Introducing the 'Syria resource drive'

A growing collection of articles, databases, maps and more available to paid subscribers

I’ve begun sorting through the thousands of Syria-related files kicking around my computer and elsewhere, and placing them into a new Google Drive as a resource now available to paid subscribers. So far this is organized into four main sections:

• Actors

• Articles & reports

• Data & documents

• Geography

From Adnan Mahhouk’s 1956 article “Recent Agricultural Development and Bedouin Settlement in Syria”

The ‘Articles & reports’ and ‘Geography’ files are currently the most developed, with the former including a PDF library of over 100 academic articles on a wide range of topics dating back to Ottoman Syria, in addition to other articles, reports, and several doctoral dissertations.

Meanwhile the latter contains dozens of maps as well as a database of over 8,000 towns and villages across Syria’s fourteen governorates with the corresponding location coordinates and 2004 census population numbers attached. I’m in the process of adding non-government names to relevant entries (ie. local Kurdish names not recognized by the state) and in the future plan on including additional demographic information as well as related links to the database. The spreadsheet also features a running guide to basic Arabic, Kurdish, and Turkish vocabulary commonly found in the local placenames of northern Syria.

The priority after finishing the file organizing and uploading process will be to expand the actor profile folder, which I’ll begin referencing throughout the weekly newsletter.

I’ve given all paid subscribers using an email address linked to a google account access to the drive (you should have received an email just before this post was published). If you are subscribed using an email address not linked to a google account and you’d like access to the drive, or if you have any other issues accessing it, or questions relating to the content, please reach out to me at:

thisweekinnorthernsyria@gmail.com.

If you are still a free subscriber, do considering upgrading to the paid tier… for just $5 a month or $50 a year you now get access to both the full weekly newsletter and the entire newsletter archives, as well as this drive full of Syria-related resources.