers to an Aramaean myth about a dragon named Typhon who had been struck by a bolt of lightning and fled underground, cutting the earth, forming a river bed, and finally causing a fountain to break forth to the surface.

Strabo quotes this story in his account of the Orontes, which has its source 15 kilometers north of Baalbek. The river passes along ancient towns like Kadesh, Emesa (mod. Homs), Hama, Apamea, Qarqar, and Antioch, until it reaches the sea near Seleucia. To the west of Baalbek are the sources of the Litani (ancient Leontes), which flows south through the Bekaa valley, along Chalkis (mod. Anjar), and empties itself into the Mediterranean near Tyre. The Orontes-Litani valley has always been an important trade route, and Baalbek must have been a nice place to stay, with abundant sources and lots of cereals and fruits for sale.

Hardly anything is known about the cult in the Late Bronze Age (if there was a cult), although we know that in this age, Ba'al became identified with the Syrian Hadad, a fertility god who was also responsible for rain, thunder, and lightning, and had his main sanctuary in Halab (Aleppo). The syncretism of the two deities is attested in the tablets from Ugarit. In Aramaic texts from the Iron Age, this god is the supreme ruler of the other divine beings. So Hadad is attested as head of several local triads.

It must be pointed out, however, that although these religious developments took place, and although they do help to explain the nature of the cults in Baalbek at a later date, there is almost no evidence from the site in the Late Bronze and Iron Age. We only know that the place was occupied.

The Hellenistic Age

Baalbek is conspicuously absent from Bronze Age texts, although Egypt was interested in Canaan and the army of Ramesses II passed along the place during the Kadesh campaign (1274 BCE). The town is not mentioned in the texts from ancient Assyria; the Bible does not refer to it. Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks : they all passed through the Bekaa valley, but none of them recorded a sanctuary at the sources of the Orontes and Litani. However, the site is possibly identical to the town called Triparadisus, where in 320 BCE the generals of Alexander the Great divided his empire.

It is certain that the site became part of the empire that Ptolemy I Soter created after the death of Alexander. Maybe, it was in these days that the town was renamed Heliopolis, "Sun city". From a local perspective, this name comes unexpectedly, because Ba'al-Hadad was not a sun god. However, in Egypt, the supreme god Ra was also a sun god, and he was worshipped in a town that the Greeks called Heliopolis. The idea to combine Ba'al-Hadad with the sun god, and rename the town, becomes explicable if we assume Egyptian influence.

It may be relevant that the cult statue of the god of Baalbek contained Egyptian elements and was believed to be taken from Egyptian Heliopolis. On the other hand, there may have been an unrecorded local tradition that the Ba'al of the sources was also a solar deity.

After the Fifth Syrian War (202-195), the Bekaa valley became part of the Seleucid Empire. When this state disintegrated at the beginning of the first century BCE, Heliopolis - if it was already called like this - became part of the small princedom of Chalkis, which in turn became part of the Roman sphere of influence when general Pompey the Great annexed Syria . By now, the construction of the sanctuary of Ba'al-Hadad-Zeus-Jupiter had started. Later, in 38 BCE, Mark Antony awarded Chalkis and the sanctuary to the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, making it a Ptolemaic possession again. Not for long, however. Civil war broke out in the Roman Empire, general Octavian was victorious, and annexed Cleopatra's possessions.

The name Colonia Julia Augusta Felix Heliopolitana has caused some debate. The second and third words may be evidence that the site was a settlement of Roman legionary veterans (a colonia) in the age of the emperor Augustus. However, the Roman jurist Ulpian states that Heliopolis became a colonia during the reign of Septimius Severus, after the civil war against Pecennius Niger in 193/194.note He is probably right, and references to coloniae prior to this date must refer to Berytus.

However this may be, from all over the Roman world, pilgrims came to the sanctuary of the God that was now called Jupiter Optimus Maximus Heliopolitanus, "the best and greatest Zeus of Heliopolis", a title that meant that the Romans identified the deity with their own supreme God, venerated on the Capitol. The God, who was already a supreme God, lord of the sources, responsible for rain and lightning, had in the meantime also accepted responsibility as an oracular God.

Temple of Bacchus, cella

The sanctuary itself was more or less completed during the reign of the emperor Nero (r.54-68). The construction of the temple of Bacchus started at more or less the same moment. Building lasted until the reign of Antoninus Pius (r.138-161), who also completed the Great Court of the temple of Zeus. The celebrations must have been quite impressive: writing several centuries later, the Antiochene chronicler John Malalas believed Antoninus to have been the builder of all of Heliopolis.

The temple, the largest in the Roman world, served as an oracle. The Latin author Macrobius has recorded that Zeus of Heliopolis announced that the emperor Trajan would not return from his expedition against the Parthian Empire. Macrobius also tells that during a session of the oracle, the statue was placed in a litter; the bearers sort of sensed the divine will and carried it in certain directions, which could be "decoded" by the priests.

The city flourished; the splendid third-century mosaics from the Suweydie villa are among the evidence. 

The Suweydie mosaic

Conquered in 634 by the Arab general Abu 'Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah, Baalbek received its original name again; on seventh-century coins, it is called Ba'labakk. The Umayyad mosque in the town, built on the former forum, is one of the oldest places of worship of the Islamic world.

Excavation started after the visit of the German emperor Wilhelm II in 1898, who sent Robert Koldewey to investigate the site. His name has been cut into one of the walls of the temple of Bacchus. Like the emperors before him, he added something to the monument: the stairs to the Propylaea.

 Edited from https://www.livius.org/articles/place/heliopolis-baalbek/

THE GREEK REVOLUTION IN BEIRUT

On March 18th 1826, a small group of brave Greek Revolutionaries, led by Vasos Mavrovouniotis attempted to liberate the Ottoman-occupied city of Beirut, and thus spread the Hellenic Revolution to Coele-Syria.

According to then-British Consul John Barker, stationed in Aleppo, the Revolutionaries were thwarted by a local Mufti and a hastily arranged defense force. Although initially repelled, the Greek heroes did manage to hold on to a small portion of the city near the seashore in an area inhabited by local Greeks.

During that time, they appealed to the locals“to rise up and join them”, and even sent an invitation to the chief of the local Druzes to also join the Revolution. Although unsuccessful, their heroic attempt to incite the Greeks of the Levant lives on as a testament that the Greeks of Europe and those of the Levant were and still are one people.

Source: The Greco~Syrian Nation Facebook Page 

THE BIRTH OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT ~ GREEK MOSAIC FROM LEBANON

The Birth of Alexander the Great.Mosaic, 4th century CE. From Baalbek,Lebanon. National Museum of Beirut.

This mosaic shows the newborn Alexander the Great being bathed in a circular fluted basin by a female figure labelled as Νύμφη (Nymphe), while his mother Olympias is resting on a bed watched by an attendant. All the figures in the mosaic have name-labels, a common characteristic of mosaics of the Greek East of the 3rd to 5th centuries.

In the case of this mosaic, the name-labels seem to serve an obvious and important purpose: how else can the viewer recognize the scene as the birth of Alexander rather than the birth of  Achilles or Dionysos? At the same time, the borrowing of the iconographic schema hints at analogies between Alexander, Achilles and Dionysos.

Source https://historyofmacedonia.wordpress.com/