User:Al Ameer son/Great Syrian Revolt

Background

Society of Ottoman Syria

The region of Syria was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1517 and in the four centuries of Ottoman rule thereafter, centralized authority over the region "waxed and waned" according to historian Michael Provence. During times of lax centralization, local elites in the major population centers, Bedouin tribes and foreign powers emerged to fill the void. In the second half of the 19th century, the Ottomans launched a major centralization effort in Syria and administratively reorganized the region into the vilayets (provinces) of Syria, Aleppo and Beirut and the special administrative districts of Jerusalem and Mount Lebanon. The interior cities of Damascus, Aleppo, Hama and Jerusalem were important regional centers with broader agricultural hinterlands and command over trade routes. At the geographic center of Syria was Damascus, which was situated in a fertile plain at the foot of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains in the east. To its south was the Hauran plain, the main source of grain for Damascus and a pasture area for semi-nomadic Sunni Muslim Bedouin. At the eastern end of Hauran was Jabal al-Druze, a volcanic spur largely inhabited by Druze that marked the last agricultural region until the Euphrates River valley further to the east. The interior and coastal plains were primarily inhabited by Sunni Muslims along with smaller communities of Greek Orthodox and Melkite Christians and Jews. Maronite Christians and Druze predominated in Mount Lebanon, Alawites in the northern coastal mountains and Shia Muslims in Jabal Amil. Arabic was the common language of Syria and was used in religion, law, academia and commercial transactions, while Ottoman Turkish was the language of the state.

The ruling political class in Syria, like that of the imperial center, was Sunni Muslim. The elite in Damascus and other major cities had their origins in Ottoman civil or military service, and thenceforth became local officials, large landowners and tax brokers, typically passing their wealth and positions down to future generations. They served as intermediaries between the central authorities, represented by governors and garrison commanders, and the local inhabitants, and were cautious to not appear as hostile to the state or as tools of the authorities. The local elite's power largely derived from land ownership and farming surpluses and by extension the elite's patronage of rural peasants and the inhabitants of urban quarters. Peasants typically owned barely enough of the agricultural share to meet their basic needs. In the cities, the families patronized youth clubs, Sufi orders, and commercial and artisan guilds and owned much property in the quarters.

For city merchants and traders, the local elite traditionally served as their protectors, enforcers of contracts, employers, landlords, arbiters in disputes and moneylenders. Opportunities for operating outside of the elites' patronage networks emerged in the late 19th century. As Syria further integrated into the international market, grain merchants increasingly bypassed the landowning elites. Thus, in quarters like al-Midan (at the southern end of Damascus), merchants began to deal directly with grain cultivators. The merchants grew wealthy and purchased agricultural tracts, while peasants began to purchase and cultivate their own land rather than be dominated by major landowners. In particular, the peasants of Hauran and Jazira (the middle Euphrates valley region east of Aleppo) developed "a warrior ethos" that duly resisted nomadic encroachments and state control over their lands. Unlike their peasant counterparts in the western regions of Syria, they also resisted attempts by the landowning, urban elites to register their lands on their behalf due to concerns that they would lose control over their property. Instead, they reciprocated efforts by urban merchants to establish direct commercial ties. In addition to the merchants and autonomous peasants of the frontier, an expanding scholarly class emerged in Syria as a result of new educational institutions.

In protest at state efforts to conscript their sons and collect taxes, the peasants of Hauran and Jazira frequently revolted against the Ottomans, and were, in turn, suppressed. According to historian Daniel Neep, the French Mandatory authorities used the "Ottoman precedent for repressing the Druze population" during the latter's rebellions in Hauran as "justification for colonial military policies during the Great [Syrian] Revolt". The Ottoman state also sought to minimize resistance in the frontier regions by improving access to education, building infrastructure such as new railroads, wagon roads, postal routes and telegraph lines, but these efforts were met with suspicion by the inhabitants. In the latter's view, telegraph lines allowed local authorities to pass intelligence to the military, new roads eased access for police and government agents and the registration of children's names in school records enabled the state to register their sons for future taxation and conscription. Conscription was viewed with particular hostility, since conscripts were often posted to distant lands and carried the high risk of being killed in action.

Establishment of French Mandatory rule

In the aftermath of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, the Ottoman state adopted Turkish-centric policies, and the Arabs of Syria became alienated by the state's Turkification efforts. During World War I, the people of Syria faced severe hardship with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants being conscripted into the Ottoman army and similar numbers died in famines. In 1916, in Ottoman-ruled Hejaz, the Arab Revolt was launched by Sharif Hussein in alliance with the British, who were at war with the Ottomans. In October 1918, Sharifian and British forces drove the Ottomans out of Syria and entered Damascus. A two-year period followed in which Sharif Hussein's son, Faisal ibn Hussein, established a rudimentary government in interior Syria, between Damascus and Aleppo. The British had made promises to Sharif Hussein supporting an independent Arab state in the Ottomans' Arab province.

Meanwhile, the French had been designated special interests in Syria in the secretive 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement with Great Britain, contradicting concurrent promises to Sharif Hussein, and were given a mandate over the northern half of Syria, including Mount Lebanon and its environs, in the 1920 San Remo Conference. Accordingly, France took control of northern Syria (modern-day Syria and Lebanon) and the British kept control of Palestine and Transjordan (modern-day Israel, Jordan and Palestine). The boundaries of the mandates were drawn by the colonial powers. The French asserted their authority in Syria by 1921, having defeated Faisal's motley army at the Battle of Maysalun and quelled the Aleppo Revolt and the Alawite Revolt. The French Mandatory authorities thereby succeeded the Ottoman functionaries of Syria. Consequently, the political and landowning elites gradually entered into a social contract with the French in which the elites were able to maintain their economic clout and a degree of political influence in return for checking the general population's pursuit of independence.

The French viewed Damascus, Aleppo and Hama as the major centers of anti-colonialist agitation and prevented suspected nationalists from playing any political role in Syria. The country was divided by the French along largely sectarian lines into the sub-entities of Damascus, Aleppo, Latakia, Jabal al-Druze and Greater Lebanon. This was done to prevent inter-sectarian alliances and to prevent the exposure of countryside peasants to nationalist activism in the cities. The French viewed rural ethnic and religious communities such as the Bedouin, Druze, Alawites, Circassians and Kurds as more likely to engage in armed struggle than the mostly Sunni Arab, urban nationalist activists.

Bibliography

• Gelvin, James L. (1998). Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire. London: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-21069-7.
• Khoury, Phillip S. (1987). Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9781400858392.
• Khoury, Philip S. (1988). "A Reinterpretation of the Origins and Aims of the Great Syrian Revolt, 1925-27". In Atiyeh, George N.; Oweiss, Ibrahim M. (eds.). Arab Civilization: Challenges and Responses: Studies in Honor of Dr. Constantine Zurayk. State University of New York Press. ISBN 9780887066986.
• Lepage, Jean-Denis G. G. (2008). The French Foreign Legion: An Illustrated History. McFarland & Company, Inc. ISBN 9780786462537.
• Neep, Daniel (2012). Occupying Syria Under the French Mandate: Insurgency, Space and State Formation. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 1-107-00006-8.
• Provence, Michael (2005). The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism (First ed.). Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-70635-9.
• Windrow, Martin (2010). Our Friends Beneath the Sands: The Foreign Legion in France's Colonial Conquests 1870-1935. Orion Books. ISBN 9780297858416.
• Windrow, Martin; Roffe, Michael (1971). The French Foreign Legion. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 9781472806369.