Syria: Society, Culture, and Polity

190 Pages·1991·2.44 MB·English

by  Richard T. Antoun

Syria
SUNY Series in Middle Eastern Studies
Shahrough Akhavi, Editor
Syria
Society, Culture, and Polity
Edited by
Richard T. Antoun and Donald Quataert
State University of N ew York Press
Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 1991 State University of New York
All rights reserved
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Syria : Society, Culture, and Polity / edited by Richard T. Antoun and
Donald Quataert.
p. cm. — (SUNY Series in Middle Eastern Studies)
The product of a conference held in 1987 at the State University
of New York—Binghamton, sponsored by the Southwest Asian and North
African Studies Program.
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
ISBN 0-7914-0713-6 (cloth : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-7914-0714-4
(paper: alk. paper)
1. Syria—Congresses. I. Antoun, Richard T. II. Quataert,
Donald, 1941- III. State University of New York at Binghamton.
Program in Southwest Asian and North African Studies. IV. Series.
DS92.3.S97 1991
956.91—dc20 90-10251
CIP
1098765432 1
C
ontents
Preface vii
Donald Quataert
Note on Transliteration xi
Chronology xiii
Glossary xv
Table Syria: Area and Population xix
Map Distribution of Population in Syria, 1970 xx
Map Syria: Administrative Divisions xxi
Introduction Ethnicity, Clientship, and Class:
Their Changing Meaning 1
Richard T. Antoun
1. Syrian Political Culture:
A Historical Perspective 13
Philips. Khoury
2. Class and State in Ba’thist Syria 29
Raymond A. Hinnebusch
3. The Alawis of Syria:
Religious Ideology and Organization 49
Fuad I. Khuri
4. Land Reform and Class Structure
in Rural Syria 63
Sulayman N. Khalaf
5. The Emancipation of Women in
Contemporary Syrian Literature 79
Salih J. Altoma
vi / Syria
6. Asad: Between Institutions
and Autocracy 97
Patrick Seale
7. The Nature of the Soviet-Syrian
Link under Asad and under Gorbachev 111
Helena Cobban
Notes 131
Bibliography 149
Contributors 161
Index 163
P
reface
Donald Quataert
In April 1987 the Southwest Asian and North African Studies Program
(SWANA) sponsored a conference, “Syria: The Society, Culture, and
Polity of a Complex Middle Eastern Nation,” held on the campus of the
State University of New York at Binghamton. The present book is a prod­
uct of that effort, assembled by two editors. The first is a social anthro­
pologist, Richard Antoun; the second, Donald Quataert, is a historian of
the Ottoman Empire. As we all know, social anthropologists study pres­
ent behavior and historians examine the past. But this book inverts the
natural order; it permits the historian the first word on past events, then
the anthropologist’s insights through contemporary field research.
Syria clearly is a significant country. It is both a region of major his­
torical consequence and a modern state, playing a vital role in regional
and global politics. The area occupied by the modern Syrian state long
has been an experimental laboratory in areas of life as diverse as religion
and politics. After all, Saul/Paul had his religious crisis on the road to Da­
mascus. It is a less well-known fact that, approximately a thousand years
later, the region nurtured the rise of the Druze faith. In the twentieth cen­
tury, its environment promoted the emergence of Arab nationalism, and
later the Ba’th Party, an Arab-Middle Eastern variant on socialism. The
ecology of its mountains still shelters a few speakers of millennia-old lan­
guages otherwise vanished, while the economy of its plains are now
transforming honored tribal patterns of existence. Few would argue
against the contemporary importance of Syria. It stands in the center of
Arab politics and for years was the coveted prize of Pan-Arab unification
schemes. The Ba’th Party born on its soil continues to be important in the
political life of the wider Arab world. Syria plays a key role in the major
international problems of the area, variously promoting or impeding res­
olution of the Arab-Israeli and Lebanese crises.
For all its rich diversity and importance, however, the country has
been the focus of remarkably little attention by scholars. As any survey
viii / Syria
of the bibliographic literature will demonstrate, there are comparatively
very few articles and books on modern-day Syria. It was this sharp con­
trast between Syrian significance and the scarcity of relevant literature
that initially attracted the attention of the editors, prompting the confer­
ence and now this volume.
Individuals and nations alike are shaped by their past, and modern-
day Syria is no exception. In the post-Ottoman, post-French twentieth
century, Syrians have embarked on a new course of identity formation
and political organization. But in important ways, the Syrian past con­
strains, restricts, shapes, and traps. Its historic economy profoundly was
affected by the post-World War I boundaries agreed upon by France and
Britain. One stroke of a pen on the map severed the great manufacturing
center of Aleppo from both its suppliers and its customers to the north,
in the region that became the republic of Turkey. Another line created the
Mandate and later the state of Lebanon, formalizing a barrier between the
Mediterranean Sea and the Syrian caravan cities of Aleppo, Homs,
Hama, and Damascus. The Syrian economy has since wrestled with
these demarcations. Syrian policymakers, for their part, remain drawn to
Lebanon. The pull of the past, however, is not irresistible and should not
be overstated. If Lebanon seems alluring to Syrian leaders, other histor­
ically Syrian regions lost to the modern state at the hands of foreign map-
makers do not. In 1938, France gave the Syrian district of Alexandretta
to the Turkish republic in a ploy to win support in the imminent World
War II. Despite this, there are few efforts to regain the lost district. Leb­
anese weakness and Turkish strength and not simply Syrian history seem
relevant in understanding Syrian irredentism (or its absence).
The contribution by Philip S. Khoury (and his 1987 book on Syria and
the French Mandate) exemplifies a major, new, and healthy development
in Middle East studies: an acknowledgment of the Ottoman past as im­
portant to the contemporary Middle East. This is a radical shift, although
Albert Hourani pointed the way many years ago in his 1969 pamphlet,
“The Ottoman Background to the Modern Middle East.” With this ex­
ception, scholars, journalists, and diplomats wrote of the twentieth-cen­
tury Arab Middle East as if it were a tabula rasa. For these new Arab
states (as for Turkey), the immediate past—that is, the Ottoman experi­
ence—was irrelevant, except as an obstacle to be overcome, a dead hand.
It was seen to have no significance or impact on modem Arab (or Turkish)
life. Khoury’s efforts are an important addition to a growing body of work
that corrects this wrongheaded view and treats the Ottoman past for what
it is, an integral part of modern Middle East life.
Other studies in this emerging pattern include Hanna Batatu’s ep­
ochal work on Iraq and William Cleveland’s fine books on Sati al-Husri
Preface • Donald Quataert / ix
and Shakib Arslan, as well as Haim Gerber’s fascinating (if flawed) study
of Middle East landholding patterns. Sulayman Khalaf s article in this
volume, for its part, is intimately tied to Norman Lewis’s book on nine­
teenth-century tribal sedentarization patterns in Syria. The two should be
read together to see how intimately the Syrian past folds into the present.
All these studies make clear the relevance of the Ottoman past for the
modern Arab world.
In its parts, the present volume also offers studies of the state and its
role in shaping society and of the Alawis, their beliefs and their political
role. Other sections examine Asad and Syrian-Soviet relations. Between
these covers are contributions from a variety of disciplines and back­
grounds, including anthropology, political science, history, journalism,
language, and literature. In its multidisciplinary richness, this is an un­
usual book. Further, it strikes a fine balance between synopsis and mi­
nute analysis. On the heights, there are the synoptical chapters of Philip
Khoury, Hinnebusch, and Seale while closer to the ground are the mi­
crostudies of Khuri, Khalaf, Cobban, and Altoma. All together, the book
offers a richly textured entree to a fascinating subject.