To promote and highlight excellence in research and scholarship, the Syrian Studies Association awards annual prizes for the best scholarly writing on the region known as Bilad al-Sham until 1918 and Syria since then.

2025 Prize Announcements:

BEST ARTICLE OR BOOK CHAPTER: Victoria Abrahamyan, "Loyalty at Stake: Armenian Refugees and the Syrian Great Revolt 1925-1926."

Published in Microhistories in Armenian Studies, ed. Barlow Der Mugrdechian, Ümit Kurt, and Ara Sarafian, Fresno: California State University Press, 2025.

The Committee writes:

”Dr Victoria Abrahamyan has written a new and fascinating reappraisal of a familiar episode during the Great Syrian Revolt. Using French, Armenian, and Communist (local and in the Soviet Union) sources, she examines and challenges the depiction of Armenian refugees newly arrived in Damascus as a homogenous community in 1925-26. She also showcases the pro-rebel Armenians, contrary to much of the Western depiction of the Armenian refugees of Syria as counterinsurgent mercenaries in the hands of the French. The article convincingly revises a number of influential works on the revolt. The chapter is persuasive in showing how the French used propaganda about “saving the Christians” to justify their bombardment of Damascus. Overall, the significance of newspapers and rumors in fomenting anti-Armenian sentiment is starkly revealed.” 

ARTICLE - HONORABLE MENTION: Muhammed Aslaner, “Responding to the Arab Revolt: The Circassian Volunteer Cavalry and the Defence of Ottoman Transjordan in the First World War,” Middle Eastern Studies 61(6):1-19, May 2025.

The Committee writes,

”Muhammad Aslaner has written a graceful, sophisticated analysis based on Ottoman sources countering the “accepted” historical record based on British military memoirs and personal notes, which held that the Ottoman Army was not capable of dealing with or responding to unconventional “Bedouin” warfare. Aslaner argues, on the contrary, that the Arab Revolt did not make a dramatic impact on the general Ottoman military posture. The Ottoman general staff considered the Arab Revolt a sideshow, and were able to achieve their main strategic goals of retaining Medina and protecting the railway. Their defensive priorities, Aslaner argues, were achieved by using irregular forces, such as the Circassian Volunteer Cavalry Unit, to quickly respond to the new guerilla strategy of the Sharifian Bedouin. The article challenges the simplistic arguments in the mainstream literature on the Arab Revolt and the Ottoman military response. It is another example of historical analysis based on Ottoman sources challenging accepted mainstream historiography.”

Our prize committee is composed of Michael Provence, Dawn Chatty, and Lauren Banko.

The 2025 prizes were awarded for pieces published between July 1, 2024, and July 1, 2025.