[12] This number sharply decreased due to the Plague epidemic in 1348–1353, which killed off an estimated third of the Levant's population.

[21] Most of them fled to neighboring countries such as Turkey,[22][23] Lebanon, Jordan,[24] and Iraq,[25] as well as European nations like Greece, Germany and Sweden.

[30] The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES), commonly referred to as Rojava, has a population of around two million.

[32] By the time the government retook Ghouta in April 2018, some 140,000 individuals had fled their homes and up to 50,000 were evacuated to Idlib and Aleppo governorates.

[34][35] Fighting in Idlib has led to further displacements, of up to 250,000 people, and generating new refugee outflows to neighbouring Turkey.

One example is the area in the North under control by Kurdish-led and US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

[42][43][44][45] In April 2016, the UN estimated that 400,000 people had died in the war,[46] and casualties have continued since, with estimates for the total dead by mid-2019 of up to 220,000 civilians, 175,000 government combatants, and 174,000 anti-government combatants (see Casualties of the Syrian Civil War).

[51] Arabs represent 80-85% of the population, with the rest being a mixture of many ethnic and religious sects, as shown in the table below: The CIA World Factbook cites the following figures for ethnic groups as in July 2018: approximately Arab 50%, Alawite 15%, Kurd 10%, Levantine 10%, other 15% (includes Druze, Ismaili, Imami, Nusairi, Assyrians, Turkmen, Armenian, and Chechens).

2021)[53] There has been no Syrian census including a question about religion since 1960, these are thus the last official statistics available:[54] In 1991, Professor Alasdair Drysdale and Professor Raymond Hinnebusch said that some 85% of Syrians were Muslims and that the remainder were almost all Christians, however, both religious groups were subdivided into many ethnic sects.

[56] The CIA World Factbook cites the following figures for religious groups: religions - Muslim 87% (official; includes Sunni 74% and Alawi, Ismaili, and Shia 13%), Christian 10% (mainly of the Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches[57] - may be smaller as a result of Christians fleeing the country), Druze 3%.

[6] The first census which focused on the sectarian distribution was carried out in 1932 under the French mandate, however, this census was only carried out in the lands under the short-lived Government of Latakia (the Alawite State established by the French) which covered only 7,000 km2 (2,700 sq mi) out of modern Syria's total area of 185,000 km2 (71,000 sq mi).

Several modern Arabic dialects are used in everyday life, most notably Levantine in the west and Mesopotamian in the northeast.

"[60] According to The Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, in addition to Arabic, the following languages are spoken in the country, in order of the number of speakers: Kurdish,[61] Turkish,[61] Neo-Aramaic (four dialects),[61] Circassian,[61] Chechen,[61] Armenian,[61] and finally Greek.