Double identity Will Syria's new leader rule as a moderate or a jihadi extremist?

On Sunday morning, a bearded 42-year-old man wearing a plain green military uniform walked into the famous Umayyad mosque in Damascus and addressed a small crowd, the Syrian nation, the region and the world.

- Jason Burke

On Sunday morning, a bearded 42-year-old man wearing a plain green military uniform walked into the famous Umayyad mosque in Damascus and addressed a small crowd, the Syrian nation, the region and the world. With the mosque's glittering decorations providing a backdrop, Ahmed al-Sharaa described the fall of the house of Assad as "a victory for the Islamic nation" and called for reflection and prayer.

"I left this land over 20 years ago, and my heart longed for this moment," he said. "Sit quietly my brothers and remember God almighty."

For most of the last two decades, the de facto ruler of much of Syria has not used his real name at all. Ahmed al-Sharaa, who grew up in a progressive household in a prosperous neighbourhood of Damascus and studied medicine, entirely disappeared.

In his place was Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, a nom de guerre formulated according to the convention of jihadi militants seeking new identities redolent of historic Muslim glory and offering the shield of anonymity.

So it was Jolani who fought US soldiers in Iraq alongside jihadi insurgents between 2003 and 2006 and then was incarcerated for five years in detention camps there. It was Jolani too who returned to Syria in 2011 to play important roles in the campaigns of both Islamic State (IS) and then al-Qaida.

It was Jolani who took over the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) and from 2017 imposed his rule on 2 million people in the north-western Syrian enclave of Idlib. Last month, it was Jolani who launched a rebel coalition dominated by HTS on its blistering 12-day campaign that ended in Damascus on Sunday.