The Alawite State (, '; ), initially named the Territory of the Alawites ()—after the locally-dominant Alawites—from its inception until its integration to the Syrian Federation in 1922, was a French mandate territory on the coast of present-day Syria after World War I. The French Mandate from the League of Nations lasted from 1920 to 1946.
The use of "Alawite", instead of "Nusayri", was advocated by the French early in the Mandate period and referred to a member of the Alawite faith with the term literally referring to a "follower of Ali". In 1920, the French-named "Alawite Territory" was home to a large population of Alawites.
Geography
thumb|left|alt=Physical-political map of Alawite region|Physical-political map of the Alawite region
The region is coastal and mountainous, home to a predominantly-rural, heterogeneous population. During the French Mandate period, the society was divided by religion and geography; the landowning families and 80 percent of the population of the port city of Latakia were Sunni Muslim. More than 90 percent of the province's population was rural, and 82 percent were Alawites. The Arab Kingdom of Syria was initially supported by the British, despite French protests.
On 2 September 1920 a "Territory of the Alawis" was created in the coastal and mountain country, comprising Alawi villages; the French justified this separation by citing the "backwardness" of the mountain-dwellers, religiously distinct from the surrounding Sunni population. The division intended to protect the Alawi people from more-powerful majorities.
- Colonel Marie Joseph Émile Niéger (1874-1951), 2 September 1920 – 1921
- Gaston Henri Gustave Billotte (1875-1940), 1921 – 1922
- Léon Henri Charles Cayla (1881-1965), 1922 – 1925
- Ernest Marie Hubert Schoeffler (1877-1952), 1925 – 5 December 1936
After the relative independence of Faisal I's rule, French colonialism was unwelcome.
1925–27: Great Syrian Revolt
On 1 January 1925, the State of Syria was born from a French merger of the States of Damascus and Aleppo. Lebanon and the Alawi State were not included.
Perhaps inspired by the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1921), the Great Syrian Revolt began in the countryside of Jabal al-Druze. Led by Sultan al-Atrash as a Druze uprising, Lasting from July 1925 to June 1927, it was an anti-French, anti-imperialist response to five years of French rule;
There was a great deal of Alawite separatist sentiment in the region, but their political views could not be coordinated into a unified voice. This was attributed to the peasant status of most Alawites, "exploited by a predominantly Sunni landowning class resident in Latakia and Hama". King Abdullah II of Jordan called it the "worst-case" scenario in the conflict, fearing a domino effect: fragmentation of the country along sectarian lines, with region-wide consequences.
The December 2024 Syrian rebel offensives and the subsequent fall of the Assad regime sparked renewed speculation by some analysts about a potential revival of an Alawite state with Russian backing. For a brief period following the rebel takeover of Damascus, Latakia Governorate and Tartous Governorate (the historical territory of the Alawite State), were the only parts of Syria not under rebel control. Some Alawite villages there formed self-defense committees and set up checkpoints, but no expected Assadist national redoubt in the region came to fruition, probably because of the mixed attitudes of the Alawite population towards the HTS-led rebels. More importantly, the insurgency in Western Syria led by Alawite remnants of the Assad regime that killed 14 officers later that month can pose many challenges to the new government; which would subsequently led to the mass killings of the Alwaites as part of the crackdown on the remnants of the former regime.
Population
{| cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" width=250 align="center" rules="all" style="margin: 1em; background: #ffffff; border: 2px solid #aaa; font-size: 100%;"
|- bgcolor=#DDDDDD
| colspan=8 align="center" | Lattakia census, 1921–22
|- bgcolor=#f0f0f0 align="center"
! Religion
! Inhabitants
! Percentage
|-
| Alawites || 253,000 || 70.7%
|-
| Sunni || 50,000 || 14%
|-
| Christians || 42,000 || 11.7%
|-
| Ismailis || 13,000 || 3.6%
|-
| Total || 358,000 || 100%
|}
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center; width:80%;"
|+ 1923 Alawite census