Abstract
The Druze are a religious sect comprising about one million people. Approximately 390 000 live in the Lebanon, 400 000 in Syria, 20 000 in Jordan and 75 000 in Israel and the Golan Heights, with the remainder scattered across the world.1 They live mainly in mountainous regions and have preserved, since their beginnings in the eleventh century, a cultural and political identity distinct from their Muslim and Christian neighbours.
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Notes
For a brief discussion of the problems involved in obtaining exact numbers on the Druze population, see Kais Firro, A History of the Druzes (Leiden: 1992), p. 3.
For a detailed survey of the origins and early history of the Druze, see Firro, A History of the Druzes, pp. 3–28, and ‘Abbas Abu Salih, Tarikh al-Muwahhidin al-Duruz al-Siyasi fi ‘l-Mashriq al-’Arabi [The Political History of the Druze Unitarians in the Arab East] (Beirut: 1981), pp. 9–57. For a review of the more fantastical theories about the Druze, including one in which their origins are said to lie in a crusading regiment (led by a nobleman entitled ‘le Comte de Dreux’) which deserted and settled in the hills of Lebanon, see Philip Hitti, Origins of the Druze People (New York: 1966), pp. 15–17. Hitti has been criticized by modern Druze scholars for his outmoded views on the racial origins of the Druze.
For a useful summary of the Fatimid background to Druzism, see Nejla M. Abu-Izzeddin, The Druzes: a New Study of Their History, Faith and Society (Leiden: 1984), pp. 29–74, and Shakib Saleh, Toldot Hadruzim [History of the Druzes] (Tel Aviv: 1989), pp. 19–38. For studies on al-Hakim see: Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Vol. 3 (Leiden: 1965), ‘Al-Hakim Bi-Amr Allah’, pp. 76–82; and P.J. Vatikiotis, ‘Al-Hakim bi Amrillah: the God-King Idea Realised’, Islamic Culture, 29/1, 1955. For a more reverent view of al-Hakim’s life (occasionally verging on hagiography) see Abu-Izzeddin, The Druzes, pp. 75–86, and Sami Nasib Makarem, The Druze Faith (Delmar, NY: 1974), pp. 14–18.
Benjamin Tudela, The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela: Travels in the Middle Ages (London: 1983), p. 79.
See, for example, Eliahu Epstein, ‘The Druze People: Druze Community in Palestine: Traditional Friendship to the Jews’, Palestine and Near East Economic Magazine, 29, 1939, p. 167.
See also Robert Betts, The Druze (New Haven: 1988), p. 20, and Gabriel Ben Dor, The Druzes in Israel: Political Innovation and Integration in a Middle East Minority (Jerusalem: 1979), p. 90.
Kamal Salibi, The House of Many Mansions: the History of Lebanon Reconsidered (London: 1985), pp. 121–2. Hitti does mention a savage Mamluke attack on the Druze community of Kisrawan in 1305 (Origins of the Druze People, p. 3) but Abu-Izzeddin convincingly refutes this, saying that the Mamlukes were in fact attacking Shi’ite Batinid Kisrawanis (hence the confusion with the Druze). In fact she maintains that there were no Druze living in Kisrawan at that time (The Druze, pp. 159–60).
Nura S. Alamuddin and Paul D. Starr, Crucial Bonds (New York: 1980), p. 19.
For more on Druze settlement in Palestine under the Ma’nids, see Salman Falah, ‘A history of the Druze settlements in Palestine during the Ottoman period’ in Moshe Ma’oz (ed.), Studies on Palestine during the Ottoman Period (Jerusalem: 1975), pp. 31–49.
The result was that they became ‘more concerned with gaining power within government rather than outside it’; M.E. Yapp, The Making of the Modern Near East, 1792–1923 (London: 1987), p. 134.
Given the involvement of the British in driving the Egyptian forces out of Syria and Lebanon in 1840, ‘the British government found itself more involved than ever in Lebanese affairs and sought to create some foundation for its policy in that country. Failing to replace France in the latter’s special relationship with the Maronites, the British government established a connection with their rivals, the Druze’; Shakib Saleh, ‘The British-Druze connection and the Druze rising of 1896 in the Hawran’, Middle Eastern Studies, 13/2, 1977, pp. 251–60.
This dispatch is cited by Joseph Abu Nohra in his article, ‘L’évolution du système politique libanais dans le contexte des conflits régionaux et locaux (1840–1864)’, in Nadim Shehadi and Dana Haffar Mills (eds), Lebanon: a History of Conflict and Consensus (London, 1988), p. 38.
‘The new political division widened the line of religious cleavage and aggravated rather than assuaged the tensity of the situation’; Philip Hitti, Lebanon in History (London: 1957), p. 436.
For a vivid eyewitness account of the events of 1845, see C.H.S. Churchill, The Druzes and the Maronites under Turkish Rule from 1840 to 1860 (New York: 1973), pp. 91–2.
‘Eager to undermine the autonomy of Mount Lebanon, the Ottomans supported the Druze in an effort to discredit the Shihabi Emirate’; Samir Khalaf, Lebanon’s Predicament (New York, 1987), p. 58.
See Y. Porath, ‘The peasant revolt of 1858 in Kisrawan’, African and Asian Studies, 2, 1966, p. 157.
See Paul Saba, ‘The creation of the Lebanese economy: economic growth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’, Roger Owen (ed.), in Essays on the Crisis in Lebanon (London: 1976), p. 10.
See N. Bouron, Les Druzes: Histoire du Liban et de la Montagne Haouranaise (Paris: 1930), pp. 212–19.
Ibid. Firro points out that the frequently quoted sentence which indicates that the Druze practice taqiya by simply following the dominant religion of their environment (‘Our Lord has commanded us to hide in the dominant religion, be it what it may; with Christians Christian; with Muslims, Muslim, and so on’) is taken from a Christian account of Druze religious practice and is probably spurious. The source is entitled Ta’lim al-diyana al-durziyya (‘Principles ol the Druze Faith’) (unpublished manuscript). See Laila Parsons, ‘The Druze, the Jews and the Creation ol a Shared History’, in Ron Nettler and Suha Taji Farouki (eds), Muslim-Jewish Relations: Intellectual Traditions and Modern Politics (London: 1998), pp. 131–48.
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© 2000 Laila Parsons
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Parsons, L. (2000). Introduction: Some Background on the Druze. In: The Druze between Palestine and Israel 1947–49. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230595989_1
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