land is what eventually allows, or disallows, its transition from a socio-economic phase to another. These natural geographical factors hence create the societal framework in which man establishes his existence, beliefs, habits, and value systems. Saadeh's critique of ethnic nationalisms led him to hence develop a framework of geographical nationalism, the idea of the "natural homeland". When he applied this model to the case of the Fertile Crescent, the conclusion he reached was straightforward: the natural geographical factors of the basin lying east of the Mediterranean is what has allowed it to become the cradle of civilizations, what has driven throughout the course of human history movements seeking to unify it, what has allowed it to establish, through ethnic, religious and cultural assimilation and mixing, a high culture and civilization, and what has made it the prize coveted by all imperialist powers. Saadeh advocated for all ethnoreligious groups to consider themselves as descendants of the pre-Christian era empires of Babylon and Assyria, of the Hittites and the kings of Aram, then of the Islamic empires, all the way up until the present. The SSNP claimed that the Greater Syria is the natural home of the Syrian people with clearly defined geographic boundaries, yet that its people are suffering from what Saadeh described as a "woe" (al-wail) owing to an identity crisis due to Ottoman occupation, colonialism, and sectarianism. Saadeh claimed that the renaissance of the Syrian nation is inevitably linked to the purge of these "decadent" forces through the reinforcing of national solidarity, resistance against colonialism, and adoption of secularism. In Saadeh's vision of "harmony" among the country's ethnic and religious communities through a return to a so-called Syrian "racial unity" which was itself in fact a mixture of races, neither Islam nor pan-Arabism was important, and therefore religion wasn't either. Saadeh's concept of the nation was shaped mainly by historical concrete interactions amongst people over the centuries in a given geography, rather than being based on ethnic origins, race, language or religion. This led him also to conclude that the Arabs could not form one nation, but many nations could be called Arab. Syrian people The SSNP's Greater Syria ideal posed a problem for all of the existing nationalist movements because of its clear departure from Arab nationalist and Islamic undertones, and its inextricable link with what the party leader defined as "the Syrian people", Greater Syria being its