Alawites (Arabic: العلويون, romanized: al-ʿAlawiyyūn) are an Arab ethnoreligious group who live primarily in the Levant region in West Asia and follow Alawism, an offshoot of Shia Islam as a ghulat branch during the ninth century. Alawites venerate Ali ibn Abi Talib, the "first Imam" in the Twelver school, as a manifestation of the divine essence. It is the only ghulat sect still in existence today. The group was founded during the ninth century by Ibn Nusayr, who was a disciple of the tenth Twelver Imam, Ali al-Hadi, and of the eleventh Twelver Imam, Hasan al-Askari. For this reason, Alawites are also called Nusayris. Before the French took control of Syria in 1920, members of the Alawite community considered themselves to be Nusayris.

Surveys suggest Alawites represent an important portion of the Syrian population and are a significant minority in the Hatay Province of Turkey and northern Lebanon. There is also a population living in the village of Ghajar in the Golan Heights, where there had been two other Alawite villages (Ayn Fit and Za'ura) before the Six-Day War. The Alawites form the dominant religious group on the Syrian coast and towns near the coast, which are also inhabited by Sunnis, Christians, and Ismailis. They are often confused with the Alevis, a religious group in Turkey that shares certain similarities with the Alawites but has key differences.

The Quran is one of their holy books, but its interpretation differs significantly from Shia Muslim interpretations and aligns with early Batiniyya and other ghulat sects. Alawite theology and rituals differ sharply from Shia Islam in several important ways. For instance, various Alawite rituals involve the drinking of wine and the sect does not prohibit the consumption of alcohol for its adherents. As a creed that teaches the symbolic/esoteric reading of Qur'anic verses, Alawite theology is based on the belief in reincarnation and views Ali as a divine incarnation of God. Moreover, Alawite clergy and scholarships insist that their religion is theologically distinct from Shi'ism. Alawites have historically kept their beliefs secret from outsiders and non-initiated Alawites, so rumours about them have arisen. Arabic accounts of their beliefs tend to be partisan (either positively or negatively). However, since the early 2000s, Western scholarship on the Alawite religion has made significant advances. At the core of the Alawite creed is the belief in a divine Trinity, comprising three aspects of the one God. The aspects of the Trinity are Mana (meaning), Ism (Name) and Bab (Door). Alawite beliefs hold that these emanations underwent re-incarnation cyclically seven times in human form throughout history. According to Alawites, the seventh incarnation of the trinity consists of Ali ibn Abi Talib (Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law), Muhammad himself, and Salman al-Farisi, a Persian companion of Muhammad.

An important component of Alawism is the belief in the transfer of souls^{[citation needed]}, rejected by orthodox Islamic scholars of both the Twelver Shia and Sunni conviction, leading to the Alawites being considered heretics by classical theologians of Sunni and Shia Islam. A lone 1932 fatwa by Hajj Amin al-Husseini recognising them as Muslims has been seen as based on immediate political, anticolonial considerations. Alawites have faced periods of subjugation or persecution under various Muslim empires such as the Ottomans, Abbasids, Mamluks, and others.^{[citation needed]} The establishment of the French Mandate of Syria in 1920 marked a turning point in Alawite history. Until then, the community had commonly self-identified as "Nusayris", emphasizing their connections to Ibn Nusayr. The French administration prescribed the label "Alawite" to categorise the sect alongside Shiism in official documents. The French recruited a large number of minorities into their armed forces and created exclusive areas for minorities, including the Alawite State. The Alawite State was later dismantled, but the Alawites continued to play a significant role in the Syrian military and later in the Ba'ath Party. After Hafez al-Assad's seizure of power during the 1970 coup, the Ba'athist state enforced Assadist ideology amongst Alawites to supplant their traditional identity. During the Syrian revolution, communal tensions were further exacerbated as the country destabilized into a full-scale sectarian civil war.

In older sources, Alawis are often called "Ansaris". According to Samuel Lyde, who lived among the Alawites during the mid-19th century, this was a term they used among themselves. Other sources indicate that "Ansari" is simply a Western error in the transliteration of "Nusayri". Alawites historically self-identified as Nusayrites, after their religious founder Ibn Nusayr al-Numayri. However, the term "Nusayri" had fallen out of currency by the 1920s, as a movement led by intellectuals within the community during the French Mandate sought to replace it with the modern term "Alawi". They characterised the older name (which implied "a separate ethnic and religious identity") as an "invention of the sect's enemies", ostensibly favouring an emphasis on "connection with mainstream Islam"—particularly the Shia branch. The term "Nusayrites" is now used as a slur and was frequently used as by Sunni fundamentalists fighting against Bashar al-Assad's government in the Syrian civil war, who use its emphasis on Ibn Nusayr to insinuate that Alawi beliefs are "man-made" and not divinely inspired.

Necati Alkan argued in an article that the "Alawi" appellation was used in an 11th-century Nusayri book and was not a 20th-century invention. The following quote from the same article illustrates his point:

As to the change from "Nuṣayrī" to "ʿAlawī": most studies agree that the term "ʿAlawī" was not used until after WWI and probably coined and circulated by Muḥammad Amīn Ghālib al-Ṭawīl, an Ottoman official and writer of the famous Taʾrīkh al-ʿAlawiyyīn (1924). However, the name 'Alawī' appears in an 11th century Nuṣayrī tract as one of the names of the believer (...). Moreover, the term 'Alawī' was already used at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1903 the Belgian-born Jesuit and Orientalist Henri Lammens (d. 1937) visited a certain Ḥaydarī-Nuṣayrī sheikh Abdullah in a village near Antakya and mentions that the latter preferred the name 'Alawī' for his people. Lastly, it is interesting to note that in the above-mentioned petitions of 1892 and 1909 the Nuṣayrīs called themselves the 'Arab Alawī people' (ʿArab ʿAlevī ṭāʾifesi) 'our ʿAlawī Nuṣayrī people' (ṭāʾifatunā al-Nuṣayriyya al-ʿAlawiyya) or 'signed with Alawī people' (ʿAlevī ṭāʾifesi imżāsıyla). This early self-designation is, in my opinion, of triple importance. Firstly, it shows that the word 'Alawī' was always used by these people, as ʿAlawī authors emphasize; secondly, it hints at the reformation of the Nuṣayrīs, launched by some of their sheikhs in the 19th century and their attempt to be accepted as part of Islam; and thirdly, it challenges the claims that the change of the identity and name from 'Nuṣayrī' to 'ʿAlawī' took place around 1920, in the beginning of the French mandate in Syria (1919–1938).

The Alawites are distinct from the Alevi religious sect in Turkey, although the terms share a common etymology and pronunciation.