Summer Reading, Lucinda Smith: Among the Ruins: Syria Past and Present (2014)
Syrians are immensely proud of their ancient past. There is a sense that many of the great tectonic shifts in human history are uniquely “Syrian moments” – whether it was the establishment of city-states along the Euphrates River in the far east of the country or the invention of the alphabet by seafaring Phoenecians on the coast. That said…there is an equally pronounced sense among some that history really began with the coming of Islam.
Christian Sahner, Among the Ruins, p 6