Michael Provence

Over the next three months, the Druze revolt became a national rising.

It did so As Michael Provence has shown, less because Damascus' nationalist notables rallied to the cause, although some, including Shabandar, quickly did so, than because a lesser-known collection of men, usually from socially modest backgrounds, often educated in Ottoman military schools, took up arms and recruited a following.

As the French never quite understood, Al-Atrash was a Syrian nationalist and not simply a local warlord.

He'd been a young Ottoman army conscript in the Balkans before the First World War and had later joined the Arab revolt and had supported the Faisal state.