The Syrian or Western Asiatic elephant (sometimes given the subspecies designation Elephas maximus asurus) was the westernmost population of the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus), which went extinct in ancient times, with early human civilizations in the area utilizing the animals for their ivory, and possibly for warfare.

A study of mitochondrial DNA from 3500 year old remains from Gavur Lake Swamp southwest of Kahramanmaraş in Turkey, which represent an apparently wild population, found that they were within extant genetic variation and belonged to the β1 subclade of the major β clade of Asian elephants, β1 being the predominant clade among Indian elephants.

If the population was not introduced by humans, it must have arrived in the region as an expansion from the core range of the Asian elephant during the Late Pleistocene or Holocene.

[7] This long hiatus makes some scholars suspect that the Asian elephants were artificial introductions to the Middle East, possibly from India, though this is difficult to prove.

It is attested by ancient sources such as Strabo[8] and Polybius[9] that Seleucid kings Seleucus I Nicator and Antiochus III the Great had large numbers of imported Indian elephants.