I recently saw Fouad Ajami, and he told me he had re-read this article of late and found it useful. I reminded him that he had reviewed the book in which the article first appeared (for the journal Middle Eastern Studies in 1989), and had nicely summarized it then. Here is that summary, and I think he does the article justice. In Syria, he wrote,

"there has been another dramatic migration from the (heterodox) countryside to the city. The children of the Alawi countryside have come to Damascus and they are there as its military masters. Martin Kramer's essay 'Syria's Alawis and Shi'ism' is an illuminating look at how this came to pass, and an intriguing analysis of the relationship between the Alawis of Syria and Twelver Shi'ism. Like the Twelver Shia in Lebanon, the Alawis were a community shut out of political power, 'divided and unassimilated'. There emancipation was, for the most part, the conquest of political power through the army. But there was another part to the Alawi rise to power: their search for religious legitimacy. And this is where Dr Kramer's narrative is particularly compelling. Stitching together various memoirs and fragmentary bits of evidence, Kramer shows how Alawis making their way out of rural insularity sought religious legitimacy by embracing (at least in public) Twelver Shia jurisprudence. It was a marriage of convenience, two communities of marginality brought together in their struggle with the hegemony of orthodox (Sunni) Islam in Bilad al Sham. The French had given the Alawis a Twelver Shia cover, in the 1920s, by establishing independent Alawi courts and claiming that these courts would rule in accord with Twelver Shl'ism. Naturally the Alawis kept to themselves, ruled in accord with Alawi custom. With independence, the Alawis sought an accord with the Sunni authorities of Damascus and had to settle for a fatwa attesting to their being Muslims from Hajj Amin al-Husayni in Jerusalem. By the early 1970s, after the Alawi conquest of political power and the Sunni rejection of Alawi dominion, the matter of Alawi recognition would become a thorny political issue. This time, the Alawis would again, as in the 19 0s, seek a Shia cover. The solution was to be provided by the Shia political divine then ascendant in Lebanon, Imam Musa al Sadr: 'The regime of Hafiz al-Asad needed quick religious legitimacy; the Shi'is of Lebanon, Musa al Sadr had decided, needed a powerful patron. Interests busily converged from every direction'. (p. 47). Several years later the Iranian revolution found an ally of sorts in the Syrian regime. The star of Twelver Shi'ism had 'risen in Iran and Lebanon'. Meanwhile the Alawis continue to straddle the fence: they are, alternately, either defenders of orthodox Islam and the besieged 'Arab order' or, like the Shia, heterodox rebels, themselves persecuted step-children of the Arab world."

In the 25 years since I published this article, interesting work has been done on the Alawis—probably much more than I know. There's even an article that develops further the question I explored in my own piece.

►David Schraub writes: Khalidi is engaging in abysmal history to weave a typical narrative of Zionist perfidy and malignancy, and now it has been debunked. Which is good.