Tartus Governorate is one of the fourteen governorates of Syria, located on the Mediterranean Sea coast along the border with Lebanon. Named for the capital of Tartus, the governorate had a population of 785,000 in 2010 before the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, with most of the inhabitants being Shia Muslim Alawites. From 2011 to 2016, no fighting took place in Tartus during the civil war, as the Alawite majority made Tartus a government stronghold.