[3][2][7] In the 13th and 14th centuries, the term levante was used for Italian maritime commerce in the Eastern Mediterranean, including Greece, Anatolia, Syria-Palestine, and Egypt, that is, the lands east of Venice.

[3] The name Levant States was used to refer to the French mandate over Syria and Lebanon after World War I.

[3][2] This is probably the reason why the term Levant has come to be used more specifically to refer to modern Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, and the island of Cyprus.

[10][5] Typically, it does not include Anatolia (also known as Asia Minor), the Caucasus Mountains, or any part of the Arabian Peninsula proper.

[17] The Levant has been described as the "crossroads of Western Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean, and Northeast Africa",[18] and in geological (tectonic) terms as the "northwest of the Arabian Plate".

[25] The notion of the Levant has undergone a dynamic process of historical evolution in usage, meaning, and understanding.

[3] In early 19th-century travel writing, the term sometimes incorporated certain Mediterranean provinces of the Ottoman Empire, as well as independent Greece (and especially the Greek islands).

Scholars have adopted the term Levant to identify the region due to its being a "wider, yet relevant, cultural corpus" that does not have the "political overtones" of Syria-Palestine.

[c][d] The term is also used for modern events, peoples, states or parts of states in the same region, namely Cyprus, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey are sometimes considered Levant countries (compare with Near East, Middle East, Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia).

[citation needed] Several researchers include the island of Cyprus in Levantine studies, including the Council for British Research in the Levant,[28] the UCLA Near Eastern Languages and Cultures department,[29] Journal of Levantine Studies[30] and the UCL Institute of Archaeology,[18] the last of which has dated the connection between Cyprus and mainland Levant to the early Iron Age.

[35] In The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Levant: c. 8000–332 BCE (OHAL; 2013), the definition of the Levant for the specific purposes of the book is synonymous to that of the Arabic "bilad al-sham, 'the land of sham [Syria]'", translating in Western parlance to greater Syria.

[41] The majority of Levantine Muslims are Sunnis adhering to the four madhhabs (Hanafi, Shafi'i, Hanbali and Maliki).

Islamic minorities include the Alawites and Nizari Ismailis in Syria, and Twelver Shiites in Lebanon.

Non-Arab minorities include Circassians, Chechens, Turks, Jews, Turkmens, Assyrians, Kurds, Nawars and Armenians.