This research paper traces the origins, history and development of the Druze, a people with a distinctive religion and culture in the Middle East, primarily in present day Lebanon and Syria, who have struggled, by and large successfully, to maintain their separate identity and way of life in the face of various political, religious and military threats since the early 11th century A.D.
As of 1988, there were a little less than one million Druze in the world, divided as follows: Lebanon 390,000 (10 percent of the population), Syria 420,000 (three percent), Israel 75,000 (one percent), Jordan 15,000 and about 80,000 scattered throughout Africa, the Americas, Australia and South and East Asia (Betts 7).
In the early 11th century, the Druze began to assume distinctive form in the mountainous regions of southeast Lebanon and in northern areas of Syria, near present day Aleppo and in and around Damascus. Today, most Druze in Syria live in the southern mountains, including about 15,000 in the Golan Heights area which was seized by Israel in 1973. Druze in Lebanon are primarily concentrated in the southeastern Shouf mountain range and in and around the southern port of Sidon and in Beirut. Druze settlements in Israel are in west Galilee and below the northern Israeli border. Crose says their forbears, most of whom came from Mesopotamia and Persia, began to filter into the mountainous area on the slopes of Mount Hermon in the eighth and ninth centuries A.D. "to fill the void left by the Byzantines who fled under the Muslim onslaught in the seventh and eighth centuries" (52).
The Druze religion entered these communities as a result of the efforts of a Fatimid religious leader of Persian origin, Hamza ibn Ali (Hamza), to introduce a new Ismailite sect of Islam during the reign of Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim (996-1021) in Cairo. As the unity of the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad (750-1258) began to weaken in the late 9th and 10th c...