Chapter 3, Part 5: Faisal's Arab Kingdom in Syria, the Battle of Maysalun and the Mandate

Section Five
The Arab Kingdom in Syria

The First World War ended with the surrender of Germany and the conclusion of an armistice with it on 11 November 1918. The Turks had withdrawn from Damascus on 30 October 1918, and they signed an armistice with the Allies on the island of Mudros on 30 October 1918, which provided for the withdrawal of Turkish forces from all the Arab lands, including Yemen and the Hejaz.

Emir Faisal bin al-Hussein had formed a national government on 30 September 1918 under Lieutenant General Rida al-Rikabi, whose members included Emir Adil Arslan, Professor Faris al-Khouri and Yasin al-Hashimi (the Iraqi).

On 2 October 1918 Emir Faisal issued a proclamation announcing the founding of the Arab state, which said:

"A constitutional Arab government, independent with an absolute independence free of any blemish, has been formed in Syria in the name of our lord Sultan Hussein, covering all the Syrian lands."

He added: "He has entrusted Rida Pasha al-Rikabi with the general command of the said government, given my confidence in his ability and fitness."

The proclamation contained a clear statement that "our government has been founded on the basis of justice and equality. It looks on all who speak the language of the dad (Arabic), whatever their sects and religions, with one and the same eye, making no distinction between Muslim, Christian and Jew".

This proclamation was in keeping with England's promises to Sharif Hussein in his correspondence with Sir McMahon, and in keeping too with the declaration issued by England and France on 8 November 1917, which said:

"The reason France and England fought in the East goes back to the ambitions of the Germans, and to the freeing of the peoples who have groaned for long generations under the oppression of the Turks, a complete and final freeing, and the setting up of national governments and administrations that draw their authority from the free choice of the native inhabitants."

Two days after the proclamation of the constitutional Arab government, that is, on 4 October 1918, Emir Faisal bin al-Hussein entered Damascus with the British General Allenby, and the Arab flag was raised over the town hall by Emir Said al-Jazairi.

The mission of al-Rikabi's government ended on 26 January 1920 because a Council of Directors was formed.[1] Under al-Rikabi's government a Syrian Congress was set up, in the form of a parliament, to express the wishes of the people before the American commission of inquiry.

When the peace conference met in Paris on 19 January 1919, Emir Faisal attended it as his father's delegate, at an invitation sent to him by Britain as "an ally and a spokesman for the Arabs", but France received him only as "the son of the King of the Hejaz".

The Allies turned a deaf ear to Faisal's appeals to this conference concerning the rights of the Arabs, and wrote off all the promises they had made to recognize these lawful rights to full independence, especially what was set out in the British-French declaration issued on 8 November 1918.

The astonishing thing is that President Wilson himself was lax in applying his famous Fourteen Points on guaranteeing the independence of wronged peoples, and accepted the principle of a British and French mandate over the Arab lands that it had been decided, on 30 January 1919, to separate from the Ottoman state.

To apply the principle of the mandate, it was decided to send an American commission of inquiry to Syria to find out the opinion of the Syrian people on the question of the mandate. This commission was headed by Messrs. King and Crane, but it is usually known as the Crane Commission (Charles Crane).

Professor Hasan al-Hakim described Mr. Crane as follows:

"He was a great American financier, a great Orientalist and a distinguished scholar. He had been his country's ambassador to China, and in all his positions he was known for his sympathy with the East and his love of the glory of the Arabs and the civilization of Islam."[2]

The commission reached Jaffa on 10 June 1919 and toured the Syrian and Palestinian lands for a month and a half. It met people of all classes and walks of life, visited 36 of the main towns of Syria and a large number of villages, and presented its detailed report to the peace conference meeting at Versailles, but the French government prevented its publication, so that it did not see the light until 1922.

Crane came back to Syria a second time in April 1922 and had wide contacts with the people.

During the commission's visit to Syria a Syrian delegation of twenty deputies, headed by President Hashim al-Atassi, called on it and presented a petition demanding complete independence; if that request were not accepted, the Syrians asked for an American mandate, and if America did not accept, then for an English mandate, "but we reject any French mandate".[3]

The report drawn up by the Crane Commission contains a number of recommendations, the most important being the following:

1. The unity of Syria must be preserved, and Lebanon given a broad form of self-government.

2. The majority of the Syrian people want independence. But if there must be a temporary guardianship, let the guardian state be America, and if it refuses, then Britain.

3. If guardianship must be given to France, let it be confined to Little Lebanon alone.

4. The French forces, however, hurried to occupy the Syrian coast from Naqoura to Alexandretta. So only the interior regions remained under Faisal's rule.

It should be noted that Faisal had sent General Shukri al-Ayyubi to Beirut to raise the Arab flag on the flagpole of its town hall, as part of the Arab state, but the English general there ordered him to leave as soon as the Allies occupied Beirut. General Allenby appointed a French general as governor of the Western Zone.

The French High Commissioner in Lebanon was quick to act. He got ahead of the Crane Commission's report and announced the creation of "Greater Lebanon" at the beginning of September 1919, making it a state separate from Syria.

On 15 September 1919 England and France agreed to amend the Sykes-Picot agreement. The amendment included the following:

1. Mosul was not to be included within the Syrian borders.

2. Britain alone was to administer Palestine.

3. Iraq was to be placed under the British Mandate.

4. The Emirate of Transjordan was to remain under British administration.

Two days after this amendment was agreed, the British Prime Minister Lloyd George and the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau issued a joint statement supporting it. As soon as the statement appeared, Emir Faisal protested against it, as did the President of the Syrian Congress, Mr. Hashim al-Atassi. But that protest went the way of the others, gone with the wind.

Finding themselves facing "allies" for whom pledges given meant nothing, Ibrahim Hananu decided to withdraw from the Syrian Congress, of which he had been a member until October 1919, and declared a revolt against the French occupation in northern Syria, fighting the French bravely despite his slender material means. He managed to take the city of Antioch and set up an Arab government there at the end of 1919, but it was not to last. When his fighting resources ran out he took refuge in Transjordan, in the spring of 1921, where the English authorities arrested him and handed him over to the French authorities in August 1921 under an agreement for the exchange of criminals. Hananu was not a criminal, but a revolutionary who fought for his country against those who had seized it.

France set up a special court for him in Aleppo, which held its first session on 15 March 1922 under a French presiding judge. The great lawyer Fathallah al-Saqqal defended him splendidly, and the court acquitted him at its session of 6 June 1922.

Ibrahim Hananu was born in the town of Kafr Takharim (west of Aleppo) in 1869, and in 1930 he was elected leader of the National Bloc. He died of tuberculosis on 21 November 1935.

Another revolt against the French was led by the fighter Saleh al-Ali, in alliance with Hananu's revolt. It too was defeated, for lack of material resources and because of the mass of French forces it clashed with on unequal battlefields. Sheikh Saleh lived until the middle of April 1950 and was honored by his fellow citizens and by the state.

Emir Faisal, while in Paris for the peace conference, reached an agreement with the French Prime Minister Clemenceau (Clemenceau) on 7 November 1919, having found himself all but defenseless and tossed about by the great powers that had broken their pledges. These were its main clauses:

1. Emir Faisal recognizes that the Syrians cannot achieve their unity and organize the administration of their country without the advice and help of a partner nation, and he asks, in the name of the Syrian people, that this nation be France.

2. France undertakes to give the "Syrian nation" its help and to guarantee its independence "within the borders that the peace conference will recognize for it".

3. Emir Faisal recognizes the independence of Lebanon under French guardianship.

4. Emir Faisal undertakes to make it easier to set up "broad self-government for the Druze of the Hauran".

5. Arabic shall be the official language in administration and teaching, and the learning of French shall be compulsory, as a privileged auxiliary language.

6. Damascus shall be the administrative and legislative capital, where the head of state shall reside, and Aleppo the seat of the French delegate, so that he is close to Cilicia.

7. This agreement shall remain secret until it is put before the peace conference.

Faisal returned to Syria on a French steamer, reached Damascus on 16 January 1920, and called a meeting at his palace on the 20th of that month, attended by the notables of the capital and the leaders of the national societies. Faisal set before them the agreement he had reached with Clemenceau and asked those present for their opinion, but no one gave one. The Syrian Congress, however, meeting in Damascus on 7 March 1920, rejected this agreement, accused Faisal of weakness and, at the same session, took a decision proclaiming the independence of Syria, comprising the interior cities, the Syrian coast and Palestine.

On 8 March 1920 the Congress approved the installation of Emir Faisal as King of Syria (including Palestine), and he was crowned at the headquarters of the Arab Club in Damascus.

On the evening of the same day Faisal formed a cabinet under Lieutenant General Rida al-Rikabi, with Ala al-Din al-Droubi, Rida al-Solh, Lieutenant General Abd al-Hamid Qaltaqji, Jalal Zuhdi, Said al-Husseini, Faris al-Khouri and Yusuf al-Hakim as members. Ihsan al-Jabiri was appointed chief chamberlain of the court, Nasib al-Bakri second chamberlain and Fakhri al-Barudi aide-de-camp to the King.

Regrettably, the Allies refused to recognize the new situation in Syria, and at the San Remo conference of 18-25 April 1920 they agreed to place Lebanon and interior Syria under the French Mandate, with Mosul cut off from Syria, and to place Iraq, Palestine and Transjordan under the British Mandate.

The country began to seethe in protest and in resistance to the Allies' treachery. King Faisal responded to the people's wishes and formed a new government, which he entrusted to Hashim al-Atassi on 3 May 1920 and then reshuffled on 5 May 1920.

The cabinet included Yusuf al-Azma for War, Sati' al-Husri for Education, Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar for Foreign Affairs and Faris al-Khouri for Finance.

The cabinet delivered a statement before the Syrian Congress in which it declared that it held fast to the complete independence of the country, rejected the Balfour Declaration and rejected the mandate over the Arab states approved by the San Remo conference.

France met the growing national movement in Syria by sending an ultimatum to King Faisal on 14 July 1920, signed by the French High Commissioner in Beirut, General Gouraud, demanding unconditional acceptance of the French Mandate, the introduction of the French monetary system in Syria and the abolition of conscription.[4] General Gouraud set a period of four days for compliance.

What happened, though, was that the Syrian Congress, and with it the Syrian government, rejected the ultimatum, but King Faisal accepted it, sent General Gouraud a letter to that effect on 18 July, disbanded the army and suspended the Syrian Congress for two months.

Popular demonstrations broke out against Faisal's conduct. But the commander of the army, Emir Zeid bin al-Hussein, ordered his men to open fire on the crowds of demonstrators, in a brutal way.

Here I quote what Professor Hasan al-Hakim, one of the leading men of that period, wrote. He said:

"The French ultimatum fell on the heads of the members of the government like a thunderbolt, stunning and bewildering them, and they began to discuss it, knowing the evil the General was hatching behind his ultimatum to destroy the country's independence. They were thus between two fires, the fire of the ultimatum and the fire of the people's fury. His Majesty King Faisal felt the gravity of the situation and the need to deal with it with wisdom and firmness and to benefit from the opinions of sensible men who knew the facts of the matter, so he held grave meetings at the royal palace, attended by the ministers, the men of authority and standing, the party leaders and the army commanders and its general staff, and they agreed that the situation was too serious to be handled with enthusiasm and feelings, but called for good management and weighing of the consequences, and in the end they advised accepting the ultimatum."[5]

Professor al-Hakim adds that Faisal's acceptance of the ultimatum was handed to the French Colonel Cousse in Damascus for him to send at once to Gouraud, but the sending of the telegram containing it was delayed by the French officials, so that General Gouraud would have his excuse for entering the country by war, on the pretext that the King's reply accepting the ultimatum had not reached him in time.[6]

Gouraud used the late arrival of the reply as a pretext for attacking Syria, and ordered his forces to advance on it.

The advance of the French army was met with great demonstrations in Syria, and the people resolved to resist. The King, however, looked at the matter in a spirit of responsibility and sent a telegram to Gouraud, telling him that the advance of the French army on Damascus, after Syria had accepted the ultimatum and disbanded the Syrian army, was "a violation of the pledges given and a breach of particular rights and of the spirit of common decency", and asking him in the telegram to halt his army's march on the capital.

The Syrian government backed the position of its King Faisal and broadcast a statement in which it confirmed its acceptance of the French ultimatum, accused General Gouraud of breaking his undertaking and starting the aggression, declared that it would defend the homeland, and asked the people to do their duty in supporting the defensive war effort.

Two views appeared in the cabinet. One, adopted and defended by the Minister of Defense Yusuf al-Azma, was that the Arab army had weapons enough to resist for a long time and perhaps to drive out the enemy. The other rested on the word of Yasin al-Hashimi, head of the army's supply, that the army's equipment would not allow it to enter any war.

A report from the army staff, signed by the military commanders and read out by Yusuf al-Azma himself, stated that the army had 70 guns with 80 shells for each gun, and 270 "fishek" (rounds) for each rifle, but that there was no source able to supply it with arms.

While the debate was raging in Damascus, the French army advanced toward the capital and camped at Maysalun.. The Minister of Education, Sati' al-Husri, played a prominent part in the negotiations with Gouraud. Rida al-Rikabi refused to form a military cabinet, and so did Yasin al-Hashimi, because the state of the army did not allow it to fight.

Then Yusuf al-Azma and his comrades among the young officers declared that they would defend the homeland with their blood, and King Faisal proclaimed "holy jihad" to drive the French back from Damascus.

The Arab army met the French army on the field of Maysalun on 24 July 1920.. Because of the inequality between the two armies, the battle was decided in favor of the French in less than half an hour. Yusuf al-Azma fell as a martyr, hit by a bullet on the field of honor, and the French army occupied Damascus on 25 July.

The Prince of Poets, Shawqi, mourned him, saying:

"As long as I live I shall remember the wall of a grave
On the outskirts of Jillaq (Damascus), astride the sands.

It will stand as long as Maysalun stands,
Recalling the death of the lion with its cubs.

In it lies hidden the greatness of the great,
The first of lords to meet the arrows.

You see the light of faith in its soil,
And breathe from its sides the scent of noble traits.

He was shrouded in swords and spears,
And laid to rest where he ranged and where he charged."

King Faisal and his ministers left Damascus for al-Kiswa.. except for some of them.. While he was there Ihsan al-Jabiri came to him from Damascus to tell him that those who had stayed behind in Damascus had reached an agreement with the French authorities on his return to the city and the formation of a new government, whose list he put before him: under Ala al-Din al-Droubi, with Faris al-Khouri, Yusuf al-Hakim, Ata al-Ayyubi and Badi al-Muayyad. The King accepted the agreement, signed the decree, and went back to Damascus with his party. The cabinet began work at once under the presidency of King Faisal. But the French authorities issued a decision "that King Faisal must leave the country within two days", on the grounds that he was responsible for the bloodshed that had taken place.

General Gouraud fixed 28 July as the date of his departure by special train to Haifa and then Europe, and he left Damascus with grief choking every throat.

So in Syria the chapter of the Hashemite monarchy was closed, the French Mandate settled on the conscience of the Syrian people and on its institutions, and the promises made to the Arabs of a united and independent state of their own vanished into thin air.

At that time armed revolts broke out in Iraq against the British occupation. Sunnis and Shiites agreed to keep up the armed struggle until the country won its independence, and the leading Shiite mujtahid issued a fatwa forbidding the acceptance of any government post in the British administration (March 1920).

The British government realized that it must not make light of this resistance, which would cause it trouble and bloodshed, so it decided to conciliate the Iraqi people rather than confront them, and invited King Faisal to London for negotiations in January 1921. Faisal and the Colonial Secretary, Churchill, agreed that Faisal would take the throne of Iraq, and he went there by sea and reached Basra on 23/6/1921. The Iraqi government at once proclaimed him constitutional king of the country, the Mandate authority approved this proclamation on 11/7/1921, and he was crowned on 23 August 1921.

He died in September 1933 in Switzerland.

At the same time Emir Abdullah bin al-Hussein and Mr. Churchill agreed in Jerusalem on 30/5/1921 on setting up a national government in Transjordan headed by Emir Abdullah, "which shall be completely independent", on condition that it be guided by the advice of a British representative residing in the capital, Amman.

As for Syria, its fate was to fall into the clutches of the hateful French Mandate.

Endnotes:

[1] This council was formed under Emir Zeid bin al-Hussein, with Yusuf al-Azma as chief of staff of the Free Shura Party, Amin al-Tamimi (the Palestinian), Rida al-Rikabi (director of war) and Lieutenant Colonel Ali Jawdat (deputy director of general security).

[2] In his book Mudhakkirati (My Memoirs), vol. 1, p. 35.

[3] Yusuf al-Hakim, Memoirs, vol. 3, p. 102.

[4] The text of the ultimatum and the memorandum attached to it are in the book by Professor Hasan al-Hakim mentioned above, vol. 1, pp. 13-22, Beirut 1965.

[5] Vol. 1, p. 22.

[6] Ibid., p. 34. See Sati' al-Husri, Yawm Maysalun (The Day of Maysalun), p. 114 ff.