Origin of the name

The most plausible theory of the origin of the name Druze is that the term is traceable to Nashtakin ad-Darazi, one of the early leaders of the faith, even though the Druze consider ad-Darazi a heretic who practiced ghuluww (from Arabic exaggeration), which is a belief held by some Islamic sects that God was incarnated in human beings, specially Imam Ali and his descendants.

The Druze sect gained his name because he was the Dai who first preached an unorthodox version of the faith to outsiders in 1016 and claimed to be the true Imam rather than Hamza ibn Ali and that al-Hakim was the incarnation of God; proceeded by his ancestors, the descendents of Imam Ali. Though he is considered a renegade by the "Unitarians" the name "Druze" is still used for identification and for historical reasons. Ad-Darazi was killed in 1018 because of his extreme ideas concerning Al-Hakim.

Others have speculated the word Druze comes from the Arabic-Persian word Darazo, meaning "heaven"; others claim that it is derived from the name of the Fatimid military commander Abi Mansur Anushtakin ad-Darazi or that of a Fatimid Egyptian landlord, Shaykh Hussayn ad-Darazi, who was one of the early converts to the faith. In the early stages of the movement the word "Druze" is rarely mentioned by historians, and in Druze religious texts only the word Muwahhidun ("Unitarian") appears. The only early Arab historian who mentions the Druze is the 11th century Christian scholar Yahyá ibn Said al-Antaki, who clearly references the heretical group created by ad-Darazi rather than the followers of Hamza bin Ali. As for Western sources, Benjamin of Tudela, the Jewish traveler who passed through Lebanon in or about 1165 was one of the first European writers to refer to the Druzes by name. The word Dogziyin ("Druzes") occurs in an early Hebrew edition of his travels, but it is clear that this is a scribal error. Be that as it may, he described the Druze as "mountain dwellers, monotheists, who believe in "soul eternity" and reincarnation."

Early history

The Druze faith began as a movement in Ismailism that favored the traditional and more liberal eastern order of Ismailism that was mainly influenced by Greek philosophy and Gnosticism and it opposed certain religious and philosophical ideologies that were present during that epoch.

The faith was officially revealed in the year 1017 by Hamza ibn ?Ali ibn Ahmad. Hamza Bin Ali, who was a Persian Ismaili mystic and scholar, came to Egypt in 1014 AD and assembled a group of scholars and leaders from across the Islamic world to form the Unitarian Order. The Order was created to combat perceived corruption and alteration of the Ismaili doctrine in North Africa and to create a "Unitarian nation".^{[citation needed]} The Order's meetings were held in the Mosque of Raydan, situated near the palace of al-Hakim.^[19] According to the Druze and the Fatimid Christian historian Yahyá b. Sa?id al-An?aki, the meetings were blessed and supported by Caliph al-Hakim.^{[citation needed]}

After gaining the support of the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim. Hamza ibn ?Ali started to work on spreading the faith facing a lot of hostility from many prominent figures of the Caliphate, especially after al-Hakim was accused of undermining the orthodox Islamic law by publishing a decree promoting religious freedom.

The decree stated :

The Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah became the central figure in the Druze faith. Although his position when it comes to the faith, had been disputed among scholars. John Esposito states that Al-Hakim believed that he was not only the divinely appointed religiopolitical leader but also the cosmic intellect, linking God with creation, while others like Nissim Dana and Mordechai Nisan stated that he is perceived as the manifestation and the reincarnation of God or presumably the image of God. Some Druze and non-Druze scholars like Samy Swayd and Sami Makarem state that this confusion is created because of the early heretical preacher Ad-Darazi who claimed that Al-Hakim is the Incarnation of God, so that he can gain his support, and that the modern Druze had been wrongfully attributed, by their rivals, to their early renegade Ad-Darazi.These sources assert that Al-Hakim refused the claims of divinity preached by Ad-Darazi and ordered the elimination of his movement, while he supported that of Hamza Ibn Ali.

Imam al-?akim. disappeared one night, when he went out for his evening ride - presumably assassinated, perhaps at the behest of his formidable elder sister Sitt al-Mulk. The Druze believe he went into Occultation, with Hamza Ibn Ali and the other three prominent preachers, leaving the "Unitarian missionary movement" to Baha' ad-Din.

Persecution during the Fatimid times

Al-Hakim was replaced by his underage son Ali az-Zahir after he mysteriously disappeared. Theories abound as to what happened to him, but none is certain. The sect founded by Hamza b. Ali, which was prominent in the Levant, North Africa, Egypt, Arabia, Iraq, Persia, Yemen and other parts of the Near East, acknowledged az-Zahir as the Caliph but followed Hamza b. ?Ali as its Imam. Fatimid Caliph az-Zahir therefore ordered his army to destroy the movement. At the same time, Baha' ad-Din as-Samuki assumed leadership of the Druze in 1021.

The killing ranged from Antioch to Alexandria, where tens of thousands of Druze were slaughtered by the Fatimid Army. The largest massacre was at Antioch, where 5000 Druze religious leaders were killed,followed by that of Aleppo. The massacres are well described in the remaining scriptures written by As-Samuki, which recorded how the Fatimid army brutally put to death infants, women and men.

The Closing of the Faith

Az-Zahir finally agreed to let the Druze alone after 1026, and Baha' ad-Din as-Samuki sent feelers and missionaries deeper into the Levant. After two decades of building strong new communities there, Baha' ad-Din as-Samuki declared that the sect would no longer accept new pledges, and since that time conversion has been prohibited.

During the Crusades

It was during the period of Crusader rule in Syria (1099-1291) that the Druze first emerged into the full light of history in the Gharb region of the Chouf Mountains. As redoubtable warriors serving the Muslim rulers of Damascus against the alien invaders, the Druze were given the task of keeping watch over the Crusaders in the seaport of Beirut, with the aim of preventing them from making any encroachments inland. Subsequently, the Druze chiefs of the Gharb placed their considerable military experience at the disposal of the Mamluk rulers of Egypt (1250-1516); first, to assist them in putting an end to what remained of Crusader rule in coastal Syria, and later to help them safeguard the Syrian coast against Crusader retaliation by sea.

In the early period of the Crusader era the Druze feudal power was in the hands of two families, the Tanukhs and the Arslans. From their fortresses in the Gharb district (modern Aley Province) of southern Mount Lebanon, the Tanukhs led their incursions into the Phoenician coast and finally succeeded in holding Beirut and the marine plain against the Franks. Because of their fierce battles with the crusaders the Druzes earned the respect of the Sunni Muslim Caliphs and thus gained important political powers. After the middle of the twelfth century, the Ma’an family superseded the Tanukhs in Druze leadership. The origin of the family goes back to a prince Ma’an who made his appearance in the Lebanon in the days of the ‘Abbasid Caliph al-Mustarshid (1118 AD-1135 AD). The Ma’ans chose for their abode the Chouf district in the southern part of Western Lebanon, overlooking the maritime plain between Beirut and Sidon, and made their headquarters in Baaqlin, which is still a leading Druze village. They were invested with feudal authority by Sultan Nur-al-Din and furnished respectable contingents to the Muslim ranks in their struggle against the Crusaders.

Persecution during the Mamluk and Ottoman period

Having cleared Syria from the Franks, the Mamluk Sultans of Egypt turned their attention to the schismatic Muslims of Syria. In 1305, after the issuing of a fatwa by the Hanbali Sunni scholar Taqi ad-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiya al-Harrani calling for jihad against the Druze, Alawites, Ismaili and twelver Shiites, al-Malik al-Nasir inflicted a disastrous defeat on the Druzes at Keserwan and forced outward compliance on their part to "orthodox" Sunni Islam. Later, under the Ottoman Turks, they were severely attacked at Ayn-?awfar in 1585 after the Ottomans claimed that they assaulted their caravans near Tripoli.^[29]

Consequently, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were to witness a succession of armed Druze rebellions against the Ottomans, countered by repeated Ottoman punitive expeditions against the Chouf, in which the Druze population of the area was severely depleted and many villages destroyed. These military measures, severe as they were, did not succeed in reducing the local Druze to the required degree of subordination. This led the Ottoman government to agree to an arrangement whereby the different nahiyes (districts) of the Chouf would be granted in iltizam ("fiscal concession") to one of the region’s amirs, or leading chiefs, leaving the maintenance of law and order and the collection of its taxes in the area in the hands of the appointed amir. This arrangement was to provide the cornerstone for the privileged status which ultimately came to be enjoyed by the whole of Mount Lebanon in Ottoman Syria, Druze and Christian areas alike.^[30]

Ma’an Dynasty, The Druze Power at its Height

Main article: Maan family

Fakhreddin castle in Palmyra

With the advent of the Ottoman Turks and the conquest of Syria by Sultan Selim I in 1516, the Ma’ans were acknowledged by the new rulers as the feudal lords of southern Lebanon. Druze villages spread and prospered in that region, which under Ma’an leadership so flourished that it acquired the generic term of Jabal Bayt-Ma’an (the mountain of the Ma’an family) or Jabal al-Druze. The latter title has since been usurped by the Hawran region, which since the middle of the nineteenth century has proven a haven of refuge to Druze emigrants from Lebanon and has become the headquarters of Druze power.

Under Fakhreddin II,the Druze dominion increased until it included almost all Syria, extending from the edge of the Antioch plain in the north to Safad in the south, with a part of the Syrian desert dominated by Fakhreddin's castle at Tadmur (Palmyra), the ancient capital of Zenobia. The ruins of this castle still stand on a steep hill overlooking the town. Fakhr-al-Din became too strong for his Turkish sovereign in Constantinople. He went so far in 1608 as to sign a commercial treaty with Duke Ferdinand I of Tuscany containing secret military clauses. The Sultan then sent a force against him, and he was compelled to flee the land and seek refuge in the courts of Tuscany and Naples in 1614.

In 1618 political changes in the Ottoman sultanate had resulted in the removal of many enemies of Fakhr-al-Din from power, signaling the prince's triumphant return to Lebanon soon afterwards.

In 1632 Ahmad Koujak was named Lord of Damascus, being a rival of Fakhr-al-Din and a friend of the bloody sultan Murad IV, who ordered koujak and the sultanat navy to attack Lebanon and depose Fakhr-El-Din. This time the prince had decided to remain in Lebanon and resist the offensive, but the death of his son Ali in Wadi el-Taym was the beginning of his defeat. He later took refuge in Jezzine's grotto, closely followed by Koujak who caught eventually with him and his family.

Fakhr-al-Din finally traveled to Turkey, appearing before the sultan, defending himself so skilfully that the sultan gave him permission to return to Lebanon.

Later, the sultan changed orders and had Fakhr-al-Din and his family killed on 13 April 1635, in Istanbul, the capital city of the Ottoman Empire, bringing an end to possibly one of the greatest eras in the history of Lebanon, a country which would not regain its natural and current boundaries that Fakhr-al-Din once ruled until Lebanon was proclaimed a republic in 1920.

Fakhr-al-Din was the first ruler in modern Lebanon to open the doors of his country to foreign Western influences. Under his auspices the French established a khan (hostel) in Sidon, the Florentines a consulate, and the Christian missionaries were admitted into the country. Beirut and Sidon, which Fakhr-al-Din beautified, still bear traces of his benign rule.

Shihab Dynasty, The Last Feudal Chiefs

Main article: Shihab family

Druze woman wearing a tantur, Chouf, 1870s.

As early as the days of Saladin, and while the Ma’ans were still in complete control over southern Lebanon, the Shihab tribe, originally Hijaz Arabs but later settled in ?awran, advanced from ?awran, in 1172, and settled in Wadi-al-Taym at the foot of Mt. Hermon. They soon made an alliance with the Ma’ans and were acknowledged as the Druze chiefs in Wadi-al-Taym. At the end of the seventeenth century (1697) the Shihabs succeeded the Ma’ans in the feudal leadership of Druze southern Lebanon, although they professed Sunni Islam. Secretly, they showed sympathy with Druzism, the religion of the majority of their subjects.

The Shihab leadership continued till the middle of the last century and culminated in the illustrious governorship of Amir Bashir Shihab II (1788-1840) who, after Fakhr-al-Din, was the most powerful feudal lord Lebanon produced. Though governor of the Druze Mountain Bashir was a crypto-Christian, and it was he whose aid Napoleon solicited in 1799 during his campaign against Syria.

Having consolidated his conquests in Syria (1831-1838), Ibrahim Pasha, son of the viceroy of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha, made the fatal mistake of trying to disarm the Christians and Druzes of the Lebanon and to draft the latter into his army. This was contrary to the principles of the life of independence which these mountaineers had always lived, and resulted in a general uprising against Egyptian rule. The uprising was encouraged, for political reasons, by the British. The Druzes of Wadi-al-Taym and ?awran, under the leadership of Shibli al-Aryan, distinguished themselves in their stubborn resistance at their inaccessible headquarters, al-Laja, lying southeast of Damascus.

Qaysites and the Yemenites

Main article: Battle of Ain Darra

Meeting of Druze and Ottoman leaders in Damascus, about the control of Jebel Druze.

The conquest of Syria by the Muslim Arabs in the middle of the seventh century introduced into the land two political factions later called the Qaysites and the Yemenites. The Qaysite party represented the ?ijaz and Bedouin Arabs who were regarded as inferior by the Yemenites who were earlier and more cultured emigrants into Syria from southern Arabia. Druzes and Christians grouped in political rather than religious parties so the party lines in Lebanon obliterated racial and religious lines and the people grouped themselves regardless of their religious affiliations, into one or the other of these two parties. The sanguinary feuds between these two factions depleted, in course of time, the manhood of the Lebanon and ended in the decisive battle of Ain Dara in 1711, which resulted in the utter defeat of the Yemenite party. Many Yemenite Druzes thereupon immigrated to the Hawran region and thus laid the foundation of Druze power there.

Civil War of 1860

Main article: 1860 Lebanon conflict

The Druzes and their Christian Maronite neighbors, who had thus far lived as religious communities on friendly terms, entered a period of social disturbance in the year 1840, which culminated in the civil war of 1860. For this disturbance the Ottoman Sultan was, in a great measure, responsible. The Sultan, realizing that the only way to bring the semi-independent people of Lebanon under his direct control was to sow the seeds of discord among the people themselves, inaugurated in the mountain a policy long tried and found successful in the Ottoman provinces, the policy of "divide and rule".

Also, after the Shehab dynasty converted to Christianity the Druze community and feudal leaders came under attack from the regime with the collaboration of the Catholic Church, and the Druze lost most of their political and feudal powers. Also, the Druze formed a strong ally with Britain and allowed Protestant missionaries to enter Mount Lebanon, creating tension between them and the Catholic Maronites, who were supported by the french. The civil war of 1860 cost the Christians some ten thousand lives in Damascus, Zahle, Deir al-Qamar, Hasbaya and other towns of Lebanon.

The European powers then determined to interfere and authorized the landing in Beirut of a body of French troops under General Beaufort d’Hautpoul, whose inscription can still be seen on the historic rock at the mouth of the Dog River (Nahr El-Kalb). Following the recommendations of the powers, the Ottoman Porte granted Lebanon local autonomy, guaranteed by the powers, under a Christian governor. This autonomy was maintained until World War I.

Modern history

In Lebanon, Syria and Israel the Druze have official recognition as a separate religious community with its own religious court system. Their symbol is an array of five colors, green, red, yellow, blue and white. Each color pertains to a symbol defining its principles: green for Aql "the Universal Mind", red for Nafs "the Universal Soul", yellow for Kalima "the Truth/Word", blue for Sabq "the Antagonist/Cause" and white for Tali "the Protagonist/Effect". These principles are why the number five has special considerations among the religious community, it is usually represented symbolically as a five-pointed star.

In Syria

Druze warriors preparing to go to battle with Sultan Pasha al-Atrash in 1925.

In Syria, most Druze live in the Jebel al-Druze, a rugged and mountainous region in the southwest of the country, which is more than 90 percent Druze inhabited, some 120 villages are exclusively so.




Flag of Jabal el Druze representing the 5 Druze principles, other variations of the flag exist

The Druze always played a far more important role in Syrian politics than its comparatively small population would suggest. With a community of little more than 100,000 in 1949, or roughly three percent of the Syrian population, the Druzes of Syria's southeastern mountains constituted a potent force in Syrian politics and played a leading role in the nationalist struggle against the French. Under the military leadership of Sultan Pasha al-Atrash the Druzes provided much of the military force behind the Great Syrian Revolt of 1925-1927. In 1945 Amir Hasan al-Atrash, the paramount political leader of the Jebel al-Druze, led the Druze military units in a successful revolt against the French, making the Jebel al-Druze the first and only region in Syria to liberate itself from French rule without British assistance. No Syrians played a more heroic role in the struggle against colonialism or shed more blood for independence than the Druzes. At independence the Druzes, made confident by their successes, expected that Damascus would reward them for their many sacrifices on the battlefield. They demanded to keep their autonomous administration and many political privileges accorded them by the French and sought generous economic assistance from the newly independent government.

Druze leaders meeting in Jebel al-Druze, Syria, 1926.

Well led by the Atrash household and jealous of their reputation as Arab nationalists and proud warriors, the Druze leaders refused to be beaten into submission by Damascus or cowed by threats. When a local paper in 1945 reported that President Shukri al-Quwatli (1943-1949) had called the Druzes a "dangerous minority" Sultan Pasha al-Atrash flew into a rage and demanded a public retraction. If it were not forthcoming, he announced, the Druzes would indeed become "dangerous" and a force of 4,000 Druze warriors would "occupy the city of Damascus." Quwwatli could not dismiss Sultan Pasha's threat. The military balance of power in Syria was tilted in favor of the Druzes, at least until the military build up during the 1948 War in Palestine. One advisor to the Syrian Defense Department warned in 1946 that the Syrian army was "useless," and that the Druzes could "take Damascus and capture the present leaders in a breeze."

During the four years of Adib Shishakli's rule in Syria (December 1949 to February 1954) the Druze community was subjected to a heavy attack by the Syrian regime. Shishakli believed that among his many opponents in Syria, the Druzes were the most potentially dangerous, and he was determined to crush them. He frequently proclaimed: "My enemies are like a serpent: the head is the Jebel al-Druze, the stomach Homs, and the tail Aleppo. If I crush the head the serpent will die." Shishakli dispatched 10,000 regular troops to occupy the Jebel al-Druze. Several towns were bombarded with heavy weapons, killing scores of civilians and destroying many houses. According to Druze accounts, Shishakli encouraged neighboring bedouin tribes to plunder the defenseless population and allowed his own troops to run amok.

Shishakli launched a brutal campaign to defame the Druzes for their religion and politics. He accused the entire community of treason, at times claiming they were agents of the British and Hashimites, at others that they were fighting for Israel against the Arabs. He even produced a cache of Israeli weapons allegedly discover in the Jabal. Even more painful for the Druze community was his publication of "falsified Druze religious texts" and false testimonials ascribed to leading Druze sheikhs designed to stir up sectarian hatred. This propaganda was also broadcasted in the Arab world, mainly Egypt. Shishakli was assassinated in Brazil on September 27, 1964 by a Druze seeking revenge for Shishakli's bombardment of the Jebel al-Druze.

After the Shishakli’s military campaign, the Druze community lost a lot of its political influence but many Druze military officers played an important role when it comes to the Baathist regime currently ruling Syria.

In Lebanon

Prophet Job shrine in Lebanon the Chouf region.

The Druze community played an important role in the formation of the modern state of Lebanon, and even though they are a minority they played an important role in the Lebanese political scene. Before and during the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), the Druze were in favor of Pan-Arabism and Palestinian resistance represented by the PLO. Most of the community supported the Progressive Socialist Party formed by the Lebanese leader Kamal Jumblatt and they fought alongside other leftist and Palestinian parties against the Lebanese Front that was mainly constituted of Christians. After the assassination of Kamal Jumblatt on March 16, 1977, his son Walid Jumblatt took the leadership of the party and played an important role in preserving his father’s legacy and sustained the existence of the Druze community during the sectarian bloodshed that lasted till 1990.

In August 2001 Patriarch Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir toured the predominantly Druze Chouf region of Mount Lebanon and visited Mukhtara, the ancestral stronghold of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. The tumultuous reception that Sfeir received not only signified a historic reconciliation between Maronites and Druze, who fought a bloody war in 1983-1984, but underscored the fact that the banner of Lebanese sovereignty had broad multi-confessional appeal and was a cornerstone for the Cedar Revolution.

Regions with significant populations
Syria 865,000  Lebanon 280,000 to 350,000  Israel 118,000  Jordan 20,000 Outside the Middle East 100,000 In the  United States 20,000