Jabal al-Duruz in the Ottoman system of provincial administration in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Abstract

The article examines the conflictual relations between the Druze community, historically inhabiting Jabal al-Duruz, a mountainous region in southern Syria, and the Ottoman authorities during the period of large-scale reforms in the Ottoman Empire, that is, during the Tanzimat (1839–1876) and the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II (1876–1909). The ethno-confessional specificity of the population of Jabal al-Duruz, which has persisted to the present day, largely shaped the sociopolitical situation in the Hauran region, of which Jabal al-Duruz formed a part, south of Damascus. This makes it possible to place the military conflicts and political arrangements between the Ottoman provincial administration in Syria and the Druze community of Hauran within a broader context of the changing historical destinies of inward-looking and compactly settled ethno-confessional communities during state-led modernization. Drawing on archival materials from Russian consular reports and other primary sources, the study traces the logic and dynamics of Ottoman attempts to incorporate Jabal al-Duruz into the empire-wide reformed system of administrative and territorial governance. It also identifies the factors that helped preserve the Druze community’s confessional and social insularity and its readiness to offer armed resistance to external encroachments on traditional self-government.

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