15 May 2011

The Great Revolt: A History Lesson

I was raised on stories of the heroes of the Great Revolt and have always considered them my inspiration. Knowing that my grandfather was a friend of Sultan al-Atrash was a point of pride; we always were told that he had kept liquor at home in case the Sheikh visited. Naziq al Abid was another inspirational figure for me from girlhood; I have always wanted to be as bold and as forthright as she was and imagined myself at Maysalun or fighting from the Ghouta …


So, when I look at what’s happening now and my mind searches for an analogy, it is natural to see this as an even greater version of that time … much more than the any of the analogies that clog the press.

But I realize a great many people who read this may not immediately recall it. So, here goes another history lesson:

Before the Palestinian intifadas, before the Iraqi insurgencies, there was what started as a Druze revolt and became a national uprising that lasted from 1925 to 1927 against the French. It wasn’t the work of one class or one place but was a real mass movement against colonialism. Though not successful, it remains a beginning of our history of reistance.

During World War I, the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein, had declared a revolt of the Arabs against the Ottoman Empire (which had ruled here for 400 years). The British had encouraged him strongly, promising their support for an independent Arab state after the war. Arab fighters from the Hijaz – along with a fair number of Syrian and Damascene volunteers – pushed north in parallel to the main British advance. In Damascus, Arab nationalists prepared to greet them and, at the end of the war, Sharif Hussein’s son, Faisal, entered Damascus in triumph. An Arab national government was formed and declared it independence with Faisal as king (I’ll write more on that at some point; the lost history of the Arab kingdom needs to be known).

However, while they had promised independence to the Arabs, the British government had also promised Syria as a reward to the French (and then there’s also the Balfour Declaration … but we won’t get into that just yet!). The French landed and occupied Beirut (they’d seized Arwad during the war and used it to blockade the whole coast, triggering a famine in many coastal districts). The new League of Nations granted Syria and Lebanon as a French “Mandate”, allegedly to prepare us for independence but really a new name for colonization. The Syrian government, naturally, refused to give up independence and rejected the French mandate.



The French met resistance as they moved beyond the coast, first in the mountains behind Latakia. The resistance, using only guerilla hit-and-run tactics, had some success and received support both from the national government in Damascus and from the Turkish resistance movement led by Ataturk (though the Turks stopped aiding Syrian resistance after Ataturk signed a treaty with the French in 1921 and the French pulled their occupation troops out of Turkey itself).


To ‘deal’ with the source of resistance, the French sent a full army in and defeated the Arab kingdom’s army at Maysalun; King Faisal had already accepted the inevitability of French rule and had prepared to flee, so it was an army outnumbered three to one by French forces and made up largely of volunteers that met them (including Naziq Abid, my hero). At the time of the French invasion, the Syrians had been writing a constitution and, at that time, the debate had been focussed on women’s voting rights. Without the French intervention, Syrian women would have had the right to vote before American women did!

Anyhow, two days later, French forces entered Damascus on July 25, 1920. King Faisal fled to Jordan; General Henri Gouraud became the French High Commissioner and celebrated his victory by going to Saladin’s grave. He spat on it, kicked it and said:

"The Crusades have ended now! Awake Saladin, we have returned! My presence here consecrates the victory of the Cross over the Crescent."


It was typical of the sort of indignity that would follow. Syria was further partitioned into five parts that the French hoped to rule as separate colonies or puppet states: Damascus, Aleppo, an Alawite state based in Latakia, the expanded “Grand” Lebanon, and a separate Druze state in the south west. Stories of the time are familiar to anyone who’s ever watched Bab al Hara or other things like that. My own family tale is that of my grandmother: she was a young, unmarried woman then, still in her late teens. She was walking, veiled through the old city alone. A French gendarme began harassing her “Fatima, give us a kiss!” and when she tried to get away from him, he chased her, pulled off her veil and tried to kiss her … she returned to her family’s house, in utter sorrow. Her older brother and a friend of his were in the house, heard about it and were outraged; they’d both be determined from then on to avenge the slight. And the friend swore then and there he’d marry her … as he of course is my grandfather!


While everyone seethed under the new regime, in the new Druze state, the rebellion began. There, the French decided that the traditional leadership of the Druze – mostly from Dar al-Atrash – was insufficiently pliant and wanted to replace them with more willing tools who’d help spread French “Civilization”. The traditional courts were to be abolished and replaced by French law and a Captain Gabriel Carbillet was to be governor. He decided that he’d abolish ‘feudalism’ by using the Druze sheikhs and community leaders as forced laborers on road-building projects and break them to the new regime.

The Druze as a group are proud and uncowed by anyone; naturally, they reacted and began gathering their strength. August 23, 1925 saw the Druze leader, Sultan Pasha al-Atrash, issuing a declaration of a national uprising against the French. He appealed to all the ethnic and religious communities as Syrians, united against foreign domination of the Bilad. And the spark took: the whole country rose up!




By the end of August, the French had been driven from the Druze mountains and were being chased from Damascus. France hastily hurried thousands of soldiers to Syria, mostly colonial levies from Morocco and Senegal. For the next three years, resistance continued across the whole country though the French were forced to use enormous numbers of troops and money. As a part of the war effort, they began recruiting Christian Lebanese and Alawi Syrians into their forces and hoped to divide the country as a result.

They attacked Damascus after they’d been driven out. They fought their way back in with mortar shells and aerial bombing. Huge parts of the city burned during the attack and one can still see evidence of it in the Suqh. At least a thousand Damascene civilians died in the attacks.


But, though resistance was fierce, France was too strong and had the full support of the neighboring British occupied areas. Ataturk and the Saudis – fresh from their invasion of the Hijaz – gave tacit support to the French. By the spring of 1927, it was over. Sultan al-Atrash and many other national leaders (including an uncle of my father) were sentenced to death by the colonists; fortunately, they escaped as a group to Transjordan. After the signing of the Franco-Syrian Treaty in 1936, they returned to Syria and were met by cheering crowds


The French gave up their dream of dividing Syria fully; Aleppo, Damascus, and the Druze mountains were reunited and, eventually, the slow drive to independence began. It would take almost 20 more years and many lives, but eventually, they were gone. To this day, we remember it as the largest and longest-lasting of our revolts. The revolt had seen Muslims, Druze and Christians unite; the townsmen, the peasants, workers, and veterans of both Ottoman and Arab armies too were united in a common cause with the great merchants, landowners and intellectuals. Syria, if it had not existed before as an idea, now lived and the idea of Syria was the first mass movement against colonial rule in the Middle East.

That memory is what I see reflected now; Kurds and Arabs arm in arm, Christians, Muslims and Druze together, city and country people … north and south, all of us together as one.

This time, though, we will win.

2 comments:

janinsanfran said...

My mother, an American, took the train with her family from Jerusalem to Damascus in the summer of 1926. The train was fired on by Druze. Unharmed, she thought this a charming adventure. Those were innocent days.

1jimen said...

A prerequisite for understanding is knowing history. Excellent post. Thank you.

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