"كتيّب سوريا (بما في ذلك فلسطين). لندن: إدارة استخبارات الأركان البحرية، يونيو ١٩١٩" [ظ‎‎١‎١‎٠] (٧٣٨/٢٢٥)

214
INHABITANTS
modern, means ‘friends i. e. friends of ‘Ali (sing. Mutawdli).
The community traces its origin to a Companion of the
Prophet, Abu Dharr Ghifari, who is supposed to have first
taught his doctrines in the villages of Sarafend and Meis.
Their views are identical with those of the Ithnasharis of
Persia, who believe in a series of twelve Imams, of whom the
last went into concealment in Samarra in the second half of
the third Islamic century, and whose reappearance they
expect. They differ from the Sunnites mainly on the question
of the khalifate, which they hold fell by right to ‘Ali;
but there are also certain differences of law and ritual. They
decline to sit at the same table with those who do not share
their beliefs, will neither eat nor drink out of a vessel which
has been used by such a person, and go far beyond other
Moslems in intolerance.
It is not quite easy to account for the existence of this
community in Syria under a series of dynasties which regarded
its tenets as revolutionary, whence some suppose them to be
comparatively recent immigrants, while others with some
historical support assume that they normally concealed their
opinions in accordance with a permission granted in the
Koran, of which the Shi‘ites make a liberal use. Some tra
vellers declare them to be illiterate; but this reproach
cannot well be justified, since for some years before the war
they maintained a press at Saida, whence a series of valuable
works was issued, and which also maintained a well-conducted
magazine. In earlier times savants belonging to this com
munity composed works which have acquired the status of
classics among the Shi‘ites of Persia and India, whither mem
bers of if have from time to time migrated, and where they
have been rewarded with high office.
The Ismd‘iUyeh (Ismailians), numbering only a few thou
sands, reside in the hills west of Homs (Qadmus and Marqab),
and in the plains about Homs and Hama. They are relics of
a society founded in the fifth Islamic century by Hasan Sabbah
at Alamut in the neighbourhood of Qazwin, in Persia, and were
known in the history of the Crusades by the name Assassins.