NUSAYRI. — The N. are a sect numbering over 300,000 souls, occupying the regions between Tripoli of Syria and Antioch, with their center in Laodicea. Despite their beliefs and practices setting them apart from other Muslim confessions outside of Islam and despite European authors having exaggerated the pre-Islamic and extra-Islamic elements that have merged into them through syncretism, they are a Muslim sect, specifically Shi‘ite. They take their name from their first theologian Ibn Nuṣayr, who lived around 859, and are also called anṣārijāḥ, but they prefer the name of ‘alawiyyūn (i.e., followers of ‘Alī), under which they established a state during the French Mandate in Syria.
The legitimism of the Shi‘ites, in opposing the caliphs of the Sunnis with its imāms, descendants of ‘Alī, reached, in its final stage—which the orthodox call exaggeration (ghulūww)—the identification of ‘Alī with God. To arrive at this, it passed through stages of an increasingly bold theory, influenced by philosophical, Gnostic, and mystical currents, as well as by the historical vicissitudes of the movement. From the beloved companion of Muḥammad and his expressly designated successor, ‘Alī soon rose to a higher rank, necessary to provide religious justification for legitimism. Muḥammad is a prophet, but prophets bring only an external law, intended to maintain order in the community, and truths of faith expressed in a crude manner suited to the multitude. Alongside the prophet, there must be a man capable of drawing from revelation its inner meaning and transmitting it to those who are capable of receiving II. In this respect, ‘Alī enjoys a divine illumination superior to that of Muḥammad. Consequently, at the same moment when Sunnism, dissatisfied with a Muḥammad conceived as a mere mortal, elevates his spirit to a being existing before the creation of the world—an emanationist Neoplatonic view that further raises it to the dignity of the first emanation of God—the Shi‘ites, and particularly the Ismā‘īlīs, attribute the same nature to ‘Alī, not in his corporeal form but in the pure light of his spirit. Alternatively, if they do not wish to wrong the prophet, they see behind the physical persons of Muḥammad and ‘Alī, in two manifestations, a single essence, from which, ascending one step in the ladder of emanations, it is easy to arrive at God.
According to the Qur’ān, Muḥammad was preceded by other divine messengers. On this dogma, the Ismā‘īlī propagandist ‘Abd Allāh b. Maymūn al-Qaddāḥ (d. c. 874) built his system of seven world cycles, each with its "speaking" prophet (nāṭiq) and its silent esoteric custodian (ṣāmit), the latter superior to the former. One step further. The Shi‘ite propaganda had its leaders, heralds of the authority of the imām, whether visible or hidden. Even these it wished to elevate to a high position. It called them bāb, or "gate" to the imām and, through him, to the divinity, presenting them also as manifestations of the deity. The figure who exercised this function on behalf of ‘Alī was found in Salmān, a Persian whom the biography of Muḥammad presents as foretelling his advent and advising him in the digging of the trench that prevented the mechanized army from entering Medina.
Though belonging to the Twelver Shi‘ite sect, which recognizes twelve imāms rather than seven like the Ismā‘īlīs, the N. have taken from extremist Ismā‘īlism the doctrine of cycles, the role attributed to Salmān, and the exaltation of ‘Alī carried to the limits of ghulūww. Their series of ṣāmit and nāṭiq (the former clearly preceding the latter) is as follows:
| Ṣāmit | Nāṭiq |
|-------|-------|
| 1 | Abel |
| 2 | Seth |
| 3 | Joseph|
| 4 | Joshua|
| 5 | Asaf |
| 6 | Peter |
| 7 | ‘Alī |
Pre-existent to the world, the supernal ‘Alī lived, as in the historical ‘Alī, so also in all his predecessors. The same is said of Muḥammad. And even the bāb Salmān had a series of pre-manifestations, the first of which is the archangel Gabriel. In the divinity, the mystery of the three letters M.S. = ‘Alī, Muḥammad, Salmān is worshipped. ‘Alī is God as Logos (ma‘nā), Muḥammad is God inasmuch as he manifests (ism = name), Salmān is God as the vestibule to His knowledge (bāb = gate). From ‘Alī proceeds Muḥammad, and from him Salmān, who creates the world and governs it with the aid of five other entities. If up to this point emanationism still casts a very thin veil over the identification of ‘Alī with God, the creed is more explicit: "There is no god but ‘Alī, son of Abū Ṭālib." With astral symbolism, they assimilate the divinity to the sun (northern group) or to the moon (southern group). The ism, the bāb, and the five associated entities, together with others, constitute the great luminous world; below it lies the small luminous world of spirits imprisoned in bodies; women, lacking rational souls, and animals form the small dark world; at the very bottom is the great dark world of demons, dead organisms, and inert matter. The ascent of fallen souls takes place in seven cycles. By casting them into the third and fourth worlds, God punishes the rebels.
Due to their monistic interpretation of Being, the N. consider themselves monotheists (ahl al-tawhīd) par excellence and reserve full knowledge of their doctrine only for the elect class, subjected to initiatory ceremonies in which wine, which also has symbolic value in Sufism (q.v.), is a ritual element. The common people, among whom all women are included as lacking rational souls, are left to the material practices of worship; notably, they ignore the mosque while showing a popular predilection for the tombs of the sect’s saints. In addition to the two great festivals of orthodox Islam (the Breaking of the Fast and the Sacrifices), those proper to the Shi‘ites, and the solar festivals of the spring and autumn equinoxes widespread in the East, proximity to Christians has added Christmas, Epiphany, Palm Sunday, Pentecost, and St. Barbara. Their sacred book is the Kitāb al-maqālīd.