Druze

• 1. Introduction

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  The Druze call themselves al-Muwaḥḥidūn, which means the Unitarians. The name the wider world uses instead comes from a man the Druze regard as a heretic. He was Muhammad bin Ismail Nashtakin ad-Darazī, an early preacher, and his name probably derives from a Persian word for a seamster. Historians suspect that opponents spread his poor reputation over the whole community by giving it his name. Other theories trace the word to an Arabic term meaning she who studies, or to a Persian word for bliss. In the earliest Druze religious texts, only al-Muwaḥḥidūn appears.

  The people behind that name belong to a faith with no way in. Outsiders cannot convert, and most of its practice is kept secret.

  Several questions follow from that. Who were the men whose quarrel in eleventh-century Cairo gave the faith its shape? Why did a movement that once sent out missionaries stop accepting anyone at all? What do the Druze believe happens to a soul after death? And how did a community numbering under a million people come to matter so much in the politics of Lebanon, Syria and Israel?

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• 2. Cairo, 1017

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  Three men dominate the opening years of the Druze faith, and all three were in Cairo in 1017 and 1018. Hamza ibn Ali ibn Ahmad, an Ismaili mystic and scholar from Zozan in Khorasan, reached Fatimid Egypt in 1014 or 1016. He gathered scholars who met regularly at the Raydan Mosque, close to the Al-Hakim Mosque. Around 1017 he began to preach a doctrine of divine unity.

  His most important supporter was al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, the sixth Fatimid caliph. Al-Hakim issued a decree promoting religious freedom, and in time he became a central figure in the faith Hamza taught.

  The third man, Muhammad bin Ismail Nashtakin ad-Darazi, arrived in Cairo in 1015 or 1017. Most sources say he was born in Bukhara and was of Persian origin. He joined the young movement and became one of its early preachers, and the movement enlisted a large number of adherents. As his following grew, he took the title The Sword of the Faith. He also named himself Lord of the Guides, because the caliph had called Hamza the Guide of the Consented.

  Hamza disliked both the title and the arrogance behind it. In the Epistles of Wisdom he warned Darazi directly: "Faith does not need a sword to aid it." Darazi ignored the warning and kept challenging the Imam. It is said he allowed wine, permitted forbidden marriages and taught metempsychosis, though contemporary and later polemicists may have exaggerated this.

  At sunset on Thursday, the 30th of May 1017, a period known as the divine call opened. It summoned people to a belief in God stripped of every attribute, whether wise, just, outside or inside. It stressed supporting one's fellow man, speaking truthfully and seeking oneness with God. These ideals outranked ritual, law and dogma, and requirements for pilgrimage, fasting, holy days, prayer and charity were downplayed. Sharia was opposed. Meetings for reading, prayer and gathering moved to Thursday, and to places called khalwats rather than mosques. Epistle thirteen of the Epistles of Wisdom described the call as "A spiritual doctrine without any ritualistic imposition."

  Missionaries carried the Druze epistles across the Middle East and took written vows from believers. The time was seen as a revolution of truth.

  Darazi's own path ended badly. By 1018 his followers, the Darazites, taught that universal reason had been incarnated in Adam and passed through the prophets to Ali and then to the Fatimid caliphs. Darazi wrote a book setting this out. When he read from it in the principal mosque in Cairo, riots broke out against his claims, and many of his followers were killed. Hamza rejected the teaching and called Darazi "the insolent one and Satan."

  Darazi then tried to win the caliph over by preaching that al-Hakim and his ancestors were the incarnation of God. Al-Hakim, described as an inherently modest man, did not believe he was God. He suspected Darazi wanted to present himself as a new prophet. The call was suspended from the 19th of May 1018 until the 9th of May 1019, and in 1018 Darazi was executed. Some sources say al-Hakim had it done. Hamza was left as the sole leader of the new faith.

  Druze books remember Darazi as the calf, narrow-minded and hasty. Al-Hakim himself, however, would soon vanish on an evening ride.

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• 3. Persecution and Closure

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  Al-Hakim disappeared one night while out on his evening ride. He was presumably assassinated, perhaps at the behest of his formidable elder sister Sitt al-Mulk. The Druze believe instead that he entered Occultation together with Hamza and three other prominent preachers. The care of the movement passed to a new leader, al-Muqtana Baha'uddin.

  Forty days after the disappearance, the persecutions began. Al-Hakim's underage son, al-Zahir li-I'zaz Din Allah, took the throne. The movement accepted him as caliph but still regarded Hamza as its Imam. In 1021 the regent Sitt al-Mulk ordered the army to destroy the movement, and the call was suspended again until 1026.

  For the next seven years, the Druze faced extreme persecution under a caliph who wanted to eradicate the faith. The Druze were already viewed with suspicion because they would not recognize him as their Imam. Many of Darazi's former followers joined the Unitarians as spies. They stirred up trouble and soiled the community's reputation, which sharpened the friction with the caliph.

  The clashes stretched from Antioch to Alexandria, and tens of thousands of Druze were slaughtered by the Fatimid army. The Druze call this the period of the mihna. The largest massacre took place at Antioch, where 5000 prominent Druze were killed, and Aleppo followed. Captives had to renounce the faith or die. The faith went underground, and the survivors were found principally in southern Lebanon and Syria.

  In 1038, two years after al-Zahir died, the movement could resume. His replacements had friendly political ties with at least one prominent Druze leader. Then, in 1043, Baha al-Din al-Muqtana declared that the sect would no longer accept new pledges. Proselytism has been forbidden ever since, while the community waits for al-Hakim to return at the Last Judgment and usher in a new Golden Age.

  Outsiders took notice of the community only slowly. Around 1165, the Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela passed through Lebanon and became one of the first European writers to name the Druze. An early Hebrew edition of his travels gives the word Dogziyin, though that is clearly a scribal error. He described them as "mountain dwellers, monotheists, who believe in 'soul eternity' and reincarnation," and added that "they loved the Jews."

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• 4. God and Souls

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  A Druze would say that God is wise, mighty and just, but not because he possesses wisdom, might or justice. He is those things by his own essence. This stripping away of every attribute is called tanzīh. God is described as the whole of existence, not merely above it or seated on a throne, since that would make him limited. There is no how, when or where about him, so he cannot be grasped. In this the Druze resemble the Mu'tazila, a school that flourished under Al-Ma'mun, and the Brethren of Purity, known as Ikhwan al-Ṣafa.

  Unlike the Mu'tazila, and like some branches of Sufism, the Druze hold to Tajalli, meaning theophany. Scholars often confuse it with incarnation. In Druze texts, God as Lahut, the divine, shows his light at a station in Nasut, the material realm, without the material becoming divine. The image they offer is a reflection in a mirror. A person appears in the mirror but does not become it. The manuscripts warn against believing that the Nasut is God. Even so, the source notes that some seekers and scholars have taken al-Hakim and other figures to be divine.

  The faith grew out of Isma'ilism, a branch of Shia Islam, yet the Druze do not identify as Muslims. Its theology absorbed ideas from Christianity, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism and Pythagoreanism. The historian David R. W. Bryer calls the Druze ghulat of Isma'ilism, because they exaggerated the cult of al-Hakim and held him divine. He writes that the faith "seems as different from Islam as Islam is from Christianity or Christianity is from Judaism." Politics muddied the picture in 1959, when Al Azhar of Egypt recognized the Druze as an Islamic sect. Gamal Abdel Nasser, then president of Egypt, saw it as a way to spread his influence across the Arab world.

  Reincarnation is a paramount principle. A soul moves at the instant of death, because the Druze hold that body and soul form an eternal pair and a soul cannot exist without a body. A soul passes only into a human body, unlike the Neoplatonic, Hindu and Buddhist systems, where it may enter any living creature. A Druze man returns only as a Druze man, and a Druze woman only as a Druze woman. No Druze is ever reborn as a non-Druze. Souls cannot be divided, and the number of them in the universe is finite. After successive lives the soul completes the cycle, reunites with the Cosmic Mind and reaches the ultimate happiness.

  The Pact of Time Custodian, called Mithāq Walī al-zamān, is regarded as the entrance to the faith. The Druze believe that every Druze signed it in a past life. In its text, the person declares, in sound mind and body and without force, that he repudiates every other creed and religion. He then hands over his soul, body and property to al-Hakim, described as the lonely God.

  The Druze read their holy books in three layers. The first is the obvious, or zahir, open to anyone who can read or hear. The second is the hidden, or batin, reached by those willing to search and learn. The third is the hidden of the hidden, called anagoge, open only to a few truly enlightened people. Hamza argued that the layers complement each other. Purity of the heart does not excuse physical impurity, and prayer is useless if a person is untruthful in speech.

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• 5. Truth and Initiation

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  Truthfulness of the tongue heads the seven moral duties at the core of the faith. The second is protection and mutual aid among brethren in the faith. The third is renouncing all former worship and false belief. The fourth is rejecting the devil, Iblis, and all forces of evil, which the Arabic word Toghyan renders as despotism. The fifth is confessing God's unity. The sixth is accepting God's acts, whatever they are. The seventh is absolute submission to God's will, in secret and in public.

  The custom of taqiyya complicates the Druze identity. Adopted from Ismailism, it means concealing or disguising one's beliefs when necessary. It keeps the teachings from people who are not ready for them and might misunderstand them. It also protects the community when it is in danger. Some Druze claim to be Muslim or Christian to avoid persecution, and some do not.

  The Druze recognize no religious hierarchy, so there is no Druze clergy. The few who are initiated into the holy books are the ʻuqqāl, meaning the wise. They include both men and women and make up less than 10% of the population. Everyone else is juhhāl, the ignorant, and this is the vast majority. Because some find that label disparaging, the terms rūḥāniyy, meaning spiritual, and jismāniyy, meaning physical, are also used. Druze themselves seldom say juhhāl.

  The uninitiated are not given the holy literature and cannot attend the meetings of the ʻuqqāl. Close community life still gives most of them a sense of their ethical duties and a broad, if often flawed, idea of the theology. Initiated women may wear al-mandīl, a loose white veil that covers the hair and wraps around the mouth. They also wear black shirts and long skirts. Most initiated people dress in the costume that mountain people wore in earlier centuries.

  Formal worship is confined to a weekly meeting on Thursday evening. The whole community gathers to discuss local issues. Then the juhhāl are dismissed, and the ʻuqqāl stay behind to read and study.

  The Druze strictly avoid iconography, yet they use five colors as a religious symbol: green, red, yellow, blue and white. Each stands for one of the five limits, and each limit pairs with a metaphysical power called a ḥadd. Green is ʻAql, the Universal Mind. Red is Nafs, the Universal Soul. Yellow is Kalima, the Word. Blue is Sābiq, the anterior, and white is al-llahiq, the posterior. The colors can be arranged as vertical stripes, like a flag, or as a five-pointed star. The source says the star embodies the golden ratio as a symbol of temperance and a life of moderation.

  The prayer house of a Druze village is the khilwa, also spelled khalwa, a place of prayer, retreat and religious unity. The primary sanctuary is Khalwat al-Bayada. Druze also visit Nabi Shu'ayb, dedicated to Jethro, a central figure in the faith, and make pilgrimage there on the holiday of Ziyarat al-Nabi Shu'ayb. A mausoleum for a prophet is called a mazār, and a shrine is called a maqām. These holy places grow more important to the community in times of adversity and calamity.

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• 6. Mountain Lords

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  Twelve Arab tribes lie at the root of the Druze story as most Druze tell it. This Arabian hypothesis holds that the tribes migrated to Syria before and during the early Islamic period. It is the most widely accepted account among historians, intellectuals and Druze religious leaders. All Druze in Syria and Lebanon accept it, as do most in Israel.

  Wadi al-Taym in Lebanon is generally considered the birthplace of the faith, and it is where the name Druze first appears in the historical record. In the Crusader period, from 1099 to 1291, the Druze emerged into full historical light in the Gharb region of the Chouf. They served the leaders in Damascus as warriors and kept watch over the Crusaders in the seaport of Beirut. Two families held feudal power, the Tanukhs and the Arslans. From fortresses in the Gharb, the Tanukhs raided the Phoenician coast and finally held Beirut and the plain beside it. After the middle of the twelfth century the Maan family took the lead, with its headquarters at Baaqlin, which is still a leading Druze village.

  The Mamluk sultans of Egypt, who ruled from 1250 to 1516, later turned on their former allies. In 1305, scholar ibn Taymiyya issued a fatwa calling for jihad against non-Sunni groups, including the Druze. Soon afterward, al-Nasir Muhammad inflicted a disastrous defeat on the Druze at Keserwan and forced them into outward compliance with Sunnism. The campaigns destroyed Christian churches and monasteries along with Druze sanctuaries.

  Under the Ottomans, who held the region from 1516, the pattern of revolt and punishment continued. In 1585 the Ottomans attacked the Druze at Saoufar after claiming they had assaulted caravans near Tripoli. From this experience, the Turkish word Durzi came to mean someone who is the ultimate thug. The Ottomans eventually granted the districts of the Chouf as fiscal concessions to local amirs. That arrangement became the cornerstone of the privileged status later enjoyed by all of Mount Lebanon.

  The greatest Druze ruler was Fakhr-al-Din II. His dominion reached from the edge of the Antioch plain in the north to Safad in the south. It also took in a stretch of the Syrian desert, dominated by his castle at Tadmur, known as Palmyra. In 1608 he signed a commercial treaty with Duke Ferdinand I of Tuscany that contained secret military clauses. The sultan sent a force against him, and he fled to Tuscany in 1613 and then to Naples in 1615. Political changes in Constantinople let him return after 1618.

  In 1632, his rival Küçük Ahmed Pasha was named Lord of Damascus, and the sultan Murad IV ordered an attack. The death of Fakhr-al-Din's son Ali in Wadi al-Taym marked the start of his defeat. He took refuge in the grotto at Jezzine but was caught, taken to Istanbul and imprisoned with two sons in the Yedi Kule prison. He and his sons were killed on the 13th of April 1635. He had been the first ruler in modern Lebanon to open the country to Western influence. The French set up a khān in Sidon, the Florentines a consulate, and Christian missionaries were admitted.

  The Shihabs succeeded the Ma'ans in 1697. Their most famous figure, Amir Bashir Shihab II, governed from 1788 to 1840. He was a crypto-Christian, and Napoleon sought his aid in 1799.

  A different kind of conflict ended at the battle of Ain Dara in 1711. Two political factions, the Qaysites and the Yemenites, had split Druze and Christians along party lines rather than religious ones. Emir Haydar of the Shihab dynasty led the Qaysites. Mahmoud Abu Harmoush led the Yamani side, which had backing from the Ottoman authorities of Sidon and Damascus. The Yamani side was routed, and many Yemenite Druze migrated to the Hauran, in the mountainous area now called Jabal al-Druze. Maronites and other Christians became a larger share of the population of Mount Lebanon.

  In 1840, disturbances began between the Druze and their Maronite neighbors, who had been on friendly terms. They ended in the civil war of 1860. The source says it was not a religious war, except in Damascus. It cost the Maronites some ten thousand lives in Damascus, Zahlé, Deir al-Qamar, Hasbaya and other towns. European powers authorized French troops under General Beaufort d'Hautpoul to land in Beirut. His inscription can still be seen on the historic rock at the mouth of Nahr al-Kalb. The Ottomans then granted Lebanon local autonomy under a Maronite governor, and that autonomy lasted until World War I.

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• 7. Syria and Lebanon

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  In May 1909 the Hauran rebellion broke out against Ottoman authority in Syria. The al-Atrash family led it, and it grew out of local disputes and Druze unwillingness to pay taxes or serve in the Ottoman Army. General Sami Pasha al-Farouqi crushed it. About 2,000 Druze were killed and a similar number wounded, and the leaders were executed in 1910. Al-Farouqi also disarmed the population, extracted heavy taxes and launched a census of the region.

  The Jebel al-Druze, in Syria's southwest, is more than 90 percent Druze, and some 120 villages are exclusively so. With a community of little more than 100,000 in 1949, about three percent of Syrians, the Druze still played a leading role in the nationalist struggle against the French. Under Sultan Pasha al-Atrash, they supplied much of the military force behind the Syrian Revolution of 1925-27. In 1945 Amir Hasan al-Atrash led Druze units in a successful revolt, and the Jebel al-Druze became the first and only Syrian region to free itself from French rule without British help.

  That confidence produced a famous threat. In 1945 a local paper reported that President Shukri al-Quwatli had called the Druze a "dangerous minority." Sultan Pasha al-Atrash flew into a rage and demanded a retraction. If none came, he said, the Druze would become dangerous, and 4,000 Druze warriors would "occupy the city of Damascus." One adviser to the Syrian Defense Department warned in 1946 that the Syrian army was "useless."

  Adib Shishakli, who ruled Syria from December 1949 to February 1954, saw the Druze as his most dangerous opponents. He declared: "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." He sent 10,000 regular troops into the Jebel al-Druze, and heavy weapons bombarded several towns. He also accused the whole community of treason and published falsified Druze religious texts to stir up sectarian hatred. Shishakli was assassinated in Brazil on the 27th of September 1964 by a Druze seeking revenge for the bombardment.

  Before the Syrian civil war, around 700,000 Druze lived in Syria in 2010, about three percent of the population. Of these, approximately 337,500 lived in the Suwayda Governorate. Violence has reached them since. On the 10th of June 2015, at least 20 Druze were killed in the village of Qalb Loze in Idlib Governorate. On the 25th of July 2018, ISIS-affiliated attackers entered the Druze city of Suwayda with gunfights and suicide bombings. They killed at least 258 people, the vast majority civilians. In 2024 a Druze force, the Al-Jabal Brigade, played a major role in the opposition offensives that brought down the Assad regime.

  In Lebanon the Druze are a minority, about 5.2 percent of the population, spread across 136 villages. Even so, they play an important role in politics. During the Lebanese Civil War of 1975-90, most of the community backed the Progressive Socialist Party under Kamal Jumblatt. It favored Pan-Arabism and Palestinian resistance and fought alongside leftist and Palestinian parties against the mainly Christian Lebanese Front. Kamal Jumblatt was assassinated on the 16th of March 1977, and his son Walid took over the party. The second largest Druze-supported party is the Lebanese Democratic Party, led by Prince Talal Arslan.

  In August 2001, Maronite Catholic Patriarch Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir toured the Chouf and visited Mukhtara, the ancestral stronghold of Walid Jumblatt. The tumultuous reception marked a historic reconciliation between Maronites and Druze, who had fought a bloody war in 1983-84. After 2005, Jumblatt broke sharply with his family's tradition. For the first time he publicly accused Damascus of being behind his father's murder, which he had long privately suspected.

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• 8. Across Borders

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  Between 800,000 and a million Druze live in the world today, with the vast majority in the Levant. According to the Institute of Druze Studies, in 1998 approximately 40-50% lived in Syria, 30-40% in Lebanon, 6-7% in Israel and 1-2% in Jordan. The scholar Colbert C. Held estimates the global population at around 1 million.

  In Israel, the Galilean Druze and those of the Haifa region received Israeli citizenship automatically in 1948. In 1957 the government designated the Druze a distinct religious community at the request of their own leaders. By the end of 2018 there were 143,000 Druze in Israel and the Israeli-occupied part of the Golan Heights. They are Arabic-speaking citizens who serve in the Israel Defense Forces, and the number of Druze members of parliament usually exceeds their share of the population. Survey data suggests Israeli Druze rank their identity as Druze first, Arab second and Israeli third.

  The Golan Heights tell a different story. Israel captured the Golan from Syria in 1967 and annexed it in 1981, and its Druze were offered full citizenship. Most declined and kept Syrian citizenship and identity. As of 2011, fewer than 10% of the Golan Druze had accepted Israeli citizenship.

  Druze settlement in Jordan began in 1918, when 22 Druze families left Jabal al-Druze for al-Azraq after the Turks withdrew from the region. Today about 32,000 Druze live in Jordan, mostly in the northwest.

  Venezuela hosts the largest Druze communities outside the Middle East, an estimated 60,000 people, mostly of Lebanese and Syrian ancestry. The source adds that more than 200,000 people from the Suwayda area hold Venezuelan citizenship. Arab migrants settled mainly in Caracas and left a mark on Venezuelan food and music. One prominent Venezuelan of Druze descent is Tareck El Aissami, a former vice president.

  The United States has the second largest Druze community outside the Middle East, with estimates between 30,000 and 50,000 and the largest concentration in Southern California. In 2017 the Los Angeles Times reported about 30,000. American Druze face two pressures. Because marriage outside the faith is strongly discouraged, finding a Druze partner is hard. And many Druze immigrants to the United States became Presbyterians or Methodists, which leaves the community working to keep its religion alive.

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