Appendix: Memorial Address by Dr. Mahmoud al-Sayyed, Minister of Education

Minister of Education

At the memorial ceremony for the late Dr. AbdulWahab Homad

Distinguished guests,

How hard it is to speak, on so solemn an occasion as this, about one of the great figures of one's country, one of its fortresses of character and virtue!

The difficulty comes from the fear of failing to do justice to the man one speaks of, to his high standing and his praiseworthy deeds, now that he has left us for the abode of the hereafter.

Professor AbdulWahab Homad is a great name that resounded across the Arab world for learning and merit, deliberation and balance, wisdom and eloquence. He was a man of firm positions, on which he would not bargain and which he would not give up, whatever the temptations.

He had combined, may God have mercy on him, the two fields of literature and law. Although he had been sent to France to obtain a licence in letters, which he earned with full competence and merit, his mighty resolve strengthened his turn toward the study of law, and he earned a degree in that field as well. In him the man of law and the man of letters came together.

It seems that his humane disposition was what drew him to study law as well, and to give that field first place in his working life, for standing beside the weak and those whose rights are taken from them was in keeping with the good impulses of his soul and his hatred of injustice. Whoever knows what is right cannot bear to see anyone wronged. Yet a deep-seated feeling stayed with him: that he was no stranger to the literary world in whose embrace he had lived for a time, before, as he put it, the rigor of the law and the stern features of its intractable articles, which do not always spread warmth in the soul, tore him away from its shady gardens and its tender melodies.

That the man of law and the man of letters came together in him shows a range of gifts, many abilities and outstanding competence, together with strength of will and high ambition. These qualities stayed with him in his working life, and he made his mark in the field of politics as a deputy and, more than once, as a minister. It was no accident that he was chosen for so many offices, with such varied tasks and duties: he was Minister of Justice, of Education and of Finance, acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Minister of Planning in Cairo during the union between Syria and Egypt. In every one of these posts he proved his worth and his distinction, just as he proved his devotion, his integrity and his uprightness. He was the finest of ministers; the offices were honored by him and the posts adorned by his presence.

He contributed to drafting the Syrian constitution in 1949. The Constituent Assembly charged with drawing up the constitution chose him as general rapporteur of its committee, and he carried the burden of that task with full competence and skill. He drafted the constitution in one hundred and sixty-six articles; it was the first Arab constitution to declare in its first article that Syria is a sovereign, democratic, parliamentary Arab republic and that the Syrian people are part of the Arab nation. The government of the day awarded him the Syrian Order of Merit of the Excellent Class, and in 1955 President Gamal Abdel Nasser awarded him the Order of the Egyptian Republic, First Class, in recognition of his stand for Arab nationalism.

He believed, may God have mercy on him, that training and developing the nation's human resources comes first among the priorities for raising the country up and advancing it. So when he took charge of the Ministry of Education, twice, once in 1951 and again in 1956, he sent more than six hundred students on study missions to Egyptian and Western universities. He also strengthened free education once the Syrian constitution had provided for it, and worked hard to make free schooling a reality in all the public schools under the Ministry of Education.

Out of his nationalist feeling and his faith in Arabism, he was, may God have mercy on him, among the strongest supporters of the union between Syria and Egypt and among those most anxious for it to last. The secession came as a great shock to him. His loyalty to the union held throughout the secessionist period, and his joy knew no bounds when the figures of the secession fell and Syria returned to its unionist, national course. He went back to political activity for a short time, then gave himself entirely to university teaching outside Syria, in Morocco and Kuwait, where he headed the department of criminal law at the universities of Rabat and Kuwait.

Alongside his nationalist political work, he taught law subjects at the Faculty of Law of the Syrian University, and as an author he wrote five well-known works, some of them reprinted several times. Among these works:

"Political Crime," "International Crime," "Principles of Criminal Procedure," "Advanced Studies in Comparative Criminal Jurisprudence" and "A Detailed Commentary on the Penal Code"; to these he added commentaries on the Moroccan penal law and the Kuwaiti penal law.

It should be noted that he left Damascus University when the secession took place and never returned to teach there after that date, so great was the shock the secession dealt him.

Among his traits as a scholar were objectivity and a dislike of generalization, since generalizing strays from objectivity. So we find him, in defending a group of Orientalists who served Arab culture, saying: "Scholarly honesty requires me to point out that the Orientalists who were spies are few. Those who loved Arab civilization and helped to spread its treasures, who wrote deep and pioneering works about it and taught us how to research our history and our literature, are the great majority. Among them I knew some, may God have mercy on them, who were my teachers, and who declared that Arab civilization must take its rightful, distinguished place; some of them even joined the Arabs in their demonstrations demanding the independence of Algeria, in the heart of Paris. Of their splendid works I will mention only:

L'Encyclopédie de l'Islam (The Encyclopaedia of Islam)

and the works of Brockelmann, Blachère, Gustave Le Bon and Goldziher... We have no right to accuse them all of ill intent."

Out of his belief in the unity of Arab culture and his national view of Arabic literature, he supported the late Professor Shukri Faisal in his serious study of the methods of literary study, and in his rejection of the regional theory, which studies our Arabic literature according to regional divisions. Let us listen to Dr. Homad: "In all honesty, all my life I taught the importance of the regional environment in the movement of crime, after the theory of heredity had attracted me for a long time. But there is a world of difference between moral deviance born of a corrupt environment and a creative impulse springing from a poetic spirit that senses reality, no doubt, yet keeps hovering in the upper air, the home of revelation and inspiration."

The regional theory goes back, in its literary roots, to the Frenchman Taine. Its starting point is a materialist rule: every event has a cause, and every result a premise. But if material laws can be explained by such rigid determinism, literary life has impulses, imaginings, emotions and inspirations that rebel against every material constraint and mold... In our time we see the rise of a psychological theory of the causes of crime, alongside the environmental theory whose banner the American professor Sutherland holds high...

So the personal elements remain the strongest creative influences in the life of literature.

Dr. Homad continues: "We who grew up believing in the unity of the Arabs feel something like shock and resentment when someone tries to impose on our feelings a regional concept that our souls cannot accept..."

Another of his traits, may God have mercy on him, was that he made no concessions to politeness when it came to speaking the truth. In his view, for a devoted scholar, establishing the truth, however bitter its taste, is worth more than flattering talk that tickles certain dreams for unscholarly ends but does harm to truth and to history.

So we saw him decline to humor our teacher, the late Dr. Shukri Faisal, in explaining the causes of our backwardness. In Dr. Shukri Faisal's view, those responsible for our backwardness are forces that are no secret... the forces of the enemies of humanity, who believe in discrimination and rank peoples into classes, those cannibals who plunder these peoples' wealth and abort their revolutions.

The late Dr. Homad responds to this view: Do we not bear a direct and enormous responsibility for our backwardness? Today we are witnessing the birth of a giant in Europe, whose states have set aside their old hatreds and the blood shed so freely on the battlefields over long centuries, and have merged into a great economic community that is working hard to dissolve itself into an astonishing political entity. And yet we look on, dumbfounded, learning nothing and taking nothing in.

And he declares it aloud, with complete certainty: Surely, had God granted Dr. Shukri a longer life, and had he lived through the grievous events of 1990 and 1991 in the Arab world, he would have radically revised his national thinking and his view of who is responsible for our backwardness.

Ladies and gentlemen,

"A man's remembrance is a second life." His students at the universities where they studied under him remember him with the greatest reverence and esteem. Upon my life, it is honor enough for a man to be revered in life and in death, and for his memory to perfume gatherings while he lives and after he has died, at a time when some are pointed out as living, moving about, though their consciences have died and their human feelings have frozen, so that they are dead even as they are counted among the living. May God have mercy on our poet, who says:

Nor can we forget the longing and yearning of our dear departed. When he decided in 1983 to return to Syria, the officials of Kuwait University tried to dissuade him from his decision and from his wish not to renew his contract, but he held to his position, so as to devote himself to research, writing books and articles and giving lectures, now that his longing for Damascus had overwhelmed him. Let us listen to him:

It was with the same tenderness of feeling and ardor of emotion that the late Dr. Homad addressed his son Ghassan on his wedding day, the twenty-fifth of February 1979:

May God have mercy on you, Abu Ghassan, with a mercy as wide as all you gave your nation, a giving that reached across the Arab world from the Ocean to the Gulf, from Morocco to Kuwait, and shone brightest in the heart of Arabism, Syria, the Syria of stance and principle, ever faithful to its values, ever holding fast to its national constants, ever defending the Arab cause with pride, dignity and honor.

Generations to come will stand before your fragrant life, so rich in giving, with reverence, esteem, pride and honor.

Our consolation is in the children you left behind, the work of your hands in character, conduct and achievement; in the life you leave us, full of values and fragrant with ideals, which generations will take as their model of strength of will and integrity of conduct; in your scholarly works, a refuge and a reference for jurists; and in your great deeds, treasured by those who love you and know your worth.

Peace be upon you, and the mercy of God and His blessings.