Syria National Anthem

Key Facts

• 1. After the fall of the Assad regime on 8 December 2024, the anthem's status was left open. In January 2025 the Syrian Football Association replaced it with "Fi Sabili al-Majd" for all its national teams and informed FIFA of the change, and in March 2026 the Ministry of Culture launched a competition to set one of seven shortlisted texts to music for a new national anthem.
• 2. The lyricist, Khalil Mardam Bey, was not only a poet but also a statesman: he became minister of education in 1942, held the education and health portfolios in 1949, was named minister plenipotentiary in Baghdad in 1951 and presided over the Arab Academy of Damascus from 1953 until his death in 1959.
• 3. The composer Mohammed Flayfel also wrote "Mawtini", the melody adopted decades later as Iraq's national anthem.
• 4. On 27 May 2011, early in the uprising, opposition activists named a day of protests the "Friday of Humat ad-Diyar" after the anthem's opening words, calling on the army to join the people; through the civil war that followed, both the government and the opposition kept using the anthem, even under different flags.