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Druze: Middle East
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The only all-Druze town in western Galilee, Yirka, is the site of one of the largest factories in the Middle East: the steel mill belonging to the Kadmani Brothers. The factory has enabled the village to develop a large commercial and industrial zone. Home to about 11,000 Druze, Yirka has a number of important sites, the most significant of which is the tomb of Sheikh Abu Saraya Ghanem, an important Druze religious scholar of the early eleventh century.
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By tradition, the Druze are farmers who depend on olive groves and fruit orchards, carefully nurtured on the hillsides in the Middle East, for food. They grow cherry and apple trees, as well as wheat. Most families grow their own vegetables and fruit, bake their own bread and live, for the most part, on a vegetarian diet, with meat, primarily lamb, served only on special occasions.
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The Druze claim that they have always existed in the Near East. They highly esteem Jethro (Nabi Shu'ayb) whom they revere as a prophet and as an incarnation of the Universal Mind (one of the emanations of God). His tomb at the Horns of Hattin near Tiberias, Israel is a Druze holy place, second in importance only to their spiritual centre at Bayyada near Hasbaya in Lebanon.
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Druze history goes back to the Middle Ages when the Druze sect began to develop. Noted Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela wrote about the Druze in his diary, written in the Hebrew language, in 1167. He describes the Druze as "Mountain dwellers, monotheists, who believe in soul eternity and reincarnation."
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Despite trying to avoid conflict with large religious groups, Druze living among Muslims in the Middle East faced retribution. Tribal skirmishes have been sporadic but ongoing for nearly a thousand years. Over the years, Druze who did not want to contend with the hostility publicly adopted the doctrine of the Muslims, while privately practicing their own religion.
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The Druze religion is a secret faith. They have preserved the strictest silence upon their beliefs and truly occult rites. A primitive cult with elements of Nature worship may have preceded it, with modern vestiges in the popular practices of the more remote Druze districts, e.g. in the eastern Hauran, where the Druze keep hill-top shrines containing each a black stone, on which rugs, etc., are hung, and these seem to perpetuate features of pre-Islamic Arabian cult, including the sacrifice of animals, e.g. goats. The shrines are held in reverence by the Bedouins.
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