As has been shown already, the zone of paramount French influence in Asiatic Turkey lies, south of Asia Minor, in Syria. “La France du Levant” is a term which is not uncommonly applied by Frenchmen to this Turkish province. The origin of this intercourse may be traced to the trade relations between Gaul and Syria in the fourth century B.C. During antiquity a widely traveled road, albeit of lesser importance than the peninsular highway of Anatolia, connected the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. This route started from Egypt and Syrian harbors and skirted the western and northern edges of the Arabian desert before assuming a southerly strike which led it through the Mesopotamian basin. The populous cities of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo lie on this ancient avenue of trade. Here, as in the case of the Anatolian cities mentioned, their present population is altogether out of proportion to their resources or activity. It can only be regarded as a sign of the importance they once had as stages in this southern east-west route. The Syrian littoral, described by Hogarth as the garden of Arabia,[211] must be regarded therefore as an intermediate region connecting Asia and the country lying west of its Mediterranean border. This influence of location prevailed throughout history.
The conquest of Syria by Frankish Crusaders gave renewed impetus to commercial relations between Syria and France. A regular trade route between Marseilles and Syrian ports was established. The treaty of alliance between the Sultan of Turkey and the King of France in the first half of the sixteenth century contributed to bind this province more firmly to France. At the end of the seventeenth century French trading-centers had been established in all the important cities of Syria. Napoleon’s invasion of this province as a result of the Egyptian campaign and French intervention in the Lebanon in 1859 likewise increased French prestige in the region. The confinement of this western hold to Syria can be ascribed to the influence exerted by the boundaries of the province. It forms with Palestine an excellent type of regional unit consisting of an elongated mountainous strip barely 50 miles wide. With the Mediterranean on the west, and deserts on the south and east, its only outlet to the world lay on the north.