The Coastal Mountain Range ( ar, سلسلة الجبال الساحلية ''Silsilat al-Jibāl as-Sāḥilīyah'') also called Al-Anṣariyyah is a mountain range in northwestern
Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
running north–south, parallel to the coastal plain.
[Federal Research Division, Library of Congress (2005]
"Country Profile: Syria"
page 5 The mountains have an average width of , and their average peak elevation is just over with the highest peak, Nabi Yunis, reaching , east of
Latakia.
In the north the average height declines to , and to in the south.
Name
Classically, this range was known as the Bargylus; a name mentioned by
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic ' ...
. The el, Μπάργκυλος, Bargylus) had its roots in the name of an ancient city-kingdom called
Barga most probably located in the vicinity of the mountains; it was a city of the
Ebla
Ebla ( Sumerian: ''eb₂-la'', ar, إبلا, modern: , Tell Mardikh) was one of the earliest kingdoms in Syria. Its remains constitute a tell located about southwest of Aleppo near the village of Mardikh. Ebla was an important center t ...
ite Empire in the third millennium BC,
and then a vassal kingdom of the
Hittites
The Hittites () were an Anatolian people who played an important role in establishing first a kingdom in Kussara (before 1750 BC), then the Kanesh or Nesha kingdom (c. 1750–1650 BC), and next an empire centered on Hattusa in north-cent ...
, who named the mountain range after Barga.
In the medieval period were known as the Jabal Bahra () after the Arab tribe of
Bahra’. They are also sometimes known as the Nusayriyah Mountains or the Ansarieh mountains ( ''Jibāl an-Nuṣayriyah'') or the Alawiyin Mountains ( ''Jibāl al-‘Alawīyin''); both of these names refer to the
Alawi ethnoreligious group
An ethnoreligious group (or an ethno-religious group) is a grouping of people who are unified by a common religious and ethnic background.
Furthermore, the term ethno-religious group, along with ethno-regional and ethno-linguistic groups, is a ...
which has traditionally lived there, though the former term is based on an
antiquated label for the community that is now considered insulting.
Geography
The western slopes catch moisture-laden winds from the
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on ...
and are thus more fertile and more heavily populated than the eastern slopes. The
Orontes River
The Orontes (; from Ancient Greek , ) or Asi ( ar, العاصي, , ; tr, Asi) is a river with a length of in Western Asia that begins in Lebanon, flowing northwards through Syria before entering the Mediterranean Sea near Samandağ in Turkey.
A ...
flows north alongside the range on its eastern verge in the
Ghab valley, a
longitudinal trench,
Encyclopædia Britannica – Syria
/ref> and then around the northern edge of the range to flow into the Mediterranean. South of Masyaf there is a large northeast-southwest strike-slip fault
In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectoni ...
which separates An-Nusayriyah Mountain from the coastal Lebanon Mountains and the Anti-Lebanon Mountains of Lebanon
Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, while Cyprus lie ...
, in a feature known as the Homs Gap.
See also
* Turkmen Mountain
References
{{Authority control
Mountain ranges of Syria
Hama Governorate
Homs Governorate