The Druze

Robert Brenton Betts was a scholar and former diplomat with long experience in the Middle East, not a member of the Druze community, and this book was published by an independent university press. It has stood since 1988 as a standard English-language introduction to Druze history, social structure and belief for a non-specialist academic readership, covering the community's eleventh century origins under Hamza ibn Ali, its division between the initiated uqqal and the uninitiated majority, and its historical practice of religious reserve toward outsiders. Being nearly four decades old, it predates more recent Druze history, including the community's role in Lebanon's civil war aftermath and in the Syrian conflict, so a claim about recent events needs a more current source alongside it. This record has not independently traced a documented history of scholarly rebuttal to Betts's specific claims. Use it for the documented history of the Druze faith's origins, structure and doctrinal reserve; it does not, and by the community's own design cannot, describe the closed content of the hikma texts themselves.