Ismail al-Atrash

Ismail al-Atrash (Arabic: إسماعيل الأطرش) (died November 1869) was the preeminent Druze sheikh (chieftain) of Jabal Hauran, a mountainous region southeast of Damascus, in the mid-19th century. His family had moved to the area in the early 19th century. As relative newcomers, they lacked influence in their new home, but Ismail gradually established himself as a power in the village of al-Qurayya and maintained virtual independence from the prominent Druze clans. This was largely due to the battlefield reputation he gained during the campaigns of the Druze leader Shibli al-Aryan in the 1840s. Ismail's leadership of the Druze in territorial struggles with the local Bedouin tribes, relations with the Ottoman authorities and in support of fellow Druze against the Christians during the 1860 Mount Lebanon civil war firmly established his paramountcy. He was a patron of Druze newcomers from Mount Lebanon and with their support he supplanted the Al Hamdan clan as the major force in Jabal Hauran. In 1868, the Ottoman governor of Syria, Rashid Pasha, appointed Ismail as the regional governor (mudir) of Jabal Hauran, drawing the ire of his Druze rivals who formed alliances with the Bedouin tribes and the Muslim peasants of the Hauran plain to restrict Ismail's power. Nonetheless, by then, he controlled 18 villages, many of which were put under the leadership of his eight sons. One of the latter, Ibrahim, became head of the al-Atrash clan following Ismail's death.