Syria is home to multiple ethnic and religious communities, often pitted against each other by Assad’s state and years of war. Many of them fear the possibility that Sunni Islamist extremists will take over. The country is also fragmented among disparate armed factions, and foreign powers from Russia and Iran to the United States, Turkey and Israel all have their hands in the mix.

For years, al-Sharaa worked to consolidate power, while bottled up in the province of Idlib in Syria’s northwest corner as Assad’s Iranian- and Russian-backed rule over much of the country appeared solid.

As Syria’s civil war intensified in 2013, so did al-Golani’s ambitions. He defied al-Baghdadi’s calls to dissolve the Nusra Front and merge it with al-Qaida’s operation in Iraq, to form the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.

In 2016, al-Golani revealed his face to the public for the first time in a video message that announced his group was renaming itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham — the Syria Conquest Front — and cutting its ties to al-Qaida.

“This new organization has no affiliation to any external entity,” he said in the video, filmed wearing military garb and a turban.

With his power consolidated, al-Golani set in motion a transformation that few could have imagined. Replacing his military garb with shirt and trousers, he began calling for religious tolerance and pluralism.