The Murshidis of Syria: A Short Overview of their History and Beliefs

The aim of this paper is to give a brief overview of the history and religious beliefs of the Murshidiyyah, a group that is relatively new in history and has not been sufficiently analyzed yet. Descriptions and analyses have only covered the time up to 1946, and/or have been extremely subjective. In the paper, it is attempted to trace the history of this group, an originally Alawite “sub-sect”, into an independent religious community, based on hitherto neglected written source material and fieldwork undertaken in 2010. The Murshidiyyah is a modern Syrian religious community which emerged as late as the 20th century as a split-off group from the Alawi/Nusayri sect. There is no official statistics about the number of its members, but according to different reports it can be estimated at approximately 300000 persons living primarily in the Western Syrian Provinces of Latakia, Tarsus, Homs and in some suburbs of Damascus (Jobar, al-Mamuniyaets)