Countries
Key facts
- Capital
- Damascus
- Region
- Asia, Western Asia
- Population
- 25,620,427 (2025)
- Area
- 185,180 km²
- Currency
- Syrian pound (SYP)
- Languages
- Arabic, Kurdish, Armenian, Official Aramaic (700-300 BCE), French
- Calling code
- +963
- Internet domain
- .sy, سوريا.
- ISO codes
- SY, SYR, 760
- Time zone
- UTC+3:00
- United Nations
- Member state
Land and position
Syria covers about 185,180 square kilometres. By area it ranks 90th among the 250 countries and territories on this site. It is a little smaller than Senegal and a little larger than Cambodia. It shares a land border with 5 neighbours: Israel, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Türkiye. Its centre lies at about 35° north, 38° east, in the northern hemisphere.
Neighbours
People
About 25.6 million people live in Syria (World Bank, 2025). That makes it the 57th most populous of the 246 places on this site with a figure, with about 0.31 percent of the world's people. On average there are 138 people to each square kilometre. About 72 percent of people live in towns and cities (World Bank, 2025). A baby born there can expect to live about 73 years (World Bank, 2024). Languages listed for it: Arabic, Kurdish, Armenian, Official Aramaic (700-300 BCE), French, English. A person from Syria is called Syrian.
Money and economy
The currency is the Syrian pound (code SYP, symbol £). The World Bank puts the size of its economy (GDP) at about US$ 23.7 billion (2022), which is about US$ 1,057 for each person (2022).
Time
Syria uses one time zone, UTC+3:00 (Asia/Damascus). Clocks stay the same all year: there is no daylight saving time.
Time now: loading
Offsets are for January 2026. See Time Zones for a converter.
Largest cities
| City | People |
|---|---|
| Aleppo | 2,098,210 |
| Damascus | 1,569,394 |
| Homs | 775,404 |
| Latakia | 709,000 |
| Ar Raqqah | 531,952 |
| Ḩamāh | 460,602 |
City figures are from GeoNames and count the city itself, not the wider urban area. They can be some years old, so use them to see the order of size.
More in Western Asia
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Georgia, Kuwait, Oman, Palestine, Qatar. See the whole region.
Figures were collected on 11 November 2026 from the World Bank, GeoNames and the open countries data set. See About and data sources. Borders and names follow those sources and do not express any view on disputed territory.