Syria

Dividing into 1) general history, 2) Ba'ath party and Asad, 3) diaspora, 4) older studies in politics and economy, 5) newer studies politics and economy, 6) Kurds and minorities, 7) 2011 Syrian revolution, 8) Syrian civil war and rebel governance, 9) Ottoman and interwar politics, 10) missionaries and (old) colonialism. 

General History:

• Cleveland, William L., and Martin Bunton. 2018. A History of the Modern Middle East. Routledge. [especially pages 414-437]

• Lesch, David W. 2019. Syria: A Modern History. Polity Press.

• Munif, Yasser. 2020. The Syrian Revolution: Between the Politics of Life and the Geopolitics of Death. Pluto Press.

• Provence, Michael. 2005. The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism. University of Texas Press.

• Saleh, Yassin al-Haj. 2017. The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy. Oxford University Press.

• Moubayed, Sami M. 2000. Damascus Between Democracy and Dictatorship. University Press of America.

Baathism & Asad

• Yonker, Carl C. 2021. The Rise and Fall of Greater Syria: A Political History of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.

• Seale, Patrick. 1989. Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East. University of California Press.

• Wedeen, Lisa. 2015. Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria. University of Chicago Press.

• Weiss, Max. 2022. Revolutions Aesthetic: A Cultural History of Ba’thist Syria. Stanford University Press.

• Hinnebusch, Raymond A. 1989. Peasant and Bureaucracy in Ba’thist Syria: The Political Economy of Rural Development. 

• Haddad, Bassam. 2012. Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience. Stanford University Press.

Diaspora

• Blumi, Isa. 2013. Ottoman Refugees, 1878-1939: Migration in a Post-Imperial World. A&C Black. 

• Fahrenthold, Stacy. 2014. “Sound Minds in Sound Bodies: Transnational Philanthropy and Patriotic Masculinity in al-Nadi al-Homsi and Syrian Brazil, 1920–32.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 46(2): 259–83.

• Fahrenthold, Stacy D. 2019. Between the Ottomans and the Entente: The First World War in the Syrian and Lebanese Diaspora, 1908-1925. Oxford University Press.

• Gualtieri, Sarah M. A. 2019. Arab Routes: Pathways to Syrian California. Stanford University Press.

Politics & Economy (Older)

• Khoury, Philip Shukry. 2014. Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920-1945. Princeton University Press.

• Khoury, Philip Shukry, and Joseph Kostiner. 1990. Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East. University of California Press.

• Khoury, Philip S. 1982. “The Tribal Shaykh, French Tribal Policy, and the Nationalist Movement in Syria between Two World Wars.” Middle Eastern Studies 18(2): 180–93. 

• Khoury, Philip S. 1985. “Divided Loyalties? Syria and the Question of Palestine, 1919–39.” Middle Eastern Studies 21(3): 324–48. 

• Gelvin, James L. 1998. Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire. University of California Press.

• Hinnebusch, Raymond. 2004. Syria: Revolution from Above. Routledge. 

• Ouahes, Idir. 2018. Syria and Lebanon Under the French Mandate: Cultural Imperialism and the Workings of Empire. Bloomsbury Publishing.

• Batatu, Hanna. 2012. Syria’s Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics. Princeton University Press.

• Hinnebusch, Raymond A. 2011. Agriculture and Reform in Syria. University of St Andrews Centre for Syrian Studies.

• Moubayed, Sami M. 2023. The Damascus Seat of Power: Syria’s Heads of State, 1918-1946. First edition. London, England: I.B. Tauris.

• Owen, Roger. 1987. The Middle East in the World Economy, 1800-1914. Methuen.

• Issawi, Charles. 1988. The Fertile Crescent, 1800-1914: A Documentary Economic History. Oxford University Press.

Politics & Economy (Newer)

• Daher, Joseph. 2020. Syria After the Uprisings: The Political Economy of State Resilience. Haymarket Books.

• Elvira, Laura Ruiz de. 2024. Charities and Politics in Bashar Al-Asad’s Syria: The Unravelling of the Old Social Contract. Edinburgh University Press.

• Haddad, Bassam. 2012. “Syria’s State Bourgeoisie: An Organic Backbone for the Regime.” Middle East Critique 21(3): 231–57.

• Haddad, Bassam. 2012. “Syria, the Arab Uprisings, and the Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience.” In The Arab Spring, eds. Clement Henry and Jang Ji-Hyang. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 211–26. 

Kurds, Minorities

• Broomfield, Matt. 2025. Hope Without Hope: Rojava, Resistance, and Revolutionary Commitment. AK PressInc.

• Kerr, Michael, and Craig Larkin. 2015. The Alawis of Syria: War, Faith and Politics in the Levant. Oxford University Press.

• Corstange, Daniel, and Erin A. York. 2018. “Sectarian Framing in the Syrian Civil War.” American Journal of Political Science 62(2): 441–55. 

• Zeno, Basileus. 2022. “The Making of Sects: Boundary Making and the Sectarianisation of the Syrian Uprising, 2011–2013.” Nations and Nationalism 28(3): 1040–60.

• Knapp (Historian), Michael, Anja Flach, and Ercan Ayboga. 2016. Revolution in Rojava: Democratic Autonomy and Women’s Liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. Pluto Press.

• Robinovich, Itamar. 1979. “The Compact Minorities and the Syrian State, 1918-45.” Journal of Contemporary History 14(4): 693–712. 

• Schmidinger, Thomas. 2018. Rojava: Revolution, War and the Future of Syria’s Kurds. Pluto Press.

• Kastrinou, A. Maria A. 2016. Power, Sect and State in Syria: The Politics of Marriage and Identity amongst the Druze. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Syrian Revolution

• Achcar, Gilbert. 2013. The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising. Univ of California Press.

• Mazur, Kevin. 2021. Revolution in Syria: Identity, Networks, and Repression. Cambridge University Press.

• Yassin-Kassab, Robin, and Leila Al-Shami. 2018. Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War. Pluto Press.

• Black, Cyril Edwin, and Leon Carl Brown. 1992. Modernization in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire and Its Afro-Asian Successors. Darwin Press.

• Wedeen, Lisa. 2019. Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria. University of Chicago Press.

Syrian Civil War, Rebel Governance

• Lister, Charles R. 2016. The Syrian Jihad: Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Evolution of an Insurgency. Oxford University Press.

• Schulhofer-Wohl, Jonah. 2020. “On-Side Fighting in Civil War: The Logic of Mortal Alignment in Syria.” Rationality and Society 32(4): 402–60. 

• Price, Megan, Anita Gohdes, and Patrick Ball. 2015. “Documents of War: Understanding the Syrian Conflict.” Significance 12(2): 14–19.

• Guha-Sapir, Debarati, Jose M. Rodriguez-Llanes, Madelyn H. Hicks, Anne-Françoise Donneau, Adam Coutts, Louis Lillywhite, and Fouad M. Fouad. 2015. “Civilian Deaths from Weapons Used in the Syrian Conflict.” Bmj 351. 

• Asal, Victor, Shawn Flanigan, and Ora Szekely. 2022. “Doing Good While Killing: Why Some Insurgent Groups Provide Community Services.” Terrorism and Political Violence 34(4): 835–55.

• Fraihat, Ibrahim, and Abdalhadi Alijla. 2023. Rebel Governance in the Middle East. Springer Nature.

• Szekely, Ora. 2023. Syria Divided: Patterns of Violence in a Complex Civil War. Columbia University Press.

• Tol, Gönül. 2022. Erdoğan’s War: A Strongman’s Struggle at Home and in Syria. Oxford University Press.

• Pearlman, Wendy. 2021. “Mobilizing From Scratch: Large-Scale Collective Action Without Preexisting Organization in the Syrian Uprising.” Comparative Political Studies 54(10): 1786–1817. 

• Pearlman, Wendy. 2016. “Narratives of Fear in Syria.” Perspectives on Politics 14(1): 21–37.

• Walk, Erin, Elizabeth Parker-Magyar, Kiran Garimella, Ahmet Akbiyik, and Fotini Christia. 2022. “Social Media Narratives across Platforms in Conflict: Evidence from Syria.” [Forthcoming in Journal of Politics]

Ottoman and Interwar Politics

• Moubayed, Sami M. 2023. The Damascus Seat of Power: Syria’s Heads of State, 1918-1946. First edition. London, England: I.B. Tauris.

• Dawn, C. Ernest. 1988. “The Formation of Pan-Arab Ideology in the Interwar Years.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 20(1): 67–91.

• Ḥakīm, Yūsuf. 1966. سورية والعهد الفيصلي. مطبعة الكاثوليكية.

• Gelvin, James L. 1998. Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire. University of California Press.

• Khoury, Philip S. 1985. “Divided Loyalties? Syria and the Question of Palestine, 1919–39.” Middle Eastern Studies 21(3): 324–48. 

• Bailony, Reem. 2018. “From Mandate Borders to the Diaspora: Rashaya’s Transnational Suffering And The Making Of Lebanon In 1925.” The Arab Studies Journal 26(2): 44–73.

• Thompson, Elizabeth. 2000. Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon. Columbia University Press.

Missionaries and Colonialism in Syria

• Womack, Womack Deanna Ferree. 2019. Protestants, Gender and the Arab Renaissance in Late Ottoman Syria. Edinburgh University Press.

• Schon, Justin. 2020. Surviving the War in Syria. Cambridge University Press.

• Makdisi, Ussama. 2017. Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East. Cornell University Press. 

• Tadros, Mazin. 2024. The Jesuits in Syria: 1625-1683. Springer Nature.

• Mouradian, Khatchig. 2021. The Resistance Network: The Armenian Genocide and Humanitarianism in Ottoman Syria, 1915–1918. MSU Press.

• Sills, Charles. 2024. “Cultural Imperialism and the American Scramble for Antiquities in Mandate Syria: 1920–1939.” Middle Eastern Studies 60(4): 650–62.

• Watenpaugh, Keith David. 2015. Bread from Stones: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism. Univ of California Press.

• Ouahes, Idir. 2018. Syria and Lebanon Under the French Mandate: Cultural Imperialism and the Workings of Empire. Bloomsbury Publishing.

• Melki, James A. 1997. “Syria and State Department 1937–47.” Middle Eastern Studies 33(1): 92–106.