The historiography of Syria during the first half of the twentieth century fixates on the problem of nationalism. The best-known occasions of popular resistance to the imposition of French rule, including the Hananu revolt, the Hama uprising and the Great Syrian Revolt have been integrated into nationalist narratives with relative ease, although recent work has shed light on the complex formation of nationalist discourse. The Shaykh Salih al-?Ali revolt (1919-1920) was one of these popular insurrections that sprouted up against the French occupation of Greater Syria; its leader and namesake was an influential landed ?Alawi notable, often alternatively represented in the literature as a “tribal chieftain.” By contrast with more canonical moments of anti-colonial resistance, Salih ?Ali and “Salih al-?Ali”—as a metaphor—were neither smoothly assimilated into nationalist politics and discourse, respectively, nor were they rejected wholesale even as certain ?Alawi intellectuals and historians would claim the revolt as an expression of local patriotism and even religious or tribal particularism. More than just an important sequence of events during the chaotic transition from Ottoman to French Mandate rule in Syria, therefore, over time the revolt became a stubborn node of ideological and historiographical contestation and refashioning. Indeed, one of the enduring tensions in the historiography of modern and contemporary Syria lies at the intersection of questions of nationalism, tribalism and sectarianism. In this paper, I consider the episode as both historical event and historiographical echo. I will be concerned less with the specific details of the short-lived revolt itself, which are relatively straightforward; by comparison with the other popular uprisings mentioned above, its consequences were less far-reaching. Ideologically policed categories of collaboration and resistance—both past and present—were elevated to the level of common sense over the course of the twentieth century. Meanwhile, the stakes of the revolt in Syrian history and memory would become much more sensitive in light of the demands and dictates of Orientalist, nationalist, and what I will call “sectarianist” historiography. The emerging contest of narratives surrounding and succeeding Shaykh Salih al-?Ali raises questions about the relationships among ?Alawi identity, sectarianism and nationalism in twentieth-century Syria, a topic that many considered (and still consider) taboo. My paper addresses the themes of the panel through an overview of historical writing and polemic about this symbolically overdetermined event in early national Syrian history.