Alwiya al-Furqan
Syrian Islamist rebel group
Alwiya al-Furqan or Al-Furqan Brigades (Arabic: ألوية الفرقان, Criterion Brigades) was an Islamist rebel group involved in the Syrian Civil War. It claimed to be the largest Islamist rebel faction that operated in the eastern Quneitra Governorate and Damascus. The group also held ties with Jordan which allowed fighters from the group to cross into the country to receive medical aid.
History
In May 2013, after the split between the al-Nusra Front and Islamic State of Iraq after the latter's refusal of a merger between the two and establishment of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the group released a statement critical of al-Nusra's leader Abu Mohammad al-Joulani for his pledge of allegiance to al-Qaeda in light of the dispute.
In 2013, after a chemical weapons attack in Eastern Ghouta, ISIL and al-Nusra conducted separate revenge attacks, Alwiya al-Furqa, Ahrar al-Sham and the Jesus Son of Mary Battalions joined the ISIL-led attacks which were code named "Volcano of Rage", and shelled Alawite neighborhoods in Damascus, areas near the Embassy of Russia in Damascus and the Four Seasons Hotel Damascus, where UN observers were reportedly staying to investigate the chemical attack.
In September 2013, the group joined a joint operations room with Ahrar al-Sham and Jaysh al-Islam.
In 2017 the group released a statement saying the group would end its cease-fire with the Syrian government in Damascus if Hezbollah or IRGC affiliated groups entered the area.
Israeli cooperation
In June 2013, Abu Jaafar, spokesman of Al-Furqan Brigades and the Quneitra Liberation Gathering, said on Al Jazeera TV that if Israeli forces enter Syria, they will stand away from any clashes with Israeli forces, do nothing, and leave the confrontation to Assad's forces.
In February 2014, a Syrian activist told France 24 that Israel coordinates the transfer of wounded Syrian fighters and civilians to Israeli hospitals "with the armed opposition which is affiliated with the Al-Furqan Brigades and two civil society coordinators from the areas of Beer Ajam and Jubata al-Khashab, where the only crossings into Israeli territory are located".
In April 2017, Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar described Al-Furqan Brigades as "another arm of the Israeli Military Intelligence Division (Aman)".
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Alwiya al-Furqan” as syrian Islamist rebel group. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17985516. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2013, 2017 and 2014.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alwiya al-Furqan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.