Syrianism instead of Islam: The Early Development of Syrian Identity and Its Repositioning of Islam and Islamic Identity

Abstract

In correspondence with the Ottoman millet system, the religious aspect of an individual's identity is regarded as the primary locus of identity in the pre-modern Levant. The proposed paper will sketch the first steps in formulating a Syrian identity and aim to show that a central aspect of these advances was an effort to sideline the Islamic identity of the Sunni majority. In order to do so, the paper will point to the origins of the Syrian idea, understood as arising from the thinking of Christian missionaries, and detail its development over the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century