Bilad al-Sham

Bilad al-Sham بلاد الشام
Province of the Rashidun, Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates
← 636–940s →   →
Capital		Damascus
Historical era		Middle Ages
•	Battle of Yarmouk	636
•	First Fitna	656–661
•	Tulunid control	878–904
•	Partition between Hamdanids and Ikhshidids	940s

Bilad al-Sham (Arabic: بلاد الشام‎‎, "northern country", i.e. Syria) was a Rashidun, Umayyad and later Abbasid Caliphate province in the region of Syria. It incorporated former Byzantine territories of the Diocese of the East, organized soon after the Muslim conquest of Syria in the mid-7th century, which was completed at the decisive Battle of Yarmouk.

The name Bilad aš-Šām means "land to the north"; or literally "land on the left-hand", relative to someone in the Hejaz facing east (Yemen correspondingly means "land of the right hand").

The name given to the Levant by the Arab conquerors was Aš-Šām "The North". The region at the time of conquest was part of the Byzantine Diocese of the East, populated mostly by Monophysite Christian peasants (like the Mardaites) who constituted the bulk of the native population, Greek Orthodox Christian minorities called Melchites or Rûm (which in that particular context means "Eastern Roman" or "Byzantine"), and by Ghassanid and Nabatean Arabs, besides various non-Christian minorities (Jews, Samaritans and Ismaelite Itureans). The population of the region did not become predominantly Muslim and Arab in identity until nearly a millennium after the conquest.

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