The Armenian Apostolic Church is an Eastern Orthodox Church and the second largest Orthodox tradition in Syria. The Church was founded in Armenia where Christianity was established as the state religion in the year 301 CE. With the fall of the Armenian kingdoms in the 11th century and the rise of the Safavids in Iran in the 16th century, Armenians immigrated to cities throughout Anatolia and the Levant. In 1742, Rome officially recognized a separate Armenian Catholic Church and over the next two centuries, Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries proselytized among members of the...

Mustafa al-Siba’i (1915-1964) was a prominent Syrian politician who founded the Islamic Socialist Front in 1949, a political organization modeled after the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Educated at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, Siba’i served as Dean of the Faculty of Theology at Damascus University in 1940 and served in the Syrian Parliament from 1949-1951.

Syria has had well-established Jewish communities since at least the Roman period. These have included a community of Arab Jews, referred to as Musta’arabi or Mizrahi, from the Roman period, Sephardic Jews who settled in Syria following their forced migration from Spain in 1492, and Jewish merchants from Europe. The largest centers of Jewish life were in Aleppo, Damascus, and in the largely Kurdish town of Qamishli. The Aleppo Codex, the oldest manuscript of the Bible completed in in the year 920, was housed in Aleppo from the 15^th century until 1947. A portion of the...

Ahmad Badr al-Din Hassoun (b. 1949) is the current Grand Mufti of Syria and has held the government-appointed position since 2005 following the death of Ahmed al-Kuftaro. He was previously the Mufti of Aleppo. In his role he has been a close political adviser and ally to Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (SMB) was established in 1945-46 by Mustafa al-Sibai, who had studied in Egypt in the 1930s where he grew close to Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and had participated in Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood political activities. The SMB was an...

Sunni Arabs arrived in Syria in the 7th century with the wave of early Islamic expansion from the Arabian peninsula, and established the Umayyad Dynasty centered in Damascus. They form the dominant ethnic majority in contemporary Syria.

Syrian Kurds are part of a regional transnational Kurdish population located in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria, 160,000 of which are located in Syria. The Kurdish population is predominantly Sunni Muslim with a Yezidi minority.

Contributed by Rachel Foran, MTS Student, Harvard Divinity School

Salafism (al-Salafiyya) is a global purist movement of Islamic reform, which seeks to regenerate Islam by a return to the doctrine of the salaf (pious forefathers; companions of the Prophet). Salafism is not a monolithic, homogenous movement. Although most Salafis share a consensus on what constitutes Islamic theology and Islamic law, within the movement exists a spectrum of views on how best to politically engage with society. Salafi political engagement is typically understood as having any...

Christians make up approximately 8% of the Syrian population, and include the Eastern Catholic Churches (Melkite/Greek Catholic, Armenian, Syrian, Maronite, Latin and Chaldean), Orthodox Churches (Greek Orthodox,...

Salah al-Din Bitar (1912-1980) was a Sunni Muslim Syrian politician who supported Arab nationalism. With Michel Aflaq, Bitar cofounded the Syrian Ba’ath Party.

Ithna’ashari or Twelver Shi’a Muslims are the largest group of Shi’a Muslims worldwide. In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, Syrian Shi’a Muslims were marginalized among the pan-Arab nationalists, despite their involvement in the establishment of the Ba’ath Party and the political importance of the Alawis. Sunni opposition to the Ba’ath Party in Syria has emphasized sectarian differences, and views Syria...

Muhammad Amin al-Husayni (1895-1974) was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (1921-1948) and a Palestinian nationalist leader who worked to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Al-Husayni attended the 1919 Pan-Syrian Congress in Damascus, where he supported the creation of a nationalist Syrian Arab state that would encompass Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine, then later went on to support an individual Palestinian state.

Sources

Michael Hall, “Haj Amin al-Husseini,” The Encyclopedia...

The Maronite Church is an Eastern Catholic Church, or Uniate Church, that follows the Roman Catholic Church. It was founded by the 4th century Syriac monk St. Maron (d. 410 CE) and grew out of the Monastery of Bait Maron in the 5th century, spreading throughout the Levant. Mass is held in Syriac-Aramaic and in Arabic. As a result of Maronite ties to Rome, the Maronite community has traditionally been isolated from the Eastern Orthodox churches and among Arabs. However, Maronite resistance to the Latinized...

The al-Ba’ath Arab Socialist Party is a political party founded upon the Arab political philosophy known as Ba’athism, which promotes secular Arab nationalism, Arab socialism, pan-Arabism, and militarism. Ba’athism developed in resistance to European colonialism in the Arab world, and understood colonialism as the root cause of problems in the Arab world. The Ba’athist movement gained prominence in Syria in the 1940s, championed by Michel Aflaq and...

Bashar al-Assad (b. 1965) has been the President of Syria since the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, in 2000. He serves as the regional secretary of the Syrian Branch of the Ba’ath Party.