Let me start with what this book is not. When I began my research, I planned to study minorities in French mandate Syria. Everyone who had written about the mandate seemed to agree that the French in Syria used the minorities – in some eyes even created them – in order to offset the opposition of the nationalist majority. Studying these communities would therefore allow me to understand better the confrontation between two ideologies that have shaped our time: imperialism and nationalism.

My original plan was to consider several specific minorities, defined along religious or linguistic lines (or both), to see how these different variables affected their relationships with the majority, the nationalists and the imperial power. This would provide insight into the aggressively divisive policies put in place by the French in Syria, and the imperialist conception of the colonised society as hopelessly divided that underpinned those policies. At the same time, it would illuminate the means whereby Syrian Arab nationalism constructed the Syrian Arab nation. While I was sceptical of the imperialist claim that religious or linguistic cleavages in Syrian society were primordial, permanent, and insurmountable, and that religious or linguistic identity determined political identity, I was also aware that such cleavages are not negligible, especially to the development of nationalism. A numerical majority of the inhabitants of the new state were Sunni Muslims, but that majority was divided by language; a numerical majority were Arabic-speakers, but that majority was divided by religion.