PAKT SIX. 



COMMEKCE. 



I. The Extent of Commercial Activities in Syria. 



(a) Foreign trade, including import of requirements, and 

 export of domestic products; 



(b) Inland trade, within Syria; 



1. Transmission of domestic products from producer 

 to consumer, of imported commodities from importer to con- 

 sumer ; 



2. Purchase of excess domestic products and transmis- 

 sion to exporter. 



(c) Trade with the Bedouin on the eastern boundary of 

 Syria, where the products of animal husbandry are bartered for 

 Syrian and imported commodities. 



Import and export are conducted almost exclusively by water, 

 even with other parts of Turkey because of the lack of railways and 

 the slowness and expense of transportation by camel. 



The merchants of Syria belong to several different categories : 



1. Levantines. They are proverbially shrewd, usually 

 well-to-do and enterprising; 



2. Europeans, (French and Germans in Beirut and 

 Aleppo, Germans in Haifa, Jaffa, and Jerusalem, Jews 

 throughout Palestine) ; 



3. Christian and Moslem Arabs, together with a number 

 of Sephardic Jews, control almost the whole inland commerce ; 



4. Armenians in Aleppo and especially in Aintab. 



There are no Turks among the Syrian merchants. 



The natives manage their business in Oriental fashion, without 

 offices or employees. 



Commerce is conducted according to the French Code de Com- 

 merce. There is a special ruling of 1888 applying to brokers. 



The formation of unlimited joint stock companies and limited 

 liability companies is effected by legal registration; one of the 

 only large export houses of Syria is a stock company, namely, 

 the Etablissements Orosdi-Back, with its seat in Paris. 



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