Druses
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
dru'zez, a sect of people inhabiting the southern part of the Lebanon Mountains and the region south of Damascus. They number about 80,000. They are described as a people of light complexion and active, warlike habits. Where they came from no one knows. They have been known since the eleventh century. They have learned the Arabic language and forgotten their own. They dress and live simply. They use neither wine nor tobacco. They tell the truth, but only to each other. They believe in one god so different from a person that he cannot be described. They make no attempt to unfold his nature. Aside from the priests who live in monasteries, the people believe, but take no part in any act of religion or worship whatever. Prayer they regard as an impertinent interference with the Creator. Among the Turks they so far comply as to bow with the face toward Mecca; and among Christians, rather than give offense, they suffer themselves to be sprinkled with holy water. Though overrun by the Turks, they have been a turbulent people and have given trouble, not infrequently maintaining independence in their mountain fastnesses. As late as 1860 a feud broke out between them and their neighbors, a Christian sect called Maronites. It is estimated that not less than 10,000 of the latter were massacred. As a matter of information, the Druses should be held in mind. Like the Poles in Russia and the Bohemians in Austria, they are an unassimilated element, and are sure to be heard from when the end of the Turkish Empire arrives. See Syria ; Turkey
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 note that "where they came from no one knows" has been answered: scholars now trace the faith to a missionary movement launched around 1017 in Fatimid Cairo under the caliph al-Hakim, preached by Hamza ibn Ali and the man whose name the sect bears, al-Darazi, and the once-secret scriptures known as the Epistles of Wisdom have been studied and published in the West. The prediction that the Druze would "be heard from when the end of the Turkish Empire arrives" proved sound: the Ottoman collapse in 1918 was followed by Sultan al-Atrash's Druze-led revolt against French rule in 1925, and Druze parties under the Jumblatt family were central players through Lebanon's civil war of 1975-90. The community, put at 80,000 here, now numbers roughly a million, most in Syria, with large populations in Lebanon and in Israel, where Druze men have been subject to military conscription since the 1950s. The 1860 massacres of Maronites are still remembered, but modern accounts describe them as part of a wider civil war in which Druze villages also suffered heavily.
Written for this edition, 2026.