The book “The Greeks, Their Systems and their Civilization”… A historical and analytical study by Khalil Sarah

 The importance of Greek civilization compared to other human civilizations lies in its assimilation of the criteria of creative human development, especially by adopting the foundations and elements of the Eastern  ancient civilizations. It confirms its openness to the societies that preceded it to the civilizational activity of prosperity, achieving a leading position for itself in the Arab, Islamic and European subsequent civilizations.

From this historical perspective, Dr. Khalil Sarah presents his latest book titled “The Greeks, Their Systems and their Civilization” published on the Internet by the Syrian General Book Organization in 624 of  large piece pages  in the form of an analytical study that suits the specialized and common reader alike.

Sarah begins his book with a presentation of the civilizational framework of  Greek history to extract the factors of the emergence and development of this civilization. He also talked about the aspects that affected Greece, including the civilizations of Egypt, the Phoenician coast and Mesopotamia, in medicine, architecture, epic literature, and others.

The author devotes a chapter to the geography of the Greeks, indicating that their nature, the beauty of their landscapes, as well as their diversity have left a great impact on the psyche of their people, their emotions, their outlook on the universe and their development in a faster and more harmonious manner.

Sarah indicated that their geography also divided their countries into isolated regions, so city-states emerged, as in Athens, Thebes, and Sparta, pointing out that the word “Greeks” was a name given by the Romans in relation to the Graecoy tribe, which established a Greek colony on the coast of Italy in 750 – 725 BC.

Sarah clarified the sources that help us know the history of the Greeks, including documentary sources based on archeology, inscriptions, papyrus, coins, and pottery pieces that give a true and natural picture of those countries and the progress they have reached.

Literary sources constitute a way to study the history of the Greeks; however, they are not assertive and definitive because they are influenced by the tendencies of their writers and their personal opinions, such as the writings of historians, including Herodotus,Socrates, and the books of philosophy. Greek political philosophy is an original source for studying the system of  the Greeks’  government   as well as its importance in the intellectual heritage through the products of its creative philosophers such as Socrates, Plato,  Aristotle, and authors of epics and plays such as Homer, Hesiodos, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes.

Sarah talked about the features of the Greek civilization on the coasts of Crete since the third millennium BC with the Aegean civilization and then the Mycenaeans, describing the Trojan wars immortalized by the Iliad epic.

To explain the origins of the Greeks and their migrations, Sarah shows that these countries have been subjected to many migrations and invasions, especially from Asia, the Syrian coast, the Danube basin, and Macedonia, whose arrivals mixed with the original Greeks, where they created the Hellenistic civilization.

The book contains a comprehensive review of the Greek religion, the polytheism, the emergence of city-states, settlement and the establishment of colonies, and civil wars with the Persians and the politician Pericles, who is considered the greatest ruler in Greece,highlighting his rule of Athens, and the development it achieved during his rule.

Dr. Khalil Sara was born in 1954. He is Professor of Greek History in the Department of History, Damascus University. He wrote a number of books on the history of the Greeks and the Arab world in classical times, as well as researches published in scientific refereed journals.

Amal Farhat