Ottoman History Podcast - Syrian Alawis under Ottoman Rule

Episode Date: March 4, 2017

Episode 303 with Stefan Winter hosted by Chris Gratien Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud Although the Alawi communities of Syria have played an important role in the politics of the 20th century, the longer history of these communities has often been obscured by generalizations and discourses of mystification. In this episode, we talk to Stefan Winter about the history of the Alawis over the centuries, which is the subject of his new book A History of the ‘Alawis: From Medieval Aleppo to the Turkish Republic. In particular, we focus on the ways in which Syrian Alawis were incorporated into the Ottoman Empire and experienced changes in Ottoman politics and governance. We also examine the social and economic history of the Alawis during the early modern period and the encounter with modernity. « Click for More »

Hello and welcome to another episode of Ottoman History Podcast. I'm Chris Grayton. Today's episode is focusing on the history of Syrian Alawis or the Alawi community. We are going to take a broad perspective in the beginning and then really focus in on the history of the Alawi community in the Ottoman period. This is a really understudied topic, but now much less understudied because our guest today on the program, Stefan Winter, has published a new book entitled A History of the Alawis, which is out from Princeton University Press.

Welcome to the program, Stéphane. Thanks very much. Stéphane Winter is Associate Professor of History at Université du Québec à Montréal. That's the University of Québec in Montreal, or UCAM. His previous monograph entitled The Shiites of Lebanon Under Ottoman Rule looked at rural communities in Ottoman Lebanon and Greater Syria during the early modern period. And so A History of the Alawis is a nice complement to that long history of research. I'll start off by reading some praise for the book from Bruce Masters, a well-respected historian of Syria. He says about A History of the Alawis,

there's a real need for a study of the Alawis and their origins and place in Ottoman Syrian society. This book fills that void. It debunks historical myths on either side of the current sectarian divide in Syria and demystifies the sect's genesis. Incredibly rich in scope and detail, this seminal book should be read by anyone interested in syria's past and present so stefan let's start off by talking about the the guiding motivation to write a book that treats the history of the alouise in this very long historical perspective all right um as you already suggested it is similar in some ways to my first book, and I guess you could say it developed as a sideline to that. Originally, in my dissertation, I thought of maybe treating both communities, but for reasons of space and also of subject, it was not really necessary or the best idea. So I've been collecting materials on the Alawis for many years, specifically on their situation under Ottoman rule in the administrative system of the provinces of what is now Syria and Lebanon and southern Turkey and so on.

There's quite a number of these documents, as you can imagine, much more than one often talks about in current discourse on the Alawis. They were not necessarily treated differently than other rural communities. There are parallels to be made with issues of Lebanon or with various Kurdish or Bedouin rural communities in northern Syria, which I'm also interested in. The difference is, of course, that because of the current civil war in Syria, and also for a number of years before that, the Alawis have always been treated in Western discourse, in the media and so on, as something exceptional. And a lot of the previous studies on Alawism have always kind of gone from their somewhat strange medieval theology

and jumped straight to Hafez al-Assad and the so-called capture of power of the Alawis. And people have literally said, well, you know, Ottoman period, there's nothing to say they were oppressed, and that's it. And that's no more than that. And with all these documents, I thought, okay, let's actually take a look at what their situation was. Right. There's idea. And we'll talk a little bit about the historical development of the Alawi community. But so Alawis who were long concentrated in the mountains of the Northern Syrian coast, there's this idea that during the 20th century, they somehow come down from the mountains of the northern Syrian coast, this idea that during the 20th century they somehow come down from the mountains

and start ruling Syria as if they had been up there from time immemorial. And your work shows that there's actually a long history of movement and connections and engagement with the surrounding communities and the polities that had ruled over Alawis over roughly a millennium throughout history. That's true. Although throughout the medieval period into the autumn period, into the late autumn period, they were, of course, concentrated in the mountains. Yeah.

There was no significant migration towards the coastal cities or Damascus until the French Mandate. I don't even touch that in the book. But even in the period before, it would be wrong to think that they were cut off from the world around them. Just as tax farmers, as agricultural producers, they were always integrated in the economy and in the social life of the region. And one of the interesting things we also see in this work is that historically, the Alawi community is connected to greater Syria, but also to southern Anatolia, places that are now in modern Turkey.

I mean, some of the earliest large migrations out of the mountain during the 19th century were in fact north towards the Chukorova region in Adana. That's right. What is interesting is that it's relatively recent in the history of the Alawite community itself and their own oral history, kind of institutionalized in the Tarikh al-Aliwi, this famous work of al-Iwi history in the early 20th century. These regions are presented as original areas of al-Iwi settlement. This is historically not necessarily true.

And there's Ottoman documentation that's fairly precise in dating the beginning of this migration to the early 18th century. Yes, exactly. in dating the beginning of this migration to the early 18th century. Yes, exactly. So let's initiate our listeners who aren't deeply involved in the literature and the history and politics of Syria. Tell us about the origins of the Alawis, the best we can. It's a complicated question.

As you point out in your introduction, sometimes it's puzzling that we always begin with studies of such communities during the medieval period with some sort of religious conversion as if religion is the defining feature of a particular community but to the best of your ability tell us about uh how you frame sort of the origins and development of the aloui community during the medieval period um okay i will try and as you indicated already raises a number of questions why do we have to define them in terms of religion yeah and the reason we do define them during the medieval period? Okay, I will try. And as you indicated already, it raises a number of questions. Why do we have to define them in terms of religion?

Yeah. And the reason we do define them in terms of religion is because as a group, whether called Alawis, as we have been doing for a century, or Nusairis, the more classical term, they have been recorded, defined, discriminated against in the sources on the basis of a religious identity.

The population that now has this religious identity, of course, its roots go back further in the region, but the process of conversion to this religious confessional identity starts in Baghdad during the last imams, the last Shi'i imams in the 9th century, where there were several groups of people having or claiming to have a particular mystical knowledge of the true nature of the cosmos and the imamate and so on and so forth, and who go out to find disciples to convert the masses to their brand of gulat, shi'i mysticism. And again, nowadays we have the tendency to see the Alawis as this sort of exception, as this bizarre holdover

from the secret mystical path of the high medieval period. In fact, there were many of these movements, including the Ismailis, who are kind of born of the same social milieu around the later imams in Baghdad and who go out seeking to convert the masses to their brand of Shiism and find converts among a large, disaffected rural population throughout North Africa and the Middle East. So the Alawis were really part of a very large movement,

one strand of the Shi'i outreach of the medieval period, 9th, 10th, 11th century. And one that happens to have gained some traction and survived until modern times. And for our listeners in Turkey, we'll make the always necessary clarification that Alawis are not necessarily the same as the people who are considered Turkish or Kurdish Alawis in Turkey today. But in your description of that process,

there is some maybe deep historical parallel in that, like, if we look at the work of Ayfer Karakay Stump, for example, Sufi orders and scholars who were also part of this kind of spreading of particular mystic traditions into the countryside of Anatolia, even prior to the Ottoman period, sort of led to the formation of that community. So while the Turkish or Kurdish Alawis aren't necessarily connected to who we call Alawis today in Syria, maybe there is some, if we want to talk about a connection, it's deep in that past. Absolutely.

It's a coincidence nowadays that the Alevis and the Alevis have adopted a name that is basically the same, both based on Ali. Right. Then again, it's not a coincidence, not a complete coincidence. Both are born of these elite mystical movements, but that were diffused to a large rural population or several rural populations. It's probably wrong to think of the Alawis and the Alevis as two distinct communities. In reality, they're both dozens of distinct communities having similar orientations, but with very major differences, as can only be the case between dispersed, illiterate rural populations. Exactly.

And I think that's one of the challenges of studying a community like this over such a long time period. I noticed in your book that the names of, or the identifiers of the community frequently change. Historically, Alawi is not the name that was used in the, in the axonymic sources, for example, usually refer to the community as Nusayris. Yeah, that's right. Named for Ibn Nusayr, the 9th century figure who was a close adept of the 10th and 11th Imam. It's for this reason that they've been known throughout the medieval period as Nusayris, as followers of Ibn Nusayr. Something that was not necessarily very pejorative in the beginning.

They rejected the term themselves, used other terms, the true believers or the muwahidun, the monotheists and so on. But with time, of course, their more distinctive nature, namely that they followed this one teaching of Ibn Nusayr, as developed by several other scholars stuck with them. It's only in recent years and in recent centuries, let's say since the early 20th century, that they've rejected the term more clearly

and adopted as a group name something else. And so A History of the Alawis is a book about a community that is in a sense defined by a particular set of religious practices and identifications, but this work is really more of a political and social history of the Alawi community. You're raising the major paradox of this book, which claims on the cover page to be a history of the Alawi community, whereas the conclusion I reach is basically that there is no such thing as the Alawi community. It's kind of the conclusion I already tried to present in my earlier book on the Shias,

that by defining them as a community, as implying that there is a uniform sectarian confessional political agenda, that that is actually not borne out by the historical evidence. Right. I can't really get around that. I mean, if people are interested in the Alawis as they are and should be in regards to their political role in Syria nowadays,

we want to know about that. But if you look at the actual sources, you see that the communities claiming an Alawi identity or having the Alawi identity foisted on them in historical times were often very divided amongst themselves, were more defined by their internal conflicts than by their otherness as regards to the rest of society, and so on and so forth. And of course, there's nothing particularly unique about that historical experience for the Alawis within that,

at least the Ottoman context, that this would be equally said about many different communities. would be equally said about many different communities. Absolutely, and that's the one thing I try to show, is that they are really not more unique than any other rural or even urban community is unique within the Ottoman context. In pre-modern times, being unique was the norm, and the Alawis are not very different than others. Welcome back to Ottoman History Podcast. Chris Grayton here with Stefan Winter talking about his new book, A History of the Alawis from Medieval Aleppo to the Turkish Republic,

out this year from Princeton University Press. To find out how to get a hold of this work or to find some further reading for this podcast, visit our website, ottomanhistorypodcast.com, where we have a short bibliography. So, A History of the Alois is an expansive work. It covers a long time period, and you do have two chapters, actually, on the pre-Ottoman period. But as you said, really, its focus is on Alawi historical experience under the Ottomans. And so let's move our conversation right to that and tell our listeners that if they want to find out about the earlier stuff, they can check out your book or some of the other literature on the subject. check out your book or some of the other literature on the subject. Alawis first come under Ottoman rule during the 16th century as part of the broader Ottoman conquest of what was largely the former Mamluk Empire. Tell us about those initial years of the incorporation of the predominantly Alawi regions

into the Ottoman political and economic apparatuses? Well, as you can imagine, there's not really a lot of sources on the rural areas of Ottoman Syria or anywhere else in that period. What we have in the Tarikh al-Alawi and other sort of oral history-based imaginings of Alawi history is the story that the Alawi, the very large Alawi population of Aleppo was massacred upon Selim's conquest in 1516. Historically, there's really no evidence for that. There's no evidence in the Ottoman chronicles, even though they very happily refer to killing Kisselbash in eastern Anatolia and so on. What we have as a concrete historical source for this period

are the Ottoman tax records. The Tapu Takhir Defreders of the early 16th century were, for example, the earliest work of, the earliest tax census taken for the province of Tripoli, the region of Tripoli, which was the relevant province where the Alouis were concentrated, dates from 1519 or just shortly after the conquest. For that reason, it's actually an interesting source on late Mamluk administrative history. Because all the Ottomans really did at that early stage was just continue on with the administrative practice of the Mamluks.

That's an interesting point. And in these sources, there's two things. There's a couple of reference, there's a couple of marginal notes. Tapu-Takheers are usually just tax censuses, lists of what each village or tribe can produce in terms of revenue. However, there are sometimes marginal notes that refer to political events, such as little uprisings, tax revolts, problems in collecting taxes. And we see that there were actually a number of revolts in the mountains shortly before 1519,

upon the Ottoman conquest, that prevented the tax assessment in several Alawi villages. And references to people fleeing from these Alawi villages to the lowlands, to Homs and Hama and Aleppo. So rather than there having been war in Aleppo that drove the people into the mountains, it was more than anything the other way around. That's the one thing with this source. The other source is we're lucky in the sense, or I'm lucky in the sense, that the Ottomans, like the Mamluks before them, imposed a special head tax on Alawis.

This is rather unique in terms of the administrative history. Most other rural populations, whether Christian or Muslim, paid the same tax rates, which could vary from one province, if not from one village to the next. But this is one of the rare times we have really a sectarian tax. We can identify heterodox Muslims vis-à-vis non-heterodox Muslims. This head tax called the Dirhem Rijal, the Piaster on Men, was imposed on Alawis on a per capita basis. And I don't believe you can really use tax censuses as statistical material. I don't believe you can really use tax censuses as statistical material,

but what I can and what I have used it for is any place where the dirhem was assessed, you could be sure there was at least an Alawi population. And that allows us to trace with some precision exactly where the population was concentrated. That's a very fascinating find, because generally in the history of Ottoman law and taxation, you know you have this division, Christians pay a different tax because they don't serve in the military, for example. This is a conventional narrative. Here you have Alawis being treated as a not really normal Muslim community in the sense that there's a special tax on them, but also not classified in the way that Christians or Jews and other non-Muslims would be classified.

That's right. So it is a discriminatory tax in the sense that only one kind of person pays it, much as the jizya is a discriminatory tax. How high, how onerous the jizya actually was on the Christians, whether it was impossible and discriminatory and oppressive, that's of course a subject for debate and probably varied from one district to the next. And I think you can probably, or we have to say the same thing for the Alawis. I can't tell you this was particularly onerous on them because every village throughout Syria and other countries basically paid a different tax rate or a different combination of taxes.

And it does show that the Alawis were distinguished by their sectarian religious identity. At the same time, it also shows that they were integrated into the Ottoman administrative system. They have this identity which singles them out, but which is nonetheless written into the administrative record and is normalized somewhere. So let's briefly, before moving into sort of the 17th century and the transformation of the Ottoman state during that time, let's just talk about the socioeconomic life of Alawis in the early modern period. How did they earn their livings?

What were the agricultural or pastoral productions, trade, et cetera? We don't really know from the documents. We know that they produced silk in the mountains. This was one of the most important, certainly cash crops. Of course, they had a local farming and orchard economy. The lower-lying villages probably had fishing and so on and so forth.

But I can't really tell you from the documentation how they lived. What is important and what becomes a big part of the story I'm telling is that in the 18th century, tobacco becomes a major, major innovation in the agricultural production and therefore in the organization, the social economic organization of the region. So we'll talk about the impact of tobacco and commercialization in just a bit. Let's first talk about what happens to Alois during the period, some would call it the period of crisis in the Ottoman Empire, or a period where you see a shift towards a more decentralized form of taxation and administration. You can explain how you would characterize this period in the greater

Syria region and for the Alawis in particular. But yeah, during the beginning of the 17th century, how do we see the political relationship between the Ottoman state and the Alawis? Is it similar to what was going on in other parts of the empire at that time? It appears to be very similar. For the early 17th century, it's really hard to say because as you know, there are so few Ottoman sources or other sources for the early 17th century. Starting in the mid-17th century, we're quite lucky because the court records of Tripoli are extant starting in 1666. And right away with the first register, we have numerous iltizan contracts given to local notable figures throughout the hinterland of Tripoli, as in the rest of the empire. This is indeed the start of the age of the Ayaan, I guess you could say, in urban as well as rural areas.

And rather than send some Ottoman Timariot to try and raise taxes in the highlands of a region where he's not at home, you give these cash tax farming contracts to local notables. And this happens throughout the Lebanese Syrian highlands and including the Alawi regions where they do give contracts to well-known Alawi families. And so this leads to the formation of a local Alawi elite that is governing over largely other Alawi populations, but is becoming integrated into sort of an Ottoman provincial elite class? Yes, absolutely.

That's like the rest of the Ottoman Empire probably at this time. This local elite is being promoted. These families, several of whom we know the names of because their names appear in the tax court records and in the court records of Tripoli, were probably important families before, but now being consecrated by the Ottoman court in Tripoli as the Miltesems, of course, are able to consolidate the position and assume a leadership position, which often goes beyond their pure tax district.

And for our listeners who have been following the podcast for a few years, we had an episode a couple years ago with Zoe Griffith about Tripoli during this time period, again, employing the court records and looking at the creation of these local families who benefited from this administrative shift in the Ottoman Empire. I don't remember if these families were in fact Alawi because they wouldn't necessarily be identified in the documents as such. But they were, in some cases, they were families who were, for example, acquiring large swaths of mulberries. Mulberries are, of course, used for the production of silk. And during this period, what Zoe found was, in fact,

that these local elite became increasingly sort of in-placed Syrian regions. Some of them had come from elsewhere, but also became part of this Ottoman notable class. Yes, absolutely. Especially in the highlands of Tripoli, the southern highlands were completely dominated by 12 Rishi elites who controlled multiple tax farms. And in the north was Alawi families. And you're quite right.

They are not identified by their sect in these court records. First of all, because it's not necessary. There's a few cases, in fact, where there's Christian notables as well acting as tax intermediaries. It's neither necessary nor is it desirable, because that would be calling attention to an aspect of their identity, which in pure Islamic law might cause a problem. However, when we know these families,

and often the same family will be castigated for tolerating brigandage and for oppressing the villages that they're supposed to be taxing, and they'll use all sorts of evil words against them, Rafizi and Nusairi, and this and that and the other thing. And the next year you see the same court appoints them back to their Ilthizan position.

So this was not a secret to anyone, but it was not necessary to name it in the court records. So let's talk about how political and economic change during the 18th century impacted the historical experience of Alawis under Ottoman rule. We've already mentioned the introduction or the rise of tobacco in this region

during the 18th century. Tell us how the rise of tobacco changes things on the ground. The way it changes things on the ground, I would say, is it makes the rich richer and therefore, by definition, the poor poorer. And what we have is a couple of notable families, Alois and others,

who have been on the scene for a while as simple multisims, becoming basically agricultural entrepreneurs, having larger and larger fields, having more and more villages, producing more and more taxes. The iltizams get more valuable. These families get more entrenched. And you see that

among other reasons. You see already the rise of tobacco. Latakia is a boom town in the 18th century. It goes from nothing to a major port. It goes from being a village of two or three or 4,000 to being the de facto capital of the province of Tripoli. This is something that's often underestimated. The governors of Tripoli spend more time in Lat of the province of Tripoli. This is something that's often underestimated. The governors of Tripoli spend more time in Latakia than in Tripoli at one point. And what this means for the actual agricultural producers in the hinterland and largely around Latakia and Jablah,

so that specific Alawi inhabited part of the province of Tripoli, is that the families that are already there are becoming more powerful. The Ilthizams are being called for them personally. The castles which they inhabit, which notables in the mountains have often inhabited, are starting to be called for the families rather than by their more historical names.

And there's more and more reference to tribes, to these people being the leaders of tribes. Until this point, tribalism is not a factor, certainly in the Ottoman state's perception of this population. I mean, I'm not saying that they were not organized into large clans and tribal units before that, but it doesn't play a role in their tax status, in their organization vis-a-vis the Ottoman state before that.

I suspect that it only starts being a social issue, even for them at that point, where these tax farmers who used to be the headman of the village and so on have suddenly been promoted to something higher. That's a very interesting point. And I guess, are we to understand that the economic boon brought by tobacco increases the political autonomy of the local Alawi elite during the 18th century in terms of their ability to put distance between themselves and the Ottoman state and its policies?

It increases their autonomy in the sense that they are richer. They can raise larger armies, which starts becoming a factor, maybe not right away in the 18th century, but in the 19th century. I wouldn't say it removes them from the Ottoman state because they are as dependent, if not even more dependent on the recognition of the ottoman authorities of their position as tax farmer as head of their tribes so to speak yeah so it's not as if they're being removed from the purview of the ottoman state but that purview is changing and this is also a time period as as I understand it, within which Alevi

population experiences a pretty significant increase, in contrast actually to many other parts of the Ottoman Empire, during which especially the late 18th century is seen as a period of population crisis. Could you develop that and elaborate on what's happening, you know, sort of to ordinary Alevi peasants living in the mountains? Yeah, it seems that there's at least two things happening with this rise of Latakia, rise of tobacco farming and so on. There is, for one, just much more stratification within Alawi society. Like I said, the rich are getting richer, they're more powerful, they're now tribal leaders. They're starting to become feudal players on their own, right? They're starting to become partners of the Shihabi Emirate in Lebanon

and so on and so forth, something which they were never before. That's the one thing that's happening. At the same time, there's also demographic movement, probably expansion. We see them migrating more towards the coastal cities and, as we mentioned earlier, towards Antioch and so on. This possibly because of demographic pressure, just because there is a large population of agricultural workers in the mountains, and also because of this increasing poverty,

this increasing poverty vis-à-vis their own society, vis-à-vis their own elite. I think the research on Mount Lebanon suggests a similar development, perhaps just a tad bit later, among Maronite communities with the rise of silk economy and mulberries, and the rise of Beirut as well as a major commercial center. Yes, I think there are parallels to be made there, the expansion of the Maronite community, particularly towards the south, towards the Chouf, towards the southern Lebanese mountains, starts a good bit earlier. And it probably has more to do with increased trade opportunities, with settlement opportunities provided by the Drusimers, in coordination with the French, who are becoming major commercial partners. In this case, the Alawis are not so much looking for new commercial opportunities

as new farming opportunities. They go towards Antioch and then the Chukorova as farmers to escape the poverty and the, let's say, feudalism that is becoming more and more marked in their region of origin. Welcome back to Ottoman History Podcast. Chris Grayton here with Stefan Winter talking about his new book, A History of the Alawis from Medieval Aleppo to the Turkish Republic. So Stefan, we've set up a situation in which Alawis are experiencing a tremendous political and socioeconomic change during the 18th century, and especially with the introduction of tobacco. Let's move to the 19th century. You have a whole chapter in the book entitled Imperial Reform and Internal Colonization, Alois Society in the Face of

Modernity. So the chapter is actually periodized 1808 to 1888. What's the major transition point that you focus on? That's a good question. And I apologize for the title of the chapter. I mean, modernity, trying to put a thousand years of Alawi history into six chapters in a short book. I try to find general categories that sort of generally define what's happening in a specific period. 1808 marks a local, rather important local battle between Ismailis and Alawis that sort of highlights the high point of what I call Alawi feudal power, this independence of the Alawi Ayan as not just Murtazans, but as industrial, as agricultural industrialists and as leaders of militias. Whereas 1888, we can get to that later, marks the foundation of the Vilayet of Beirut, in which Latakia is integrated.

Modernity is sort of a general theme that you can probably apply to anything that happens within the span of time, in one way or another. I mean, so what's the process that takes place during this period? It overlaps with the Tanzimat period of the Ottoman Empire, of course, a major administrative restructuring and sort of legal restructuring of the Ottoman Empire, and especially later on, the provincial settings in particular. That's the problem of this chapter. Tanzimat, reform, modernity, and so on is one aspect, but there's so many different things going on that I try to, that I have to get into the pages there. At the beginning of the century, it's really kind of the opposite of the Tanzimat. The Ottoman state has either lost control or is just very, very hands-off in its approach

to governing this region, opening the door to local notables again in the cities, the Ayan rule in the cities, including governors who rule for a very, very long time without any sort of control and who are very inimical to the Alawi's interests. This is also a period of rising sectarianism as the entire region comes under pressure, as the entire Ottoman Empire comes under pressure militarily from Western powers, comes under pressure, particularly in coastal regions, from the presence of French and other European merchants and navies and so on and so forth. Opening the door to a lot of instability, a lot of fighting between these different mountain elites where the Alawis, because they are more and more powerful, participate, but also opening the door to

sort of Islamist reactions, new ideologies, Wahhabism coming up from Arabia and having a big influence in the politics of Damascus and southern Syria. And in the case of the Alawis of particular importance, the arrival of a Wahhabi-style propagandist from North Africa, Mohamed el-Maribi, or Murabi, who sets up shop in Latakia and really motivates a lot of the violence between groups, a lot of the violence of tax collection that was always a fact of rural life, but gives it a new sectarian bent that probably wasn't there before. That's the first part of the century. Then, of course, comes a complete shift of gears with the Egyptian invasion, which sort of reverses a lot of that and emancipates the Alawis like never before.

The Egyptian regime wants to be very progressive, criticizes Mughrabi and the discrimination of the Alawis and the de facto slave trade in Alawi girls as servants, maidservants in Latakia and so on, all the while trying to integrate the Alawis, conscript the Alawis, disarm the Alawis, which of course doesn't go over well either. And when they're kicked out by basically the British, then the Tanzimat state comes along trying to establish central control with very, very few resources as elsewhere in the empire and when does that happen for the case of the aloues because it tanzimat is very uneven in terms of like when we see a real impact in some parts of the empire it's very early um but in many others it's extremely late and and

there's even parts of the empire that during the proper tanzimat of 1839 to 1876, we don't actually see many of the reforms implemented. So for the case of the Alevis, how is it? That's absolutely true. We imagine the Tanzimat go off like a rocket in 1839. That's of course not the case. After the Egyptians are kicked out, there's another long period where these local feudal forces get the upper hand again and dominate Alawi society. Although even then, there's a new approach on the part of the Ottomans. They try to put it in a more legal framework. They try to listen to the Alawis. They start trying to integrate them already in the 1850s onto the new consultative councils being instituted on the provincial level.

Again, unevenly, but starting throughout the empire. But where it really starts and why the Alawi Mountains, just like the Lebanese mountains and the Chukurova and so on, are sort of an early test arena of Ottoman modernity, it starts with education,

with the foundation of, say, a national Ottoman education system, which again is very uneven, but which is particularly important in these regions where foreign missionaries are so present. Right. So this is mainly under the reign

of Abd al-Hamid II that the education in the Alawi region really takes off. And again, as you mentioned, it's in part a response to this fact that missionary educational institutions and even attempts at conversion to Protestantism are occurring sort of throughout this Levant area. Yes, it really takes off under Abdulhamid, that's right, and it gets a very sectarian bent at that point. The schools are there to educate them so that the Christian missionaries don't, but it's really also to make them Sunnis. public money raised locally, already starts several years before Abdulhamid in these regions specifically.

The state never really has enough money to follow through and to get all the aluwees. But with Abdulhamid, it becomes really a priority of the state. Yeah, and you mentioned this issue of what we might call sunification. Salim Derengil talks a little bit about this in his book, The Well-Protected Domains. little bit about this in his book, The Well-Protected Domains, efforts to, in a way, subjugate Alawis and make them proper Muslims as a way of retaining sovereignty or increasing the role of the Ottoman state in this region. Do you see this as a very top-down process taking place, or do we find examples in which at least maybe Alawi elite or maybe merchants for economic regions are more willingly participating in this process and even in

seeking to strengthen the relationship with the Ottoman state for one reason or another? No, not really. The Alawi elite, as defined up until that point by their multasm status as tribal leaders and so on, they want nothing to do with the education of other Alawis. That would be a catastrophe for them. So they are certainly not participating in that. Who is participating, as far as we can see in the records, are the Alawis themselves. participating as far as we can see in in the records are the alouis themselves they are very very interested in having access to schools they participate in the building of schools they participate in the financing of schools yeah they have no choice they villages are being assessed specifically for the um construction and maintenance of their own schools and according to the uh

government uh documents themselves they are very very eager to do this right okay these are government documents saying this but it's probably true these populations realize full well that their path to social promotion and economic development has to go through education and they very willingly go to these schools and they very willingly appear to convert to Sunni Islam. There's lots of references, very optimistic and positive references, especially in the Yildiz Palace

collection of tens of thousands of Alawis converting from one day to the next to Sunnism. Their authorities are ecstatic. Whether they've really given up their Alawism is another question. Well, there's this brief period, too, where the religious elite, I guess we could say, or the sheikhs or whoever, are identifying the community to the Ottoman state as, by this term, Hudayi. Sort of that they are Alawis or Nusayris who have become on the right path of Islam.

Yeah, this is a little bit later. And again, the Alawis from the beginning on are very, just like any other rural population, are very savvy in addressing themselves to either the Western missionaries or the Ottoman authorities in the terms that will be beneficial to them, in terms that will get them something like schools. And starting really in the 1890s, I think, there is, again, it's an empire-wide phenomenon.

It's nothing special to Syria or the other ways. There is this culture of petitioning the central authorities in Istanbul and asking for schools or complaining when they're being prevented, because this is a big problem, when they are being prevented from going to the schools that have just been built

by local authorities who don't believe that they've actually converted to Sunnis and so on. So they will petition the central authorities and they will, of course, insist on their loyalty to the Ottoman Sultanate and to their desire for education and for guidance in correct belief. And they will use terms like the Hudayi sect, the rightly guided sect, or the Alawi sect. This is something that you can see in the documents, the occasional use of Alawi to describe themselves, to make themselves more, give themselves a more universal Islamic identity. That's a very interesting development, and it kind of points to how,

especially during this 19th and 20th century period, a community like the Alawis is kind of pulled in multiple directions. Here you have a rapprochement between the Ottomans and the Alawis in terms of education, perhaps many economic interests lie in sort of the, you know, being integrated into the broader Ottoman geography.

Perhaps even, you know, this is an Arabic speaking population historically, but even sort of, you know, engaging in education in Ottoman Turkish would certainly be sort of another form of integration into that Ottomanist identity. But on the other hand, especially during the very late 19th century and early 20th century, you have the rise of notions of an Arab or Arabophone identity in greater Syria. How are the Alawis also part of this development? That's an interesting question because the Ottomans are of course aware that they would like to make the Alawis Turkish Ottoman subjects at the same time they know that to reach them they have to reach them in Arabic so there's a discussion over what language school materials should be printed in. Later on, it really is quite late. The development of Arab nationalism, like any nationalism, is of course a late phenomenon.

Even later in the mountains than in the cities like Beirut and Damascus, where of course a kind of westernized elite is already mulling these ideas for much longer. The Alawis as Arab subjects and possible vectors of Arab nationalism, this is really very late development. It's really not before the First World War that competing claims are made on their political loyalty, namely by the progressive Arab nationalists of Damascus and Beirut, by the Sharifians, and by the Ottomans themselves. So we're painting with very broad strokes here, but getting a general sense of the historical trajectory of the Alawis throughout the Ottoman period and really showing a number of periods of transformation amidst certain continuities and themes in the history of these populations

under Ottoman rule. history of these populations under Ottoman rule. We've got a couple minutes left and I'd like to ask about those early years of the post-Ottoman period that you deal with in your book. That's a huge transformation for the modern Middle East, obviously the fall of the Ottomans and the total restructuring of the political map. But we also see a lot of continuities with what occurred in the decades leading up to the First World War. Tell us about the experience of Alawis during this time, who mostly find themselves

in the French Mandate of Syria, but on the other hand, have historical connections to the yet undefined boundaries between Syria and the modern state of Turkey during the 1920s and 30s. What do we see there? Sure. And that is sort of what interests me throughout the book is the historical continuities from one period to the next that are often treated in separate fashion.

If there's one theme that really applies to Alawi history in general in the 1890s and the early 1900s, it is their desire to be integrated into the wider political community, to be recognized as Muslims, to be allowed to go to state schools, and so on and so forth. And I think this holds true throughout the World War I period and into the early years of the mandate or the Turkish Republic, which is where I stopped the book. And you see that, for example, in two aspects, two or three aspects, I can think of. The revolt of Salah al-Ali, who is today considered sort of the hero, founder of the modern Alawi community in Syria, who was a resistance leader against the French occupation,

fighting the French occupying forces immediately from 1918 until his defeat in 1921. And who did this partially in coordination with other local rebellions in northern Syria, Ibrahim Hananou and so on. And who, like Ibrahim Hananou, had contacts with the Kemalists on the other side of the border, or what was going to be the border, and who were doing the same thing, namely fighting the French occupation forces. And we have evidence, concrete evidence now, that he was receiving arms from the Kemalists and support, soldiers helping him fight the French on his side of the border.

soldiers helping him fight the French on his side of the border, recognizing Turkey's leadership and placing himself in sort of a post-Ottoman, larger regional political project. Other examples are, of course, from the Alexandria district, which was originally part of the mandate of Syria, but starting in 1936 was then contested because the Kemalists, seeing that Syria might become independent, raised their own claims, staked their own claims to the district. And where, of course, many Alawis wanted nothing to do with Turkish national rule. It had become really national, nationalist rule at that point.

Many Alawis left the district to go to Syria. The resistance against the Turkish annexation plans in the district were led by an Alawi lawyer. However, there were also a number of Alawis in the district, which we talk about less today, who were very, very much

in favor of its annexation to Turkey. On what basis? On what basis? On what basis? They had old ties with the Turkish regime. For example the lead Alawi landowner of the region who wanted by all means to stay with

Turkey, the Maruf family, Sadik Maruf, he or his father had been awarded a Mecidiyah order in late 1918 by the Turkish state. He was the most loyal, possibly for personal effective reasons, the most loyal to the Turkish regime. So it was those late Ottoman connections. Late Ottoman connections. Most of the Alawis in Antioch, as elsewhere, were poor

peasants working on other people's fields. However, there were also a few large notable families who were landowners themselves. And they were not necessarily interested in joining in this new republican regime in Syria, where they would be a small minority, and where they feared for their socioeconomic status and interests. So some of them in Alexandria wanted to remain independent under French mandatory rule or within the Republic of Hatay. Others, for older reasons of attachment to the Ottoman state,

wanted to become part of Republican Turkey. So there again, there's not a single position by the entire Alawi community. And so your narrative ends at this moment with the, I guess the division, the political division officially of the historical Alawi community that the

Alawis who end up on the Turkish side of the border are now largely citizens of Turkey, although connections do remain and the rest of the community remains on the other side in what becomes an independent Syria. I mean, what's so great about this work, and I do recommend our listeners to check it out, is that it gives such a detailed history of really a very long period of time that is often totally left out of the discussion, as you said at the beginning. And really, a lot of what I've read, especially in more journalistic or political narratives of Alawi history really kind of begins where your work ends, right?

Like, this is where you end is like almost the starting point for maybe the most nuanced contextualizations of discussion of the politics and identity of Alawis in Syria today. Sure. And as with any other periodization, there's no necessary reason why I stop it at the point I stop it. However, the contexts, the political contexts, the archives and so on, dealing with the Alawis of Turkey and of Syria and of Lebanon and even of Israel, where there's small populations of Alawis as well. These contexts become so different that it starts becoming difficult and possibly not so legitimate to try to squeeze them all into the same volume. So I think all those subjects I could have continued on any one of them or on all of them,

but it really is quite a different project. Yeah, and it's is quite a different project. Yeah. And it's good to leave something for someone else to do and write about since there's, this is a topic of like tremendous interest, I think, for a lot of people today, given the, its relevance to understanding or reinterpreting the present context in Syria, the political context in Syria. I think there's so much left to do and not not just in the periods which I haven't covered, but also in the periods which I did cover. In the Ottoman period, there's an endless amount of sources that are still out there

that I haven't seen yet or that I haven't been able to cover in as much detail as I liked. Part of the major point of the story of the book is just to say there are these sources out there. There's no reason to claim that these periods are obscure or unimportant, as is being done in current discourse. There's no reason for it. So the discourse about the completely mysterious and unknowable past of the Alois is very much called into question by this work. It sets a new research trajectory

for people who are interested in the history of the Alawis, showing that while it is, again, an Arabic-speaking community historically, that there's lots of Turkish sources and Ottoman sources with which you can do some detailed work on the subject. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast

and talking to us about this work. It's been our pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thanks to our listeners for tuning in. I want to remind you that you can check out our website, ottomahistorypodcast.com to find out about Stefan Winter's book, A History of the Alawis from Medieval Aleppo to the Turkish Republic, out this year from Princeton University Press.

Also a great place to leave your comments and questions and get in touch with our other listeners through Facebook, where we have a community of over 25,000 followers. That's all for this episode. Join us next time, and until then, take care. Thank you.