The whiteness of Syrians is underestimated on this forum

[Chocolate_Hound]

In overall numbers yes I'd say Syria has the whitest Arabs. Many in fact even have light hair and light eyes. If we're talking all MENA countries though, Turkey probably has highest amount of European-eque individuals.

Don't know about Iran, some of them can get quite dark, others can be relatively fair. Usually their facial features give them away though.

[Avicenna]

Yes Syrians are the lightest levantines , people just seem to have a fetish regarding Lebanese due to Alot of them being quite westernised ( Christians mainly ).

[Hamilcar]

Yes Syrians are the lightest levantines , people just seem to have a fetish regarding Lebanese due to Alot of them being quite westernised ( Christians mainly ).

they are quite diverse though, some look straight anatolian others look iranian or arab (based on my experience with them)

[Avicenna]

they are quite diverse though, some look straight anatolian others look iranian or arab (based on my experience with them)

The three groups you mentioned to an outsider looking in look practically the same . And to be honest , there is not much difference bar a few specific traits which pop up more in one group or the other . Syrians come in many looks you right though .

[Chocolate_Hound]

Syrians are white lol. They may have a distinct culture but a guy like Assad wouldn’t face much discrimination if at all in America. Christian Levantines are basically European-lite.

[Creoda]

'The Unbearable Whiteness of Syrians' - by Sajit Kumar, Slate.com

[LorenzoSpitaleri]

Most syrians and lebanese in Venezuela look euro

[Zagrosian]

"Syrian" encompasses several largely different groups.
The West Syrians with no Beduin or SSA ancestry could, for the most part, pass as Greek or Italian.
However the fertility rates are much higher among those with Beduin and SSA ancestry. In the past it was a relatively small group - today many if not most Syrian Sunni Arabs have significant Beduin ancestry.

[pompandy]

Yep, they can be very light like Bashar Al Assad, Sami Zayn or Fares al Khouri, etc. They are somewhat similar to Lebanese when it comes to pigmentation(hair, eyes) but I read once that Lebanese are stereotyped as being "dark skinned" in Syria, I think that Lebanese are a bit more tanned than them. And you'll find more people with Assad skin among Syrians than among Lebanese. But when it comes to Traits, I think that definitely Lebanese pass better in Europe than Syrians, in general in Levant the more you go to the West and North, the most possible you look European, in the case of Syrians, they appear to be mixed with Mesopotamians/Arabs in the East.
For example this is Nabih Berri who is probably the most powerful and rich man in Lebanon, he is a Shia, he is very tan skinned but like Sikeliot once said(and I agree), he can pass in Malta for example.


Compare to Bashar al Assad who is light but his look is common only among West Asians in my opinion. In contrast his father could have passed better than both in Europe.


As for Palestinian Muslims they are darker than Lebanese Muslims and Syrian Muslims but they have considerable higher "dark ancestry", Bedouin but also North African(Egyptian and Berber) and also SSA.
But Druze Israeli as also Christian Israeli/Palestinians or Samaritans are not darker than the Druze or the Christians or any other ethnicity from Northern Levant. In fact Israeli Arab Christians are closer genetically to Cypriots and Greek Islanders than any other ethnicity in the Levant.

Distance to: Cypriot
6.27337230 Lebanese_Druze
6.51048385 Christian-Arabs-Israel
6.96440952 Lebanese_Christian
7.09987324 Turk_Cappadocia
7.94029124 Druze
8.99678832 Arabs-Israel-1
9.45879485 Armenian_Lebanon
9.53174171 Samaritan
9.63928421 Greek-Islands
9.67200083 Lebanese_Muslim
9.72099275 Syrian_Jewish
10.01389659 Lebanese

Samaritans and Druze look very light in particular, almost 40% light eyed.

Samaritans according to [Genna Giuseppe E., I Samaritani. Antropologia, 1938]
have such light-eyes frequency.


Among 39 men, 14 with mixed-eyes (Martin 7-12), one with light (Martin 13-16).

Among 45 women, 12 with mixed-eyes, 2 with light.


https://postlmg.cc/k2vYtfbs

Also 3 Samaritan men and 3 Samaritan women had light hair

Pure Samaritans [Genna, 1938].

All have mixed (green-grey) eyes (Martin 10).

62 and 57 had reddish hair, 49 dark blond (on BW photo it isn't visible although).

https://postimg.cc/G48HS5c3

As for Turks, they are lighter than Syrians and Lebanese but only by a bit, what is surprising because Turks have received recent European Admixture and also have Caucasians(Georgians, Laz,etc.) while Syrians and Lebanese have received Arab admixture although not much. But also We have to consider that Turks have Central Asian and Iranic admixture. And Syrians and Lebanese have received ancient European Admixture(modern Lebanese Muslims are modeled with 30% Greek Islander Ancestry) and also Caucasian admixture, especially the Lebanese.

https://postimg.cc/G48HS5c3


As for Iranics, they are darker than both, Turks, Syrian/Lebanese and also "Pure" Palestinians, maybe in Ancient Times they were more or less on pair and also some Tribes still on the same level currently, but Persians, Kurds and Pashtuns are just darker than them when it comes to hair and eye color. A turkish user found that some Kurdish provinces of Turkey are even less than 10% light eyed. Not even talking about "passing in Europe".



"In the Middle East and North Africa light eyes reach an average of 8%, with 18% in Lebanon, 15% in Armenia and Syria, 13% in Israel, 8% in Iran, 5% in Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Iraq, as well as 3% in Saudi Arabia"



As for why a great number of Levantines look "European" in comparison with other West Asian ethnicities, Levantines started to show a noticeable percentage of Grecoanatolian ancestry at the Bronze Age III from 1/8 to 3/8 and an average of around 30%, this was before Macedonians "invaded" the Levant, so they didn't even reach their peak of European Ancestry, this mean the Levantines in a moment of history were like the modern Cypriots, while Greeks and Romans were less European than in modern times, so there was an Eastern Mediterranean continous genetically and also physically.

"We found that significant genetic changes that were marked by an increase in Eurasian ancestry related to ancient Europeans and ancient Central Asians occurred after the Bronze Age and starting from the Iron Age II (Figure S7A). We did not observe significant genetic differences between the Iron Age II and Iron Age III populations in this test (Figure S7), and thus, we merged our samples from these two periods into one population (Figure S7C) and used qpAdm (see Supplemental Methods) to explore possible Iron Age admixture models (Tables 2 and S7). We found that the Lebanese Iron Age population can be modeled as a mixture of the local Bronze Age population (63%–88%) and a population related to ancient Anatolians or ancient South-Eastern Europeans (12%–37%) (Table 2 and Figure 2.... showed that a Steppe-like ancestry, typically found in Europeans, appears in the Near East starting from the Iron Age II (Figure 2D). A potential source of this exogenous ancestry could be the Sea Peoples, a seafaring group of people with a disputed origin who attacked the Eastern Mediterranean and Egypt after the Bronze Age (1200–900 BCE). One of our successful models for admixture involved an ancestry source related to the Ashkelon (a city situated ∼170 miles south of the Beirut sites) Iron Age I population, which was previously identified as possibly descending from Sea-Peoples-related admixture."

https://imgur.com/mZ1ZThE
https://imgur.com/htJXDBa
https://imgur.com/IlvbSSo

Obviously they are currently more different with all the admixtures they received in the following centuries. But the similarities are still present and obvious.

In resume probably Syrians and Lebanese are the most "White" of all the Non European countries maybe along with Turkey and Georgia.

[Rafael Passoni]

Syrians are white people IMO, much more lighter and sharpy featured than North Africans, specially Western North Africans maybe bc their lack of a significant West African imput. Their lighter types overlap a lot with SE Europeans and their lighter types sometimes looks white enough to even have a pseudo Northern Euro look. My great-grandpa was a Franco-Syrian man, he was a white man, passable as white in USA easily, a proof that in many cases such marriage (White European + Syrian) can produce a white person.