Samuel Lyde

Samuel Lyde (1825–1860) was an English writer and Church of England missionary who lived and worked in Syria in the 1850s and wrote a pioneering book on the Alawite sect. In 1856, he sparked months of anti-Christian rioting in Ottoman Palestine when, during a visit there, he killed a beggar.

Life and missionary work

Lyde was born in 1825. He obtained a degree in 1848 after studying at Jesus College, Cambridge and in 1851 he was awarded an M.A, took holy orders as a clergyman of the Church of England and became employed as a fellow of Jesus College. Poor health, according to Lyde, prevented him from "exercising the duties of his profession in England, at least during the winter months" and, therefore, in the winter of 1850/1851 he made "the usual tour" of Egypt and Syria. While on the "tour", he decided, because of his health, to settle permanently in Syria, then a part of the Ottoman Empire.

Lyde was persuaded by the idea. From 1853 to 1859, he lived among the Alawite Kalbiyya community, and established a mission and school in Bhamra, a village overlooking the Mediterranean port of Latakia. However, he later wrote that living among them convinced him that the Alawites fulfilled St Paul's description of the heathen: "filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness". It was either an accidental discharge of the gun or Lyde had lost his nerve and fired. He was 35 years old. |group="note" of the Reformed Presbyterian Church.

Publications and influence

Lyde wrote two books on the Alawites: The Anseyreeh and Ismaeleeh: A Visit to the Secret Sects of Northern Syria with a View to the Establishment of Schools (1853) and The Asian Mystery Illustrated in the History, Religion and Present State of the Ansaireeh or Nusairis of Syria (1860). The latter is considered to be a pioneering work, and was the first monograph to be written on the Alawite-Nusayri religion. It remained the only Western book on the subject until 1900, when René Dussaud published his Histoire et religion des Nosairîs. which he said he had bought from a Christian merchant from Latakia. Lyde had bequeathed it to his old college, and, apparently, had sent it to Cambridge shortly before his death. The Asian Mystery became a popular book and has been described as "colourful" but "unreliable" in some respects. Nevertheless, Lyde's account remains an influential source on Alawites, and, for instance, is widely quoted on the internet.