Syria Flags

The Syrian Arab Republic flag is rectangular with three colored bands of identical width. The top stripe is red followed by a white middle piece, and the bottom one is black. The white mid band has three green five-pointed stars engraved on it. The current Syrian Pan-Arab tricolored flag was officially adopted on May 29, 1980. The conflict in Syria that resulted in the fragmentation of the state into different factions led territories saw the reintroduction of the Independence flag by the Syrian National Coalition in areas they control. The flag shares the red, white, and black colors but has three red stars and not green on the white band.

The Arab Republic of Syria's flag has a lot of Islamic connotations attached to the symbols used on it. For example, the green color on the flag stands for Rashidun; this was the first of the four successors (caliphs) of the prophet. The white symbolizes the Umayyad's caliphs who came after the Rashidun, while the black shade represents Abbasids the third successors. The three stars on the flag represent the provinces that makeup Syria; the first star stands for Aleppo, Damascus, and Deir Ez-Zor, the regions of Jebel Druze are represented by the second star and finally the last star for Sanjak of Latakia.

The Syrian flag has borrowed heavily from the Arab Revolt Flag that was adopted in 1917 by Husayn ibn Ali the king of Hejaz the present day Saudi Arabia. The 1930 constitution drafted by a parliamentary committee established the flag of the new Syria under Article IV, Part I that spelled out the design of the flag. The constitution give the dimension of the flag as having the length which is double the width, with three parallel colors of equal bands.

At the time of gaining autonomy from the French, Syria had the green, white and black colored flag that had three downward pointing red stars. This flag was first hoisted in Aleppo on January 1, 1932. Then at independence in 1946, the flag retained the green-white-black colors except that the three red stars were upward pointing. On February 22, 1958, Syria adopted the green-white-black stripe colored flag with two green stars as the United Arab Republic flag when it united with Egypt until 1961 when it seceded. From January 1, 1972, Syria started using the green-white-black flag with the Hawk of Quraish in the middle when together with Egypt and Libya formed the Federation of Arab Republics.