405 Alejandra Álvarez Suárez The collapse of order... religious minorities, to turn them into sympathizers of the Head of State and isolating the Sunni population without an exit to the sea. Note how the French division largely exists nowadays (as a matter of fact some analysis about the future in Syria with different variations replicate the Mandate map). The new French organization of the territories constantly benefited the “religious minorities” and would be detrimental to the Sunni population. This is how on August 30th 1920 French created The Great Lebanon which was conceived as a Christian26 community but still added to the central core where the Christian “compact minority” 27 would really assembled in (Lebanon Hill) which were the wide , even, and productive territories mainly inhabited by Sunni and Druze citizens. During the same year on September 2nd the “Territory of the Alawis” was established which would be later proclaimed state in 1922 in order to protect the Sunni minority. In fact it appears that the Alawis obtained this mountainous and coastal land in the Latakia and Tartus provinces (where there was a strong presence of other confessions) due to its anti-nationalistic positions. Economic benefits and all low taxes that they enjoyed favor their collaboration with the French.28 On the other hand Syrians in the inland felt finally isolated after the Alejandreta autonomous province was created (it basically coincides with the current Turkish province Hatay after the heads of state had handed over to Turkey) which was a coastal territory aimed to protect its Christian inhabitants.29 The Druze another “compact minority” that refrained from confronting the French also obtained their own state located in Hawrān in 1922. Finally the remaining inland territory (where Sunni were a majority even though there also were religious minorities) became the Aleppo and Damascus states (1922) although they both merge to create the Syrian State.30 Oxford: Clarendon Press 1905, I, 36-45. 26 Cf. Youssef S. Takla, “Corpus Juris du Mandat Français”, The British and French Mandates in Comparative Perspectives. Les mandates français et anglais dans une perspective comparative (Nadine Meouchi y Peter Slugletti, eds.) Leiden: Brill 2001, 77-79; David D. Grafton, The Christians of Lebanon, Political Rights in Islamic Law, Londres - Nueva York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2003, 94. 27 Cf. It tamar Rabinovich, “The Compact Minorities and the Syrian State, 1918-1945”, Journal of Contemporary History 14/4 (1979), 693-712. 28 Cf. Youssef S. Takla, “Corpus Juris du Mandat Français”, The British and French Mandates in Comparative Perspectives. Les mandates français et anglais dans une perspective comparative (Nadine Meouchi y Peter Slugletti, eds.) Leiden: Brill 2001, 79-81; Daniel Pipes, Greater Syria. The History of an Ambition, Oxford: OxfordUniv. Press 1992, 166. 29 Cf. Youssef S. Takla, “Corpus Juris du Mandat Français”, The British and French Mandates in Comparative Perspectives. Les mandates français et anglais dans une perspective comparative (Nadine Meouchi y Peter Slugletti, eds.) Leiden: Brill 2001, 80-82. 30 Youssef S. Takla, “Corpus Juris du Mandat Français”, The British and French Mandates in Comparative Perspectives.Les mandates français et anglais dans une perspective comparative (Nadine http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee
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