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CHAPTER 5 The Spread of Rebellion urban agitation P rotests and agitation continued into September 1925 and gradually spread to all the cities of mandate Syria. Mme. Shahbandar immediately assumed the mantle of her fugitive husband and engaged in a series of meetings with the wives of exiled and jailed Damascene nationalists and with other prominent women. She organized women’s marches and decried the lack of courage among the men of Damascus and the failure of merchants to close the bazaars completely.1 French intelligence opined that the house of Mme. Shahbandar was ‘‘a hotbed of anti-mandatory propaganda .’’2 Still, the devoted attention that she received from French intelligence came from a general lack of more threatening activity. She held meetings at her house and drafted petitions to the League of Nations. Twenty or thirty women routinely attended and represented the most accomplished and publicly visible Syrian women. They included several school and orphanage directors and teachers and at least one lawyer. Like the male members of the People’s Party, they met at the Shahbandar house and the house of jailed merchant Uthmân al-Sharâbâtî. They also met at the Damascus-American Girls’ School in al-Ṣâliḥiyya.3 Agitation continued in the countryside too. Nasîb al-Bakrî toured villages throughout southern Syria seeking support and making contacts. Sulṭân alA ṭrash sent various letters to villages and towns all over the countryside in the name of ‘‘independence, liberty, fraternity, and equality,’’ declaring that all Druze, Sunnîs, Alawîs, Shîîs, and Christians were sons of the Syrian Arab nation. As there was no difference between them, there was only one enemy before them: the unjust militaryauthorityand the foreign colonizer. As leader of the Syrian Arab revolutionary army, he asked all to help: Ensure harmony between all communities. Guard the tranquility of their villages and towns and allow entry of rebel troops [into their villages] in order to speed the flight of the colonizers .  The Spread of Rebellion Allow patrols . . . loyal to the homeland to blend in among the inhabitants , in order to take possession of the villages in good order, and to safeguard the inhabitants and their belongings against pillage and all aggression. Recruit volunteers in the towns and villages [to welcome] the detachments of the patriotic rebels with chants of enthusiasm.4 Intelligence agents recovered this tract in al-Qunayṭra, a city mostly populated by Circassian Muslim refugees settled by the Ottoman government after the defeat of 1878.The implied threat in the third point reflects the realities of guerrilla warfare and the historically poor relations between the Circassians and the Druze. Despite the fine language and inclusive nationalist sentiments, villagers were responsible for the consequences if they resisted the insurgents. Circassian villages in Ḥawrân had long resisted Druze domination more fervently than other communities in the Ḥawrân. Druze migrants resented the more recent Circassian migrants to a frontier region that they had fought to dominate. As refugees resettled by the Ottoman state, the Circassians also had a deeper identification with the central government than most of their neighbors did. This loyalty apparently carried over to the mandate . Circassians, along with Armenian refugees from Anatolia, constituted the majority of locally raised French colonial troops during the revolt. A few days before this tract appeared, rebels, reported to be Druze, engaged Circassian gendarmes in the Ḥawrân village of Durîn. When the gendarmes pursued the rebels into the formerly peaceful village, the villagers themselves fired on the gendarmes. Soon after, aerial bombardment destroyed the village, and the villagers abandoned their homes. The report affirmed that Circassian troops were widely disliked and that many had quit the gendarmerie or requested reposting elsewhere.5 The League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission charter explicitly prohibited the use of locally raised troops outside their states of residence. Since Syria and Lebanon had been partitioned into Greater Lebanon, the state of Syria surrounding Damascus, the state of Jabal Druze in Ḥawrân, and the state of the Alawites in the northern coastal regions, Circassian and other locally raised troops protested that they could not be sent outside their home regions.6 Muslims and Christian villages in Ḥawrân also had difficult historical relations with the Ḥawrân Druze. The Druze shaykhs, particularly the Aṭrash, had long bullied the Ḥawrânîs (plural Ḥawârna), and some resisted the uprising .7 A few Ḥawrân shaykhs aided...

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