Hafiz Assad (al-'Asad; 1930-2000) took power in Syria in 1970 and became president, a position he retained longer than any other person since Syrian independence in 1946.

Hafiz Assad was born on October 6, 1930 into a large, poor peasant family that lived in a rural, mountainous village of Qurdaha, southeast of the Syrian port city of Latakia. He was one of nine children of 'Ali Assad, a farmer, who opposed the French rule that prevailed in Syria prior to independence. Assad was a member of the minority Muslim religious sect called the Alawis and of the Haddadi Clan. The Alawis sect represented roughly 12 percent of the Syrian population but was dominant in the rural areas near Syria's coastline.

Assad received his primary education in his local village. Secondary education did not exist in the poor mountain regions of Syria in the 1940s so his family moved to the coast where Assad...