Palestine]
I. GEOGRAPHY PHYSICAL AND POLITICAL
(1) Position and Frontiers
Syria, broadly speaking, is the country that lies between the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and the deserts of Arabia; but, except in the west, the boundaries are vague. In Turkish official usage Syria consists of the vilayet of Damascus, extending from the Arabian borders on the extreme south to 35° 25' north latitude.
Syria has no fixed boundary on the east; but in recent years the advance eastward of the sedentary population and the policy of the Turkish Government have considerably extended the limits of Syria in this direction. Starting south of Akaba, on the Red Sea, the boundary crosses the Hejaz railway, runs northward, and turns east so as to encircle the Jebel Druz; thence continuing by longitude 37° to the neighbourhood of Hama, and crossing diagonally to the eastward bend of the Euphrates, near Rakka. The Euphrates then forms the boundary to beyond Rum Kale (about 37° 20' N.). The best physical boundary between northern Syria and Arabia, according to Blanckenhorn, would be the ranges of Jebel esh-Sharki (Jebel et-Tawil) and Jebel Bishri, which stretch from Damascus past Tadmur and reach the Euphrates at Halebie. The building of a railway from Homs to the Euphrates would probably tend to establish some such political frontier.
On the north the latest boundary of the vilayet of Aleppo supplies a provisional frontier. It starts from Jonah’s Pillar, slightly north of Alexandretta, runs eastward to Giaur Dagh (the Amanus range), follows the crest of these bills northwards to a point nearly due west of Rum Kale, and then strikes on to the
