  In this paper we establish stability results for symmetric spaces of
noncompact type under Ricci flow, i.e. we will show that any small perturbation
of the symmetric metric is flown back to the original metric under an
appropriately rescaled Ricci flow.
  It will be important for us which smallness assumptions we have to impose on
the initial perturbation. We will find that as long as the symmetric space does
not contain any hyperbolic or complex hyperbolic factor, we don't have to
assume any decay on the perturbation. Furthermore, in the hyperbolic and
complex hyperbolic case, we show stability under a very weak assumption on the
initial perturbation. This will generalize a result obtained by Schulze,
Schn\"urer and Simon ([SSS2]) in the hyperbolic case.
  The proofs of those results make use of an improved $L^1$-decay estimate for
the heat kernel in vector bundles as well as elementary geometry of negatively
curved spaces.
