The Nusayri-Alawis: An Introduction to the Religion, History and Identity of the Leading Minority in Syria

Yaron Friedman is a scholar of Islamic studies, and this Brill monograph is his academic introduction to the religion, history and identity of the Alawite, or Nusayri, minority of Syria, a group whose specific doctrine has historically been kept closed to outsiders. Its strength is that Friedman works from available primary Alawite religious texts and historical sources to give a documented scholarly account where much popular description has instead relied on hostile outside characterization. Its limit is that as an introduction it surveys the tradition's history and identity at a broad level, so a claim needing detailed theological analysis of a specific closed Alawite doctrine is inherently limited by how much such material has been made available to outside scholarship at all.