Talk:Syria

this has been a proposal for nearly a year now, maybe its time to QSS it.--Marc Pasquin 23:19, 25 September 2007 (PDT)

For me that's ok. When I started this article I just putted things referred from other articles and discussion on Conculture. All these articles are now QSS so therefore I think it makes sense to de-prop Syria. On the other hand I think this article the way it is now is quite uncomplete. For example, nothing is said about Syria before the 20th Century.--Pedromoderno 06:19, 26 September 2007 (PDT)

Syrian flag

I just noticed the syrian flag. Considering the writing is that of saddam hussein which in addition is already use on the Iraqi flag, maybe we could use a different writing style ? --Marc Pasquin 12:18, 20 March 2008 (PDT)

I took the flag as it appears at the Syria article as found in FOIB web-site. Guess someone who did it just changed its colours and let everything else equal. I agree with you, syrian flag should be more syrian.--Pedromoderno 07:37, 7 April 2008 (PDT)

Maybe the simplest way is to have it like it was in the 1930s-1960s *here*--Marc Pasquin 13:56, 7 April 2008 (PDT)

This seems the best way to honor the FOIB flag, which is sort of QSS but has in this case an obvious error. Benkarnell 05:18, 8 April 2008 (PDT)

I've got passable handwriting in Arabic, if you want to keep the arabic writing... BoArthur 07:42, 8 April 2008 (PDT)

I think the syrian flag as Marc suggests is definetely a good choice. Anyway I prefer to have this flag still with arabic writings. So I would prefer to keep such writing on the flag. On the other hand I don't know if Moslem are so dominant in Syria *there* as much as they are *here*. So possibly the "Allah Akbar" wouldn't be so obvious in IB Syria. What do you all think?--Pedromoderno 08:57, 8 April 2008 (PDT)

Allah is the word for God...they could be Arabic speaking Christians; maybe Aramaic or some other language, then? (If Islam's not dominant there...) BoArthur 09:21, 8 April 2008 (PDT)

That's a good point. Allah is the same as God so any monotheistic religion could have same motto. Surely for believers God (whatever they might call him) will always be great.--Pedromoderno 10:27, 8 April 2008 (PDT)

There is no QAA reason to have the writing on the flag since no syrian flag ever had it. as for whether islam is dominant, the wiki article say so but since this is a work in progress, there is no reason to believe it couldn't be otherwise especialy considering its christian history.--Marc Pasquin 09:35, 8 April 2008 (PDT)

(undent) The Allahu Akbar is a very Muslim expression, and I doubt many Christians would accept it as representing them. If you want Syria to have something non-Islamic on its flag, then it should be secular rather than religious. But based on your history, Pedro, it looks like Syria is mostly Muslim. (It had a Hashemite sultan, it was part of the pan-Arab movement.)

Minor Quibble

I was just perusing the page the other day when I noticed that the SNORist government banned birth control. If I have this right, and it was the Orthodox Christians who took power and not say the Catholics, the Orthodox Church has neither condoned nor condemned birth control. I see that this Syria was based off of Metaxas' Greece of the 1930's what with its modesty laws on dresses and whatnot, I just don't think that birth control is something an Orthodox would go out of its way to do away with if the majority faith of the people in power rules it in or out purely on a case by case basis. I would just swap it in for something else that Metxas' Greece banned, like subversive music (in the 1930's Greece example, rembetiko) or hashish (or both). Misterxeight 00:43, 8 August 2016 (PDT)

The page has never been depropped, so I think it's fair game. I'd say hashish/marijuana in general is best to ban. Juan Martin Velez Linares 10:42 9/8/2016 (EDT)

Demographics

Olá mano, tudo bem.

So I've been having fun lately quantifying various countries' demographics, and I just went over Syria's. Of all the caretakers, you've been the kindest because you gave clear percentages. This was mostly just dividing numbers over 19 million, simple stuff. Right, so here we are

1. Christians of Syria (12.5% of the population) 2,375,000 out of 19,000,000 (used to 1,900,000) A. Oriental Orthodox: 276,000 (used to be 246,000)

• Syriac Orthodox=163,000 (used to be 146,000) (also 50k Leb, 500k Iraq)
• 113,000 Armenian Orthodox (100,000, so +13,000)

B. Eastern Orthodox Church: 1,646,700 (used to be 1,216,700) C. Catholic=368,300 (317,300, so +51,000)

• Armenian Catholic=28,543 (24,433)
• Latin Catholic=13,000 (11,000)
• Maronite=17,000 (14,500)
• Syriac=14,500 (12,500)
• Chaldean=10,000 (8,500)
• Melkite=285,257 (246,367)

D. Assyrian Church of the East: 135,000 (120,000, so +15,000)

2. Jews: 190,000 (of which there are Romance-speaking Judeans, Aramaic speakers with their own unique liturgy, and speakers of Judaeo-Arabic)

3. Islam=16,150,000, 85% (used to be 89%) A.) Sunni (Hanafi): now 8,075,000 (8,445,000) B.) Shia (inc. Alawi and Druze): 8,075,000

• Alawi: 2,691,667
• Druze: 1,000,000
• Twelver Shia (Jafari): 3,933,333
• Sevener Shia (Ismaili): 450,000

4.) Other: 285,000 1.5% (Yazidis mostly [around 100,000], atheists (next biggest), with Zoroastrians, Mormons, Hindus, Bahais, and Buddhists)

The Christians' data from real life statistics (out of 22,000,000 Syrians in 2011, only 368,000 were Catholics). The Jews and Druze I was reminded to make bigger than real life because they're both major players in the Levant and Jews and Muslims are pretty cordial after coordinating their independence movements together. The Assyrians I honestly just had to make up: I couldn't find numbers for either of the two institutions claiming to be the real Assyrian Church of the East (there's one based in Chicago and one in Baghdad). I also didn't further break down the number of Shi'a between those who follow the standard school amongst the Shia, the Jafari, & who follow the more obscure Ismaili. I'll leave that to you should you want it. Cheers, hope these are alright by you Misterxeight 14:48, 20 March 2017 (PDT)

Great statistics. I'll add it to the article.--Pedromoderno 17:42, 20 March 2017 (PDT)

Wow, great, obrigado muito, I'm so used to giving people stats and for them saying "eh, that's not really what I imagined, sorry." You've been the easiest person to work with so far! May I ask for one tiny request, though? Could I talk you into bumping the Christian population to anywhere from 13%-15%? In our world in 2011, Christians were about 13.67% of the population, which is where I got that window from. I have no reason behind it, I just ask for personal, sentimental reasons, haha.

Misterxeight 18:46, 20 March 2017 (PDT)

I'm not sure if Christian population in Syria would be that large today, after the fall of Arab Snorist regime in 1955. So, I'm not going to change that. Afterall 10% of Christians in Syria *there* seems to me already quite good. :) --Pedromoderno 19:21, 20 March 2017 (PDT)

I'm gonna have to agree with Kostas on this one--if anything, I actually think the Christian population should be around 15%, unless the post-SNORist reaction from Muslims was particularly violent. Juanmartinvelezlinares 20:21, 20 March 2017 (PDT)

Well, I think Muslim reaction in post-1955 Syria wasn't too violent as the regime shifted to a moderate leadership (under Shukri al-Kuwatli), but surely there were some troubles for local Christians. So you have convinced me, although was already said that thousands of Christians left Syria to other Mediterranean basin countries (especially to Greece) by the second half of the 1950's afraid from persecutions and troubled economy. So let make of Syrian Christian population 13% (and not 15%) as result of a higher fertility rate among Muslims and emigration during troubled 1960's (see the unstable regimes in Syria between 1961 and mid-1970's). I'll have to change now the population figures.--Pedromoderno 03:52, 21 March 2017 (PDT)

Thanks for being so understanding. I hope you don't feel like I'm intruding on your creative space; I mean no ill will. I can take a crack at tweaking the figures again, it': the least that I can do. Oh! One thing that might explain it is that a lot of Syrians could have come back as time went on and Syria got better. Stuff like that happens all the time with emigres, and all the Arab Orthodox Christians I've met are super nostalgic for their homelands and stuff. So for 20-30, or even 40 years, they could've wallowed in exile, and from the 90's onward left Lebanon, Cyprus, Greece, the NAL, & South America and gone home. Any resentment the Muslims in power would have at that point would probably be gone, and they'd be useful for all the capital and lifeskills they'd bring.

Also, may I ask, do you have a Facebook? We have a Facebook group for IB, and it's a super easy way for all of us surviving conteibutors to communicate with each other. P.S. Syria owns Hatay, right(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatay_State, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatay_Province)? I'm almost positive that it does, because it seems like old maps show it, but the problem is that the Middle East has no special maps of its own and it's only ever been shown as an extension of Europe on maps, plus Ben's beautiful maps (for example, this one: http://ib.frath.net/w/File:Romance_languages_of_Europe.png) that I used for a map showing religious denominations show Turkey with the little stub. Since that's where the historical Antioch is, I'd rather push for nice, secular, not mean Syria to have it than you know, the Ottoman Empire. The link for the FB group is here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/10758889087/ P.P.S I forgot to account for Yazidis. Could you take .5% from someone else and say that's the other category, which would include yazidis, Zoroastrians (Persian immigrants), atheists, and immigrant faiths like say Buddhists and Hindus and Mormons, who might be present because of the oil industry? Misterxeight 06:34, 21 March 2017 (PDT)

Considering, y'know, history and stuff, I also get the vibe that Alexandretta should probably be part of Syria. With Syria becoming independent through a revolution rather than France's maudits pied-noirs, I would imagine that Alexandretta's pluralistic religious population would join in throwing off the Turkish yoke. Plus, it gives us a neat little Turkish minority in North(west)ern Syria.

Also, I dunno just how much of Syria *here* is Kurdistan, but I think that there would be enough Kurds in Syria *there* to give us a fair amount more than just <.5% Yazidis . But that's just me own two cents.Juanmartinvelezlinares 14:37, 21 March 2017 (PDT)

That was a typo. In my revised stats above, I proposed 1.5% other, with 100,000 Yazidis, which is a bit higher than Syria's prewar levels. 1.5% of Syria is 285,000 people, which even if there were 150,000 Yezidis, that still leaves plenty of numbers for all other faiths, or people with no faith.

As per your question about the Nestorians, there is no Nestorian Church in our world. What some historians lazily refer to as the Nestorians is actually the Assyrian Church of the East, which I gave 120,000 members, and then said it could be 135,000 in the new stats.

However, I have made a serious mistake. Bo_Arthur gave me a website maintained by the Mormon Church that documents religious statistics in every country. They're known for their demography and I trust those with my life. Syria has 680,000 Syriac Orthodox Christians. I severely underestimated the number of Oriental Orthodox Christians so I need to basically redo everything I proposed. This is why I don't like editing pages and Pedro, I don't want to change your vision for your idea. I fucked up, and I want to fix it.

Here's what the LDS site says: "Greek Orthodox 1,100,000; Syriac Orthodox 680,000; Catholic 368,000; Jehovah's Witnesses less than 500; Seventh-Day Adventists 587 (includes Jordan and Lebanon); Latter-Day Saints less than 30". Honestly, I might make a Google Doc so that I don't make 8 edits a day on this page. I feel bad, Pedro, lo sento!

Misterxeight 19:18, 21 March 2017 (PDT)

Demographics Proposal Continued

Here's my newest proposal. Christians: 2,470,000 (1,202,000 E. Orthodox, 780,000 Oriental Orthodox, 368,000 Catholics, 120,000 Assyrians). Jews: 190,000. Other: 285,000. Muslims: 16,055,000.

To further break the Muslims down, of the 16,055,000 Muslims, 8,027,500 are Hanafi Sunni, 2,675,833 are Alawites, 900,000 are Druze, 450,000 are Ismaili/Sevener Shia, and 4,001,667 are Twelver Shia.

To further break the Oriental Orthodox down, 680,000 are members of the Syriac Orthodox Church and 100,000 are Armenian Orthodox. These two Churches are in full communion with each other and part of the Global Oriental Orthodox Communion.

To further break the Catholics down, 28.543k are Armenian Catholics, 17k are Maronites, 13k are Latin Rite Catholics, 12.5k are Syriac Catholics, 10k are Chaldeans, and Melkites make up the rest at 286,957.

To further break down the mighty Others, 150,000 are Yazidis, 50,000 are followers of Yarsanism, 5,000 are Mormons, and 80,000 are people with no registered religion on their ID cards and immigrant groups like Zoroastrians, Buddhists, and Hindus.

That satisfies everyone that wants 13% Christians (still well below real Syria's 3 million which was 13.6% of the pop), maximum Yazidis and other obscure sects, and still leaves all Muslims above 16 million in the 84% range. Now, before the war, Syria was 72% Sunni whereas this one is 42.25% Sunni, but honestly we just added a ton of Twelver Shia that don't exist in real life (real Syria only had 3% Twelver).If you put those two together, you get 63.3%, and if you adjust for all the Druze we added to fulfil Rabbi Steve's request that the Druze be a huge part of Middle Eastern demography, you get back to the 72% mark. We also increased the Alawi population (real life had 1,980,000) by 135%.

In short, we get plenty of Christians for everyone, the Sunnis are still by far a huge plurality of the population and could numerically dominate any group, we have some Judean speakers down south near the border, and we packed the place with Yazidis. Pedro, I hope that my final proposal meets your qualifications. If this is not what you had in mind, I will back off now and let you edit your page as you see fit. Obrigado muito. Misterxeight 12:15, 22 March 2017 (PDT)

In general sounds very good to me. My only doubts are concerning Yazidis and Yarsanis. By reading the Wikipedia article about Yarsanism it doesn't seem to live many Yarsanis in Syria. Of course Syria *there* can be different. About Yazidis *here*, Syrian Yazidis live mostly in two areas, the Aleppo Mountain (or Kurd-Dagh, among several other names) and Al-Jazira province. *There* I have no doubts Aleppo Mountain being located in Syria, but I'm not so sure about Al-Jazira Province being Syrian. By watching the World map it seems to me Al-Jazira *there* lies in Kurdistan. If so, many of those Yazidis probably live in Kurdistan and not in Syria. So I propose to downgrade by some thousands the Yazidi population and give those thousands to other community at your choice. And yes, you can edit the article. I always allowed anyone to edit the articles I started as I don't feel being the owner of them. For me they are part of a group work. Of course there are limits, you would have to explain very well and convince me if you turned Syria (for example) as a shintoist or voodoo majority country. :)--Pedromoderno 18:46, 22 March 2017 (PDT)

Shinto-majority Syria? Just you wait 'till Japan takes over the world! >:)

W/r/t the Yarsanis--we (me and Kostas-sama, I guess) are operating under the assumption that the Kurds are more religiously heterogenous than they are *here*--although granted, Yarsanis are sort of on the other end of Kurdistan, so who knows. (Also, it all depends on just how many Kurds there even are in the area, y'feel? Though probably there would be some Yarsani Arabs as well--those exist in our world.) As for the extra Yazidis, I think maybe we could beef up the Christian population a little and offset the whole "no Al-Jazira canton" thing, plus also manage to get those Christians up just a leeeeeetle closer to 13.6%. Juanmartinvelezlinares 06:53, 23 March 2017 (PDT)

Yarsani Arabs? Why not? They could exist in *there's* Syria and so everyone would be happy. As for the Yazidis, yes you can exchange some of them by extra Christians. Afterall it seems *here's* Syria had 25% of Christians before WW#2. More Christians in Syria are still far more plausible than Shintoist Syrians. :)--Pedromoderno 19:57, 23 March 2017 (PDT)

Well, I have to say, I'm mighty thankful for all your help. I thought you were annoyed at all this. Even now, I'd still be nervous editing your page because the Arab world is your domain, not mine. I'm just a Greek who likes religious demography who might go mainstream by breaking into the ethnic demography business.

Honestly as a joke, at this point, we should throw in something about Japanese-Syrian relations being built around the oil industry and mention something about 15,000 Japanese in Damascus with a Shinto temple tucked away on the grounds of the Japanese embassy there.

Also, have we considered bumping up the number of Syrians? Pedro, you set the population at 19 million a couple years ago, right? What's to say that since then, Syria hasn't hit the 20 million mark and isn't pushing 21 million? I felt bad for taking the Druze down from a cool million to a measly 900,000, I can finally give them their hundred thousand souls back this way. I also couldn't find the number of Yarsanis per country. Wikipedia only says that there's anywhere from half a million of them to a million of them, and that they're found in eastern Iraq and western Iran but also in southern Turkey, so they could feasibly be in Syria, especially as immigrants to a country that hasn't had to worry about a war in quite some time (whereas you know, Iran and Iraq had that one big war and Turkey sponsors Islamism abroad). Why don't we compromise and say that of the other's, they're only 25,000 of that 285,000 (or less). I noticed that you mentioned that Syrian Jews would all be in the cities, but when I was thinking of 190,000 Jews, I had in mind that they were almost entirely down south, along the Judean border, as villagers, not city folk. Could we compromise, maybe even bump up the number of Jews to 250,000? What if tiny Jewish villages mixed in with Sunni and Druze villages dot the Syrian-Judean border and the villages number around 125,000 souls, and the other 125,000 are split between Damascus primarily, and then Aleppo and any other big city?

Alternatively, what if the Judean speakers on the Syrian side of the border are Muslims, their ancestors having converted centuries ago? I got the idea because Ben made a map that shows Judean-speakers on the other side of the border. That's where I got my idea of the Jewish villages. But perhaps we could have a maximum number of Sunnis and Judean speakers by mentioning that once the border got set between Lebanon (for the Druze), Judea (for the Jews), and Syria for the Sunnis, that the Judeans unlucky enough to fall on the third country's side of the border were given the ultimatum of convert or leave their farms and workshops behind. That's a very powerful way to get a populace to change their religion: I've read about an anecdote of during the population exchange of 1924, a family of Turks that had been rounded up and was set to get on a boat bound for the new Turkish Republic from Piraeus actually bolted and took refuge in the closest church to the harbor. They begged the priest to baptize them all so that they could be Greeks and allowed to stay. Now I don't know if the priest refused and ratted them out or if the soldiers stationed at the pier found them and dragged them out of the church, but that same family was indeed sent to a new life in western Turkey. Judaism is powerful as an ethnoreligion, but sometimes, if it's your spiritual way of life or your material, there'll be enough people who will choose the latter. The way I propose is a balance between the two; 190,000 Jews mostly in cities, 125,000 Judean speakers in Syria, of which 25,000-60,000 are Sunni Muslims.

Misterxeight 09:59, 23 March 2017 (PDT)

I liked your idea of a Japanese community in Syria, even if it could be not so large. Remember, Syria is a medium oil producer and not a large one like Saudi Arabia, Persia or the Gulf Leopards. So possibly Japan and other countries in a far far away distance would take much more attention to closer oil producers and there are many on their side of the Suez Canal.

About Syrian population figures, you are right. 19 million was written not a couple of years ago but eleven years ago! As Syria didn't suffer any whole country catastrophe, full scale war or deadly pandemic since then surely population is larger now, especially because I always had the idea Muslim families (the majority) have in average more kids than Christian ones (a minority). Also most of the times *there* I always thought the number of people (so as resources) are more or less like *here*, being New Lithuania an exception (so as possibly Australasia, which was able to defeat and occupy China after the Great Oriental War). So if Syria *here* increased population, at least until this ongoing war, surely Syria *there* either.

About Yarsanis, a community of refugees from Persia and Iraaq due to wars seems plausible. Now about the Jews: Syria got independence under Hashemite rule, which although keepers of the Holy Mosques aren't fanatic. So, I'm not sure if convert or leave way of doing things would appen under Hashemite rule. On the other hand one thing is what the leader far away at the capital city tell to do and other thing is what those who work for the leader do in the countryside. If *here* there are Arab Jews there's space *there* to exist Judean Muslims. And if you were referring about Levantine history between the Crusades and Ottoman rule (that means from 16th century until 19th century) your idea also works. So I have to say you found a final solution for the Jews (sorry, this sounds really bad but without Shoah in IB and Hitler being a sci-fi writer guess we can tell these bad taste jokes). Talking about jokes that anecdote you wrote is quite interesting.--Pedromoderno 19:57, 23 March 2017 (PDT)

That makes sense. Do you think 15,000 Japanese is too high, and it might be something like 5,000-7,500 almost all of them in Damascus? Damascus is a pretty important city: they could be in Syria for banking and shipping as well in either Damascus or a coastal port city. I bet your Syria is definitely higher than 22 million (that was 2011 Syria's population in our world), it could be in the 23-24 million range by now, I bet. Sim, I was definitely thinking any conversions would be happening in the Ottoman era and before, not after. If you're fine with 285,000 Jews and 190,000 others (the reverse of what I proposed before), I am too. Syria in our world was as high as 3% Jewish during its best time, so we're still below the limit.

You're not Sunni by any chance, are you? Misterxeight 20:28, 23 March 2017 (PDT)

5,000-7,500 Japanese in Syria sounds good to me. Perhaps living mostly in Damascus, a port city (Latakia, for example) and wherever are located the oil fields. Overall Syrian population definetely should have surpassed the 20 million by now but statistics shown refer to the "latest census" so we could keep the 19 million for statistical reference. I prefer 190,000 Jews in Syria rather than 285,000 as Jews already have their own country for so long in the area (plus Himyar, in the Yemens/Thousand Emirates).

No, I'm not Sunni. Do I look so? I was quite surprised. I'm a statistic Catholic (because my parents baptised me when I was a baby) and atheist.--Pedromoderno 04:04, 24 March 2017 (PDT)

That's fair, we could leave the 19,000,000 only for statistical purposes. It's a fair compromise, I'd say. No problem at all, I'll switch the numbers. Ha, you know the second I asked that, I saw that your profile picture said "towliban.jpg" and I instantly realized that it was a joke. Ha, you had me fooled. I think we've just about wrapped this up. All's well that ends well: é bom! Misterxeight 14:05, 24 March 2017 (PDT)

Greek Dialect in Syria

Also, as long as I'm here, I had this idea for Syria and Lebanon, and I was wondering if you'd like it. It's based off of two ideas: the real life settlement of Greek-speaking Muslims from Crete along the southern coast of Syria and northern coast of Lebanon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Hamidiyah), and this idea, of a highly Hellenized Arabic spoken by Maronite Catholics on Cyprus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypriot_Maronite_Arabic).

My idea is sort of the reverse of the latter. Greek died out in the Levant pretty quickly I believe after Islam conquered the region. But what if it didn't? What if some portion of the Syrian and Lebanese Orthodox populace not only retained Greek in the liturgical (which they did until the 1890's), but also retained it in everyday life? It'd be highly Arabized, same as the Maronites' speech on Cyprus is highly Hellenized, maybe even with some influences from Syriac (and Italian and French by way of the Catholics), too. It need not have a large base, I imagine that Arabic is going to spoken by almost all if not all Orthodox Christians in Syria and Lebanon, but I hope that it's there nevertheless in small numbers. What say you to this idea? Misterxeight 16:16, 20 March 2017 (PDT)

So I got a professional opinion from a professor of Semitic languages to help me think of a name for the dialect. He sent me this: "In the premodern Middle East, Greeks are universally known as Rum, so their language would probably be some variant on Romeiká. Other possibilities for minority languages in the Middle East are simply "language," e.g. glossa, or the name of the religion (like calling Ladino "Judezmo," or the Portuguese Creole of Singapore, which is known as Kristang). So you could call it something like Masikhí (Messianic), or Nasrani (Nazarene), or Malikawi (Royal), or for that matter Vasiliká. Khristiana could work too, I guess." My favorite is "Masikhí." Misterxeight 19:18, 21 March 2017 (PDT)

I'm partial to Nasrani myself. Juanmartinvelezlinares 19:46, 21 March 2017 (PDT)

I vote on Nasrani too.--Pedromoderno 18:50, 22 March 2017 (PDT)

The problem with "Nasrani" is that in Arabic, it refers to all Christians of all stripes, whereas this language would most definitely only be spoken by Eastern Orthodox Arabs who have ancestors from Greece (and their breakaway sect the Melkites and any Latins who pick it up, which the Latins tended to do in places like Smyrna). That's why I didn't vote for it, because it would be too confusing. "Malikawi" was used by the Eastern Orthodox until the Catholics stole the term, so that's a bit confusing. Eastern Orthodox Christians in Arabic are called "Rum" (Romans). I really doubt that it's a holdover from the Greek spoken before the Islamic conquest of the Levant; it was probably only relegated to the upper classes or at the very least was outnumbered by Aramaic speakers. That's why Syriac is alive today out there and Greek isn't. The ancestors of the people who speak this proposed language were probably brought to the Levant as exiles by the Ottomans, and Greeks who moved there for business opportunities. Maybe it's a mix of all three; demotic Greek was moribund until the Ottomans sent Greeks by the thousands packing there and a couple decades or a century later, Greeks moved to coastal Syria again as silversmiths/merchants/weavers/whatever. The latter two waves would probably be a godsend to to the last Romans still clinging to their language.

Hmm. Vasilika is my favourite out of the ones you offered, TBH. We could find something derived from "Rum", but then again that might get mixed up with Pontic and Mariupolitan Greek varieties. Juanmartinvelezlinares 20:02, 23 March 2017 (PDT)

"Vasilika" doesn't sound bad. As Misterxeight brought to discussion this idea of Levantine Greeks, let him chose the name of the language.--Pedromoderno 20:09, 23 March 2017 (PDT)

That's the beauty of rural languages; they might have different names for the language spoken in their villages. One village might call it "Nasrani," another might just say "this is our glossa [language]," another could be Mesikhi, and so on and so forth. I would only need a name for what the rest of the world calls it in scholarly circles, and that might be something as generic as "the Syrian dialect of Greek." Misterxeight 20:28, 23 March 2017 (PDT)

This depends on just How Greek It Is, but I think Nasrani Greek or Nazarene Greek could work as a scholarly name. After all, Pontic isn't exactly the most intelligible Greek lect, but we still call it Greek.Juanmartinvelezlinares 06:06, 24 March 2017 (PDT)