{"collection":"asia","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/asia/odpr/odpr08.htm","path":"asia/odpr/odpr08.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/asia/odpr/odpr08.htm","text":"Origins of the Druze People and Religion, by Philip K. Hitti, [1924]\nWhat then are the racial affinities of that singular people which for the last nine hundred years has grouped itself with marvelous cohesion, solidarity and consciousness of kind, around the divine person of a whimsical Caliph? Or, to reduce our question to its lowest denomination, what were the racial connections of that little community at the foot of Mt. Hermon, in W\u0101di-al-Taym, which in 407 A.H. 1/1016 A.D. responded to the mission of Darazi and consequently assumed his name?\nThe Persian Nucleus at W\u0101di-al-Taym:\u2014It is safe for us to make two postulates at the very outset. First, the people who later became known as the \"Druzes\" must have formed a more or less socially homogeneous community prior to the advent of Darazi. Second, that homogeneous community must have had in it something which predisposed it for the favorable reception of the seemingly strange and peculiar doctrines proclaimed by Darazi, and, having accepted them, to cherish and perpetuate those doctrines. Something in the social and intellectual make-up of that primitive community at W\u0101di-al-Taym must have made it respond whole-heartedly to Druzism and proved a fertile soil for the germination of its dogmas.\nThe trustworthy Egyptian historian, ibn-Taghri-Birdi (\u2020 1469 A.D.), who is the first authority to give us any explanation as to why al-\u1e24ak\u012bm chose, of all places, W\u0101di-al-Taym as the scene for his Syrian propaganda, gives that explanation, which he, of course, draws from earlier documents, in the following words:\n[paragraph continues] \"And al-\u1e24ak\u012bm said to Darazi, 'Proceed into Syria and spread the cause in the mountains because their people are quick to follow.'\" 1 This reason may sound strange considering the rightly reputed conservative character of mountaineers, but at least it makes it clear that Darazi proceeded to W\u0101di-al-Taym according to preconceived plans and he made its population his first objective. And since his new doctrine was at the core an incarnational one of the extreme Sh\u012b\u2018ite type which had been previously developed in \u2018Ir\u0101q and Persia, it is logical to assume that the natives of W\u0101di-al-Taym must have been subjected to \u2018Ir\u0101qizing or Persianizing influence before.\nThe Founders of Druzism All Persian:\u2014It should also be remembered in this connection that Darazi himself was of Turco-Persian origin. 2 His sect was the Ism\u0101\u2018\u012bliyyah. 3 His theological philosophy was B\u0101\u1e6diniyyah (Innerite), i.e., the system of giving an esoteric, inner meaning to the scriptures other than the apparent, literal one. \u1e24amzah, the teacher of Darazi 4 and the brains of the whole movement, especially after Darazi had fallen into disrepute, was of undoubted Persian origin. 5 Besides, the whole\n[paragraph continues] F\u0101\u1e6dimite dynasty, whose claim of legitimacy of descent from \u2018Ali and F\u0101\u1e6dimah has been either suspected or vehemently denied by many judicious Moslem historians, was probably founded by, and descended from, a Persian adventurous ancestor who exploited a \u2018Alid tradition and a \u2018Alid fetish for his own personal interest and for the aggrandizement of his progeny.\nThe Testimony of Religious Vocabulary:\u2014If we, furthermore, investigate the technical terms current in the Druze religious vocabulary, we find many of them, including the word for God, al-B\u0101r (from Barkhoda), 1 of clear Persian origin. 2 It is significant that the Druze password as taught in their catechism, formulated after the time of \u1e24amzah and al-Muqtana and patterned after the Christian system of questions and answers, consists in the proper answer to the catch question, \"Do they plant the seeds of hal\u0101l\u012bj [or ihlil\u012bj, from Persian hal\u012blah = myrobalan citrina] in your country?\" 3 If the man is a Druze his answer would be, \"Yes, they are planted in the hearts of the believers.\"\nNames of Feudal Families:\u2014A study, therefore, of the Druze dogmas, their religious vocabulary and the nationality of the missionaries would suggest \u2018Ir\u0101qi and Persian beginnings for the Druze people. This conclusion regarding the Persian racial origins of the Druzes which we have reached is in contradiction to almost all other conclusions reached by travelers and historians. 4 It is\nfurther corroborated by an investigation of the genealogies of the chief feudal families which we shall now consider.\nThe leading families among the Druzes have been throughout their history either of full Kurdish and Persian origin or of Persianized and \u2018Ir\u0101qized Arab origin. That is, they have been either Kurdish and Persian families or tribes from the Arabian peninsula who, before their advent into the Lebanon, sojourned for many generations in Mesopotamia where they became fully indoctrinated with the \u2018Alid ideas and subjected to Gnostic and Manichaean influences.\nW\u0101di-al-Taym, the place where the Druzes first appear in history under that name, 1 is so called after an Arab tribe Taym-All\u0101h (formerly Taym-All\u0101t) which, according to the greatest Arab historian, al-\u1e6cabari, 2 first came from Arabia into the valley of the Euphrates where they were Christianized prior to their migration into the Lebanon. Many of the Druze feudal families whose genealogies have been preserved to us by the two modern Syrian chroniclers: al-Am\u012br \u1e24aydar and al-Shidy\u0101q, seem also to point in the direction of the same origin\u2014Arabian tribes which emigrated via the Persian Gulf and stopped in \u2018Ir\u0101q on the route that was later to lead them to Syria. The first feudal Druze family, the banu-Tan\u016bkh, which made for itself a name in fighting the Crusaders under authorization from the Sultan N\u016br-al-D\u012bn of Damascus, was according to \u1e24aydar, 3 an Arab tribe from al-\u1e24\u012brah (Mesopotamia) where it occupied the position of a ruling family and was apparently christianized. The Tan\u016bkhs must have left Arabia as early as the second or third century A.D. The Ma\u2018n tribe which superseded the Tan\u016bkhs and produced the greatest Druze hero in history, Fakhr-al-D\u012bn, had the same traditional origin, 4 although Fakhr-al-D\u012bn himself is quoted, on the authority\nof a grandson of his, as saying that the Ma\u2018ns were Kurds. 1 The banu-Ta\u1e37h\u016bq 2 and \u2018Abd-al-Malik 3 who supplied the later Druze leadership have the same record as the Tan\u016bkhs. The banu-\u2018Im\u0101d are so-called from al \u2018Im\u0101diyyah, 4 near al-Maw\u1e63il, and, like the Junbl\u0101\u1e6ds, 5 are of Kurdish origin. The Arisl\u0101ns claim descent from the \u1e24\u012brah Arab kings, but the name (Arslan = lion) suggests Persian influence if not origin. It was in conformity with the principle of racial dissimulation (taqiyyah) that many Druze families of Kurdish and Persian origins claimed Arab descent.\nIt is interesting to note that most of these Druze Arab tribes trace their origin to southern Arabia, and not to the \u1e24ij\u0101z tribes which flooded western Asia at the time of the Moslem conquests. This would imply an earlier migration into \u2018Ir\u0101q than the rise of Islam, and a sojourn of many generations in a sphere of Persian influence.\nPersian Tribes Transplanted into Syria:\u2014That the Indo-Iranian elements in the blood of the historic Druzes are varied and multiplied can be safely assumed, not only on the ground of probable beginning and intermarriages in their earlier home, Mesopotamia, but on the ground of possible admixture in Syria itself where many Persians had been domiciled prior to the rise of Druzism. Al-Bal\u0101dhuri, the most judicious of the early Arab historians, informs us that Mu\u2018\u0101wiyah (660-680 A.D.), among other Umayyad Caliphs, transplanted on different occasions quite a number of Persian and Mesopotamian tribes into the districts of Ba\u2018labakk, \u1e24im\u1e63, \u1e62\u016br (Tyre) and elsewhere in order, evidently, to take the place of the Byzantines who had evacuated Syria subsequent to its conquest by the Moslem Arabs. 6 In the shuffle to which these\n18:1 \u1e24amzah did not proclaim openly the incarnation of the Deity in al-\u1e24ak\u012bm till the following year, 408 A.H., which marks the beginning of the Druze era and from which their manuscripts are dated.\n19:1 Al-Nuj\u016bm al-Z\u0101hirah, op. cit., II, 69.\n19:2 Al-Mak\u012bn, op. cit., calls him Persian; Silvestre de Sacy, Expos\u00e9 de la religion des Druzes (a vols., Paris, 1838), I, CCLXXXIV, thinks he was a Turk. By many historians he is described min muwalladi al-atr\u0101k, i.e., one of his parents was Turkish, of course, not Ottoman Turkish, but one from Persia or Turkestan. See al-Mu\u1e25ibbi, Khul\u0101\u1e63at al-Athar (Cairo, 1284 A.H.), p. 268.\n19:3 A Sh\u012b\u2018ah sect which believed in seven Im\u0101ms of whom the last and greatest was Mu\u1e25ammad ibn-Ism\u0101\u2018\u012bl, a descendant of \u2018Ali. For a statement in English on this sect see D. B. Macdonald, Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence and Constitutional Theory (New York, 1903), pp. 43 seq. and E. G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia from the Earliest Times until Firdawsi (New York, 1902), pp. 405-415.\n19:4 In his Literary History of Persia from the Earliest Times until Firdawsi, op. cit., p. 400, and Literary History of Persia from Firdawsi to Sa\u2018di (New York, 1906), p. 199, the eminent English scholar, E. G. Browne, confuses Darazi with \u1e24amzah making them both one man \"\u1e24amzah-al-Duruzi.\"\n19:5 Many historians refer to him as \"al-Z\u016bzani,\" i.e., coming from Z\u016bzan in Persia. The Governors and Judges of Egypt or Kit\u0101b al-Wul\u0101h wa-Kit\u0101b al-Qu\u1e0d\u0101h of el-Kindi, together with an appendix derived mostly from Raf\u2018 El-I\u1e63r by Ibn-\u1e24ajar, ed. R. Guest (Beir\u016bt, 1908), p. 652.\n20:1 E. Blochet, Le Messianisme dans l\u2019h\u00e9t\u00e9rodoxie musulmane (Paris, 1903), p. 94, n. 1; S. de Sacy, Chrestomathie Arabe (Paris, 1826), II, 246, n. 72.\n20:2 This etymology is recognized by \u1e24amzah himself in al-S\u012brah al-Mustaq\u012bmah, MS.\n20:3 One version of the Druze catechism was translated by Adler, op. cit., see p. 127; another by Guys, La Nation Druse, see p. 199. Cf. Baron de Bock, Essai sur l\u2019histoire du Sab\u00e9isme auquel on a joint un cat\u00e9chisme, qui contient les principaux dogmes de la religion des Druzes (Metz, 1788), pp. 143 seq.; \"A Catechism of the Druze Religion\" in Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement (London, 1886), p. 41.\n20:4 Lieut.-Col. Conder in his Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, op. cit., p. 235, makes the categorical statement \"Nor were the Druzes of Arab race. They were in great measure of Persian stock; and their women wore the silver horn beneath the veil, projecting forward from the forehead, a costume which was used among tribes of the Oxus and Caspian.\"\n21:1 For Tay\u0101minah (coming from, or belonging to, W\u0101di-al-Taym) as a synonym of \"Druzes,\" see al-Mu\u1e25ibbi, Khul\u0101\u1e63at al-Athar (Cairo, 1284 A.H.), III, 268. Cf. Guys, La Nation Druze, p. 118.\n21:2 Ta\u2019r\u012bkh al-Rusul, ed. de Goeje (Leyden, 1889), I, 2489-2490, 2031.\n21:3 Ta\u2019r\u012bkh (Cairo, 1900), p. 350.\n21:4 \u1e24aydar, p. 316. See also T. Shidy\u0101q, Akhb\u0101r al-A\u2018y\u0101n (Beir\u016bt, 1859), p.562.\n22:1 Al-Mu\u1e25ibbi, op. cit., p. 266.\n22:2 Shidy\u0101q, p. 255.\n22:3 Shidy\u0101q, p. 160.\n22:4 Shidy\u0101q, p. 260.\n22:5 Baron Carra de Vaux, Les Penseurs de l\u2019Islam (Paris, 1926), V, 69, erroneously makes the Junbl\u0101\u1e6ds Moslem. They and the Arisl\u0101ns form the two leading Druze families at the present time.\n22:6 Philip K. Hitti, Origins of the Islamic State (New York, 1916), pp. 180, 260. Ya\u2019q\u016bbi, Kit\u0101b al-Buld\u0101n, ed. Juynboll (Leyden, 2886), pp. 114-115.\n[paragraph continues] Persian tribes were later subjected in Syria, 1 it is possible that some tribes landed in W\u0101di-al-Taym, which, according to a passage in ibn-al-Ath\u012br, 2 recorded under the events of 523 A.H./1128 A.D., was included in the district of Ba\u2018labakk. According to the same passage, W\u0101di-al-Taym was then swarming with diverse heterodoxies, such as the \"Nu\u1e63ayriyyah, Durziyyah and Maj\u016bs\" (Magians = Manichaeans or some Zoroastrian sect). The modern Sh\u012b\u2018ah of Syria, popularly known as \"Mat\u0101wilah\" may go back to one or more of these transplanted Persian tribes. 3\nRacially, therefore, the Druze people were a mixture of Persians, \u2018Ir\u0101qis, and Persianized Arabs, and were thereby admirably fitted for the reception of the Druze dogmas and tenets of belief, which we shall next take up.\n23:1 Hitti, Origins, p. 228.\n23:2 Al-K\u0101mil, ed. Tornberg (Leyden, 1863), X, 461-462.\n23:3 P\u00e8re Lammens, Tasr\u012b\u1e25 al-Ab\u1e63\u0101r (Beir\u016bt, 1914), II, 48-49. Cf. Lammens, La Syrie (Beir\u016bt, 1921), I, 282.","title":"Origins of the Druze People and Religion: Chapter IV. The Persian Origin of the Druzes","type":"page"}