The separatist Alawi petition to the French Prime Minister Léon Blum (1936): reliability, background and aftermath

Abstract

This article focuses on a controversial document that has not yet been studied in depth. It is a petition sent by an Alawi separatist leader from Latakia (Syria) to the newly elected French prime minister in 1936. Its aim was to persuade the French that their decision to grant Syria independence and to incorporate the Alawi district to Syria would be a mistake that could endanger the safety of the sect. This article presents for the first time in research the authentic petition and compares it with the distorted version of this document that has been available until now in Arabic literature and media. In addition, the article presents the historical background of the petition and demonstrates its relevance to recent Syrian politics. Two appendices appearing at the end of the article include a table summarizing the comparison between the original document and the previously available unreliable version, and a copy of the original petition from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archive.

Keywords:

• Alawis
• French Mandate
• Syria
• Politics

The history of the Alawis in modern Syria under the French Mandate has been discussed in several studies. Most of them agreed that in the 1930s the Alawi community, a minority living in northwest Syria, was divided between those loyal to France and those inspired to join the Syrian national movement. It was a division between separatist Alawis who wanted to keep the autonomous Alawi State at the Jabal al-ʿAlawiyyin (‘the Alawi Mountain’, the region of Latakia, Jabla, Banyas and Tartus) created by the French Mandate, and the unionist members of the sect who backed the Syrian national movement and the absorption of their territory into the independent Syrian state.¹

The present article focuses on a controversial document, a petition that is claimed to have been sent by Alawi separatist leaders to French Prime Minister André Léon Blum in 1936, a month after his election. The main goal of the present study is to shed light for the first time in research on the original version of this document, which, for four decades, was considered lost. Another goal is to compare the original petition with another less reliable version of this document, which was until now the most cited source for this text.

The embarrassing ‘betrayal petition’

Among the most intriguing questions that have been raised concerning the Franco-Syrian treaty of 1936 is one regarding the authenticity of a petition that was sent by a group of Alawi leaders to the French government shortly before the agreement. In this petition, the Alawis urged French Prime Minister Léon Blum to alter his decision to grant Syria independence. The signatories of the petition urged the French authorities to keep the Alawi State autonomous and not to incorporate their territory into the Syrian state.² The explanations provided by the Alawis focused on the danger that they would face in a country ruled by the Sunni-Muslim elite of Damascus, lacking the French Mandate’s protection, in the light of the Alawis’ long history of Sunni oppression.

This separatist petition has gained new interest recently, since it became the subject of an actual debate during the Syrian civil war, concerning the loyalty of the Alawi sect to the idea of Syrian nationalism. During the bloody oppression of the demonstrations against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, two Lebanese journalists from al-Nahar newspaper, Antoine Saʿb and Mahmud al-Zibawi, published provocative articles, the former in October 2011 and the latter in August 2013. These articles retold the story of the controversial separatist document sent by Alawis to France in 1936. The two journalists were aiming to embarrass the Alawis in Syria, and more specifically to show how the ruling Alawi leaders and army commanders, who were oppressing and killing Syrian citizens in the present day, had a notorious history of betrayal – namely collaboration with the French Mandate.³

Another recent publication that made the ‘betrayal petition’ relevant was an article published by Kamal Qubaysi, a reporter for the al-Arabiya television channel. According to Qubaysi’s report, the French foreign minister Laurent Fabius made a reference to this historical document in August 2012. When meeting Bashar al-Jaʿfari, the Syrian representative at the United Nations, Fabius criticized al-Jaʿfari’s speech at the United Nations Security Council, where the Syrian representative condemned the French Mandate in Syria. Fabius said to al-Jaʿfari: ‘Since you have spoken about the period of the French occupation, it is my duty to remind you that the grandfather of your president (Bashar al-Assad) asked France not to leave Syria and not to give it independence, and that is according to an official signed document that is kept at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and if you want I could give you a copy of it.’⁴

However, al-Arabiya’s staff looked for the mentioned document and did not find it at the French archive, so they cited the copy used by Lebanese Antoine Saʿb from al-Nahar who presented it as a document catalogued by number 3547 of the French Ministry of Foreign affairs, dating from 15 June 1936. According to al-Arabiya, Saʿb’s copy was not the original one sent to Léon Blum, but a copy of it that was kept at the archive of the French Socialist Party (FSP).⁵ This note is important, since other sources also refer to two copies of this document.

According to the FSP version of the petition published in the Arab press, six Alawi separatist leaders signed the document: ʿAziz Agha Hawwash, Muhammad bek Junayd, Sulayman al-Murshid, Mahmud Agha Jadid, Sulayman al-Assad, Muhammad Sulayman al-Ahmad.

Their petition is said to have been sent in Arabic on 15 June 1936, expressing the signatories’ desire to maintain Alawi autonomy and opposing incorporation into the Syrian state, as stated above. The most embarrassing part of the petition’s contents was the authors’ comparison between the Alawis and another minority in danger – the Jews in Palestine. The authors claimed that this Jewish community was an example of a minority that contributed to the development of the region but became victims of Muslim violence (see details below).

Authentic or fake?

Before we deal with the contents of the document, we should first mention the controversy concerning its reliability that followed the publication of the petition in the Arab press. The ‘betrayal document’ number 3547 was dealt with in a polemical article by the Israeli scholar Mordechai Kedar published in English online in 2012. Kedar considered this document to be historical evidence of the Alawi objection, including that of Hafiz al-Assad’s grandfather Sulayman al-Assad, to the unification of Syria and their fear of extermination by the Sunni majority. Kedar’s article and the English translation of the petition that he offers to the readers seem to be based on al-Arabiya’s version copied from al-Nahar.⁶

Reacting to Kedar’s article, Stefan Winter, a Canadian historian, published another online article on the same topic in 2016. In his article, Winter claimed that Kedar’s conclusions were based only on one separatist petition, while many other petitions that Alawis sent to the French government in 1936 rather reflected loyalty to the national movement and proved the sect’s motivation to join the united Syrian State.⁷ The same argument was also offered in detail in Winter’s monograph on Alawi history. Winter claimed that the document number 3547 cannot be found at archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (the ‘Quai d’Orsay’), now located in La Courneuve. It is also not to be found in the French Diplomatic Archives of Nantes. Nevertheless, Winter has found several unionist letters in these archives and concluded that there were as many pro-Syrian unionist petitions sent by the Alawis in 1936 as there were separatist petitions. One of the unionist petitions was even signed by Ali Sulayman al-Assad, i.e. the father of Hafiz al-Assad and the grandfather of Bashar al-Assad.⁸ Winter even questioned the reliability of the ‘betrayal document’, and asserted that number 3547 could be a forgery.⁹

Winter suggested another possible option, that all the documents, unionist and separatist, were reliable: ‘could it be that both petitions are genuine, and reflect a real political – in fact a generational – conflict within the ‘Alawi community in 1936, between old-guard separatists like Sulayman al-Asad and ‘Aziz Agha al-Hawwash, on the one hand, and their unionist sons ‘Ali Sulayman al-Asad and Ismaʿil al-Hawwash, on the other? This should not come as a surprise, after all, when it is clear that neither the ‘Alawi nor any other confessional community adopted a single, uniform opinion on French rule and independence.’¹⁰

In this context, it is worth mentioning the view of Patrick Seale, author of the most well-known biography of Hafiz al-Assad: ‘In the Kalbiya confederation to which the Asad family belonged, both collaborators and nationalists were to be found… The Asad family was itself ambivalent in its attitude to the French authorities. Asad’s grandfather, Sulayman, never came to terms with the Mandate or deferred to men who owed their prominence solely to the French connection. Asad’s father, ‘Ali Sulayman, fought the French at the start but was later drawn into French arrangements, being appointed in 1926 a member of a committee set up in Latakia to draft a constitution for the territory… But a decade later he was enough of a nationalist to be one of those who travelled to Damascus – along with scores of other local leaders from all over Syria – to welcome Syrian patriots home from France.’¹¹ Seale avoided accusing al-Assad’s family of betraying Syrian nationalism and preferred to present it as an opportunist approach rather than a pro- or anti-French attitude.

Winter was right to locate the source of the mysterious 3547 document in Extremist Shiites, a biased and anti-Alawi book by Matti Moosa published in 1988 in the United States. Moosa’s English translation of the petition became the most common reference to the ‘betrayal petition’. However, tracing Moosa’s footnote to this document reveals that he used a book in Arabic printed in Lebanon as his main source. Moosa’s source was printed four years earlier. It was Abu Musa al-Hariri’s (a pseudonym of Joseph Qazzi) book entitled al-Alawiyyun al-Nusayriyyun - Bahth fi al-ʿAqida wa-l-Taʾrikh (The Alawi Nusayris: Research on the Religion and the History).¹² The Christian Lebanese scholar and monk Qazzi (1937–2022) was later responsible for the exposure of several Alawi texts, including most of their secret religious texts in the 2000s.¹³

In Qazzi’s al-Alawiyyun al-Nusayriyyun he explained that he did not cite the original 3547 document but rather quoted from a copy of it that was preserved at the archive of the French Socialist Party (FSP).¹⁴

If all the citations of the ‘betrayal petition’ were taken from the FSP archive copy cited completely by Qazzi, we should ask: where is the original document sent to Léon Blum? And where did the document archived 3547 disappear to?

Leon Goldsmith’s study may shed light on the matter. Goldsmith dealt with the topic of the 1936 petitions in his Cycle of Fear. He described the turbulent events of that year, when long queues of protesters lined up in Latakia post office to dispatch telegrams supporting and rejecting the unity to Beirut, Paris and Geneva – to the League of Nations.¹⁵ The rush in sending the petitions was understandable. The left-wing coalition led by Léon Blum won the elections in France at the end of April 1936 and the Alawis feared that the French policy in Syria was about to change. According to Goldsmith, the petition sent to Blum, which was later a source of embarrassment for the Syrian president al-Assad, was mysteriously reported missing in the 1980s.¹⁶

Locating the original petition

As one would expect, my own searches for the 3547 documents were also in vain. Nevertheless, it seems that the online French Archives diplomatiques de La Courneuve has enjoyed great progress and updates in recent years, which enabled greater and easier access to rare documents. A copy of the original Alawi petition to Léon Blum can be found today in the same archive under a different catalogue number. The available document is catalogued under the diplomatic file SDN 242QO Pétition 598.¹⁷ It seems that this copy of the original petition (not the French Socialist Party copy) was preserved since it was kept by Joseph Paul-Boncour (1872–1972), who served in several cabinet and diplomatic posts and was in 1936 France’s permanent delegate to the League of Nations. Boncour’s name appears at the bottom of the French translation of the petition.¹⁸

An examination of the original document reveals some differences comparing this document with the French Socialist Party (FSP) version. Two basic differences cannot be ignored: first, the original petition was sent one month earlier, that is 14 May 1936, not 15 June, the date of the FSP archive version. Second, the original petition is signed only by Muhammad Sulayman al-Ahmad while the FSP copy is signed by the same author together with the five more Alawi leaders mentioned above.¹⁹ These differences and others are explained in detail below.

As opposed to the FSP version that is widespread, the original version is rare. The closest version to the original, still with minor modifications, can be found in a biography of Muhammad Sulayman al-Ahmad (1903–81) published in Lebanon by a Syrian author. Al-Ahmad, who had the pen name Badawi al-Jabal (the Bedouin of the mountain) was not only famous in Syria but was considered one of the greatest modern Arabic poets. This unusual biography of al-Ahmad was published in Beirut in 1998. It was composed with an unexpected academic integrity, especially when it comes from Hashim ʿUthman, a Syrian scholar from Latakia and a prolific writer of apologetic pro-Alawi literature.²⁰

As opposed to other biographers of the same poet, Hashim ʿUthman admits that Badawi al-Jabal had a Francophile period during the French Mandate that was reflected in his pro-French poetry.²¹ Before and after the direct French Mandate rule Badawi al-Jabal was a nationalist, but in the late 1920s he became a pro-French separatist until 1936.²² Nevertheless, the accusation of betrayal never left him. He was accused of disloyalty later on as well, since as a poet he was very critical of contemporary politicians. This indictment followed him to the 1960s when he did not trust the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser and objected to Syrian-Egyptian Unity (1958–1961), and then opposed the ruling Baʿth Party and accused it of failure in the 1967 war against Israel.

Back to our issue, Muhammad Sulayman al-Ahmad – Badawi al-Jabal – belonged to the young and educated generation of Alawis that enjoyed the advantages of the French Mandate. Al-Ahmad witnessed the dramatic shift in the fate of his sect under the new foreign rule. He addressed the French rulers in his poems as enlightened liberators rather than cruel occupiers and admired their culture and language.²³ Al-Ahmad and his generation’s admiration of France can be understood in the light of the long period of oppression and persecution that preceded the Mandate.

The petition: background and aftermath

The Alawi (previously Nusayri) sect lived under Sunni rulers from the Mamluks to the Ottomans, living under the shadow of a hostile fatwa (legal decree) of the Syrian Sunni Taqi al-Din b. Taymiyya (d. 1328). The latter, a respected authority in Sunni Islam, defined the Alawi sect as heretical apostates. This fatwa brought calamities on the sect, deadly raids in the short term during the Mamluk period (thirteenth–fourteenth centuries), and accusations, suspicion and isolation in the long period under Ottoman rule (fifteenth–early twentieth centuries).²⁴ At the beginning of the twentieth century, isolated on their mountain, the Alawis were the poorest community in Syria, suffering from scorn and humiliation. The French Mandate in Syria, beginning in 1920, partitioned greater Syria into small political entities, under a policy of divide and rule. This strategy harmed the Syrian national movement but provided the Alawis semi-autonomy, the ‘État des Alaouites’ (altered in 1930 to ‘État de Lattaquié’) a political entity of their own in the Syrian north-eastern coastal region. It was a kind of freedom that the Alawi sect had never previously experienced, and a protection and backing that they had not known over the centuries.²⁵

The Alawi sect took the opportunity to change its name from Nusayris, something that symbolized their humiliating past, to Alawis, foregrounding their new, respectable identity as followers of Ali b. Abi Talib (the prophet Muhammad’s cousin) and a proud Shiʿi Muslim sect. Moreover, the French enabled the Alawis to maintain autonomous Jaʿfari courts and to join the army. The members of the Troupes spéciales du Levant who served as military police of the French Mandate were recruited from the local population. While joining these forces would be seen by the Sunni majority as a betrayal, the Alawis enlisted en masse. Becoming soldiers, the members of the sect experienced a dramatic shift in their position in Syrian society: they felt respected, benefitted from better salaries and achieved education and power. It was this stage of the Alawis’ disproportionate integration into the army that enabled their future advance in military ranks in the independent Syrian army, until the eventual capture of the regime by Alawi officers in the 1960s.²⁶

Hashim ʿUthman provides a detailed and reliable report of Muhammad Sulayman al-Ahmad’s cooperation with the French and the dramatic background to the petition he sent to Léon Blum and the furious reactions in the region to its publication, based on the Lebanese and Syrian newspapers of the 1930s. As a young lad, al-Ahmad was an enthusiastic nationalist and backed King Faisal in Damascus and the Alawi revolt of Salih al-Ali in the Alawi mountains until its failure in 1921.²⁷ Then al-Ahmad changed his mind and became a pro-French separatist and was rewarded for his loyalty. The French appointed him as a member of the Latakia representative council twice, in 1930 and again in 1935. The French gained from al-Ahmad’s cooperation the backing of one of the greatest Alawi intellectuals, who was also the son of Sulayman al-Ahmad, the greatest religious sheikh of the sect in that period. It was a blow to the nationalists’ effort to enlist the leaders of the sect to their side. In January 1936 Muhammad Sulayman al-Ahmad was criticized in Syrian newspapers for flattering Damien de Martel, the High Commissioner of the Levant in Syria and Lebanon, saying to him when he visited Latakia, ‘The Alawis never tasted the flavor of freedom until this time, every young Alawi has the word France in his mouth….’ These words raised anger also among unionist Alawis, who wrote in the Syrian press in February that these words were shameful and did not represent their sect’s view.²⁸

In addition, on 2 April al-Ahmad also expressed his private religious views, perhaps influenced by his father’s relations with the Shiʿi community in Lebanon. In a meeting with members of his sect in Banyas he said, ‘The separatists are the party of Ali and the unionists are the party of Muʿawiya b. Abi Sufyan [founder of the Umayyad dynasty], so one should curse them!’²⁹ ʿUthman admits that although he considered al-Ahmad’s political behavior at that time as negative, at the same time when serving a senior deputy in the council of Latakia al-Ahmad had defended the social rights of the peasants.³⁰

After the French decision to grant Syria limited independence and to merge the Alawi State into Syria in December 1936, al-Ahmad again made a dramatic change and returned to his unionist and nationalist views.³¹ These shifts from separatist to unionist were not unique to him; they characterized the shifting views of many Alawi leaders in the 1930s.³² However, the petition that al-Ahmad sent to Léon Blum in 1936, prior to the French final decision and during his separatist period of his career, would embarrass him three years later as a unionist.

Al-Bashir, a Jesuit Catholic Lebanese newspaper from Beirut, obtained a copy of al-Ahmad’s petition and published it on 17 June 1939, which raised furious reactions in Syria.³³ Al-Bashir’s interest in spreading such chaos between the members of the Syrian nationalist movement is not clear and may reveal the hostility of the Christian Lebanese towards their Syrian unionist rivals, most of them Sunni Muslims. This topic certainly merits a separate study.

Munir al-ʿAbbas, an Alawi unionist, who was al-Ahmad’s rival back in the 1930s, now took the opportunity to shame his ex-rival among their sect by spreading his petition in Latakia.³⁴ At the same time, al-Bashir’s publication was cited by several Syrian newspapers. One of them was the Damascene al-Qabas, which summarized the ‘betrayal petition’. Its editor (whose name is not mentioned) expressed his shock especially concerning two parts of al-Ahmad’s petition to Blum: the claims that the Muslims considered the Alawis infidels and were permitted to kill them, and the part sympathizing with the Jews in Palestine, saying that ‘the Muslim killed their women and children although they brought money, culture and peace to the region’. Eventually the al-Qabas editor questioned al-Ahmad’s loyalty to the national movement and asked: ‘why did al-Ahmad bother to reply in long letters without denying that he wrote this shameful petition?’³⁵ Only a few of his intellectual friends, such as Riyad Ruwayha, dared to defend al-Ahmad in the Syrian press and to say he was always a loyal nationalist.³⁶

Embarrassed by the publication, al-Ahmad wrote apologetic articles in several Syrian newspapers attacking al-Bashir for spreading what he considered to be lies concerning his disloyalty to the Syrian nationalist ideology. Al-Ahmad made efforts to prove his nationalism, reminding readers of his loyalty in his youth to King Faisal, his arrest as an anti-French activist in the early 1920s, his joining the unionists in Damascus after the Franco-Syrian treaty of 1936 and, above all, his writing of nationalist poetry. In fact, al-Ahmad did not unequivocally deny having written the notorious petition to France. Moreover, in one of his published letters, addressing al-Bashir’s editor, al-Ahmad apologized and claimed that in a limited period of his national struggle he was dissuaded from confronting the French. He confessed in his letter, ‘I made mistakes and I admit it was a weakness, yet no one would have acted differently in my circumstances and my surroundings. The fact that it is a fault is undeniable, I admit and ask Allah’s forgiveness for it … why did you forget all (the nationalist activity) and remember only this letter (to Léon Blum)….’³⁷

According to ʿUthman, this affair of ‘the betrayal petition’ ended in 1939 when Muhammad Sulayman al-Ahmad decided to leave for some years for Iraq. Ironically, this decision to move there with his family on the verge of the Second World War was influenced by two opposing motives, accusations of betrayal that produced threats of revenge by Syrian nationalists on one hand, and accusations of nationalist activity against the Mandate, which made the French authorities attempt to arrest him, on the other.³⁸ In February 1939 France decided to abandon the Franco-Syrian treaty and to maintain direct rule of Latakia district. Due to the new circumstances, Syria’s independence was delayed until 1946. The Alawi aspiration to maintain an autonomous state of their own as that of 1922–36 was abandoned. That dream was shattered but gave way to new Alawi inspirations within the new Syrian state.

The original petition: contents

The following is the translation of the original petition sent by al-Ahmad to Léon Blum (see the original reproductions in Arabic in the appendix):³⁹

Sir, the Prime Minister Mr. Léon Blum

I have the honor, under the circumstances of the Franco-Syrian negotiations, in the name of the Alawi people and in my position of elected representative, of drawing your attention and that of your party to the following points:

1. The Alawi people have preserved their independence for a thousand years, something for which they paid with tens of thousands of victims. They are an independent people in their religion, their customs, their traditions and their history from the Syrian Sunni Muslim people. They have never been ruled by the authority of Damascus.

2. The Alawi people refuse to be annexed to Muslim Syria because the official religion of the state in Syria is Islam. It (Islam) considers the Alawi as an infidel, authorizing his killing, to take his possessions and his honor. His testimony is not accepted in Sharʿia (Muslim) court. This is why I draw your attention to the frightening dark future that awaits the Alawis if they were forced to be annexed to Syria, when it (independent Syria) would be freed from the supervision of the Mandate, and able to enforce the laws of its religion and to apply its rules (of Islam).

3. Providing Syria complete independence and the abolition of the Mandate represents a severe failure of the values of socialism in Syria, since the total independence of this country means handing a few families rule over two million people. The existence of a parliament in the country and a constitutional government will not ensure the freedom of the individual, since all of these shows are fake and worthless. Moreover, it conceals beneath it a feudalist regime.⁴⁰ It is a feudalism that did not collapse despite the existence of the Mandate, imposing the yoke of domination upon the people.

   The Mandate limited its power (lit. clipped its wings) and enabled the working class of the people to feel some freedom and equality. However, the cancelation of the Mandate under the current circumstances would represent a great dangerous regression and would return the Syrian state into the rule of religious feudalism and the rule of the aristocratic domination. In other words, it means the suffering of two million people in order to please fifty or sixty aristocratic families in Syria.

4. The spirit of hatred and fanaticism embedded in the hearts of the Arab Muslims against everything that is not Muslim, is the spirit that always nurtures by religion so there is no hope that it would develop. Hence, the minorities in Syria, in the case of the abolition of the mandate, will be exposed to the dangers of death and extermination, regardless of the fact that it [such abolition] would put an end to freedom of thought and belief.

   Here we see today how the Muslim citizens of Damascus force the Jews that live among them to sign a document that requires them not to send aid and food to the suffering Jews in Palestine during their last crisis. The situation of the Jews in Palestine is the strongest, the clearest and the most noticeable evidence for the violent hostility of the attitude of Arab Muslims toward everyone who does not belong to Islam.

   These Jews brought the Muslim Arabs money, civilization and peace, spread gold, progress and charity on the land of Palestine, did not harm anyone, did not take anything by force. Nevertheless, the Muslim Arabs declared holy war against them and did not hesitate to slaughter even their women and children, despite the presence of England in Palestine and the French in Syria.

   What fate awaits the Jews and other minorities in the case of the cancellation of the Mandate and the unification of the Muslim Arab Syria with Muslim Arab Palestine, this unification that is the highest Arab objective.

5. We can respect the noble sentiments of the French intellectuals aiming to protect the Syrian people and their wish for its independence. Nevertheless, Syria in the present situation, still ruled by the spirit of religious feudalism, is still remote from this noble goal that your party wishes for. I do not think that a party that embraces public liberty and social reforms can provide the Syrians an independence that would mean in its fulfilment the enslavement of the working class and the proletarians to the aristocracy and exposure of the minorities to the danger of death and extermination.

   As to the Syrians’ request to merge the Alawi people into Syria, it is impossible that you would agree and accept it, since your noble values, that are loyal to the principle of liberty for all the people, could not back people who are aiming to strangle the freedom of another people and to force them to join them.

6. You may see it as possible to provide the rights of the Alawis and the minorities by texts of treaty. Nevertheless, we can assure you that there is no value to treaties in the Muslim mentality in Syria. We could sense the same with the treaty that Britain established with Iraq, which did not prevent the Iraqis from slaughtering the Assyrians, the Kurds, the Yazidis and in these moments also the Shiʿis. Hence, the Alawi people urge the representatives of democratic France to guarantee their freedom and independence in the realm of its small peaceful environment under the protection of France. It [the Alawi people] puts in its hands [that of France] its case, believing that it would find in you a strong and reliable backing to a loyal and friendly people, which is threatened with death and destruction.

Latakia, 14 May 1936

Representative of Latakia

Muhammad Sulayman al-Ahmad

Analyzing the document, one can conclude that the text in Arabic was typed in a hurry, since there are some spaces missing between words and even one handwritten correction from the author (in the first phrase of paragraph 4). It reflects al-Ahmad’s sense of urgency to change France’s decision by sending this petition.

As to the contents, paragraph 1 clearly shows that al-Ahmad was pleased with the existing system that provided the Alawis autonomy and freedom with an elected council where the representatives of his sect formed the majority (63.2 per cent), while in greater Syria they were about to become a minority (some 11 per cent). Eighty per cent of Syria’s approximately 340,000 Alawis lived in their autonomous area in the coastal mountain region. Most of them were poor and illiterate peasants, but the sect also witnessed the emergence of a new generation of young, educated intellectuals, such as al-Ahmad.⁴¹ Al-Ahmad used the uncommon term al-Shaʿb al-ʿAlawi, ‘The Alawi people’, although it is normally defined as a ṭaʿifa – a sect or a community. This definition emphasizes the fact that al-Ahmad considers them a separate group that is not part of the Syrian people.⁴²

Paragraph 2 emphasizes the central role of religion in Syrian politics and the fear of Islamic fanatics considering the Alawis as infidels. It seems that al-Ahmad had Ibn Taymiyya’s fatwa in mind, although he did not mention it explicitly. This lethal verdict from the fourteenth century authorizing the killing of the Alawis who ‘are more infidels than the Jews and the Christians’ became a dangerous legal precedent for Sunni authorities in Syria until the modern period.⁴³

Paragraphs 4, 5 and 6 are examples of the results of that fanaticism, when minorities are left defenseless, such as the Jews in Damascus and in Palestine and even worse – the Assyrians slaughtered in Iraq, after the British provided autonomy to Iraq.⁴⁴ Al-Ahmad warned the French that this would be the fate of the Alawis if the Mandate granted Syria independence and abandoned the Alawis as a defenseless minority in this new political entity. This fear is intensified by the fear of Sunni revenge due to the Alawi collaboration with the French, an issue that is hinted at in paragraph 7, describing the sect as loyal and friendly to France. As stressed above, the Alawis were over-represented in the French colonial army.

Paragraph 3 addresses the French values of freedom in general and the socialist values of the French ruling party of Léon Blum in particular. According to al-Ahmad, granting Syria independence means transmitting the power to the Sunni urban elite of Damascus – the feudal landowners – and harming the Alawis who are rural farmers in their majority.⁴⁵

The empathy towards the Jews in paragraph 4, one of the most embarrassing parts of the petition, seems to refer, without explicitly mentioning them, to the events in Palestine under the British Mandate, from the massacre of the Jews in Hebron by its Arab Muslim population in 1929 to the Palestinian Arab Revolt that began in 1936 and had deadly results already by April (Jewish casualties in Jaffa), one month before the writing of the petition. It seems quite obvious that the stressing of the Jewish issue in the petition was aimed at getting the attention of Léon Blum personally as a French Jew, in order to gain his solidarity with the Alawis.⁴⁶

Finally, we should focus on the surprising ending of the original petition, which includes only one signature, that of al-Ahmad. This fact raises intriguing questions concerning the remaining five signatures that appear at the bottom of the other version of the document, the FSP copy.

The unreliable FSP version

There are two possible explanations for the difference between the number of signatories: the first, which is less probable, is that two petitions were indeed sent separately, the first (the original copy) sent only by al-Ahmad to Léon Blum on 14 May 1936 and the other (the FSP copy) sent to the Socialist Party the next month, with some amendments to the contents and with the additional signatures of five more Alawi representatives from Latakia.

The second option, which seems favorable and more logical and which is explicitly noted by Qazzi and in the Arab press, is that there was only one version sent in two copies, one to Prime Minister Blum and another to the Socialist Party. There would be no reasonable explanation for sending two copies to France with a difference of one month, that are almost identical with some minor but still significant differences, both addressing the same French prime minister. Moreover, the version sent to the Socialist Party (FSP), was missing for some forty years. This last version, described as the copy of the controversial document no. 3547, can be found only in Qazzi and Moosa’s books, both written in the 1980s.

Since both Matti Moosa and Joseph Qazzi were Christians, their motivation for embarrassing the ruling Alawi sect in Syria would be their hostility to the Syrian regime that invaded Lebanon in 1976, harmed the Christians deeply and contributed to the destruction of their country. However, the embarrassing document was also spread by Sunni nationalists and Syrian opposition activists in the Arab media and in recent years across the internet. The latter’s reasons for publishing the embarrassing petition would rather be motivated by Hafiz al-Assad’s massacre of the Muslim Brothers in Hama in 1982 and the recent civil war in Syria that began in 2011, when most of the opposition was Sunni.

Since the only available copies of the FSP version go back to sources from the 1980s, five decades after its composition, we can assume that this version was corrupted over time, to serve political goals, which would be relevant for upcoming periods.

The original document contained only one signature, that of the Alawi separatist poet, while the others were added later to serve political ends. The list of the additional signatures seems selective, some representatives in Latakia who were well-known separatists are suspiciously absent in the petition, such as Jabir al-ʿAbbas and Ismaʿil al-Kinj. It seems that the five additional signatures do not appear by coincidence. From the alleged signatories of the FSP version of the ‘betrayal petition’ three are clearly related to the Alawi officers who later on founded the Military Committee that led the Baʿth coups in the 1960s – Jadid, ʿUmran and al-Assad, and another signatory was considered by the nationalists as a notorious messianic Alawi leader and a collaborator: 1) the signature of Mahmud Agha Jadid (Haddadin clan), apparently a relative of Salah Jadid, head of the Baʿth Party and leader of Syria between 1966 and 1970; 2) the signature of ʿAziz Agha Hawwash (Matawira clan), a relative of Colonel Muhammad Hawwash, a close associate officer of Muhammad ʿUmran; 3) the signature of Sulayman al-Assad (Kalbiyya clan), grandfather of Hafiz al-Assad (president between 1970 and 2000) and great grandfather of the current president Bashar al-Assad. It is evident that this signature is supposed to embarrass the Assad regime. Nevertheless, this signature is problematic in several respects. First, the signatory’s son, Ali Sulayman al-Assad, signed the opposing petition, that of the Alawi unionists. As opposed to the controversial FSP separatist petition, the unionist petition signed by Ali Sulayman al-Assad is a reliable document, which is found in the French Foreign Office archive.⁴⁷ Secondly, since Ali al-Assad (1875–1963) who signed the unionist document was in his early sixties, one should question whether it is logical that his father Sulayman al-Assad, then an old man (his date of birth is unknown), could sign the separatist petition. Hence, we have more solid proof that the Syrian president’s ancestors were unionists; 4) the signature of the messianic leader Sulayman al-Murshid (eponym of the Murshidi sect), also is meant to embarrass the regime’s loyalists. Al-Murshid was considered by the nationalists a rebel and a collaborator and was hanged for treason in 1946 after Syria’s independence. This signature was apparently meant to present the Murshidiyya, a sub-sect of the Alawis that was loyal to al-Assad’s regime, as traitors.⁴⁸ The connection of the fifth added signature, that of Muhammad bek Junayd, to other ‘traitors’ is still unknown and demands further study.

The minor differences in the contents of the two versions, the original and the FSP version, also support the theory that the latter was distorted and is unreliable. The FSP version that is said to have been sent to the French Socialist Party omitted the paragraph most relevant to its recipient: the explanation concerning the social injustice that would result from the Sunni feudalist (iqtaʿi) rule over the Alawi peasants if Syria were to unite under Damascus in paragraph 3. Another suspicious part of the FSP version is the definition of the sect’s territory in Syria as Jibal al-Nusayriyya the Nusayri mountains (paragraph 3), a name that the members of the sect strictly avoid using after 1920, when the name of the sect was altered from Nusayri to Alawi.⁴⁹

In addition, in the FSP version, when the Jews are mentioned as the group that contributed to the development of Palestine, there is an addition of al-tayyibin (the ‘good’ Jews, paragraph 4), an adjective that is absent in the original version. The aim of this addition was to stress the Alawis’ alleged sympathy with the Jews in Palestine, in order to demonstrate their betrayal. The last paragraph of the FSP version omits the last two minorities from the list of the four groups killed by Sunnis in Iraq. The original petition mentions Assyrian Christians, Yazidis, Kurds and Shiʿis and the FSP version only Assyrian Christians and Yazidis. The aim of this change is to compare the Alawis merely to non-Muslim groups, since the Shiʿis are Muslims and most of the Kurds are Sunnis.

Conclusion

The Franco-Syrian Treaty of Independence (the Viénot Accords) was eventually signed on 9 September 1936 between the newly elected French Prime Minister Léon Blum, leader of The Popular Front (Front Populaire, an alliance of French left-wing movements) and Hashim al-Atasi, head of the Syrian National Bloc (al-Kutla al-Wataniyya, mostly Sunni Muslims).⁵⁰

The petitions sent by Muhammad Sulayman al-Ahmad that are dealt with in this article did not succeed in altering the new French government’s policy towards the Levant in February 1936, supporting the annexation of the Alawi territory to Syria. This shift in the traditional French policy created great confusion among the Alawis. While the Sunnis unanimously supported the annexation, the Alawis were divided on the issue. However, it was clear that following the shift in their government’s attitude toward the Syrian question, the French had lost the confidence of the separatist Alawis. Meanwhile, the unionist Alawis asked the religious sheikhs of their sect to support their view. These sheikhs gathered the same year in Latakia declaring that the Alawi religion belongs to Islam, in order to approach the Sunni nationalist leaders in Damascus. This declaration was backed by a political fatwa of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, confirming that the Alawis are Muslims.⁵¹

A French newspaper report, written shortly before al-Ahmad sent his petition to Léon Blum, reflects very well his sentiments in that time. On 18 March 1936, L’Intransigeant, a Parisian newspaper, cited Muhammad Sulayman al-Ahmad, described as a 32-year-old poet with the pen name Badawi al-Jabal and a representative from Latakia, saying:

Do we wish to be connected to Syria? No way! Between the Sunni Arabs of Damascus and us there is a millennium of hate, a religious hate, and a hate of the oppressed to the oppressors, both reinforced by centuries of persecutions. Syrian unity would be the end of the Alawi minority. It would mean a massacre that would include the 200,000 in habitants of our mountains. What I wish for is the independence of my country under the umbrella of France, until we would be sufficiently advanced in order to coexist. Now you will leave us to the Arabs of Damascus, which would be committing a crime against a nation which is in the process of revival. Here are my sentiments, sincere, categorical. You can cite it or not, it is not important!⁵²

Following the French decision to incorporate the Alawi district into the Syrian state at the end of 1936, al-Ahmad returned to his unionist-nationalist views.

The current study raises intriguing questions, given the advances in modern technology and the digitization of communication, about the ease of producing a forged document or adding false signatures to an existing problematic document. The case studied in this article reveals how just such a forged historical document, one that had appeared only in two books and was cited by Arab newspapers and discussed by a few western scholars can gain mass circulation on the internet and be spread during times of political crisis, creating mass fake news, due to the accessibility of online information. The falsified version of the document dealt with in this article was used as propaganda against the ruling Alawi sect during the Syrian civil war. Such falsification could shape public opinion and have influence even on policy makers.⁵³

The French foreign minister Laurent Fabius was not entirely wrong when referring to the document kept at the Foreign Office’s archive. Indeed, the specific controversial petition studied in this article does exist there. However, it appears that it was not signed by one of al-Assad’s ancestors, nor by other Alawi leaders. This specific petition was composed by one Alawi poet. Nevertheless, his words in the French press and in his petition in 1936 reflected a moment of truth, when the Alawi poet expressed the true deep sentiments of his sect that lived at the heart of the Sunni world and have been oppressed for long centuries. Al-Ahmad regretted sending this petition to France and paid a heavy personal price. He understood, as did the rest of the Alawis, that the French option after the short period of fifteen years of the Mandate, turned out to be unrealistic and irrelevant. Al-Ahmad also caused an embarrassment and political damage to the Alawis in the long term. Nevertheless, his words were genuine, fearless and courageous. He did not try to be politically correct and did not use taqiyya – the traditional custom to conceal the sect’s secrets.⁵⁴ The Alawi sect was indeed left alone, as al-Ahmad feared, and had to struggle for its survival, and it still does.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Concerning the French Mandate in Syria, see, for example, Philip S. Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism 1920–1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); Daniel Neep, Occupying Syria under the French Mandate: Insurgency, Space and State Formation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Benjamin Thomas White, The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011).

2 Concerning the struggle between separatists and unionists among the Alawis during the French Mandate and in 1936 in particular, see Patrick Seale, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), pp.18–20; Gitta Yaffe-Schatzmann, ‘Alawi Separatists and Unionists: The Events of 25 February 1936’, Middle Eastern Studies Vol.31, No.1 (1995), pp.28–38; Kais M. Firro, ‘The ʿAlawis in Modern Syria: From Nusayriya to Islam via ʿAlawiya’, Der Islam Vol.82, No.1 (2005), pp.19–24.

3 Antoine Ghattas Saʿb, ‘Wathiqa taʾrikhiyya ʿan mashruʿ ‘al-Dawla al-ʿAlawiyya” fi Surya’ [A Historical Document about the ‘ʿAlawi State’ Project in Syria], al-Nahar 23 October 2011. It is not available online anymore, but preserved in al-Raqqa Post.com (15 April 2017), including a photo of the 3547 document (not the original that is lost): https://www.raqqapost.com/25067/15/04/2017/. See also Mahmud al-Zibawi, ‘al-Dawla al-ʿAlawiyya’ [the ʿAlawi State], al-Nahar 17 August 2013: https://www.annahar.com/arabic/article/58568-دولة-العلويين.

4 Kamal Qubaysi, ‘Wazir kharijiyyat Faransa yattahimu jadd al-Asad bi-khiyanat Surya’ [The Foreign Minister of France Accuses the Grandfather of al-Assad of Betrayal], https://www.alarabiya.net (31 August 2012): https://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2012%2F08%2F31%2F235337. Also cited in Mordechai Kedar, ‘Assad’s Grandfather’s 1936 Letter Predicts Muslim Slaughter of Minorities, Praises Zionists’, Jewish Press (20 September 2012): https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/analysis/dr-mordechai-kedar/assads-grandfathers-1936-letter-predicts-muslim-slaughter-of-minorities-praises-zionists/2012/09/20/0/.

5 Qubaysi, ‘Wazir kharijiyyat Faransa yattahimu jadd al-Asad bi-khiyanat Surya’.

6 Kedar, ‘Assad’s Grandfather’s 1936 Letter Predicts Muslim Slaughter of Minorities, Praises Zionists’.

7 Stefan Winter, ‘The Asad Petition of 1936: Bashar’s Grandfather Was Pro-Unionist’, Syria Comment (14 June 2016): https://www.joshualandis.com/blog/asad-petition-1936-bashars-grandfather-pro-unionist-stefan-winter/.

8 Stefan Winter, A History of the Alawis – From Medieval Aleppo to the Turkish Republic (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2016), pp.260–62 (including photo of such a document).

9 Winter, ‘The Asad Petition of 1936: Bashar’s Grandfather Was Pro-Unionist’. Winter suggested in this article that ‘the French Foreign Minister will uncritically copy and paste from one another rather than spend 10 minutes actually going through the catalogues at La Courneuve’. However, minister Fabius was not entirely wrong as proven below.

10 Stefan Winter, ‘The Asad Petition of 1936: Bashar’s Grandfather Was Pro-Unionist’.

11 Seale, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East, pp.19–20. For a collection of separatist and unionist letters that were sent to the French government in 1936, not including the petition dealt in this article, see Le Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires étrangères - Centre des Archives diplomatiques de La Courneuve: Correspondance politique et commerciale, Série E – Levant: Liban – Syrie – Cilicie 1918-1940 (50CPCOM), file 492 (1936).

12 Matti Moosa, Extremist Shiites – The Ghulat Sects (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1987), pp.286–89, p.508 note 31.

13 See Yaron Friedman, The Nusayri-'Alawis: History, Religion and Identity of the Leading Minority in Syria (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp.2–3.

14 Abu Musa al-Hariri, al-Alawiyyun al-Nusayriyyun - Bahth fi al-ʿAqida wa-l-Taʾrikh [The ʿAlawis Nusayris: Research on the Religion and the History] (Dyar ʿAql, Lebanon: Dar li-Ajl al-Maʿrifa, 1984, reprinted in 2002), pp.232–34.

15 Leon Goldsmith, Cycle of Fear: Syria’s Alawites in War and Peace (London: Hurst, 2015), pp.64–65. Benjamin White provides a similar description of the division among the Alawis between unionists and separatists and cites a petition sent by the members of the sect in al-Haffa from 1933, which contains some similar elements: a warning of the danger of Islamic fanatism to the fate of the Alawi sect. See White, The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in the French Mandate Syria, pp.84–89.

16 Goldsmith, Cycle of Fear, pp. 64–65; Joseph Brewda and Linda de Hoyos, ‘The Anglo-French patrons of Syria's Hafez al-Assad’, Executive Intelligence Review 23/45 (8 November 1996), p.25 note 1. According to the authors, the original petition to Léon Blum, catalogued E.412.2, file 393.8, ‘somehow, inexplicably disappeared’, so they had no choice but to cite the petition’s translation from Matti Moosa. I have found several other separatist letters sent from Alawi leaders, including Muhammad Sulayman al-Ahmad, that have doubtful reliability, such as one petition that allegedly emphasizes the success of the Crusaders (Franks) thanks to the collaboration of the minorities (including the Alawis) in the Syrian coastal plain. See Muhammad Hawwash, ʿAn al-ʿAlawiyyin wa-Dawlatihim al-Mustaqilla [Concerning the Alawis and their Independent State] (Casablanca: al-Sharika al-Jadida lil-matabiʿ al-Muttahida, 1997), pp.249–53. Other, more reliable petitions from June 1936, expressed the Alawis’ preference for annexation to a Christian Lebanon rather than to a Sunni Syria. See ibid., pp.370–76. Compare with a similar Alawi anti-unionist letter in Henri Froidevaux, ‘Levant – Pays du Mandat Français’, L'Asie française 345 (December 1936), p.340.

17 Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires Étrangères - Direction des Archives Centre des Archives diplomatiques de la Courneuve Société des Nations (SDN) 1917–1940, 242QO/598: Pétition de Sulayman al-Ahmad à Paul Boncour. See copy in Appendix 2.

18 Paul Boncour appears in the bottom of the French translation with the title Senator and ex-President of the Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs, with his personal address of 17, rue de Téhéran, Paris. See Document 242QO/598, p.4.

19 The existence of two versions of the petition was dealt with in one article published by Joseph Dahir Elias, ‘Wathiqat al-ʿAlawiyyin: Mazid min al-Niqash’ [The Alawi Document: More Discussion], al-Nahar 24680 (18 March 2012). Also appearing online: http://www.drjosephelias.com/l47.htm. Elias corrected several mistakes in the text of the petition cited by his colleague Antoine Saʿb, who published the petition in the same newspaper in December 2011. Apart from errors of syntax, Elias maintains Saʿb’s publication was copied from al-Hariri (Qazzi) with errors and alterations. As to its contents, Elias expressed his shock at the fact that Muhammad Sulayman al-Ahmad a son of Sulayman al-Ahmad, a nationalist leader and member of a respectable family, held such separatist views and negative attitude towards Sunni Islam as expressed in the petition.

20 See information about Hashim ʿUthman, a researcher and lawyer from Latakia, including a list of his books on abjjad.com (Syrian scholars): https://www.abjjad.com/author/2811101579/هاشم-عثمان.

21 Hashim ʿUthman, Badawi al-Jabal – Athar wa-Qasaʾid Majhula [Badawi al-Jabal: Impacts and unknown poets] (Beirut: Riad El-Rayyes Books, 1998). See for example his poem admiring Henri Gouraud, High Commissioner of the Levant (1919–22) entitled tahiyya lil-jiniral [Praise to the General] p.249. See another poem where he scorned the Alawi rebellion leader Salih al-Ali who revolted against the French (1919–21) and praised the French officer who fought him, Emile Nieger entitled ʿawaqib al-jahl [the consequences of ignorance] pp.249–50. These two poems were censored in other collections of Badawi al-Jabal’s poetry, for example, Akram Zuʿaytir, Diwan Badawi al-Jabal (Beirut: Dar al-ʿAwda, [n.d.]); ʿAziz Nassar, Badawi al-Jabal – Dhakirat al-Umma wa-l-Waṭan (Damascus: al-Hayʾa al-ʿAmma al-Suriyya, 2013).

22 The unstable political views of Badawi al-Jabal were well described in Seale, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East, p.19: ‘He was first a nationalist, then secretary to the collaborator Ibrahim al-Kinj until 1936, then again a violently anti-French nationalist and a member of the Damascus parliament.’

23 ʿUthman, Badawi al-Jabal, pp.249–50.

24 Concerning the period of persecution, see Friedman, The Nusayri-'Alawis, pp.56–63 and the translation of Ibn Taymiyya’s fatwa in pp.299–309.

25 Concerning the sect’s Golden Age under the protection of the Hamdanid in Syria and the Buyid in Iraq between mid-tenth century and mid-eleventh century (‘the Shiʿi century’), see Friedman, The Nusayri-'Alawis, pp.17–48.

26 Philip S. Khoury, ‘Factionalism among Syrian Nationalists During the French Mandate’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 13/4 (November 1981), pp.441–69; Daniel Pipes, ‘The Alawi Capture of Power in Syria’, Middle Eastern Studies 25, no. 4 (October 1989), pp.429–50.

27 ʿUthman, Badawi al-Jabal, pp.17–29.

28 Ibid., pp.21–26.

29 Ibid., pp.30, 36. Concerning Alawi- Shiʿi relations, see Sabrina Mervin, Un réformiste chiite: Ulema et lettres du Gabal Âmil (actuel Liban-Sud) de la fin de l’Empire ottoman à l’indépendence du Liban [A Shiʿi Reformist: Ulamas and Letters of Jabal ʿAmil (actual South Lebanon) from the End of the Ottoman Empire to the Independence of Lebanon] (Paris: Karthala, 2000), pp.321–30; Martin Kramer, ‘Syria’s Alawis and Shi’ism’, in Martin Kramer (ed.), Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival: The Politics of Ideas in the Middle East (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1996), pp.237–54.

30 ʿUthman, Badawi al-Jabal, p.39.

31 Ibid., pp.41–43.

32 Kais M. Firro, ‘The Attitude of the Druzes and ʿAlawis Vis-à-Vis Islam and Nationalism in Syria and Lebanon’, in Krisztina Kehl-Bodrogi, Barbara Kellner-Heinkele and Anke Otter-Beaujean (eds), Syncretistic religious communities in the Near East: collected papers of the International Symposium ‘Alevism in Turkey and comparable syncretistic religious communities in the Near East in the past and present’: Berlin, 14–17 April 1995 (Leiden and New York: E.J. Brill , 1997), p.92.

33 ʿUthman, Badawi al-Jabal, pp.55–6, citing al-Bashir 5828 (17 June 1939). Joseph Ḍahir Elias, ‘Wathiqat al-ʿAlawiyyin’ corrected this mistake and completed the source, noting that it was in fact cited from al-Bashir 5828 (16 June 1939), p.1. Both sources agree that the petition to Blum was sent on 9 May 1936.

34 ʿUthman, Badawi al-Jabal, pp.62–63.

35 ʿUthman, Badawi al-Jabal, pp.59–60 citing al-Bashir 5832 (21 June 1939).

36 Ibid., pp.61–63.

37 Ibid., pp.57–59.

38 Ibid. p.64.

39 The following translation of the two-page petition was made by the author. In order to reconstruct the original version, the translation is based on three layers, the first half translated to English from the original document in Arabic (page 1 of 2), the second page is completed from the French translation of the entire document that is compared with Hashim Uthman’s almost identical version (page 2): text in Arabic and anonymous translation to French from Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires Étrangères - Centre des Archives diplomatiques de la Courneuve Société des Nations (SDN) 1917-1940, 242QO/598, pp.1–4 (French translation), 5 (original text in Arabic – one page of two). Compared with almost identical version of ʿUthman, Badawi al-Jabal, pp.56–59, citing from al-Bashir 102 (Damascus, 24 June 1939). However, it should be noted that the minor distortions made by ʿUthman or by the reporter of al-Bashir do not change the principal ideas presented in the document. Another distorted version of the petition can be found online. It is signed only by Muhammad Sulayman al-Ahmad, surprisingly dating from 9 May 1936 (an error?). At the bottom it is noted cynically: ‘This is the nationalism of Badawi al-Jabal and his clan, the slaves of the French.’ See: Syrian History.com (Image Source: Prime Minister Hasan al-Hakim’s Library): http://www.syrianhistory.com/en/photos/6389?search=badawi+al-jabal.

40 The Arab term is iqtaʿiyya, a system in the Muslim world which is similar but not identical to European feudalism. Nevertheless, in this specific petition al-Ahmad was referring to the meaning of this term in the west since it was addressed to the French authorities. See the meaning of iqtaʿiyya, in Cl. Cahen, ‘iqtaʿ’. Encyclopaedia of Islam 2^nd edition III (1986), pp.1088–91.

41 See demographic details in Fabrice Balanche, ‘“Go to Damascus, my son”: Alawi demographic shifts under Ba’ath Party rule’, in M. Kerr and C. Larkin (eds), The Alawis of Syria: War, Faith and Politics in the Levant (London: Hurst, 2015), pp.79–106.

42 For al-Ahmad’s use of the term ‘the Alawi people’ in previous remarks, see Hashim ʿUthman, Badawi al-Jabal - Athar wa-Qasaʾid Majhula, pp.21–40.

43 See the translation of the fatwa in Friedman, The Nusayri-'Alawis, pp.298–309. Other fatwas launched during the Ottoman period echoed that of Ibn Taymiyya. The most famous were published by Sheikh Nuh al-Hanafi of Damascus during the period of Ottoman Selim I (d. 1520), and another fatwa was issued by Sheikh Muhammad Nasr al-Din al-Mughrabi in Latakia (d. 1827/8) in the 1820s. See Yvette Talhamy, ‘The Fatwas and the Nusayri/Alawis of Syria’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.46, No.2 (March 2010), pp.175–94.

44 Concerning the massacre of the Assyrian Christians in Iraq and the Simele events in 1933 in particular, see Sargon George Donabed, Forging a Forgotten History: Iraq and the Assyrians in the Twentieth Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), pp.76–77, 93–94, 110–12.

45 Concerning the Sunni urban ownership of the lands in rural Alawi mountains, see Muhammad Hawwash, Takawwun Jumhuriyya – Suriya wa-l-Intidab [Making of a Republic: Syria and the Mandate] (Tripoli, Lebanon: Manshurat al-Saʾih, 2005), pp.250–51.

46 A similar separatist petition was sent by Druze leaders the same year, mentioning the danger to the sect centered in South Syria, that also gained autonomy under the French Mandate, in the light of ‘massacres of the Assyrians in Iraq, the Armenians in Turkey and the Jews in Palestine’. See Hawwash, Takawwun Jumhuriyya, pp.281–83. For a comparative study of Alawi and Druze unionists and separatists in Syria in the 1920s and the 1930s, see Firro, ‘The Attitude of the Druzes and ʿAlawis Vis-à-Vis Islam and Nationalism in Syria and Lebanon’, pp.87–99.

47 Winter, ‘The Asad Petition of 1936: Bashar’s Grandfather Was Pro-Unionist’.

48 Dmitry Sevruk, ‘The Murshidis of Syria: A Short Overview of their History and Beliefs’, Muslim World Vol.103, No.1 (January 2013), pp.80–93.

49 The new name, Alawi (follower of Ali, synonym of Shiʿi) represented the sect’s new identity as a legitimate Muslim sect, while the name Nusayri (followers of the heretic mystic Muhammad b. Nusayr) became a pejorative title used by the sect’s enemies to remind them of their old status in Syria as a rejected and marginal group. See Friedman, The Nusayri-'Alawis, pp.235–36.

50 See details concerning the Paris negotiations in Khoury, Syria Under the French Mandate, pp.464–67.

51 Gitta Yaffe-Schatzmann, ‘Alawi Separatists and Unionists: The Events of 25 February 1936’, Middle Eastern Studies, 31/1 (January 1995), pp.28–38. Yaffe had assumed that the appointed Syrian Prime Minister, who was of Alawi origin, may have persuaded many members of the sect to back the union in two big gatherings in Latakiya and Tartus. See also Paulo Boneschi, ‘Une fatwa du Grande Mufti de Jérusalem Muhammad Amin al-Husayni sur les Alawites’ [A Fatwa of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Muhammad Amin al-Husseini Concerning the Alawis], Revue de l’histoire des religions 122/1 (July–August 1940), pp.42–54. I use the term ‘political fatwa’, since it was launched to serve political nationalist interests and was not backed by original Muslim sources. Not only that the fatwa of Hajj Amin contradicted the famous fatwa of Taqi al-Din ibn Taymiyya (fourteenth century) defining the Alawis (then Nusayris) as infidels and apostates, but also it was not echoed by any Sunni religious authority in Syria. See Yaron Friedman, ‘Ibn Taymiyya’s Fatawa against the Nusayri-ʿAlawi Sect’, Der Islam 82/2 (2005), pp.349–63.

52 Translated from French by the author. The source: Jean D’Esme (Jean Marie Henri d'Esmenard), ‘La Syrie, carrefour de races: De l’action, l’autorité, tel est le remède au malaise syrien’ [Syria, crossroad of races: from action to authority, a remedy to a Syrian illness], L’Intransigeant (18 March 1936), p.2. This French newspaper, as with others that represented the right-wing opposition, cited separatist Alawis in order to criticize what they considered the left-wing government’s abandonment of the minorities in Syria. This topic deserves a separate study.

53 The issue of falsification of historical documents in the Arab world demands further study. Concerning the phenomenon of fake news in recent media, see, for example, Hanen Himdi, George Weir, Fatmah Assiri and Hassanin Al‑Barhamtoshy, ‘Arabic Fake News Detection Based on Textual Analysis’, Arabian Journal for Science and Engineering Vol.47 (2022) pp.10453–69.

54 Concerning the sect’s duty of taqiyya (dissimulation), see Friedman, The Nusayri-'Alawis, pp.143–46. Concerning its application by the sect in modern politics, see Firro, ‘The ʿAlawis in Modern Syria: From Nusayriya to Islam via ʿAlawiya’, pp.12–16.

Appendices

1. The two versions of the Alawi separatist petition to Léon Blum:

Table

Version	Original petition	Socialist Party Copy (FSP)
Catalogue details and location	E.412.2, file 393.8 (missing) 242QO/598 (is found at Centre des Archives diplomatiques de la Courneuve)	Copy of 3547 (missing)
Date	14 May 1936	15 June 1936
Sent by	Muhammad Sulayman al-Ahmad	ʿAziz Agha Hawwash, Muhammad bek Junayd, Sulayman al-Murshid, Mahmud Agha Jadid, Sulayman Assad, Muhammad Sulayman al-Ahmad
Addressed to	Léon Blum	Léon Blum
Available source	Archive: French Foreign Office (Archives diplomatiques de La Courneuve) Books: Hashim ʿUthman (1998) Newspaper: al-Bashir (Lebanon, 1939)	Archive: Unavailable Books: Joseph Qazzi (1984) and Matti Moosa (1987) Newspaper: al-Nahar (Lebanon, 2011, 2013)
Socialist values	Explained in detail – danger of feudalism.	Mentioned very briefly.
Minorities threatened by Sunni Islam compared to the Alawis	Jews, Assyrian Christians, Yazidis, Kurds and Shiʿis.	‘The good Jews’, Assyrian Christians, Yazidis.
Reliability	Reliable: original document in Arabic and translation to French preserved by Paul Boncour.	Unreliable: a distorted version similar to the original, with some deliberate amendments to stress the Alawi betrayal.

1. The original petition, reproduced on the following pages: the photos are the original petition as preserved at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. These reproductions from the Archives diplomatiques du Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires étrangères – La Courneuve are published in this article with their authorization granted on 25 October 2022.