The Druze are an Arabic-speaking ethnoreligious community of the Levant, holding a distinct, closed monotheistic faith that emerged from Ismaili Islam in the eleventh century and does not accept converts either into or out of the community, a closed-practice status this atlas records rather than describes in doctrinal detail. Druze communities are concentrated in the mountain regions of Lebanon, Syria and Israel (including the Golan Heights), and Druze citizens in Israel serve in the military, a distinct civic position among Israel's Arabic-speaking minorities. Druze social structure separates an initiated religious elite (the uqqal) from the broader lay community (the juhhal), and marriage is endogamous within the community by religious norm.
Facts
Group TypeSourced to the subject's own accountEthnoreligious community 1 Typical RegionSourced to the subject's own accountLevant (Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and a diaspora in the Americas and Australia) 1 Primary LanguageSourced to the subject's own account Subsistence ModeSourced to the subject's own accountHistorically agrarian mountain-village communities in the Levant, notably Mount Lebanon, the Chouf and the Golan/Jabal al-Druze. 1 Disputed
Population Estimateapproximately 1 to 1.5 million 1 Sourced to the subject's own accountDruze population figures are drawn from national censuses in several countries that classify religious affiliation differently, and the closed nature of the faith complicates external counting. Sources
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