Homs, Hama & the Coast

The Orontes valley and the coast have been settled since the Bronze Age. Ugarit, north of Latakia, was a rich port whose scribes wrote in an early cuneiform alphabet, and the Phoenicians of Arwad ruled the coast opposite their island. Hama was the Aramaean kingdom of Hamath, and in 1274 BC the Egyptians and Hittites fought the battle of Kadesh near Homs. The Seleucid Greeks founded Laodicea, now Latakia, and Apamea; Roman Emesa, now Homs, gave Rome a line of priest-kings and the empress Julia Domna, and Palmyra grew rich on caravans until Queen Zenobia defied Rome and was defeated in 272.

The Homs Gap, the one easy route from the interior to the sea, made the region a battleground during the Crusades. The Knights Hospitaller rebuilt Krak des Chevaliers from 1142 and held it until the Mamluk sultan Baybars took it in 1271; Marqab fell to Qalawun in 1285, and the Templars' last foothold, Arwad, fell in 1302. Under the Ottomans, Hama and Homs were market towns of the Orontes, while the coastal mountains remained the home of the Alawites.

Under French rule the mountains formed a separate Alawite State from 1920 to 1936. After independence many Alawites rose through the army, and the Assad family came from Qardaha near Latakia. In 1982 Hafez al-Assad's forces crushed a Muslim Brotherhood uprising in Hama, killing thousands. In 2011 Homs became the centre of the uprising and its rebel-held districts, including the old city, were besieged until 2014, while the coast stayed under government control. ISIS held Palmyra twice in 2015–17 and dynamited the Temple of Bel.

The region is a patchwork of communities. Homs and Hama are mainly Sunni cities, Hama known as one of Syria's most conservative; Homs had large Christian quarters and the Christian villages of Wadi al-Nasara, the "Valley of the Christians", lie below Krak des Chevaliers. The coastal mountains are the Alawite heartland, Salamiyah and Masyaf are Ismaili centres, and Kassab in the far north of Latakia province is an Armenian town. The coast has long been the most socially relaxed part of Syria, with mixed beaches and café life.

Hama's identity is bound to its waterwheels and to the memory of 1982, a subject still handled carefully.

Crafts include boat-building on Arwad, and the tobacco farming of the Latakia hills, whose smoke-cured leaf gave its name to Latakia tobacco. Weddings in the villages still bring out the dabke line dance, and the monastery of Saint George stands in Wadi al-Nasara.

Homs, Syria's third city before the war, and Hama each have several hundred thousand people, though large parts of Homs remain in ruins and many former residents have not returned. Latakia is the main port and has several hundred thousand people; Tartus, with some 450,000, is the second port. Palmyra's modern town, Tadmur, lies beside the ancient site.

The Orontes valley and the Ghab plain are farming country for wheat, cotton, vegetables and sugar beet; the coast grows citrus, olives and tobacco; Homs has an oil refinery and the Baniyas refinery lies on the coast between Tartus and Latakia. Before 2011 the coast was a summer holiday destination for Syrian families, and Latakia University, formerly Tishreen University, draws students from across the west.

Days follow the same Syrian rhythm of bread queues, power cuts and evening gatherings, eased on the coast by the sea air and the corniche. Rebuilding Homs, the fate of displaced families, the economy of the coast and relations between communities under the new authorities are the questions that matter here.

Homs and Hama are known across Syria for halawet el-jibn, soft rolls of sweet cheese dough filled with clotted cream and sprinkled with pistachio and syrup, eaten fresh from the shop. The Orontes towns also make kibbeh in many forms, baked in trays or fried as stuffed ovals, and pastries such as sfiha, open meat pies. Bread from the wheat of the Ghab plain comes with every meal.

The coast eats from the sea: grilled fish with tahini and lemon, sayadieh (fish on spiced rice with caramelised onions) and fried small fish and squid in the harbour restaurants of Latakia, Tartus and Arwad. The coastal mountains supply olives and olive oil, citrus fruit, figs, pomegranates and honey, and mountain families make shanklish, a dried, spiced cheese ball rolled in thyme, and kishk, fermented yoghurt and bulgur dried to a powder for winter soups.

Arak, the aniseed spirit, is distilled from grapes, and cafés on the Latakia corniche serve strong coffee and water pipes late into the evening.

The Homs Gap is guarded by Krak des Chevaliers, whose concentric walls, great hall and chapel make it one of the best-preserved Crusader castles; below it lie the villages of Wadi al-Nasara. Homs itself has the mosque of Khalid ibn al-Walid and the badly damaged old city. Far to the east, across the steppe, Palmyra keeps its colonnaded street and a damaged theatre despite the destruction of the Temple of Bel and the monumental arch, with the Arab castle on its hill above.

Hama's norias turn beside the Orontes in the centre of town. North-west, on a ridge above the Ghab plain, Apamea's colonnaded street runs for nearly two kilometres; Masyaf's castle was a stronghold of the Nizari Ismailis, and the Byzantine palace of Qasr ibn Wardan stands in the desert east of Hama.

On the coast, Tartus keeps the Crusader cathedral of Our Lady of Tortosa, now a museum, and boats cross to Arwad's fortress and harbour. The Hospitaller castle of Marqab overlooks the sea near Baniyas. Latakia has its corniche and a Roman tetrapylon; the ruins of Ugarit lie just north, and the Citadel of Saladin, UNESCO-listed with Krak, stands in forested hills inland. The mountain resorts of Slenfeh and Kassab look over the Alawite mountains.