Posts Tagged ‘Druze sect’
Solving the 2,000 Year Old Mystery of the Druze
The origins of the Druze people and their religion have fascinated historians, linguists and geneticists for centuries.
Druze farmers. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
It is in what we now call the Middle East that humans domesticated plants and animals, built the earliest cities, devised the first alphabet, and wrote the first literature.
But while many of the mysteries in the region’s history still abound, few have attracted more varied speculation than the origin of the Druze people and their religion. Modern genetics gives us powerful new tools to decipher the origin of the Druze.
Much like the Ashkenazic Jews, the origins of the Druze people and religion have fascinated historians, linguists and geneticists.
For nearly a millennium, travellers and their neighbours have wondered and hypothesised about the beginnings of this enduring people, and their exclusive religion in the mountains of Israel, Syria and Lebanon.
Benjamin of Tudela, the Jewish traveller who passed through Lebanon in 1165, was one of the first European writers to refer to the Druze by name. Even then, they were known as mountain-dwellers, and Benjamin described them as fearless warriors who favoured the Jews. But he could not state their origin, and he was not the only one to be mystified. Over the years, people have proposed that the Druze have Arabian, Persian or Near Eastern origins.
Reports from Cairo’s ruler, Al-Hakim (996-1021 CE), give us the first glance into the Druze and Druzism.
Al-Hakim had sent missionaries throughout Arabia, to win new believers. His missionaries claimed the Druze had splintered from Isma’ili Islam, a branch of Shia Islam. (Sects opposing the Caliphs’ institution)
After Al-Hakim’s sudden disappearance, the new ruler eradicated the faith in Cairo.
The Druze who took residence in the mountains of what is now Lebanon, Syria and Palestine not only survived, but flourished.
Since the 11th-century Crusades, the Druze have played a distinctive role in the region. (How distinctive? any details?)
Also in the 11th century, the Druze closed their faith to new adherents. You cannot become a Druze. This exclusivity also means that modern-day Druze people contain the genetic signature of the their Druze ancestors.
The Geographical Population Structure (GPS) technology, which works in a similar way to the satnav geolocation system, uses DNA instead of satellites to predict the most recent geographical origins of a DNA sample. To infer the origin of Druze ancestors, my lab at the University of Sheffield has applied the GPS technology to the DNA of Israeli Druze. (Meaning Palestinian Druze?)
Most of the Druze, we have found, can be traced to the highest mountains in Turkey, northern Iraq and southern Armenia, and to the Zagros Mountain belt bordering Mount Ararat – very close to ancient Ashkenaz.
By comparing the DNA of contemporary Druze to DNA dated 1,000-4,000 years ago from the Levant, Turkey and Armenia, my lab confirmed these findings.
This means that, genetically, the Druze really are different from their neighbours.
Unlike Palestinians, Bedouins and Syrians who share between 36-70% of ancient Levantine ancestry, the Israeli Druze have only a minor Levantine component of 15% and a significantly higher (80%) ancient Armenian ancestry.
Ashkenazic Jews, by contrast, had a major ancient Anatolian ancestry (96%) and a residual Levantine one (0.5%), in support of their non-Levantine origins.
The Druze have long preferred to live among high mountains, which has helped them maintain their close social structure, as well as providing them with protection. Our results indicate that the Druze habitation in high mountains is an ancient practice, one that their ancestors brought with them from what is now Iraq, Armenia and Turkey.
But why did they come to the Middle East? Can DNA help us answer that?
Fortunately, since the Druze maintain a close-group social structure, each group preserved a different aspect of the Druze history.
Genetic testing is thereby able to determine that the Druze DNA experienced its last major admixture event, where Druze mixed with local Levantines (Syrians), between the early ninth century and the early 12th century. The date overlaps with the expansion of the Seljuk Turkish Empire into the Levant during the 11th century to fight the Crusaders.
We know that after pushing away the invaders, the Seljuks settled in Iran, Anatolia and Syria, and that the Druze were first recorded in that region around 150 years later.
The genetic similarity between Druze and Armenians supports speculation that they had Seljuk ancestors.
Most likely, the Seljuks would have, upon their arrival in the Levant for the Crusades, mixed with the native population. Some of them would have likely adopted the Druze faith.
The Druze genome is therefore like a very long museum with separate rooms for Near Eastern and Levant exhibits, and including rooms for mixed inheritances that could not be sorted. Now, we can put together the remaining evidence to reconstruct the Druze’s history.
The Near Eastern ancestors of the Druze emerged near the Fertile Crescent, in the region that saw the rise of domestication and agriculture.
Unsurprisingly, it was also a major convergence point on the Silk Road, with trade routes leading to Constantinople and Antioch. This is when the Druze likely encountered the Ashkenazic Jews who played a key role in global trade.
The genetic similarity between Druze and Ashkenazic Jews is very high, although they emerged from different ancient founding populations (Anatolians and Armenians). However, although they started at the same place, they went their separate ways.
By the eighth century, Ashkenazic Jews had abandoned ancient Ashkenaz and moved north to Khazaria and west to Europe. (Read my note). Two centuries later, the Druze ancestors began descending to the Levant to fight in the Crusades.
When the Druze re-encountered Ashkenazic Jews in Palestine centuries later, neither population recalled its Near Eastern origins, and both peoples developed a rich heritage based on their experience over the previous millennium. (Now the propaganda or hasbara starts)
However, as both populations, to a large extent, favoured marriage within the community, each retained Near Eastern relics in its DNA museum, which allowed us to tell the end of this 2,000-years-old odyssey.
This article originally appeared in Aeon.
Note: The Khazaria “kingdom” was over-run by the Russian Ivan in the 11th century and the Ashkenazic dispersed in the neighboring regions. Many of them transferred to eastern Europe. The Ashkenazic adopted the Jewish daily customs and rituals, as many early Christian sects did in proselytizing in the Near East and onward to the Caucasus and even toward China. Jesus and his disciples (from the province of Tyre and Galilee) were Not recognized as Jews by the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, even though they also followed the daily Jewish practices and customs.
Israel’s exploitation of the Syrian war: Laid bare
Last summer in the occupied Golan Heights, an Israeli military ambulance ferrying wounded fighters from across the border in Syria came under attack by Druze.
Rebel fighters had been inadvertently straying into Israeli-held territory for years.
But these fighters in the ambulance were different: they were members of the Al Qaeda-linked Jabhat Al Nusra, which has been fighting Bashar Al Assad’s forces with varying degrees of success, and essentially funded by Saudi Arabia.
Andrew Bossone shared a link.
As the chaos of the Syrian civil war deepened, Al Nusra and other extremist groups have taken advantage of the security vacuum to rally support from external governments, reportedly including Turkey and the United States. Israel’s role in aiding these fighters, however, had been shrouded in secrecy until the episode on the Golan Heights.
As the Israeli ambulance sped towards a field hospital with two wounded Al Nusra fighters, it encountered a large group of Druze blocking the road.
The Druze, a small Muslim sect who live in Syria, Israel and Lebanon, have been largely on the side-lines of the Syrian war but have remained loyal to Bashar Al Assad’s government. Recently there has been sporadic fighting between the Druze and extremist groups like Al Nusra inside Syria.
In June, Druze in Syria alerted their brethren on the other side of the border that the Israeli army was treating Al Nusra fighters who had been wounded fighting the Druze.
On the Golan Heights, Druze attacked the Israeli ambulance convoy with stones, eventually attacking the wounded fighters. When the dust settled, one Nusra fighter was killed and another was unconscious from the blows of the mob.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu then held a special meeting with Druze leaders to keep the situation under control. Despite the fact that this episode was reported extensively in local and foreign press, the Israeli army continues to deny its links to Al Nusra.
When Hezbollah operative Samir Kuntar was killed in an Israeli targeted assassination in Syria two weeks ago, Tel Aviv’s foothold in the conflict came under renewed inspection.
Hafez Al Assad, who ruled Syria before his son for 3 decades, often joked that the Syrian-Israeli border in the Golan Heights was the quietest in the Middle East, but since the outbreak of civil war in 2011, things have steadily heated up.
While Israel has tried to keep its involvement in the Syrian war under wraps, there are several things we know about its participation.
First, Israel has been carrying out air strikes against Hezbollah targets throughout Syria. Ostensibly, these air strikes are tailored to keep Hezbollah from obtaining Syrian chemical weapons.
In the 2006 Lebanon war, the Iranian-backed militia became the only Arab fighting force to unconditionally force Israel to retreat from Arab land occupied in the course of battle.
(In May 2000, Israel withdrew from south Lebanon unilaterally and in great hurry after its occupation presence was made untenable by Hezbollah resistance fighters)
Hezbollah has an extensive rockets cache that can reach any part of Israeli territory, as well as an elaborate network of underground bunkers in southern Lebanon that the Israeli military has never succeeded in fully destroying. It makes sense that Israel would want to keep Assad’s chemical weapons out of Hezbollah’s hands. (As if Hezbollah ever used chemical weapons that are easily manufactured)
In Syria, Hezbollah has endured heavy losses; it is operating outside its normal strongholds in a country where it doesn’t have the support it enjoys in Lebanon, and the war appears to be wearing the group’s resources thin.
In a sign of its dwindling human capital, the group has recently ratcheted up recruitment with promises of cash for new fighters.
For decades, Iran and its proxies have been Israel’s primary enemies. Now that those groups are fighting a draining war in Syria, Israel is taking the opportunity to hit them with air strikes.
An uneasy alliance between Israel and radical extremist groups fighting in the region – as last summer’s episode on the Golan seemed to confirm – is not beyond comprehension.
Note: Israel is purchasing cheap oil from ISIS through Turkey. The objective of Israel is to divide Syria into small cantons in order to impose its military dominion in the region.
Adonis Diaries 