Salih al-Ali

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Sheikh Salih al-Ali ( Arabic الشيخ صالح أحمد العلي, DMG aš-Šaiḫ Sāliḥ Aḥmad al-ʿAlī ; * 1884 in Sheikh Badr ; † April 13, 1950 in Tartus ) was a Syrian clan leader and politician from the Alawite denominational community . He led an uprising against French rule in Syria .

Life

Salih al-Ali came from an Alawite landowning family from the Bashargha tribal community, who settled in the mountainous area on the Syrian Mediterranean coast ( Jebel Ansariyye ) , which is predominantly inhabited by poor farmers . As a young man, during the time of the Ottoman rule over Syria , he gathered a small vigilante group around him and was supported by other Alawite notables. The background was, among other things, conflicts between Alawi and Ismaili villages in the coastal area.

With the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I in 1918, the occupation of the Vilayets of Syria by the Entente powers and the Arab Hashimites initially allied with them , French troops took control of the region and tried to overthrow Alawite militia and gang leaders. Al-Ali escaped arrest by ambush.

In 1919 there were repeated attacks by supporters of al-Ali on French facilities. The French mandate authorities apparently did not judge this as a revolt until several hundred Alawis attacked a depot of the mandate troops in Tartus in February 1920. Al-Ali's actions coincided with various local uprising movements, including the so-called Hananu revolt in the vicinity of Aleppo, and were partially coordinated with them. Al-Ali was in correspondence with the Turkish military leader Mustafa Kemal Pasha , who at the time was leading the Turkish Liberation War against the Entente powers and who saw al-Ali as an ally. The Turks also supplied weapons to Syrian insurgents. Allegedly, al-Ali was also in contact with the Hashimite Faisal I , who was disempowered by the French , who is said to have asked him to restore property that his Alawites had looted during attacks on Christian villages in the outskirts of Tartus.

From November 1920 to April 1921, the French authorities under High Commissioner General Henri Gouraud carried out several operations against al-Ali in the coastal mountains, but without getting hold of him. An absent death sentence passed on al-Ali was overturned by Gouraud in 1922. This happened in the course of a changed French policy in the mandate area, which had the aim of co-opting the Alawite clan leaders.

meaning

At the celebrations for the independence of the Syrian Republic on April 17, 1946, al-Ali was honored as a national hero by President Shukri al-Quwatli . Representatives of the Syrian national movement and historians endeavored to portray al-Ali as a Syrian nationalist and the uprising he led as the forerunner of the Great Syrian Revolt (In Arabic, however, it is called the "Alawite Revolt" or "Ali Revolt" for short, Ar : ثورة العلي, denoted). It is controversial whether al-Ali's original motivation was not more to defend Alawite interests in autonomy or to defend sectarian rivalries with other minorities.

The importance of al-Ali as the Alawite clan chief who rebelled against the French is also to be seen in relation to the Alawite state established by the mandate authorities (1920-1936). As a discriminated, Hetherodox denominational community, the Alawites have repeatedly faced accusations in recent Syrian history that they are not sufficiently loyal to Syria and its Sunni majority. Against this background, the importance of al-Ali as a national figure of identification of Alawite origin is of particular importance. At the beginning of the protests, which culminated in the Syrian civil war from 2011 , some members of the opposition invoked al-Ali as a national counter-figure to the likewise Alawite ruler Bashar al-Assad .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sami M. Moubayed: Steel & Silk: Men and Women who Shaped Syria 1900-2000 . Cune Press, Seattle 2006, pp. 363 .
  2. ↑ Matti Moosa: Extremist Shiites: The ghulat Sects . Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY 1987, pp. 282-283 .
  3. ↑ a b Stefan Winter: A History of the 'Alawis: From Medieval Aleppo to the Turkish Republic . Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 2016, pp. 248 .
  4. ^ Fabrice Balanche: La région alaouite et le pouvoir syria . Karthala, Paris 2006, p. 36 .
  5. ^ Itamar Rabinovich: The Compact Minorities and the Syrian State, 1918-45 . In: Journal of Contemporary History . London October 1979.
  6. ↑ Cajsa Wikstrom: The battle to name Syria's Friday protests. Retrieved February 3, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Salih al-Ali
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sheikh Salih al-Ali (full name); d = aš-Šaiḫ Sāliḥ Aḥmad al-ʿAlī (Arabic)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Syrian clan leader and politician
DATE OF BIRTH 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Sheikh Badr
DATE OF DEATH April 13, 1950
Place of death Tartus