Resettlement of the Syrian Ismaʿilis in Salamiyya in the mid-nineteenth-century Ottoman Syria

Abstract

This is a study of the Syrian Ismaʿili Resettlement in the city of Salamiyya in the mid-nineteenth century Ottoman Syria. The study examines the Ismaʿili early settlement in Syria in the ninth century CE, and traces their later movements within Greater Syria between towns and cities until their long-term residency in the Coastal Mountain Range. It explores the relation between the Ismaʿilis and the ʿAlawis, and among the Ismaʿilis themselves and the local disturbances in the Mountains caused by the competence over land, property and right to tax farming. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Ottoman authorities granted a group of Ismaʿilis the right to resettle at Salamiyya, a decision in many ways the outcome of a series of measures carried out in the region by Ibrahim Pasha and the Ottomans after him, besides other local factors.

The study traces the history of Salamiyya, its population, and the type of official authority and the local governorship that influenced its status throughout history. It also examines the reasons behind the ruined status of the city prior to the Ismaʿili resettlement in it. The study goes on to examine the state of coexistence between the Ismaʿilis and their neighbouring tribes; the economic activities in the town; the Ottoman agrarian policies in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the way these influenced the Ismaʿilis at Salamiyya; as well as the administrative policies that led to the designation of Salamiyya as a Qadaʾ by the end of the century. Ultimately, the study reinserts the Ismaʿilis and Salamiyya within the map of nineteenth-century Ottoman Syria.