Editing Southern Syria (section)

==Background==
Throughout the Ottoman period, prior to 1888, the Levant was viewed administratively as part of one province called the [[Syria vilayet|Vilayet of Syria]] and was divided into districts known as "[[Sanjak]]s".

Palestine was, by the end of 19th and early 20th centuries divided into the [[Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem]], the [[Nablus Sanjak]], and the [[Acre Sanjak]] (under [[Beirut Vilayet]] from 1888, and previously under [[Syria Vilayet]]), and a short-lived [[Karak Sanjak|Mutasarrıfate of Karak]] in [[Transjordan (region)|Transjordan]] (split as a new administrative unit from [[Syria Vilayet]] in 1894/5).{{citation needed|date=April 2018}} In 1884, the governor of Damascus proposed the establishment of a new Vilayet in southern Syria, composed of the regions of Jerusalem, [[Balqa (region)|Balqa']] and Ma'an though nothing came out of this.<ref name="Rogan2002p52">{{cite book|last=Rogan|first=Eugene L.|title=Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850–1921|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AMAbXGQDmDYC&pg=PA52|access-date=2013-06-10|date=2002-04-11|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-89223-0|pages=52–55|archive-date=19 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231019081438/https://books.google.com/books?id=AMAbXGQDmDYC&pg=PA52#v=onepage&q&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref>

In the beginning of Faisal’s reign in the [[Arab Kingdom of Syria]], particularly after the San Remo Conference of March 1920, the term "Southern Syria" emerged as a political [[neologism]] synonymous with Palestine,<ref name="Gerber2008" /> and it would take on an increased political significance as a way of rejecting the separation of Palestine from the Kingdom.<ref>{{cite book | title =The Great War and the Remaking of Palestine | page=3 |author = Salim Tamari | publisher = Univ of California Press | year = 2017|quote=Al-Fatat became a leading force in the establishment of the First Syrian government under Prince Faisal. It was during this period that the term Southern Syria became synonymous with Palestine, but the expression gained an added political significance after 1918 – for example, in the creation of Aref and Dajani's newspaper, Surya al-janubiyya, signaling the unity of Jerusalem with Damascus, in response to the British-Zionist schemes of separating Palestine from Syria. In other words, the term Southern Syria, which so far had been a geographic designation, was now explicitly used instead for Palestine as a reaction to the attempts by the British Mandate authorities to excise Palestine from Syria.}}</ref>