Year 1960 - Part 4: The Founding of Aleppo University

Monday the 7th: The Night of Aleppo University

For me, as an Aleppan and a university professor, this night stands as a historic one. It saw the fulfillment of an old dream that had long occupied the imagination of every son of Aleppo, and of the whole North besides, one resisted with a fierceness neither understandable nor justified by pressure groups in Damascus.

Aleppo's own deputies had raised the matter of "their own university" again and again, only to be met with empty courtesies and requests to wait for a more suitable time.

At this session, which ran on until two in the morning, the decisive moment finally arrived.

I already knew President Abdel Nasser intended to raise the matter himself, and that he had already agreed to it, having promised as much when I spoke with him at his own home in Manshiyet al-Bakri.

The session opened with talk of the shortage of doctors in the region. The Minister of Health, Dr. Shawkat al-Qanawati, said he would bring the very key to his own ministry to the President, unless it was reinforced with a sufficient number of Egyptian doctors. The President asked him: then, so long as the Damascus Faculty of Medicine cannot graduate enough doctors, does not both need and logic press us to establish a faculty of medicine in Aleppo as well, to meet the region's own need for doctors?

The bomb went off, entirely without warning.

Dr. Amjad al-Tarabulsi took the floor, and set about raising every obstacle, difficulty, and impossibility standing in the way of a second university in Aleppo: "we are, at present, unable to meet its own requirements," and "we hope, one day, to achieve this wish, once we are capable of bringing a university of real standing into being."

Before the discussion of Aleppo's university could be closed, Nour al-Din Kahhaleh and Wajih al-Samman spoke up, demanding the establishment of a Faculty of Engineering in Damascus as well, "on the model of Aleppo's own Faculty of Engineering."

I asked to speak, and the President granted me the floor, smiling as he did.

I spoke of the North's own need, and the whole country's need, for a university to be established in Aleppo at once, without delay or procrastination, and stated clearly the very arguments I had already made to the President at his own home. Among the things I said was that the sons of Aleppo and the North were going, in droves and singly alike, to Turkey and the communist countries of the East to study at their own cheap universities, where they married Turkish, Bulgarian, or Russian girls, returning with them and their children, or sometimes never returning at all. This was a situation we had to bear in mind when speaking of the country's own future and its rising generation.

We likewise had a duty to remember that the weakness of currency in those countries, and the gap between the cost of studying there and living costs in Damascus, made for an ideal trap luring away Syria's own youth.

I turned to address the President directly, saying: I would like to point out that the budget laws have included, periodically since 1946, provisions for the establishment of two faculties in Aleppo, one of commerce and the other of agriculture. Yet year passes after year, and no one ever begins establishing either faculty, and one year after another goes by, the allocated sum lapses, and the effort begins all over again, simply to have it written back into the budget.

This is a state of affairs that can no longer be allowed to repeat itself.

For this reason, there is no escaping it, in this era of the Union, and now if at all possible, from deciding to establish Aleppo's own university, and I am pleased to announce before you my own readiness to set aside any reasonable sum to begin building it.

Al-Tarabulsi asked to speak again, reminding us once more of the "scientific" difficulties this time, which he said did not permit us to proceed with such "improvised action."

I returned to answer him.

At this point the President leaned toward Abdel Hakim Amer, and the two whispered to each other, and laughed.

Afterward the President turned to the ministers, as though apologizing for this laughter, and said: I was telling Abdel Hakim (as he used to call him), this is the first time I have ever seen a Minister of the Treasury offer money so generously, only for the responsible minister himself to refuse it. In Cairo, we are in constant conflict with Kamal El-Din Hussein (the central Minister of Education), who can never get enough of asking for money to establish yet more educational institutions.

Laughter broke out, loud and unrestrained.

At that, the President took the floor himself, and announced, in decisive terms, "that Aleppo University would be established now," since the country truly needed it to exist.

And so Abdel Nasser settled, in a single stroke, a matter that had remained suspended for years upon years, with no one listening and no one answering.

And so, as the saying goes, "Juhayza's word cut short every orator's speech" (meaning the matter was settled once and for all).

In fairness, I must mention with gratitude Hajj Najib Baqi, founder and patron of Aleppo's orphanage, for his own tireless efforts on behalf of Aleppo University, and Sheikh Muhammad al-Hakim, Aleppo's old mufti, and the deputies, past and present, who did everything they could so that their own city's eyes might finally behold the birth of a child so long stuck in its own mother's womb.

Hajj Najib visited me many times, to remind me of this thorny matter.

I once told him, teasingly:

Uncle, you are like the man carrying dates to Hajar, as the Arab proverb says,

or carrying coal to Newcastle, as the English proverb says,

or carrying water to the sea, as the French say, all expressions for someone trying to convince a person already convinced.

Long ago, Umar ibn Abi Rabi'ah put it this way:

"They drew the very cords of passion closer for a lovestruck man,

who measures a whole arm's length for every inch they measure back."

In fairness, I must also praise my friend and colleague, in government and in the Chamber of Deputies, the esteemed Muhammad al-Mubarak (Abu Hashem), a fellow student of mine at the Faculty of Arts in Paris before he returned home with the outbreak of the Second World War. Our evening meetings at the "al-Koutoubia" restaurant in the Latin Quarter would resume every day of Ramadan at the hour of the fast-breaking meal.

May God have mercy on him, he was chairman of the parliamentary Committee on Education, and understood fully what establishing a university in Aleppo meant for the hopes of half the country's own population. I was a member of this committee myself, and the committee reviewed the bill I had submitted to the chamber, choosing me as its own special rapporteur on the matter, to defend it before the chamber's general assembly whenever needed, and we issued the following resolution, from which I quote passages here in tribute to the committee's members and its chairman, even though this resolution ultimately remained mere ink on paper:

"The Committee on Education held a meeting on 17 December 1957, chaired by its chairman Muhammad al-Mubarak, with AbdulWahab Homad as rapporteur, attended by its members:

Rateb al-Hasami, Ali al-Dandashi, Salman al-Hunaidi, Ahmad Kanaan, Diab al-Mashi (still a member of the People's Assembly as of 1995, holding his seat continuously since that date), Ahmad al-Hussein, Mahmoud Habib, Farhan al-Jundlawi, Sobhi Taha, Adel al-Ajlani, Abdul Raouf Abu Touq, and Rizkallah Salem.

The committee reviewed the proposed law providing for the establishment of a university in Aleppo, with the Faculty of Engineering as its nucleus, to include the Faculties of Commerce and Agriculture once established.

It found that Aleppo's own industrial and agricultural setting, its proximity to the border, and the movement of large numbers of Aleppan and other students to neighboring foreign institutes, all made approving this proposal a matter of national interest.

Since Syria stands in need of a second university to ease students' own access to places of study, and since it serves the nation's highest interest to multiply centers of intellectual influence rather than confine them to a single region.

And given the country's own pressing need, in this period of comprehensive development, to develop the nation's lands and produce a trained corps of industrial engineers, of whom the country stands in real want.

And on the basis of this project's own enormous importance in raising the citizen's own standard of living and education.

The committee has therefore decided, unanimously, to approve it as submitted."

It is regrettable that this resolution was never brought before the Chamber of Deputies, preoccupied as it was with the question of Union with Egypt.

Saturday the 12th

The Council of Ministers held an important session today, chaired by Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer, to review the National Union's own requests.

The following was decided:

The appointment of a director for Aleppo University. With this decision, the decision establishing this university was crowned, becoming a fact as solid and enduring as a mountain.

Al-Tarabulsi proposed Mr. Tawfiq al-Munajjed as its first president.

I was delighted at this proposal, for Mr. al-Munajjed was among the most prominent teachers of natural science and physics in the secondary schools, and although he held no doctorate in his own field, he had gone on to become a professor and dean of the Faculty of Science in Damascus. His appointment was approved, so that he could take up the burdens of this truly weighty responsibility.

I was overjoyed for him, congratulated him, and promised him every assistance within my own power.

The founding of a Faculty of Agriculture this same year.

The immediate construction of the Palace of Justice in Aleppo, whose plans had sat on paper for thirteen years. I approved, naturally, setting aside a suitable sum of half a million lira to begin its construction.

The immediate start of construction on Aleppo's great hospital, for which we set aside a suitable sum as well.

The council authorized me to sell the extensive property set aside for the prison in the center of Aleppo, and to begin building a new prison.

I sensed that al-Sarraj was not entirely comfortable with this task being assigned to me, since "prisons" fell within his own remit. But I explained to him that the matter was purely financial, while the choice of the new prison's location and site fell outside my own authority entirely.

The construction of a large tourist hotel in Aleppo, in partnership with private investors.

The expansion and modernization of Aleppo's airport, to receive jet aircraft.

The execution of the second and third phases of the project to bring Euphrates water to the city of Aleppo.

The issuing of a law exempting Aleppo's water authority from the interest it owed but could not afford to pay.

I recall that the Secretary-General of the Ministry of the Treasury once brought me a decision to seize this authority's own assets, and I asked him: shall we sell off the pumping machines and the water pipes, then?

The man wiped away the redness that flushed across his face, from the narrowness of his own vision.

At the end of the session, I approached Field Marshal Amer, thanking him and noting how these decisions would delight the whole of Aleppo's own people.

The good-natured man laughed, patted me on the shoulder, and said, teasingly: now your success in the coming elections is guaranteed.

At this same session, it was decided to carry out essential projects in Damascus, its countryside, and the other provinces as well, and their own delegates were overjoyed and delighted.

Sunday the 13th: The Agadir Earthquake

This month, a great calamity befell our sister country Morocco, an earthquake that destroyed the city of Agadir, on the Atlantic coast.

It is said the city was reduced entirely to rubble.

The Crown Prince of Morocco stated that the number of victims exceeded twelve thousand.

Some broadcasts put the number above twenty thousand. The members of the government donated a week's own salary to the disaster's victims.

Even man, who has flown through space, built dams, raised skyscrapers, invented deadly weapons, and tamed ferocious beasts, still feels his own weakness before nature's destructive forces.

In these very days, earthquakes bring down cities.

Raging floods drown vast stretches of cultivated land, and man looks upon the ruins with grief, feeling his own sorrowful helplessness.

Thursday, 17 March (20 Ramadan 1379 AH)

The President issued decisions, published in the Official Gazette, accepting the resignations of the Baathist ministers:

Akram al-Hourani, Vice President of the Republic

Salah al-Din al-Bitar, central Minister of Culture and National Guidance

Khalil al-Kallas, Minister of Economy

Mustafa Hamdoun, Minister of Agrarian Reform

Abdul Ghani Qannout, Minister of Social Affairs and Labor

Riyad al-Maliki, Minister of Culture and National Guidance, had already been dismissed earlier.

Dr. Amjad al-Tarabulsi, one of their own number, did not resign.

It was decided to bring in the following men in their place:

Ahmad al-Hunaidi, as Minister of Agrarian Reform (a former officer)

Akram Deiri, as Minister of Social Affairs and Labor (a former officer)

Husni al-Sawwaf, as Minister of Economy

Jaddou Ezzedine, as Minister of State for Presidential Affairs (a former officer)

Jamal al-Sufi, as Minister of Supply (a former officer)

Thabet al-Aris, as Minister of Culture and National Guidance

Yousef Muzahem, as Minister of Religious Endowments

Among these new ministers were four officers, an economist, a diplomat, and an administrator.

The officers were men who had held real sway within the army and were members of its former factions. There is no doubt that the wish behind bringing them into the cabinet was to restore the armed forces' own health.

Friday the 18th

We bid farewell to President Abdel Nasser as he left from Latakia, by sea, on his way to Alexandria and then Cairo. A great many essential matters had been accomplished during his own stay, or under his own direction.

For all my genuine respect for parliamentary life, what was achieved over these twenty-three days would be difficult to achieve through a parliament and its own slow, deeply complicated committees, even over many long years, should they ever manage to achieve it at all.

The Establishment of the "Syrian Economic Organization"

Today's issue of the Official Gazette arrived, containing the establishment of the Economic Organization for the Northern Region (Law No. 99, dated 19 March 1960).

The purpose of its establishment is "to contribute to the development of the national economy, through economic activity in the public sector" (Article 4).

To guarantee its own independence, and enable it to carry out its tasks productively, it was attached directly to the Presidency of the Republic.

The law establishing it provided that its activities focus on the region's own economic needs and the management of state funds in the public sector. For this reason, it was allotted capital to manage, made up of:

The government's own shares in the capital of joint-stock companies,

and the capital of public institutions (Article 2).

This organization studies the region's own economic needs and works to secure them, and, to this end, may:

Establish companies or enterprises for national development purposes,

Contract loans with national public institutions,

as well as with foreign governments, bodies, and international institutions.

Article 15 provided that the organization have a board of directors, whose members are appointed by a decision of the President of the Republic, and Article 22 required this board to submit an annual report on its own activities to the President of the Republic.

At the same time, the President issued a special, unanticipated budget to help the region meet its own urgent needs.

The reason behind it was the drought gripping the region with such severity.

It was issued under Republican Decision No. 423, dated 16 March 1960.

This budget's own size came to 15,150,000 Syrian lira, its most notable items as follows:

One million lira

5,000,000 for housing projects under the Agrarian Reform Authority

2,500,000 for housing units for the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs

3,366,000 for building hospitals and clinics

500,000 to complete the Palace of Justice in Aleppo

300,000 for irrigating villages in Idlib

1,250,000 for barley to subsidize animal feed in the steppe regions