Alawite State

Origins

In 1920 France established the Territory of the Alawites, covering the coastal mountains and the port of Latakia, where the Alawites, a heterodox Shia community long marginalised under the Ottomans, were the majority in the countryside. The territory became the Alawite State in 1922.

Rule and society

Governed by French officials with an Alawite-dominated representative council, the state withdrew from the Syrian Federation in 1924 and was renamed the Government of Latakia in 1930. France recruited many Alawites into its colonial army. Road-building and land reform were undertaken, but the coastal towns, largely Sunni and Christian, favoured union with Syria.

Decline and legacy

Under the 1936 Franco-Syrian treaty the state was incorporated into the Syrian Republic, despite petitions by some Alawite notables asking to remain separate, and it was fully integrated in 1937.