Alawite Batin Teaching

Alawite Batin Teaching is the esoteric, inward reading of scripture and doctrine held within Alawite religious tradition, a branch of Shia Islam concentrated historically in the mountains of coastal Syria. Alawite history, including centuries of persecution and marginalization, its place within Shia Islam, and beliefs discussed openly in scholarship, such as the Imamate, the general concept of taqiyya, and belief in the transmigration of the soul, are described elsewhere in this atlas. The batin itself, the community's inner interpretation of scripture and the core teaching built upon it, is transmitted only within initiated lineages, held closed to all but initiated men, and never opened to converts. That inner teaching is not described here.