In 1925, the French Mandate government in Syria faced an armed uprising led by a rough alliance of Druze and Sunni Arab local elites. While this conflict can be validly interpreted as a clash between colonial power and nascent nationalisms, or as a contest between traditional local elites and the modernization and centralization introduced by the French, the conflict also included many episodes of explicitly sectarian violence. This paper argues that this violence, rather than being incidental or a result of colonial interference, reflected deep-seated sectarian divides in Syrian society that preceded and outlasted French involvement in Syria. Anti-French forces burned several Catholic villages in southern Syria. Insurgents massacred Armenian refugees outside Damascus, and local Muslim leaders, fearing a repeat of the 1860 massacres, organized to protect Damascus’ Christian quarter. Rebels besieged the Christian holy city of Maʿalula in the winter of 1925-1926. Christians in Hama faced boycotts and attacks, and Hama newspapers openly called for a “massacre” of Christians. For their part, Armenians and Christian Syrians fighting for the Mandate government committed atrocities against Sunni Muslims in the Damascus countryside and elsewhere, and the French supplied weapons to Christian villages to fight the rebels. While some Christians supported the uprising, and prominent rebel leaders tried to attract Christian support, most Christians either stood aloof or openly supported the French. This was especially true among Catholics and Armenians. Many scholars (most prominently, Michael Provence) correctly argue that the French encouraged this sectarian dynamic in order to justify their rule in Syria, styling themselves according to their historic role as “protector” of Levantine Christians. However, the violence itself revealed sectarian rifts in Syria, which have emerged periodically at moments of economic pressure (as Philip Khoury argues was the case in the 1860 massacres) or political uncertainty and insecurity (as Leila Fawaz claims vis-à-vis 1860.) These rifts and the violence they engendered in 1925 cannot be reduced to French colonial constructions, as Benjamin White and others contend. This paper draws on American and British diplomatic archives, French administrative records, and firsthand accounts from the siege of Maʿalula, as well as secondary literature including Philip Khoury’s Syria and the French Mandate, Michael Provence’s The Great Syrian Revolt, N. E. Bou-Nacklie’s account of the 1925 Hama uprising, and Ellen Marie Lust-Okar’s exploration of the relationship between the French Mandate and Armenian refugees in Syria.