In 1974 Dr Constantin Zureiq, Vice President of the American University of Beirut, persuaded his friend Dr Nazem al-Koudsi, to recording his memoirs. He assigned University librarians to be in charge of taping them. In fact three tapes were made. They are at present in the University library but the recordings were discontinued on the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975.

Later in Amman, capital of Jordan, on the insistence of his son, Fa’iz, and his own wife, President al-Koudsi continued recording his memoirs in 1990, with the aid of a number of people who interviewed him. Then in 1993 he asked the former parliamentary Deputy and Minister, Ahmad Qanbar, his friend and colleague in the People’s Party, who was living in Aleppo, to call on him in Amman to recall with him some of the events they shared in during the 1940s and 1950s.  In fact the questions Ahmad Qanbar posed in Amman are on this site.

The principal source for this summary is the recordings of President al-Koudsi in his spoken words. He completed the recordings in 1994. 

Nazem, son of Taqi al-Din son of Baha al-Din al-Koudsi was born on 26 February 1906 in the city of Aleppo. His father, who died in 1926, was a Judge in the Criminal Court, and his grandfather Baha al-Din, who died in 1892, was a Judge, the elected representative of the Ashraf, and the first the Mayor of Aleppo municipality. The al-Koudsi family occupied several times the role of representatives in Aleppo of the Ashraf, descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. His mother, Fatima, was the daughter of ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Rikbi, one of the leading merchants of Aleppo. 

Nazem entered with others into the care of a teacher, al-Khoja, in 1910 when he was four years old. After that he went to the school of The Sun of Progress where his teacher was Sheikh Ahmad al-Zaranji; from there he was transferred to the Franciscan school and stayed there until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 when the Ottoman authorities closed the School down. After that he was transferred to the Armenian Catholic School and was under the supervision of his teacher Bashir al-Jahami. But after a year the authorities closed that school down as well. He then went to the Shaibani German School that was founded in 1880. He stayed there until the end of the war in 1918. His fellow-pupil in this school was Iskandar Qassis who became a gynaecologist and supervised the birth of all his children.

Nazem was transferred in 1918 to the Eastern School. When he was at this school, in November 1918 to be precise, the Arab Army under the command of Amir Faisal, son of Sharif Husain, entered the city of Aleppo. All schools were closed and he went out with other pupils to greet the Amir Faisal in Arab dress. On that auspicious day Amir Faisal was accompanied by the high ranking officer of the Arab Army, Nuri Pasha al-Sa’id.

The father of Nazem al-Koudsi, in his capacity as the eldest of his brothers, was the head of the family. He had a hospitality house for receiving guests, a konak, to which the principal personages of Aleppo came, men such as As’ad Pasha al-Jabiri, Nafi’ al-Pasha al-Jabiri, ‘Abd al-Hamid al-Jabiri and Hajj Murad al-Jabiri. In fact, his father was on terms of close friendship with the Jabiri family and chose two of them to be witnesses at his second marriage, to Nazem’s mother. As for people outside Aleppo, Subhi Bey Barakat, whenever he came to Aleppo, used to stay at the guest house. He afterwards became Head of State of Syria.

Nazem’s father sent him to train in the provincial offices of Aleppo during the summer holidays of 1917. He benefitted from this by familiarising himself with the Ottoman administrative reorganisation, the Tanzimat, just before the end of the First World War and the departure of the Ottomans from Greater Syria. The last Governor of Aleppo then was Mustafa ‘Abd al-Khaliq who has been described as one of the best to have occupied this post.

Moreover, we note that at the beginning of the last century Nuri al-Sa’id had been a student at the Military School in Istanbul, where Staff Brigadier Zaki Pasha al-Koudsi was an instructor. Nuri Pasha appointed him to be commander of the Aleppo base in the Arab Army after it entered Aleppo in 1918. He had, however, already retired by then. He appointed Lieutenant General (Retired) Kamil Pasha al-Koudsi as Military Governor of Aleppo.

After the end of the First World War with the victory of the Allies, the father of Nazem, together with his friends and relations, decided to send their sons to receive secondary education in the preparatory boarding section (today the international College) attached to the American University of Beirut; its name then was the Syrian Protestant College.

So at the end of 1918 Nazem al-Koudsi travelled with his uncle Jalal al-Din al-Koudsi and his son, Nadir. The others who were with them were Hasan son of As’ad Pasha al-Jabiri, Mazhar son of Nafi’ Pasha al-Jabiri. Hajj Murad al-Jabiri came with his two sons, Shakib and ‘Abdullah, and the son of the Director of Religious Endowments in Aleppo, As’ad ‘Antabi. They all took the train to Beirut. This was the first time Nazem had travelled by train – he was no more than twelve years old.

The year of study that he completed in this College had a profound influence on the course of his life: the foreign way of teaching, his mastery of the English language and its grammar, reading and writing, not to speak of the American way of dealing with matters of daily life. There were students from outside Aleppo – Rafiq al-Jallad from Damascus, and Qabuli al-Zawq from Tripoli, and a number of members of the Ghandour family of Beirut. He was registered in the boarding section, and because of his academic excellence he was promoted, exceptionally, in the middle of the school year, causing some resentment.    

While Nazem was in Beirut during 1919 Amir Faisal son of al-Husain arrived in Beirut, returning from the Conference of Versailles held in the suburbs of the French capital, Paris. He took part in organising the students of the preparatory section to go to Beirut Port and greet the Amir, raising flags of the Arab Army. This was in defiance of the French authorities. The representative of the Syrian government in Beirut at the time was the late martyr Yusuf al-Azma. At the end of the academic year it was clear from the decisions of the Versailles Conference that Syria would be subject to the French Mandate. His father therefore decided to bring him back to Aleppo where he rejoined the Franciscan School. He stayed there for three years to complete his secondary studies, receiving his Secondary Certificate in 1923.

During this time his father asked him to read out the foreign newspapers and magazines to the gatherings in the al-Koudsi family Guest House. He took advantage of the discussions that took place, especially as those attending were the intellectual, economic and social elite of the city at that time.

Furthermore while Nazem was in the Franciscan School, he nurtured feelings of national anger against the French presence in the country. The idea then occurred to him and to his fellow students, Jamil, Mamduh and Ahmad al-Amiri and to a group of other students that they should resist the French occupation.  When they graduated the school directors decided that he would not be from the top of the class and gave that honour to another student named Rene Daher. Nazem challenged the School Director because he believed he was among the top five students and that one of them should have received the top place. When the School Director refused to give him the Secondary Certificate he threatened to submit a complaint to the French authorities. This made the Director change his decision and he gave Nazem his certificate.  

        

It is worth remembering that when France divided Syria into five statelets, after consulting with the senior men of Aleppo, the French authorities accepted their suggestion and appointed Lieutenant General Kamil Pasha al-Koudsi who had retired from the Ottoman army with the highest rank of any Arab in that army, as Governor of the State of Aleppo, in 1921. He was a first cousin of Nazem’s father. Meanwhile the French authorities arrested the national leader Ibrahim Hananu and put him on trial. While he was still a fifteen year old student, Nazem went to the court and attended Hananu’s trial. When the French court acquitted him he was surprised at the independence of the French judges. This decision of the court made a profound impression on Nazem and he decided to study law. When Hananu came out of prison Nazem went to congratulate him. He kissed his hand. The leader Hananu asked him who he was. Nazem answered and the leader immediately seated him on a small chair at his side during the whole period that he was at the reception.

Nazem al-Koudsi graduated from the secondary school with the Secondary Certificate obtaining the second place in academic excellence. That was in 1923 when he was seventeen years old. Because of the strong nationalist feelings in Aleppo, especially after the acquittal of Ibrahim Hananu, he decided to stay in Syria and to pursue his studies at the Faculty of Law at the Syrian University in Damascus, but the university administration refused to admit him, not accepting that his certificate was equivalent to the government school certificate. Moreover they argued that he was less than eighteen years old. He sent a complaint to Subhi Bey Barakat, President of the country at the time, and a friend of his father, as has already been mentioned. Nazem called on him when he visited Aleppo. The President of the State proposed that he undergo an examination, and this took place. Nazem al-Koudsi succeeded in the entry examination and was enrolled in the Syrian University at the end of 1923. Among his fellow students in that first year in the Faculty of Law were Saif al-Din al-Ma’mun, Ra’if al-Mulqi, ’Adil Hatahit, ‘Umar ‘Abbas,  Ahmad al-Shihabi and Yusuf Yasin. Among his teachers were Faris al-Khuri, ‘Abd al-Qadir al-‘Azm, Muhammad Kurd ‘Ali and ‘Arif al-Nakadi.

    

At that time the French authorities accused students in the Faculty of Law of assisting the rebels, especially after the outbreak of the Revolt of Sultan Pasha al-Atrash in Jabal Druze and the extension of the flames of sedition to the Damascus Ghuta and even to Damascus itself. One important event at this time was the request of the French High Commissioner, Henri de Jouvenel, to visit the Faculty of Law. The Law students received him by turning their backs on him as he entered. All he had to say to Faris al-Khuri, scholar and great national leader, “You are teaching Revolution to the students”, and threatened to close the Faculty down. Faris al-Khuri replied that he was teaching the students Evolution. The High Commissioner was taken aback by this retort.  ‘Abd al-Qadir al-‘Azm told the first year students, “Allah decides; be of good cheer.” He knew that students were assisting the rebels of the Ghuta at night when the French authorities had imposed a curfew.

    

It also happened that the French authorities detained the student ‘Adil Hatahit. Nazem al-Koudsi with two fellow-students – Ra’if al-Mulqi who later became a Deputy from Hama and a Minister, and Ahmad al-Shihabi – went to see General Georges Catroux but they were not allowed to speak. But he was taken aback by their courage and after giving them a lecture about the law promised to release Hatahit. This he did.

    

In 1923 Dr ‘Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar founded the People’s Party in Damascus. Another of the founders was Faris al-Khuri. The Party was a great supporter of the rebels of Jabal Druze.

    

In the following year, 1924, Lord Balfour, author of the ill-fated Balfour Declaration, visited Damascus and stayed at the Victoria Hotel. The students of Law were stirred to organise demonstrations in the streets and mosques of Damascus. They marched towards the Hotel Victoria with the aim of torching it. The French authorities asked Lord Balfour to leave Damascus the same day for the sake of his life.    

    

In 1925, demonstrations took place in Aleppo in support of the Druze Revolt, and the French authorities imprisoned a number of nationalists at the head of whom was Ibrahim Hananu, along with Rushdi al-Kikhya and Basim son of Taqi al-Din al-Koudsi, Nazem’s older brother. Nazem visited them in prison. This was the first meeting between Nazem al-Koudsi and Rushdi al-Kikhya.  Afterwards they were destined to share political fortunes that continued for nearly six decades until Rushdi Kikhya’s death in Cyprus in 1989.

    

In the course of Nazem al-Koudsi’s three years of study in the Faculty of Law he scored a mark of ten out of ten, the top mark, in all subjects except Principles of the Arabic Language in which he scored a mark of eight out of ten. This prompted the Dean of the Faculty, Faris al-Khuri, to say to those who had opposed accepting his certificate, “This is the man whose certificate you objected to; has there been anyone like him come to you in the University’s history?”

    

In 1925 the Syrian government announced the award of a scholarship for students of the Faculty of Law to complete their studies and obtain a doctorate in France. The hero of this memoir, together with a number of his fellow students, entered for the examination to obtain this scholarship. His fellow competitors told him that he was sure to win considering the results of his Faculty examinations. They wanted him to withdraw from the competition because his family was well off. This he did, and Saif al-Din al-Ma’mun was the winner of the government award. In the same year, 1925, the Syrian Revolt broke out and the French government declined to say that the certificate awarded by the Faculty of Law in Damascus was equivalent to the certificate issued by Faculties of Law in French universities. As he sat for his final year examinations of the Faculty in 1926, his father died, but the family thought it best not to give him the news until he went back to Aleppo after the exams.

    

But the next stage was not far away. His uncle, Nafi’ bin Mujib al-Koudsi, chief of police in Syria, obtained a letter of recommendation from one of the French authorities addressed to the Minister of Education in France, asking that Nazem al-Koudsi be accepted at the Sorbonne. Then his father left him a considerable amount of agricultural property, as well as 1270 golden sovereigns to pay for his university studies in Europe for three years.

Nazem al-Koudsi left Beirut at the end of 1926 on a steamer bound for the French port of Marseilles, from where he travelled on to Paris. He was just twenty years old. He presented the letter of recommendation addressed to the Minister of Education, but the lady in charge of the Minister’s office told him that the law did not allow his certificate to be recognised, but it was not possible to refuse the letter of recommendation, and so he had to wait.

    

During this time Nazem attending sessions of the French parliament. He was impressed by the ferocity and frequency of political debate. This was his first exposure to western democracy, which became rooted ever after in his political thinking. In Paris there was a Society of Syrian Arab Students which he joined. Among the other members were Munir al-‘Ajlani, Muhsin al-Barazi, Najib Armanazi, Majid al-Umari and Haidar Mardam Bey. But as the period of waiting went on and on, he decided in early 1927 to go to the Swiss city of Geneva. There he registered at the University’s Faculty of International Law, noting that the Dean of the Faculty, Monsieur Rafarre, was the chairman of the Mandates Committee of the League of Nations in Geneva. M Rafarre regularly attended the meetings of this committee. In Geneva he also got to know Ihsan al-Jabiri, Amir Shakib Arslan and his brother Amir ‘Adil, and Riad al-Sulh, who were members of the Syrian-Palestinian delegation at meetings and discussions with the League of Nations. He also got to know Habib Bourguiba, later the Tunisian leader. He embarked on his political activity with the Syrian-Palestinian delegation who gave him the task, with Farid Zain al-Din, to represent Syria in the Conference to Combat Imperialism held in Frankfurt in 1928.

    

In Geneva at the end of 1927 Nazem al-Koudsi passed an oral exam for a doctorate, getting six out of six, and at the beginning of 1928 he passed the written exam getting a score of 5.5 out of six. He started research on writing his thesis with the title “A Critique of the Theory of Sovereignty in International Law”. He went on writing it until the end of the year. Meanwhile he continued with his political activity with the Syrian delegation to the League of Nations.

    

At the beginning of 1929 his doctoral thesis was debated for three hours; the debate was attended by advisers from the League of Nations. The thesis was accepted, and confirmed and registered by the University of Geneva that year. Indeed the University asked him to have 300 copies of the thesis printed and it is on this site. He had it printed in Paris from where he returned to Syria after spending a fortnight in Venice and the Italian port of Trieste at the end of 1929. It is interesting to note that on board the steamer were a number of European Jewish immigrants who disembarked at night at the port of Haifa.

 

The Syrian delegation in Geneva had informed the nationalist youth that the man who was now Dr Nazem al-Koudsi was arriving in Beirut. Some of them greeted him at the port of Beirut so he could be their guest. But he excused himself and left Beirut on the same day and travelled by train to Aleppo. In his own city he was also welcomed by nationalist students on instructions sent by Ihsan al-Jabiri in Geneva.

    

Nazem al-Koudsi returned to Aleppo with his doctoral Certificate in Public Law and International Law at the end of 1929 when he was twenty-three years old. He trained in the office of his fellow student and friend, Dr Edmond Rabbath. Ihsan al-Jabiri had informed his brother Saadallah al-Jabiri about the effective political activity which they had shared in Geneva. The National Bloc embraced him, and the young lawyer became one of the most outstanding intimates of the leader of the National Bloc, Ibrahim Hananu, especially for his skilled oratory.

    

At that time, public meetings were forbidden, and the National Bloc used to meet in large private houses in the old city of Aleppo, on religious occasions, especially the Prophet’s Birthday. Dr Nazem was always the speaker, in the presence of leaders in Aleppo such as Ibrahim Hananu, Saadallah al-Jabiri, Dr ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Kayyali, Sheikh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Sarmini, Ahmad al-Rifa’i, Dr Subhi al-Ghazi, Hajj Najib Baqi,  Hajj Fatih al-Mar’ashli and Hajj Fatih Wafa’i. With them were Jamil Ibrahim Pasha and his brother Hasan Ibrahim Pasha; these last two were the cousins of Nazem al-Koudsi. There were others. After one year of training, Dr Nazem joined the Lawyers’ Syndicate in Aleppo.

In 1930 the hero of this memoir joined Dr Edmond Rabbath in a legal office. This office represented members of the National Bloc in Aleppo, especially before the mixed courts and the Syrian courts. The National Bloc authorised him to give speeches on behalf of the Bloc on national occasions in Damascus, especially when commemorating the execution of the Martyrs of 6 May and in commemoration of the Battle of Maysalun. The leaders of the National Bloc in Damascus during the early 1930s were full of praise for these speeches. This delighted the leaders in Aleppo, notably Ibrahim Hananu and Saadallah al-Jabiri. On one occasion in the presence of his professor, the President of the Republic Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Husni, he departed from his text, and was so eloquent that the audience was fired with national feeling. On that occasion the President of the Republic proposed, via his cousin Nafi’ Mujib al-Koudsi, Director General of Police in Syria, that he be appointed to the state judiciary. This invitation was gratefully declined.  

Meanwhile Dr Nazem, in his role as oldest brother, was also responsible for managing the agricultural estates of his father. His younger brother, Dr Rashad al-Koudsi, was in France pursuing his studies to obtain a doctorate in private law. However, after a couple of years, nationalist political work took up most of his time. He attracted work that required legal claims to the office of the lawyers, and he delegated these in the courts to his two partners, Dr Edmond Rabbath and Attorney Rizq Allah Salim.

In 1932 in the parliamentary elections his brother Basim Taqi al-Din al-Koudsi was nominated on a list to compete against the list of the national Bloc, but Dr Nazem preferred his national allegiance to his family membership. A rumour circulated in Aleppo that the second slate was receiving the support of the French authorities. This situation surprised the leaders of the National Bloc, especially that there was no family issue between him and his elder brother.

During these elections the leader Hananu sent messages by word of mouth to the leaders of the Bloc in Homs, at the head of whom was Hashim al-Atassi, and to leaders of the Bloc in Damascus, Shukri al-Quwatli, Faris al-Khuri Jamil Mardam-Bey, Lutfi al-Haffar and others, but success did not attend most of the National Bloc in all parts of Syria.     

     

When the French broke their undertakings to the Chamber of Deputies, and imposed a treaty that did not meet the Syrian nationalist demands, Nazem al-Koudsi went with the leaders of the National Bloc in Aleppo to meet the National Bloc in Damascus. They forced the National Bloc representatives in Haqqi al-‘Azm’s government to resign.

Violent demonstrations took place all over Syria, demanding that the Assembly reject the treaty. The National Bloc met with the crowds of demonstrators in the Great Mosque in Aleppo. Dr Nazem gave a speech from the minbar asking the crowds to join the demonstrators who would leave the Great Mosque following the leaders of the Bloc. At that moment news arrived that the Syrian Chamber of Deputies had rejected the Treaty. This was met by huge popular rejoicing. The French authorities thereupon dissolved the Chamber of Deputies.

    

In 1934 Nazem al-Koudsi married Shahira (1918-97), daughter of Hajj ‘Abdullah son of al-Hajj ‘Abd al-Qadir Salahiya. This family worked in trade and property and was then one of the large well-to-do families in Aleppo. The children they had were Muhammad Saad (1934-2009), Fatima ‘Ahd (1936-81), Muhammad Farid (1939-2018), Fawwaz (1941-). Fa’iz (1943-), Faisal (1947-) and Faris (1959-). In 1934 Muhammad ‘Ali al-‘Abid was President of the Republic and Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Husni, who was close to the French authorities, was Prime Minister. The latter decided to visit Aleppo; he was a good friend of Basim al-Koudsi and of Nazem’s brother in law ,’Abd al-Qadir Salahiya.    

    

The National Bloc learned that Sheikh al-Husni intended to perform Friday prayers in the Great Mosque. It advised the leadership to go to the Great Mosque and occupy the seat of honour so that the Prime Minister could not sit in it. Meanwhile the crowds standing outside the Mosque asked leaders of the Bloc, through Nazem al-Koudsi, for permission to strike the Prime Minister with their shoes. He gave their agreement without either informing or consulting Ibrahim Hananu or Saad Allah al-Jabiri, who were occupying the seat of honour with him at that moment. The consequence was that hundreds of shoes rained down on the Prime Minister. Nazem al-Koudsi, Saad Allah al-Jabiri and a large number of the leaders of the Bloc in Aleppo were taken off to prison. This was the first time he entered a political prison and it was just as he was returning from his honeymoon!  Following this incident the city of Aleppo went on strike for twenty-five days. The event raised the popularity of the National Bloc and support for it grew in all parts of Syria. When the leaders of the Bloc came out of prison they were summoned to a meeting in Damascus and it was decided to open branches of the Bloc in all parts of the country.

    

That year, 1934, also saw the death of the leader, Ibrahim Hananu; it was announced by Saad Allah al-Jabiri. The funeral was delayed by two days to enable groups of people to come from all parts of Greater Syria to Aleppo. Indeed huge crowds numbering tens of thousands, led by delegations from Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon, Tyre, from Nablus and Jerusalem as well as various parts of Iraq. There were also leaders of the National Bloc from all parts of Syria. Dr Nazem al-Koudsi organised the funeral procession that extended about three kilometres. Four men bore the coffin – Edmond Rabbath, Na’im Antaki, Nazem al-Koudsi, and Dr Khalid al-Jabi from Damascus. The Bloc charged him with welcoming the delegations coming to Aleppo. Actually before Hananu died and at the request of Sa’d Allah al-Jabiri, Nazem al-Koudsi tried to persuade Hananu to sell some of his agricultural property to pay off his debts, but the attempt failed. Hananu had said to him, “I would sell my soul rather than sell off my lands.” The leader Hananu died, owing great sums of money to Aleppo merchants.

    

After the death of Hananu the leadership of the National Bloc devolved to a committee under the chairmanship of Hashim al-Atassi; the members were Saad Allah al-Jabiri, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Kayyali, Jamil Mardam, Lutfi al-Huffar, Shukri al-Quwatli, Fakhri al-Barudi and Faris al-Khuri. In 1935 an unarmed police force was established and attached to the National Bloc. In Aleppo it had the name of the Iron Guard. It was under the authority of a committee made up of Rushdi al-Kikhya, Mikha’il Layyan, Nazem al-Koudsi and his cousin, Jamil Ibrahim Pasha. In the same year there was a bloody confessional problem in Aleppo. He, his cousin Hasan Fu’ad Ibrahim Pasha and Sheikh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Sarmini put a stop to it, separating the sides after a number had been killed. In the same year Dr Nazem advised the leadership of the Bloc to set up a campaign to boycott foreign companies in Syria. The leadership indeed agreed and, under Fakhri al-Barudi from Damascus and Nazem al-Koudsi from Aleppo, organised the boycott. This prompted the French authorities to invite the National Bloc to send a delegation to Paris to start on the independence negotiations that led to the 1936 Treaty.

In 1936 the leadership of the National Bloc in Aleppo entrusted Nazem al-Koudsi with the task of organising the welcoming of the Syrian delegation on their return from Paris after their success in negotiating the Franco-Syrian Treaty.  For two months he was busy arranging delegations from the quarters, and the review that would be put on when the delegation arrived in Aleppo, led by Hashim al-Atassi and composed of Saad Allah al-Jabiri and Faris al-Khuri.  This review lasted three hours and the participating crowds were over a hundred thousand people from Aleppo and the surrounding towns and villages. Every village was represented with their own flag. People came from the villages in traditional dress, and there were two musical bands, one from the Syrian Scouts and the other from the Iron Guard. Hashim al-Atassi, the leader of the delegation, spoke from the balcony of the Hotel Baron, before which the review proceeded: “There’s no need of a referendum on this Treaty after today,” he said. “The referendum has already taken place.” Indeed it was the largest popular reception Aleppo had ever witnessed. Hashim al-Atassi and Saad Allah al-Jabiri asked Dr Nazem al-Koudsi, together with a contingent of the Iron Guard, made up of forty people, to accompany them on the train to Damascus and to stay there to accompany them to the meetings with the French there.

In 1936 Nazem al-Koudsi reached the age of thirty, the minimum legal age for being a candidate in elections. Saad Allah al-Jabiri invited him to nominate himself on the list of the National Bloc in the elections for the Chamber of Deputies that year. This he did. From then on, he continued to represent the city of Aleppo in five elections for the Chamber from 1936 to 1954, obtaining the highest number of votes with his two colleagues, Rushdi al-Kikhya and Ma’ruf al-Dawalibi. During the 1936 election Saad Allah al-Jabiri asked him to supervise the elections that were taking place in the Province of Iskenderun on behalf of the national Bloc. This did not meet the approval of the Bloc candidates there, Mikha’il Layyan, and the mutasarrif, Husni al-Barazi.

    

At this election to the Chamber of Deputies, Faris al-Khuri was elected to the Speakership, and Dr Nazem al-Koudsi and Dr Tawfiq al-Shishakli to be secretaries of the Chamber. Jamil Ibrahim Pasha and Fakhri al-Barudi were elected to be supervisors. Hashim al-Atassi was elected President of the Republic. This did not please the Deputy, Dr Munir al-‘Ajlani, who was not yet married to the daughter of Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Husni. He made his opposition to these elections known to the Speaker of the Chamber.

    

It may be noted that Nazem al-Koudsi’s attendance at the French National Assembly and the discussions at the League of Nations in Geneva had a profound impact on his fundamental political thinking. When he was elected to the secretariat of the Chamber in 1936 he established rigorous procedures in the manner of keeping the minutes of the meetings of the Chamber from then until union with Egypt in 1958. Dr Nazem required the secretariat to make a literal record without neither addition nor omission. They should be recorded and distributed to Deputies before the convening of the next session. He personally checked the minutes of every session to make sure they were accurate. These minutes were produced in volumes and can be found on this site. They are the most important resource for the history of representative democracy in Syria.   

    

In 1937 the national government under the Presidency of Jamil Mardam Bey sent a delegation to Cairo to meet the Speaker of the French National Assembly, Monsieur Herriot, in order to ask the French government to confirm the proposed Franco-Syrian Treaty which the French government had not yet done. The delegation included Mustafa al-Shihabi, Edmond Homsi, Nazem al-Koudsi and Nawfal Ilyas. Then Jamil Mardam Bey went twice to Paris to persuade the government there to ratify the Treaty after the addition of a few annexes.

    

But when the Syrian Chamber of Deputies objected to these additions, Jamil Mardam Bey resigned, and Lutfi al-Haffar formed a new government. But again when al-Haffar was unable to persuade the French government to ratify the Treaty he too resigned, and was replaced as Prime Minister by Nasuhi al-Bukhari.

    

In 1939 with the outbreak of the Second World War Nuri al-Sa’id came by train from Baghdad through Syria on his way to Europe. The leadership of the National Bloc gave Dr Nazem the task of meeting him and accompanying him for a day while waiting for the train to Istanbul. In the same year because the French government rejected the Treaty, giving as excuse the Second World War, the President of the Republic, Hashim al-Atassi, resigned his post and the French authorities dissolved the Syrian parliament.

    

It may be noted that after the death of the leader Hananu, Saad Allah al-Jabiri was unable to get the approval of all the popular elements that marched under the banner of the National Bloc. Stories spread that the Bloc had brought incompetent individuals into the public service in exchange for bribes. Hashim al-Atassi said to Lutfi al-Haffar, “If the Bloc wants independence it has to change its way of running things.” And some people blames Saad Allah al-Jabiri saying he was close to people who supported his leadership of the Bloc in Aleppo, and alienating others whom he was scared of due to competing with him for the leadership of the Bloc. This was due to their glorious record in resisting the French occupation. Others also accused him of appointing his relations to government positions, and that in Aleppo the Bloc had become a tool of the Jabiri family.

    

Meanwhile a number of personalities from Aleppo submitted their resignations from the National Bloc after the dissolution of the Syrian parliament. These included Rushdi al-Kikhya, Nazem al-Koudsi, al-Hajj Fatih al-Mar’ashli and others. This was all in 1939.

    

Later in 1942 Mr Summerhayes, the British Consul in Aleppo, requested a meeting with Dr Nazem al-Koudsi in which an offer was made that he work as a consultant to the British Consulate for local propaganda purposes in exchange for a fee. He refused this offer. This is referred to in secret British documents, recorded in its proper place. It is also worthy of note in this context  that sometime after Dr Nazem declined this offer, in 1946, a meeting of the UN Security Council was held in London. After that there was a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo in 1951. Nazem al-Koudsi took part in that in his capacity as Syrian Prime Minister. Summerhayes who was now of Ambassador status in the British Foreign Office came up to him and said that the British government had every respect for his refusal for paid work, and that “it wished there were plenty more politicians like him, with clean hands and political integrity in emerging countries.”  

    

After Rushdi al-Kikhya and Nazem al-Koudsi resigned from the National Bloc, the two allies set out to make independent political contact with leaders in Damascus, Homs and Hama, and particularly with the al-Shishakli, al- Mulqi and al-‘Azm families in Hama, the al-Atassi and al-Jandali families in Homs, and the al-Quwatli, al-‘Ajlani, al-Husami and al-Hasibi families in Damascus, as well as the tribes in the Syrian desert.

    

In 1943 elections Nazem al-Koudsi and Rushdi al-Kikhya were successful on a list independent of the National Bloc, while all the candidates who had been on the slate in Aleppo failed. The successful leaders, including Rushdi al-Kikhya and Nazem al-Koudsi, had a meeting in the house of Shukri al-Quwatli in Damascus. After lengthy and fruitless discussions, Dr Nazem, addressing Quwatli, said, “We nominate you as President of the Republic and we nominate Faris al-Khuri as Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies. We leave it to you to choose whom you want to form the government.“ Everybody agreed to this proposal that was then implemented. Rushdi al-Kikhya and Nazem al-Koudsi both refused offers to enter the ministry, and they formed the nucleus of a political opposition to the Ministry.

    

Nonetheless Dr al-Koudsi continued to be politically active in the parliament and with their political street. On 26 August 1943 he made a proposal to the Chamber of Deputies which was adopted unanimously, that the Chamber asks the government to do their utmost to encourage the unity of Arab states. The Chamber and also the Ministry adopted this proposal unanimously. Then in 1944 Rushdi al-Kikhya offered a response to the government about the corruption that existed in the Committee for Subsistence. The Chamber of Deputies assigned him the task of chairing a committee of investigation composed of Deputies. It resulted in the dismissal of a number of corrupt officials and the bringing of merchants making bribes to justice.        

    

In early 1945 President Shukri al-Quwatli asked Dr Nazem al-Koudsi to visit him at the Palace. He invited him to be the first Minister Plenipotentiary of Syria in the United States and member of the Syrian delegation to the San Francisco Conference for setting up the United Nations and to the meeting of the Security Council to be held in London afterwards. Al-Quwatli said to him, “I am offering you the post even though you are in the opposition and if I found someone more qualified than you for this post I would not have offered it to you.”  He told him that the Prime Minister, Faris al-Khuri, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jamil Mardam Bey, both supported this appointment. Dr Nazem replied that he needed time to think about the matter. He consulted his colleagues, headed by Rushdi al-Kikhya, his popular base in Aleppo, and his family. The decision was that being the representative of Syria in the most important international assembly was of more value to his country than his presence in the Syrian parliament. Indeed his transfer from the Chamber of Deputies to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for one year was subject to renewal by agreement of by both parties.

    

Dr Nazem al-Koudsi selected as his Embassy team Dr Constantin Zureiq, a Damascus born Professor at the American University of Beirut, and Husni al-Sawwaf, a senior official in the Ministry of Finance. After leaving his family in Aleppo he made haste to leave for the United States in February 1945 on British and American military aircraft – for the Second World War was not yet over. In Washington he set up temporary headquarters for the Embassy in the Mayflower Hotel, and then rented a house that had belonged to the former US President, William Howard Taft. He started to prepare it as the base for a Syrian Embassy in Washington.  When a few months later the family put it up for sale he bought it, for the Syrian state. As was the custom with representatives of small states, a dealer in furnishing houses offered him a special discount, in effect a bribe. He said to Husni al-Sawwaf that he was to work to increase the discount by as much as possible and then charges it to the Embassy account. The dealer told him that throughout his working life in Washington he had never come across anything like this. Before that he had rented a large meeting room in the hotel and made it a reception room that would be open daily and would provide food and drink out of his own pocket to members of the Arab communities who could turn up whenever they wanted. He was in this reception room from early morning to midnight welcoming people from the Arab communities, the Arab and foreign diplomatic corps, as well as officials from the State Department. Dr Zureiq asked him, “Are we in diplomatic work, or are we running an election campaign?” To which he was answered, “We’re doing both together. We are constantly raising high the fluttering flag of Syria in this, the most important capital in the world.”

    

In March 1945 before the Washington Embassy had been completely furnished, the US State Department gave Dr Nazem pressing invitation to present his letters of accreditation to President Franklin Roosevelt – it was just three and a half weeks before his death. This was on 18 March 1945. On that day he was one of five other ambassadors. The Head of Protocol at the White House told him the time for each ambassador was limited to just five minutes because of the President’s health. But when he entered into President Roosevelt’s presence, he said, “I have come to you from a small state, but with the biggest letters of accreditation in the world.”  President Roosevelt was pleased with these introductory remarks and the conversation continued for twenty minutes, with the Head of Protocol coming in every five minutes to remind the President of the other appointments.

    

President Roosevelt then said he had just come from a meeting with King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Sa’ud, adding that he had not been impressed in his life with anyone as he had been impressed by Ibn Sa’ud. He then asked, “Why don’t these Arab states unite?” Dr Nazem replied by saying that the President should address this question to his allies, the British and the French. “Such unity did not suit them.” He started to talk about the modern history of the Arab states and President Roosevelt told him that he would ask the State Department to follow this issue up.

    

After the death of the President, Nazem al-Koudsi continued to meet and correspond with his widow, Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt. On the recommendation of the President, the doors of the State Department were always open to him. Having presented his letters of accreditation the Minister Plenipotentiary Dr Nazem al-Koudsi left for San Francisco and remained there for three months until the signing of the United Nations Charter, signed on behalf of Syria by Faris al-Khuri, Na’im Antaki and Dr Nazem al-Koudsi, who was still no more than thirty-nine years old. On his death in 1998 the hero of this memoir was the last surviving signatory of the Charter.  

    

During the San Francisco Conference personal relationships between Dr Nazem al-Koudsi and Prince Faisal bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al-Sa’ud became stronger. This friendship between the two men continued until the death of King Faisal in 1975. Because of his youth and fluency in four languages Minister al-Koudsi became the pivotal point and the joint link between the ambassadors of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia in Washington.  Sheikh Yusuf Yasin, the Director of the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs and his fellow student at the Syrian University, asked him several times to distribute the correspondence between King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz and President Harry Truman to the Arab Embassies and the American press in Washington. When President Truman opened the doors of immigration for Jews to go to Palestine, Dr Nazem invited the Arab Ambassadors to meet the Egyptian Ambassador, Hasan Badawi Pasha, and ask for an appointment with the US Secretary of State. They met him the following day. The Secretary of State told them that the State Department had nothing to do with the matter which came from the White House. From then on he learned that anything to do with the question of Palestine was the concern of the President personally and not of any American government institution.

    

Dr Nazem always recalled a meeting he asked for with the proprietor of The New York Times. He objected to the position the paper had taken in support of the establishment of the State of Israel in Palestine. The owner of the venerable newspaper then told him, “If I took your advice, Your Excellency, could you find me other work?” When he was asked to explain, he replied that all the advertisements that came to him came from advertising agencies that for the most part were owned by the Jewish minority in America. And so, if he offered opposition, these advertisements would cease, and that would lead to the newspaper closing down.

    

At the end of 1945, on his way back to Syria, Minister al-Koudsi was charged by the government among others to attend meetings of the United Nations and the Security Council that were being held in London between 10 January and 14 February 1946. During this time the Council demanded that France withdraw all its forces from Syria. Dr Nazem then resumed his seat in the Chamber of Deputies after a year’s absence.

On his return to Syria from the United States, Dr Nazem al-Koudsi found the opposition was fragmented in the Chamber of Deputies. One group of opposition deputies was taking financial support from some industrialists and merchants. He submitted to the Chamber of Deputies a measure to change the electoral system from two stages to one. According to this law the people would be entrusted with the direct elections of their representatives and not through an electoral college.  

    

There were demonstrations in all parts of Syria in support of this change, and the Chamber of Deputies was obliged to agree to this measure. Elections for the Chamber thereafter were in one stage whereby people elected their representatives for the Chamber directly. One of the results of the opposition of Rushdi al-Kikhya, Nazem al-Koudsi and their parliamentary allies and their refusal to take part in the government of Jamil Mardam Bey and their disclosure of corruption in the state was that their popularity with voters soared. And so the two allies began to think seriously about founding a new party based on their principles in political and national work.   

    

In the middle of 1947 Saad Allah al-Jabiri, the leader of the National Bloc in Aleppo, died. This greatly weakened the Bloc, especially as, from the early 1940s, many members had come under the influence of industrialists and merchants. In the eyes of the ordinary people this made it seem to represent just the wealthy class in the country.

    

In the summer of that year Rushdi al-Kikhya and his friend and colleague, Dr Nazem al-Koudsi, as well as a number of colleagues, friends and supporters decided to found a new school of political and national activity. It would be based on social justice, equal opportunities and an individual’s educational qualifications, rather than the financial and social standing of the family. Similarly it believed in a free economy based on transparency, and fighting corruption in the state and society, either in financial forms or by the exchange of favours and interests. And so the People’s Party was founded under the leadership of Rushdi al-Kikhya and the chairmanship of Nazem al-Koudsi. Younger people with educational qualifications and good character were pushed to the forefront of political work regardless of family or social background: such people as Dr Ma’ruf al-Dawalibi, Dr ‘Abd al-Wahhab Hawmad, Ali Buzu, Dr Munir al-‘Ajlani, Ahmad Qanbar and many others. In a very short time the party spread to all parts of Syria and obtained a parliamentary majority from the end of the 1940s to the end of the 1950s with the support of a group of tribal deputies. As a result of this, Dr Nazem al-Koudsi was elected the Speaker of the Syrian Chamber of Deputies over four consecutive sessions until 1957.                           

    

In 1947 elections were held under the new electoral law, and the People’s Party list triumphed in Aleppo. The People’s Party formed the nucleus of the opposition and refused to take part in the government of Jamil Mardam Bey.

    

1948 saw the Palestine war in which the armies of the Arab states next to Palestine were defeated. The People’s Party decided to put aside their domestic political views and to support the government in everything it decided, especially with Arab states, and in its financial decisions relating to the army. In April 1948 Shukri al-Quwatli was re-elected President although the People’s Party opposed this renewal, abstained from voting and did not take part in the session that swore the oath of allegiance.

     

 In the same year the Syrian Chamber of Deputies mandated Dr Nazem to lead a delegation to attend the New Delhi Conference concerning the independence of Indonesia. This was held in January 1949. During this visit personal relations were established with the Indian leader, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter Indira. One consequence was that Nehru paid a visit to Syria in 1955.

    

Also, after the rout of the Syrian army in the Palestine war, the command of the army was changed, and Major General Husni al-Za’im became commander in chief. On 23 November 1948 the deputies of the People’s Party presented their famous open memorandum to the President of the Republic, Shukri al-Quwatli, in which they opposed the way the state was being managed, refusing to cooperate with it so long as the interests of the country was not separated from personal interests. They would fight against corruption in the state.

Suddenly on 29 March 1949 Major General Husni al-Za’im carried out his coup, which afterwards became clear was a coup organised and carried out with American moral and material encouragement. The coup saw the imprisonment of President Quwatli and Prime Minister Khalid al-‘Azm.

    

Husni al-Za’im sent his brother-in-law Nazih Fansa to the Orient Palace Hotel in Damascus at dawn. He rapped at the door of Dr Nazem’s room and invited him to meet al-Za’im in order to form a government. But he firmly turned down al-Za’im’s invitation. He refused to meet al-Za’im. Later in the morning a number of opposition deputies came to him; these included Ma’ruf al-Dawalibi and Akram al-Haurani. They told him that al-Za’im was determined to meet him and they insisted that he accompany them. He went to the room of his friend, Amir ‘Adil Arslan, and he joined them. They all went to call on Husni al-Za’im at military headquarters. 

    

There the group found al-Za’im like a raging bull. He started by saying that he had smeared his blood on his hand to hand government over to Nazem al-Koudsi whom he kept waiting for five hours. Dr Nazem replied, “You have carried out a coup against the legitimate institutions of the state without the consent of or in consultation with politicians. I therefore refuse to form an administration even if it means I have to go to the prison at Mezze.” He then walked out of the meeting, and left Damascus the same day to go back to Aleppo, without knowing whether al-Za’im’s coup or his insistence on handing the administration to him had been with the hundred per cent collusion and support of the Americans. Had he known that, it would have reinforced his refusal. Some opposition deputies put pressure on him to agree to form an administration in the national interest. In the end, Husni al-Za’im appointed Dr Muhsin al-Barazi, Secretary General at the Palace, as Prime Minister.

    

After these developments Rushdi al-Kikhya travelled from Aleppo to Damascus to attend a meeting in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the request of the Secretary General of the Ministry, Farid Zain al-Din, a supporter of the coup. Zaki al-Mudarris and Lutfi al-Haffar were also present. Al-Kikhya stressed his absolute rejection of the interference of the army in politics. All present, apart from Farid Zain al-Din, refused to support the coup.

    

Then there came a delegation from Iraq to congratulate al-Za’im but a clash broke out between al-Za’im and Nuri al-Sa’id – both were military men. This led to an estrangement between Iraq and Syria that lasted throughout al-Za’im’s regime that did not survive for more than a few months. But during this period, under American pressure, a truce and a petrol pipeline agreement was signed – the latter became known as Tapline. Husni al-Za’im also handed over Antun Sa’ada, the leader of the Parti Populaire Syrien (PPS), to Lebanon after giving him security guarantees. There he was executed after a few hours.

    

Also during this short period Husni al-Za’im accused the People’s Party of working against him. He arrested a large number of its leaders including Ahmad Qanbar, Faidi al-Atassi, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Hallaj, Jawdat ‘Izzat Agha and ‘Abd al-Latif Sibahi, and also placed Rushdi al-Kikhya and Nazem al-Koudsi under house arrest.

    

In the night of Husni al-Za’im’s crass behaviour, senior army officers, especially a group belonging to the PPS, carried out a coup against Husni al-Za’im, and executed him together with his Prime Minister, Dr Muhsin al-Barazi. They threw their bodies in some place outside Damascus.

    

Following this, the new Chief of Staff, Major General Sami al-Hinawi, went to Hashim al-Atassi, and asked him to take over the government and form a new administration.  At the invitation of President al-Atassi, the leaders of the parliamentary groupings    met in his house in Homs. The meeting was attended by Sami al-Hinawi who swore on the Holy Qur’an that he would not allow the army to interfere in politics. Then in the summer of 1949, the political leaders agreed to return to the country’s civilian regime and to take part in it.    

    

Hashim al-Atassi formed an administration and appointed Dr Nazem al-Koudsi as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Later the cabinet unanimously charged the Minister of Foreign Affairs with opening negotiations for establishing a confederation with the Iraqi kingdom. After a number of sessions with the Iraqi delegation, the Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs said that Iraq was committed to a treaty with Britain and was obliged to obtain their agreement for this union. But the Iraqi delegation did not agree that they needed to get British support. The British Ambassador’s opinion was to state conditions that made things more or less impossible for Britain to agree to this union. Following this he advised the Syrian cabinet that there was no possibility of a project like this in the light of the superior advantage that the Iraqi delegation wielded and because of its treaty obligations to Britain, requiring Iraq to follow the foreign policy of Britain in its international relations. The cabinet then asked the Syrian Ambassador in Paris, Dr ‘Adnan al-Atassi to follow this matter up.

The cabinet decided to promulgate a modern constitution for the post-independent Syrian state, and elections were held for a Constituent Assembly entrusted with drafting a constitution at the end of 1949.  The People’s Party and their allies triumphed with an absolute majority in these elections and Rushdi al-Kikhya was elected Chairman of the Constituent Assembly and Nazem al-Koudsi Chairman of the committee authorised to devise the new constitution to be called the 1950 Constitution. This constitution continued to be in operation until 1958, and then, after the union with Egypt, until the Ba’th Nasserite coup of 8 March 1963.

    

Dr Nazem al-Koudsi was very proud of the fact that he and the committee, who were mostly from the People’s Party, borrowed from the constitutions of western democracies in operation at that time, especially with the clauses guaranteeing all the rights of the Syrian individual, including political liberty, press freedom and freedom to demonstrate and all the civil rights in operation in Europe and Switzerland. He was absolutely convinced that the advanced western European states followed a decentralised system because it was sounder and better. He was reasonably successful in establishing this in the constitution. But, on the other hand, he failed to persuade the committee to adopt the presidential system, especially as Syria had just ended the first military coup. This would not have happened if there had been a strong and cohesive form of government. It is also worth mentioning that most members of the committee were professors at the Syrian University: Dr Ma’ruf al-Dawalibi, Dr ‘Abd al-Wahhab Hawmad, Dr Munir al-‘Ajlani and ‘Ali Bozo, all four from the People’s Party.

    

Anyway, the Chamber of Deputies unanimously accepted, ratified and issued the constitution. Having issued the constitution, the assembly voted to call itself the new parliament in the summer of 1950. Hashim al-Atassi was elected President of the Republic September 5th, 1950. A few months after the execution of Husni al-Za’im, a difference arose among army officers. Major General Sami al-Hinawi resigned and was replaced by Major General Shawkat Shuqair. The man who took over the section dealing with army officers was Colonel Adib al-Shishakli.

    

After the constitution was approved by the Constitution Committee, Hashim al-Atassi resigned  as prime minister and became head of state, and Dr. Nazem al-Koudsi was tasked as Prime Minister to form the government on December 24,1949. He did so and issued decrees accordingly. But the same day, and before the ministers met, Dr Nazem invited the army staff chiefs to meet him in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where he was Minister. He wanted to be reassured about their promise to refrain from interfering in politics and the daily work of the cabinet. In that meeting there was a difference among the officers. The officers who were present left after he informed them that he would not tolerate any interference from them in the politics of the country. That night after consulting with the Speaker of the Chamber, Rushdi al-Kikhya, he submitted his resignation to the Head of State even before the cabinet met. This obviated a clash with army officers.

    

President al-Atassi charged Khalid al-‘Azm to form the government, and this lasted until the middle of 1950 when it resigned after clashing with the army command, especially with Colonel Adib al-Shishakli. Then the People’s Party with a parliamentary majority and with the agreement of President al-Atassi, decided to challenge the army command and prevent them from interfering in politics. Dr Nazem al-Koudsi was again asked to form a government at the beginning of June 1950. This government lasted until March 1951.

    

In that year President al-Atassi invited King Faisal II of Iraq, to visit Syria with Crown Prince ‘Abd al-Ilah.  During the visit President al-Atassi insisted on discussions about federal union with Iraq, but Nazem al-Koudsi was already convinced that it would not be fruitful, first, because the obligations of Iraq to the treaty with Britain, and, secondly, because of the attitude of condescension shown by the Iraqis in their dealings with the Syrians.  During the discussions, Tawfiq al-Suwaidi, Iraqi Prime Minister from February to September 1950, said that the Syrians were afraid of the Iraqis. Dr Nazem responded by saying that the Syrians “had not been afraid of France, the imperialist state, so why would they be afraid of Iraq, a sister state?” 

    

Another point was that in the early 1950s the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was fearful of Hashimite expansion, particularly into Syria. Iraq had enormous petroleum wealth. As a result of this visit the Saudis established contacts with senior army officers, at the head of whom was Colonel al-Shishakli. Funds came to the Saudi Embassy in Damascus and a Syrian member of the Embassy staff passed them on to al-Shishakli who in turn distributed it to senior officers in order to guarantee their loyalty to him.

    

At the beginning of 1951 the Council of the Arab League had a meeting at the level of Prime Minister in Cairo. Syria on that occasion was in the chair of the Arab League. It was the belief of Nazem al-Koudsi that the only way to confront Zionist ambitions in the Arab world was to find some sort of federal unity among the Arab states. Then, in the name of Syria, he presented a project for Arab confederation. But he asked that it remain confidential until Arab governments had studied it. But Riad al-Sulh, the Prime Minister of Lebanon, in order to stymie the project, gave a copy of it to the Egyptian newspaper, al-Ahram, that published it before Dr Nazem got back to Damascus to brief the Syrian government about it. Then on his arrival, the President of the Republic and the Cabinet unanimously agreed to the project. But some deputies who followed instructions from the army intelligence service, began to wonder why the Chamber of Deputies had not been consulted before the project had been presented. Then Dr al-Koudsi sought a vote of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies, but the leadership of the People’s Party considered that there was no need for that because the party had a majority in the Chamber of Deputies. He had already received a vote of confidence.

    

As a result, Dr Nazem al-Koudsi headed a ministerial delegation to visit Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia to explain the reasons and objectives of the memorandum on Arab federal union. In Iraq there were discussions with Nuri al-Sa’id. There were old links between these two men for reasons that have already been mentioned. Iraq welcomed the memorandum but had doubts about its success. In Jordan Dr al-Koudsi met King Abdullah who did not welcome the memorandum. He had his own ambitions to rule Syria especially as his brother Faisal had previously been King. But King Abdullah was delighted with the culture and conversation of the Syrian Prime Minister. This had been the same feeling of other leaders whom al-Koudsi met before, Ibrahim Hananu, President Roosevelt and Pandit Nehru. King Abdullah mentions this in his memoirs.   

    

In Saudi Arabia, in spite of the camaraderie that brought Dr Nazem and Sheikh Yusuf Yasin, the Director of the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs, together, as well as the personal relationship between him and Prince, later King, Faisal bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al-Sa’ud that had been formed during the San Francisco Conference, there was an idea held by the Saudi leadership that the People’s Party was ultimately linked with the Hashimites in Iraq and Jordan; there were commercial and economic relations with these two neighbouring states. After four sessions over four days with King ‘Abd al-’Aziz, Dr Nazem was able to persuade the King that Syria would always be a republic, and would not follow or merge with any monarchical regime – referring to Iraq. The Saudi position changed and Crown Prince, later King, Sa’ud bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, hosted a banquet in honour of the Syrian Prime Minister. King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz made him stay another four days, and put at his disposal his private airplane so he could perform the ceremonies of al-‘Umra at Mecca and Medina. This relationship with the founder of the Kingdom continued into the reign of his sons, King Sa’ud, King Faisal, King Khalid, King Fahd and Crown Prince ‘Abdullah until the death of the hero of this memoir in 1998. This meeting was the only one he had with King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz but it made a profound impact on him. Dr Nazem told him what he had heard from President Roosevelt about his meeting with King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, his feelings about him and the impression he had made.

`    

When he returned to Damascus, Dr Nazem al-Koudsi learned that the commander of the Air Force, Colonel Muhammad Nasir, had been assassinated. He summoned Major General Anwar Bannud, head of the army, and Major General Shawkat Shuqair, Chief of Staff. They accused Colonel al-Shishakli of arranging the assassination. He asked them to dismiss al-Shishakli but the reply came that they were unable to do that because he was stronger than them in the army.  In the light of this he submitted his own resignation as Prime Minister to the President of the Republic. At the same time al-Kikhya resigned as Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies.

    

After that while staying with his family at the Orient Palace Hotel in Damascus, an army officer in civilian clothes came to tell Dr Nazem that Colonel Adib al-Shishakli had sent him to tell him that al-Shishakli was carrying out a coup in which the hero of this memoir was to be President of the Republic and al-Shishakli Prime Minister. Dr al-Koudsi wrote a strongly worded message, suggesting that “Adib al-Shishakli abandon his dreams that are ruining the nation”. The officer departed in great confusion.

    

Considering that the People’s Party had a parliamentary majority, the party decided to nominate Dr Nazem to be Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies and this was carried out at the end of 1951. Hashim al-Atassi then charged Khalid al-‘Azm with forming a government once again. One week after al-‘Azm took office as Prime Minister and without reference to the cabinet or the President of the Republic, he sent a letter in the name of the Syrian government to the Arab League requesting the withdrawal and the abrogation of the project for federal Arab union that his predecessor, that is, Dr Nazem al-Koudsi, had presented. This was a cause of the coolness between the two men. The latter reckoned that al-‘Azm always acted from motives of personal rather than national interest in defence of Syria after the disaster of the Syrian army in the Palestine war of 1948.

    

The al-‘Azm government did not last long. He was replaced as Prime Minister by Hasan al-Hakim, then Zaki al-Khatib and finally by Ma’ruf al-Dawalibi for one day. Adib al-Shishakli carried out his coup against the civilian government with the encouragement and financial support from outside. That was on 30 November 1951. That night a senior officer in the military police, ‘Abd al-Haqq Shahada, very drunk, burst into the room of Dr Nazem at the Orient Palace Hotel. Dr Nazem addressed him, “You bursting into this room in the middle of the night – it’s as if you have liberated Palestine.”

    

After that, Dr Nazem was taken to the military hospital in the prison at Mezze. Meanwhile Hashim al-Atassi left the Presidential Palace and went home to Homs. Ten days later Dr al-Koudsi was released and taken to the headquarters of the army, for al-Shishakli had insisted on seeing him. He was offered a cigarette and asked after his health. He replied that he would not ask about the bad state of things of which al-Shishakli was the cause. After that, he left Damascus for Aleppo where he was placed under house arrest for three months.      

    

The Adib al-Shishakli regime continued for two years and two months. It became clear that he was steering Syria into the American-Saudi orbit. Iraq did not remain silent about that for long. In fact, in the middle of 1953 Rashad Jabri came to Aleppo and invited Rushdi al-Kikhya and Nazem al-Koudsi to a political meeting in Homs. A large number of politicians attended and they were told that Iraq was ready to offer all sorts of assistance in order to topple the al-Shishakli regime. The two allied leaders refused to cooperate with any outside party, even though a large number of Syrian politicians joined this grouping, including prominent members of the People’s Party led by Rashad Jabri, Munir al-‘Ajlani, Ma’ruf al-Dawalibi and Dr ‘Adnan al-Atassi, son of President Hashim al-Atassi.

    

In late 1953 there was restlessness in the army and Al-Shishakli had become frustrated and isolated from other people. In this atmosphere, Hashim al-Atassi, in his capacity as constitutional President of the country, called for a meeting of Syrian politicians at his house in Homs. Taking part in it were the People’s Party, the National Party, the Ba’th Party and a group of socialists. After this meeting al-Shishakli arrested many politicians including Rushdi al-Kikhya and accused them of working with Iraq against him.

    

In February 1954 the armed military revolt started in the north-east of Syria, on the Iraqi border. It spread to Aleppo where the Chief of Staff announced his support for the politicians in toppling al-Shishakli’s military regime. After that the military command in Aleppo asked Dr Nazem al-Koudsi to take over the political leadership in Aleppo in his capacity as legitimate Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies and leader of the largest parliamentary group, as Rushdi al-Kikhya was in the Mezze prison. Mindful of the lives of political prisoners in Damascus, and in order to avoid bloodshed to any parties, Dr Nazem from the Staff Headquarters at Aleppo made a telephone call to Camille Chamoun, President of the Lebanese Republic, asking him to tell al-Shishakli that any harm to the political prisoners in the prison at Mezze could lead to a revenge by the prisoner’s relatives on his family in Hama. On the same day the commander of the base at Homs announced that they were joining with Aleppo; at this point al-Shishakli decided to leave Syria to avoid bloodshed in the army and in the nation. He left for Beirut on 25 February 1954 and from there went on to Saudi Arabia.

    

Immediately after this chain of events, President Hashim al-Atassi summoned a second meeting at his house for all the politicians, especially those that had been released. At the head of them was Rushdi al-Kikhya. The politicians who attended agreed to the return to the constitutional status quo, as if the period of the al-Shishakli regime had not existed. So Hashim al-Atassi returned to complete his term as President of the Republic, and Dr Nazem al-Koudsi went back to being Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies. Then everyone agreed to charge Rushdi al-Kikhya, in his capacity as head of the largest parliamentary grouping in the Chamber of Deputies and also because he was a man trusted by everyone, to form a government.

    

At first Rushdi al-Kikhya did not agree, but after a lot of debate and discussion he was persuaded by his ally, Dr al-Koudsi, to form a government. But after discussions it was agreed that the Prime Minister should be from the capital Damascus, and from the National Party itself. It was agreed that Sabri al-‘Asali should form a government.

    

At this time, the leaders of the sectors in the army in revolt gathered at the Staff Headquarters. Among them were officers from the family of al-Atassi in Homs. They asked the politicians to meet them at Staff Headquarters. Dr Nazem refused and threatened that the People’s Party would withdraw from this meeting for as long as the army leaders did not come to Hashim al-Atassi house. As the army had great respect for the personality of Hashim al-Atassi, the army commanders did come to his house, where they offered pledges of obedience and loyalty to the legitimate institutions.

    

Dr Nazem al-Koudsi returned to Damascus in his constitutional role as Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies. He forced his way into the Chamber and sat in his Speaker’s office. He dismissed all the Deputies who had taken part in the illegal elections that had been held during the al-Shishakli period, stripping them of their membership of the Chamber and banning them from entering the Chamber. Among these was Dr Ma’mun al-Kuzbari, Speaker of the Chamber during the al-Shishakli period. A government was formed in which the People’s Party, the National Party, independents, the Ba’th Party and the socialists took part. At the end of the year, once again the Chamber of Deputies elected Nazem al-Koudsi as Speaker.

    

In 1954 the constitutional period of the Chamber of Deputies ended and new parliamentary elections were held. Rushdi al-Kikhya, after the repeated military coups, was reluctant to stand for election to the Chamber, but Dr Nazem persuaded him that his role as head of the People’s Party bloc of deputies was a national requirement. He agreed. In the elections although the People’s Party and the National Party gained a majority of seats, the Arab Ba’th Socialist Party, formed from a merger of the Arab Ba’th Party and the Arab Socialist Party, increased its representation. Similarly the number of independent members and the bloc of tribal deputies increased.

In 1955 Nazem al-Koudsi was re-elected as Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies for the third time running.  During this year al-Koudsi led a parliamentary delegation to Yugoslavia and a number of meetings were held with President Josef Broz Tito.

    

During this period in the Middle East, Syria became the state arena in which the interests of the Soviet Union were competing with the Western Bloc, especially after the appearance of Jamal ‘Abdel Nasser on the Arab and international scene. In 1955 the constitutional term of office of Hashim al-Atassi ended. The Chamber of Deputies that had been elected that year embarked on elections for a new President. All Deputies who were independent, Socialist, Ba’thist and the one Communist, Khalid Bakdash, met and decided to support Rushdi al-Kikhya, and nominate him to be President of the Republic. After this the executive office of the People’s Party met and unanimously decided to nominate either of the two leaders, al-Kikhya and al-Koudsi, for the Presidency. But al-Kikhya said at that meeting that “at this critical juncture, and with the unexpected increase of the popular vote of the socialist and Ba’thist forces in the recent parliamentary elections, the conservative parties represented by the People's Party, the National Party, the Tribes and the Independents should combine their efforts to confront the spread of socialism and communism in Syria.” He therefore suggested to the party, in the light of the strength of the National Party in the capital Damascus, that the People’s Party should support the candidacy of Shukri al-Quwatli, leader and doyen of the National Party. After that Dr Nazem al-Koudsi spoke announcing that he was disinclined to be nominated. He agreed with the analysis of al-Kikhya, asking the executive office of the party to agree to support al-Quwatli. After discussions that went on for three days, the People’s Party supported al-Quwatli as President of the Republic and authorised its prominent member, the Minister of Defence Rashad Barmada, to tell al-Quwatli so.

    

On the day of the election, deputies from the People’s Party and the National Party nominated al-Quwatli. They were joined by the independents and some of the tribal bloc. The Ba’thists, the socialists and the deputy, the leader of the Communist party, Khalid Bakdash, in their turn, nominated Khalid al-‘Azm, who was at that time called “the Red Millionaire” because of his closeness to the Soviet Union.   

    

At the end of the casting of the votes, al-Quwatli gained a majority of the Deputies’ votes, but not two thirds of them, as required by the constitution. Nazem al-Koudsi adjourned the session, to be resumed after one hour. Then al-Haurani, Khalid Bakdash and Salah Bitar asked for a meeting with the Speaker of the Chamber in his room and in the presence of Rushdi al-Kikhya, and try to persuade one of them to accept the Presidency of the Republic as a compromise. But the two leaders, al-Kikhya and al-Koudsi, rejected the idea. Dr Nazem al-Koudsi emphasised the fact that the party had taken the decision to nominate al-Quwatli, and would not deviate from that.  During this break a letter arrived from al-Quwatli in which he asked to withdraw from his candidature.  But in view of the fact that the Syrian constitution did not stipulate that the consent of the candidate to the nomination to the Presidency of the Republic was required, no importance could be given to this letter, and the parliament was not informed about it. Also during this break, the hero of this memoir had a phone call from some unknown person saying he was one of the officers at the army staff, and he was asking for support for the candidacy of Khalid al-‘Azm.  He then put the phone down.

    

Then in the second session of the election process some deputies who had voted for Khalid al-‘Azm abstained or changed their votes and al-Quwatli obtained a two thirds majority. Dr Nazem and the Prime Minister Sabri al-‘Asali went to al-Quwatli’s house to congratulate him on his election. The latter was taken aback at the situation because he thought he had withdrawn his candidacy. Thus ended the matter.

    

After the session when the President took the oath of office, al-Quwatli told Dr Nazem that he would like to give him the task of forming a government. He excused himself from this, saying that he was needed as Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies because it represented different political currents, and he was on terms of friendship and respect with all parties. Then Faris al-Khuri was nominated to the post. He formed the first government of the President al-Quwatli era. This was the first and last peaceful transfer of political power in Syria. 

    

After this political episode, instigated by the “Second Bureau”, the intelligence section of the army, demonstrations were organised against the election of Shukri al-Quwatli. That year the Ba’thist officer, ‘Adnan al-Maliki was assassinated. The PPS was then held responsible and a large number of officers were dismissed for belonging to that party. The Ba’th Party and the Left in general took this assassination as the pretext for making all sorts of accusations of treachery and corruption against the Syrian conservative parties and national figures and the commercial and industrial middle class.

    

In 1955 Adnan Menderes, the Prime Minister of Turkey, asked to visit Syria. The Syrian Prime Minister, Faris al-Khuri, was afraid of the reaction of the socialists, but Nazem al-Koudsi persuaded him to issue an invitation, and the President of the Republic hosted a dinner in his honor at the Presidential Palace. During this period the army became divided between Right-wing officers and Left-wing officers, and it was claimed the army chief of staff Afif al-Bizri was allegedly a communist officer. At the beginning of 1956, at the invitation of the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, a delegation from the Egyptian Revolutionary Command Council visited Syria, led by Salah Salam. This was an occasion for Syrian parliamentarians to meet officers from the Egyptian army who had left the army and then entered political life.

Also in 1956 President al-Quwatli invited to his house Dr Nazem in his capacity as Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, as well as the Prime Minister Sabri al-‘Asali, Sa’id al-Ghazzi and ‘Abd al-Qadir Aswad, Head of the Supreme Court. He told them that his health no longer allowed him to continue as President. Consequently he would go for treatment in Europe for two months. When he presented a letter of resignation to Dr Nazem during the meeting, he said that according to the constitution he had to submit this resignation to the Chamber of Deputies. Those present were all silent, and then wished him good health and success on his journey for treatment. But Dr Nazem told him that the situation in the country required him to remain in the Presidency. He concluded by saying, “If you resign, you’re a coward.” He tore up the letter of resignation and President al-Quwatli went up to him and embraced him with tears in his eyes. He took back the letter of resignation. But when the deputies heard about what had happened, the Left and some independents objected, arguing that the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies had no right to refuse the resignation and that he should have shown it to the Chamber. The Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies replied that in legal terms he had not refused the resignation but had persuaded the President to withdraw it.

    

Anyway, al-Quwatli left for Europe for treatment and was away for two months. In accordance with the constitution, Dr Nazem al-Koudsi, in his role as Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, assumed the duties of President of the Republic. Al-Quwatli, from the time of his election to the time of the union with Egypt in 1958, made no fewer that eleven trips abroad. He had asked the parliament Speaker al-Koudsi to perform the duties of the presidency in writing 8 times during the period 1955 to 1957. The authorisation letters are on this site. On every occasion Dr Nazem took his place in the Presidential Palace and carried out the tasks attached to the Presidency.  

President Shukri al-Quwatli accepted an invitation to visit Moscow in 1956. On the morning of the day of his departure, the Triple Aggression occurred, with France, Britain and Israel attacking the Suez Canal. Dr Nazem al-Koudsi moved his office to the Republican Palace and announced that he would hold meetings open to the government in the Republican Palace. He also cabled President Jamal ‘Abdel Nasser to say that Syria was ready to enter the war in support of Egypt with all its military and human potential. He also asked for a meeting with the Syrian army high command at the Palace. After discussions they said that the army was on an extreme war footing and that they were ready to carry out the political decision to enter the war on Egypt’s side and to attack Israel.

    

Also on that day the Army Intelligence Department, the Second Bureau, commanded by ‘Abd al-Hamid al-Sarraj, announced that the oil pipeline that crossed Syria had been blown up without the knowledge of the political leadership, even though the Prime Minister, Sabri al-‘Asali, had given assurances to the British Ambassador in Damascus that the pipeline would not be affected by current events.

    

During this crisis, the Lebanese President, Camille Chamoun, made contact with Dr Nazem at the Palace, inviting Syria to an Arab summit conference. He accepted the invitation in the name of Syria before President al-Quwatli came back from Moscow. The Syrian delegation was made up of the President of the Republic, the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies and the Prime Minister. King Sa’ud also came to Damascus by plane, and they all went to Beirut. The Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, Tawfiq al-Suwaidi, headed the delegation from his country and Mahmud Riad, then Egyptian Ambassador in Damascus, was the representative of the Egyptian leadership.

    

Dr Nazem al-Koudsi clashed with the Iraqi delegation in the discussion on the cutting of the oil pipeline. He threatened to withdraw from the meeting so long so long as oil was not cut off from the western countries. King Sa’ud and Mahmud Riad tried to calm things down, and King Sa’ud said that in Saudi Arabia there was an idea that the People’s Party supported Iraq, but now it was proved that this was not so. He invited Nazem al-Koudsi to visit the Kingdom. Al-Quwatli also told him, “You have honoured Syria with this attitude of yours.” The Lebanese press published al-Koudsi’s statements on the summit conference; this can be found on this site.

    

In the same year the Syrian Army’s Second Bureau announced the “discovery” of an American-Iraqi plot to overthrow the regime in Syria. Politicians from all parties were accused of being implicated as well as a number of soldiers. The military court put them on trial on the charge of conspiracy and treason. Some of them were given the death sentence while President al-Quwatli was still out of the country. But al-Koudsi summoned to the Republican Palace Hamid al-Khuja, Deputy Minister of Defence – the Minister, Khalid al-‘Azm, was in Moscow. He was asked not to confirm the sentences until the Minister of Defence had returned. When he did return he said publicly that he would not confirm the death sentences. In fact President al-Quwatli had instructed him to do that. He said he would issue a complete amnesty for all who had been sentenced to death. He then called on the previous President, Hashim al-Atassi, and reassured him that his son, ‘Adnan, the principal defendant in this conspiracy, would not be executed. At the end of 1956 Nazem al-Koudsi was re-elected Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies for the fourth consecutive time.

    

Before that, in 1955, the Damascus newspaper, al-Rai al-‘Am, whose editor was Mr Ahmad ‘Asa, wrote a report saying that the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Dr Nazem al-Koudsi, had asked the Aleppo municipality to open a road in front of property owned by his wife to raise the value of the land and improve the neighbourhood. In the first parliamentary session al-Koudsi withdrew from the Speaker’s chair and asked the Chamber of Deputies to consider him as a defendant in this case, and to send a parliamentary committee to Aleppo to look into this charge. The committee did indeed go and made enquiries with some officials of the Aleppo municipality. It became clear to them that the charge was false. The committee returned to report back to the Chamber. The Chamber found the Speaker innocent of the charge. At once al-Koudsi returned to the Speaker’s chair. He said he would waive his right to litigate against the editor, Ahmad al-Asa as a reward to him for safeguarding public funds and to protect the freedom of the press, as guaranteed by the Syrian constitution.

    

Also in 1955 al-Koudsi was returning to Damascus from Aleppo in the official Speaker’s car though with private number plates, accompanied by his son Faisal, when he was involved in a distressing traffic accident near the town of Hisya. The government driver was blameless. They all waited there for two hours until the traffic police came. An investigation was made and the driver was ordered to remain subject to further inquiries. He was held in the Hisya prison. When it was nearly midnight the Speaker of the Chamber was unable to find a taxi which could take him and his son to Damascus. The driver of a passing lorry offered to give them a lift to Damascus and he agreed. The lorry, with them, reached the Orient Palace Hotel in the morning and they got down to the surprise of everyone there, including the hotel staff. The following day the driver was released as it was established that he had no responsibility for the accident.

    

During 1955 the Baghdad Pact was established, and Iraq called on the Arab states to join it. But the Egyptian President, Jamal ‘Abdel Nasser, opposed any state joining it. Then the Ba’th Party and socialist deputies mobilised the street against the Pact, accusing the Syrian Right, openly and by implication, of seeking to drag Syria into it.

In early 1957 rumors spread suggesting that the Communists were preparing to topple the regime, especially that ‘Afif al-Bizri, Chief of Staff, was allegedly a member of the Communist Party. But it became clear many years later that these rumors were being spread by the army’s Second Bureau with direction from the Egyptian Embassy and support from the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Previously in 1956 Dr. Nazem al-Koudsi accepted an invitation from President ‘Abdel Nasser and he headed a parliamentary delegation to Cairo. After general meetings with the delegation, the Egyptian President invited Dr Nazem to a private meeting which lasted about three hours.  The talk was about a federal union of Syria and Egypt. ‘Abdel Nasser was very cautious about this matter. He told Dr. Nazem “Do you want to transfer the bacillus of coups d’état to the Egyptian army?” Also in that year the hero of this memoir, in his capacity as Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, received an invitation from the Soviet Union for him and a parliamentary delegation to visit Moscow. But he was unable to accept the invitation and passed it to the Deputy Speaker, Rafiq Bashur, who headed a delegation to visit the Soviet Union.

    

As has already been mentioned, during the period before the union with Egypt and especially in 1956 and 1957 and after the exposure of the American-Iraqi plot, the Ba’thists and the socialists persisted in accusing what they called the Syrian Right  represented by the People's Party, the National Party, the Independents and Tribes in their newspapers and speeches of treachery and colluding with foreign states. There was a drop in the level of discussion between deputies of Left and Right in the Chamber of Deputies. Rushdi al-Kikhya, leader of the People’s Party, gave a celebrated speech in the Chamber of Deputies, directed at the leaders of the Communists, Khalid Bakdash, and Leftist deputies. He said  "We do not need your Certificate in Nationalism, adding you know very well when we were sent to exile & prisons while resisting French colonialism for the sake of Syria's independence  neither the Baath nor the Socialists had any presence in the political arena."He then offered his resignation from the Chamber of Deputies without having consulted Nazem al-Koudsi or the executive office of the party, which was later rejected unanimously in the following session.

At the end of 1957, at the annual election for the post of Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Akram al-Haurani nominated himself for the post with the support of the Leftist Bloc in the Chamber. A number of independent deputies absented themselves from this electoral session under pressure from the Second Bureau, headed by ‘Abd al-Hamid al-Sarraj. Al-Haurani won the election as Speaker by 63 to 57 votes. Dr Nazem congratulated him and went back to his seat as a member in the Chamber which is part and parcel of the Democratic process very dear to his thinking and beliefs.  

    

At the end of that year also, a delegation of army officers went to meet the Egyptian President, Jamal ‘Abdel Nasser, and asked for an immediate union merging the two countries.  We note that they did this without the Syrian political authorities knowing anything about it. President ‘Abdel Nasser refused the officers’ request at once,  and requested that an official military delegation come with the agreement of the political authorities and that the delegation be led by the Minister of Defense. When the political authorities did hear about this delegation’s unauthorised journey, they decided to send a military delegation led by the Minister of Defence, Khalid al-‘Azm. At first he refused to go. But the army Second Bureau, headed by ‘Abd al-Hamid al-Sarraj, threatened to assassinate al-‘Azm if he continued to refuse, so he went.

    

During the meeting with the Syrian delegation, President ‘Abdel Nasser stated his conditions, the most important of which was the dissolution of all Syrian political parties and the non-interference of the army in politics. Any officers who wanted to engage in political work had to resign from the army, and the Chamber of Deputies should vote for the union and for its own dissolution. Then the people should vote in a referendum on the project of complete union.

    

All ‘Abdel Nasser’s conditions were met, and union between Syria and Egypt was announced. The name of the state was to be the United Arab Republic. The Syrian President, Shukri al-Quwatli, offered his resignation to the Chamber of Deputies. The Chamber of Deputies voted unanimously for complete union; all except Khalid al-‘Azm, and Khalid Bakdash, leader of the Syrian Communist Party, who immediately left the Chamber for the airport. He did not come back to Syria throughout the period of the Union.

    

At about this time, Shukri al-Quwatli said to Dr Nazem al-Koudsi that he had advised President ‘Abdel Nasser that he be appointed Vice-President in Syria. Before the announcement of unity a telephone call had come from the Egyptian Embassy in Damascus for Dr Nazem in Aleppo, informing him that the President wanted to meet him in Damascus. The meeting was held in the Guest Palace and lasted an hour, during which the President rose from his chair and lighted a cigarette for his guest who said, “You embarrass me with your complete humility.” After that, President ‘Abdel Nasser asked his guest for his advice.  The hero of this memoir said that the popular support the President had obtained in Syria was unprecedented in the modern history of Syria. Syrians loved individual initiative not only in their economic life but also in their political life. He told him that daily economic and political events, if they did not proceed as expected, could quickly transform that support into resentment. President ‘Abdel Nasser then escorted him to the door of his office. As he left he found Akram al-Haurani and ‘Abd al-Hamid al-Sarraj waiting in the next room. As is well known Akram al-Haurani was appointed Vice-President. The headquarters of the union was the southern region, that is, Cairo. The two allies, Nazem al-Koudsi and Rushdi al-Kikhya stayed a few days in Damascus after the announcement of the union, after which they left for Aleppo. The People’s Party was officially dissolved in February 1958.

    

It was clear to everyone that President ‘Abdel Nasser was under the influence of the advice of ‘Abd al-Hamid al-Sarraj, especially after the discovery of an assassination plot that was devised in the Syrian Second Bureau and tricked to fund it by King Sa’ud. He decided to work with the Ba’th Socialist Party and its officers in the Syrian army.  

    

Dr Nazem al-Koudsi returned to Aleppo to work in agriculture which he had loved since he was a child. There he received a proposal from President ‘Abdel Nasser via his friend and colleague in the People’s Party, ‘Abd al-Wahhab  Hawmad, who was of the socialist tendency and had become Minister of Finance in the United government. The proposal was for him to be personal adviser to to Crown Prince of Yemen, Imam al-Badr, in view of the personal friendship between the Imam and Dr al-Koudsi. Yemen had joined the Union as a third party. But the hero of this memoir excused himself from accepting this post because he did not wish to leave Syria. Shortly after that the Intra Bank in Lebanon made contact with him. They were establishing the Arab World Bank in Syria at that time and asked him to cooperate with them.  After brief negotiations with the Bank and its Syrian founders he joined them as one of the founder of the Arab World Bank. He became a member of the Board of Directors. Then the Board elected him as their Chairman and Chief Executive at the end of 1958. He remained in this position until his election as President of the Republic

For the previous thirty years Nazem al-Koudsi had been living in a large house in the al-Jamiliya quarter of Aleppo which he rented from his maternal aunt, who had married into the family of Ibrahim Pasha. She told him in 1957 that she wanted to sell the house. His cousin Nadir al-Koudsi told him that the house adjacent to his own house in the Muhafiza quarter of Aleppo, was available for sale, and advised him to buy it. A price was agreed but before the contract of sale was signed Dr Nazem asked the owner of the house, “I hope you’re not under any financial pressure to sell this house.” The owner, “Yes, I have to sell because I need money. I want to go to Kuwait and work in commerce.” Dr Nazem then said to him, “I’ll give you the sum agreed without interest, and you can let me have the use of the house as security for three years. I will live in it rent free. If after that Allah has given you prosperity you can return the money and I will give you back your house over six months.” The owner could not believe what he was hearing, but this is what happened. After the deal was made, and he moved into the house, Dr al-Koudsi gave him a letter recommending him to his friend the Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh ‘Abdallah al-Salam Al-Sabah. The result of this was that he became a partner of the Behbehani family, friends of the Emir of Kuwait, and became a millionaire as we shall see later. Moreover, when the contract was signed, his cousin Nadir said, “How did you do that? I brought you the bargain of the century so you could be our neighbour. How could you let the purchase of the house slip from your hands?” Dr Nazem replied, “I will not buy a house and live in it if its owner had to sell it because he was forced to financially.”

Anyway, during the years of the union, Dr Nazem al-Koudsi was punctilious in sending congratulatory cables to President ‘Abdel Nasser on religious and national holidays. There was always a reply without any delay. In August each year Dr Nazem would send a large basket of Aleppo pistachio nuts, freshly harvested, from the orchards of Aleppo to President ‘Abdel Nasser who would send a basket of green Egyptian mangoes. During the years of unification he used to receive official invitations to attend celebrations of Independence Day and the opening of big projects in Damascus and Aleppo.

    

In 1959 an Egyptian cook, Chef Hasan, was employed in Dr Nazem al-Koudsi’s house in the Muhafaza quarter of Aleppo. It was a house that was open to any visitor and especially to those who worked on the family farms of Aleppo. There was an open house every Thursday evening when he greeted his visitors, from the family, and his supporters, ordinary people as well as friends and colleagues in the People’s Party and former senior politicians of Aleppo. Chef Hasan used to insist on opening the door even though he knew there were other staff members who had this responsibility. Later it emerged that Chef Hasan was a First Lieutenant in the Egyptian Intelligence Services. That became known when he fled to General Security to return to Egypt days after Syria’s secession from Egypt.

    

During the years of unification there was a period of drought and little rain for three years. This had a great impact on the agricultural sector in Syria. In 1959 a law of agricultural reform was issued. The socialist ministers in the unification government applied the law with vengeance on owners of agricultural estates.

    

The state security apparatus and the Ministry of Agricultural Reform incited owners of small agricultural property against the large land owners and their property. Then the socialist laws nationalised the big companies and arabised the international banks in Syria. It is worth mentioning that the nationalisation law obliged the payment of the value of the property nationalised in state bonds that were paid over a number of years. But to this date the state has paid no compensation for the nationalised companies, which means that the nationalisation and agricultural reform laws have been laws of confiscation of the property of merchants, industrialists and agriculturalists as well as a large number of small Syrian investors who had bought shares out of their savings in the companies that became nationalised, or rather confiscated. Appointments were made to boards of directors to nationalised companies from civil servants and army officers who were unwanted in the army. These companies generally went from being profitable to being loss making concerns.

    

Resentment in the Syrian street among people of all economic and social classes against the state in the period of unification increased, especially among small farmers who received the lands of the big owners but did not have the material resources to cultivate them. On top of that, the absence of rain meant the loss of harvests during the years of unification. On top of all this the iron fist of the political security services led by ‘Abd al-Hamid al-Sarraj was like a massive boulder on the bodies of all Syrians.  

    

In 1961 there started to be resignations one after the other, of Syrian ministers from the unification government; they were from the Ba’th Party and socialists, and most of them had been army officers.  At the same time the speeches of President ‘Abdel Nasser were becoming more serious and extreme against what he describes as the Syrian Right represented by industrialists, merchants, big farmers, and former members of dissolved conservative parties , the People's and National Parties. He charged their leaders of treason and of being agents of imperialism; he said he would trample them underfoot. But Nazem al-Koudsi and the political leaders of Aleppo continued to go and greet President ‘Abdel Nasser when he came to Aleppo. In 1961, President ‘Abdel Nasser gave a speech in Lattakia about imperialism and their agents in Syria.  In that city chaos reigned, not allowing people time to call on the President at his base. The following day the government press published headlines saying that the Syrian Right had not come to greet the President of the Republic. After the visit Dr Nazem telephoned the Governor of Aleppo, Rif’at Zuraiq, and said heatedly “It’s a disgrace that you say we did not greet the President when we were prevented from calling on him.”

    

Popular resentment against ‘Abdel Nasser had many causes and many forms. Akram al-Haurani used to believe he was the shining star in the firmament of unification. He was Deputy to the President of the Republic and based in Cairo. He claimed he was being overlooked there and given no authority. He resigned and turned to hate the unification and ‘Abdel Nasser himself for purely personal reasons. The Syrian officers whom President ‘Abdel Nasser had taken to Egypt, the majority from the country parts of Syria, began to complain that they were treated as second class officers before Egyptian officers.

    

In the middle of 1961 President ‘Abdel Nasser sacked ‘Abd al-Hamid al-Sarraj and appointed in his place Field Marshal ‘Abd al-Hakim ‘Amer as Vice President in Syria. Dr Nazem in his capacity as Chief Executive of the Arab World Bank was regularly managing the bank in Damascus for two weeks in the month. In the summer of that year his friend and old colleague in the People’s party, who was Minister of Finance in the Unity government, Dr ‘Abd al-Wahhab Hawmad, came to see him at the Orient Palace Hotel to tell him that he wanted to resign because he was unwilling to bear the responsibility before the Syrian people for mistaken economic decisions.  He was advised to delay awhile until things became clearer.

    

After the issuing for the law arabising the banks, banking circles started grumbling about the economic conditions in the country. There started a flight of Syrian capital to Lebanon. Many of the larger scale merchants and industrialists from all Syrian cities left for neighbouring countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. At the end of summer 1961 Syrian complaints about the general situation intensified. Everybody was expecting there to be a radical change, either peaceful or through a coup. The talk on everybody’s lips was about who would carry out a coup. . .  Would it be ‘Abd al-Hamid al-Sarraj and his group? Or would it be the Ba’th Party which had in fact not dissolved itself? Or Syrian officers getting their own back on the Egyptian officers in Syria?

On the morning of 28 September 1961 Dr Nazem al-Koudsi was with his wife in the Orient Palace Hotel in Damascus when they heard the sound of gunfire in the capital. The radio was playing military music and broadcasting regular military bulletins announcing the end of unity with Egypt.

    

He did not leave the hotel that morning, but he did come across a number of Egyptian guests in the hotel lobby, very anxious for themselves and in a state of panic. He spoke with them and reassured them that they would come to no harm.  At noon Bulletin 9 was broadcast stating there were guaranteed negotiations for restoring unity on the condition that Marshal ‘Amer promised to correct errors that had occurred during that period, especially about the preference given to Egyptian officers in the army. But President ‘Abdel Nasser repudiated negotiations between the officers and Marshal ‘Amer, who left Damascus that afternoon on board a military aircraft, accompanied voluntarily by Lieutenant General Jamal Faisal, head of the army in Syria. On that same afternoon there were demonstrations in Damascus, shouting and calling for the leading Syrian politicians, Shukri al-Quwatli, Sabri al-‘Asali, Rushdi al-Kikhya, Nazem al-Koudsi and Khalid al-‘Azm, and others.    

    

The morning of the day after the coup Dr Nazem al-Koudsi and his wife returned to Aleppo to stay. Meanwhile the army asked all Egyptians resident in the Northern Region of the Union to go to the army base in the governorate where they were. The army command requested that all the political leaders attend a meeting in the Officers’ Club in Damascus to discuss the political situation.              

    

Politicians from all the political parties took part in the meeting and signed what was called the Secession Document. In spite of pressure from the leadership of the army and members of the People’s Party, Rushdi al-Kikhya and Nazem al-Koudsi both declined to go to Damascus and attend the meeting in the Officers’ Club.  Considering that the People’s Party had been dissolved, Rushdi al-Kikhya neither permitted nor banned members of the People’s Party from attending the meeting. Al-Kikhya made a famous statement, “The hand that signed the Unity Agreement should be cut off sooner than sign the Secession Document.” 

Afterwards in Aleppo, the army command asked again to meet with a large number of politicians from all parties to explain what happened and to sign the Secession Document, as happened in Damascus, everyone signed except Rushdi al-Kikhya and Nazem al-Koudsi, who were the only ones who did not sign.

On the second day the army command headed by Major General ‘Abd al-Karim Zahr al-Din charged Dr Ma’mun al-Kuzbari to form the government. In the first week after the secession an officer from the Chief of Staff in Aleppo came to Dr Nazem’s house to say there was an Egyptian first lieutenant called Hasan who said he had worked in Nazem al-Koudsi’s house as cook and was asking for protection until his repatriation to Egypt. Dr al-Koudsi asked the army to protect him and not harm him in any way.

    

At the end of October 1961, the commander of the Air Force, Brigadier General Muwaffaq ‘Assassa, arrived in Aleppo in a military plane and called on Dr al-Koudsi at his home. He came to consult him about arresting the Prime Minister, Ma’mun al-Kuzbari, and also his relative, Major Haidar al-Kuzbari.  Officers had received a report from the intelligence services that there were alleged links between the two and foreign agencies. He advised that this such allegation, which proved a fabrication subsequently, would reflect negatively on the army. He said the head of the Supreme Court, ‘Abd al-Qadir Aswad, should assume the duties of Prime Minister until parliamentary elections were held. But Judge Aswad refused and Dr ‘Izzat al-Nass was appointed Prime Minister. The cabinet decided to hold elections on December 1st, 1961. The political leaders of the parties in Aleppo, the dissolved People’s Party and the dissolved National Party agreed to cooperate in drawing up a joint list of candidates to be called “the National Coalition List” which would be made up of candidates of the two parties as well as some independents. This was done in consultation with and with the blessing of Rushdi al-Kikhya and Nazem al-Koudsi. Neither of the two leaders, be it noted, accepted nomination for the elections when the third man in the party, Dr Ma’ruf al-Dawalibi, nominated himself and headed the list. With the support of all the effective merchants and industrialists and agriculturalists in Aleppo, the Coalition List was completely successful. No Ba’thist or socialist won in Aleppo. Indeed these elections were the freest of elections, for there was no interference from the army or the intelligence services. It was the result of popular resentment against the secret police under ‘Abd al-Hamid al-Sarraj who had been arrested and was in the military prison at Mezze. As in Aleppo, in all Syrian cities,  the representatives of the People’s Party and the National Party were victorious, together with the Muslim Brothers and Independents. Very few Ba’thists or socialists won. Representatives of those parties and the tribes formed the largest bloc in the new Chamber of Deputies.

    

Before the election results were announced a high level delegation from the army command came secretly late at night and met Rushdi al-Kikhya in his house at Aleppo and sought his opinion about accepting nomination as President of the Republic. He refused point blank, saying that he had retired from political work since the dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies. They then asked his advice and he replied that the Chamber of Deputies as capable of identifying and electing a competent person for this post. Army officers should not interfere in politics. They left Aleppo after midnight.    

    

Meanwhile Dr Nazem al-Koudsi was still travelling to Damascus to carry out his work in the Arab World Bank. Some of the Directors, especially Hanin al-Turk, came to him to say that there were strong rumours in Damascus that he would be elected President of the Republic and that no one would contest him for the post. But his reply was always that he had no desire for that.

    

After the parliamentary election results were announced with the domination of deputies from the Parties that were dissolved in 1958 namely the People’s  and the National Party and the tribes in the Chamber of Deputies, Dr Ma’mun al-Kuzbari was elected Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies. He was helped in that with popular support and with his role in administering the country after Syria’s secession from Egypt. Ma’ruf al-Dawalibi as one of the leaders of the largest bloc in the Chamber asked Rushdi al-Kikhya his agreement to being nominated as President of the Republic. He knew he would not agree. But this time he said that the Chamber of Deputies would not agree to elect anyone other than Rushdi al-Kikhya or Nazem al-Koudsi. Rushdi al-Kikhya insisted on refusing on the grounds of age and his lack of fluency in languages. He told Nazem al-Koudsi that his duty to his country obliged him to accept this post, especially since it was impossible for the Chamber of Deputies to agree on anyone else. Ma’ruf al-Dawalibi left Aleppo to meet Nazem al-Koudsi at the Orient Palace Hotel in Damascus two days later.

    

Groups of deputies started to flock to the hotel to meet Dr Nazem al-Koudsi, pledging their support to him as the sole candidate for the Presidency of the Republic. Then Khalid al-‘Azm who had become a deputy in the Chamber, expressed his wish to nominate himself with the support of some of the Right in Damascus and the socialists in the chamber. However, the majority of the deputies made up of the People's Party, Independents and Tribes wanted to vote for Nazem al-Koudsi.    

Upon realizing he would lose the election, al-Azm decided to withdraw his candidature, and Nazem al-Koudsi agreed to follow the dictates of his national conscience and accede to the request of Rushdi al-Kikhya and the majority of deputies and agreed to be nominated as President of the Republic. He actually won with nearly all the votes of the deputies on 14 December 1961, gaining 153 votes out of 172, the total number of deputies.

    

A few days before the election Nazem al-Koudsi sat down in his room at the Orient Palace Hotel in Damascus and wrote the speech for his inauguration. He wrote it himself without any interference, consultation or advice from anyone else. In this speech he expressed his political faith without ambiguity. He had not striven for this post, for he knew the difficulties that would confront him including dangers to his life. Even materially it would be better for him to remain in his job as director of the Arab World bank where he was well known for the cleanness of his hands and his use of private and family money in support of his national and public work. This had especially been the case when he was Ambassador in Washington, when he entertained Syrian, Arab and foreign political figures. The invoices of the Orient Palace Hotel, where he stayed in Damascus in the 1940s and 1950s, bear witness to this.

    

After Nazem al-Koudsi’s election as President of the Republic in the Chamber of Deputies but before the swearing in ceremony, he headed for the house of the deputy Khalid al-‘Azm and thanked him for withdrawing. Then after the swearing in, he went to his new home, in the Guest Palace together with his wife and two youngest children, Faisal and Faris.

    

Delegations continued coming to offer congratulations at the Guest Palace for a week. Among them were the commanders of the army who had led the movement for secession from Egypt, and from all the Syrian governorates. From the first day Nazem al-Koudsi chose to be available for all, Right and Left, Nasserites and Secessionists. He wanted to be to the people of the countryside as he was to the people of the cities. The Presidency of the Republic was above the conflicts between politicians just as he tried as far as possible to keep the army away from politics and from conflicts among politicians. Above and beyond all else the policy of the state should aim to achieve social and economic justice and equality of opportunity for all.

    

After that there were parliamentary consultations for forming a ministry. A majority of the deputies wanted Dr Ma’ruf al-Dawalibi to be given the task of forming the government. But there were other considerations with President al-Koudsi. He and al-Dawalibi were both from the city of Aleppo, and also they were both from the People’s Party. But the hazards of not taking into consideration the views of the recently elected deputies were more and greater.

When the President chose to accede to the will of the deputies and invite Dr Ma’ruf al-Dawalibi to form a government in December 1961, there was at that time an attempted coup in Lebanon, made by the Parti Populaire Syrien (PPS). President Nazem al-Koudsi phoned President Fu’ad Shihab offering whatever support was requested. President Shihab thanked him and said that the situation was under control, and he would get in touch when necessary.

After that there were discussions aiming at reviewing the law for agricultural reform and annulling the law nationalising companies. This had been an economic disaster, turning profitable companies into loss-making companies.

In 1961 Iraq had demanded that the state of Kuwait be returned to Iraqi sovereignty. President al-Koudsi  considered it was his duty to seek reconciliation so as not to aggravate matters between the two countries, and in addition knowing from his International experience that the United  Stated might tacitly encourage a resolution, he asked for a meeting with  Abdul Karim Qassem, who invited him to visit Iraq, but he insisted on meeting with him on the border.  He persuaded Qasim to abandon this demand because it would not be successful and there were hazards for Iraq and for the whole region. ‘Abd al-Karim Qasim was persuaded during the one-to-one meeting they had, on the condition that it would remain confidential until Iraq thought it would be appropriate to give it publicity. The meeting also resulted in activating military cooperation and strengthening economic, cultural and political relations. This meeting did not meet the approval of the army commander, ‘Abd al-Karim Zahr al-Din, who had refused to accompany the President, but he agreed with him that the Iraqi army was the principal support to the Syrian army when confronted by the common enemy. It became clear later that this meeting irritated the Kuwaiti leadership and raised their doubts, in spite of the personal friendly relations between Nazem al-Koudsi and the Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh ‘Abdullah al-Salam Al-Sabah.

On 16 March -1962 the Israeli army crossed the Syrian border but the commander of the front, Brigadier General Mustafa al-Dawalibi, had mined that road one day earlier. This led to the destruction of a number of tanks and armed cars belonging to the Israeli army. The Syrian army returned fire by blowing up Israeli settlements in Galilee all the next day. This battle was known as the battle of al-Kursi, after the name of the neighbouring village.

At noon that day the American Ambassador requested a meeting with President al-Koudsi who received him standing, not inviting him to take a seat. The Ambassador asked for an immediate cease-fire on the pretext that it would otherwise lead to more killing of Israeli civilians. President al-Koudsi replied with vehemence to the American Ambassador, saying that Syria did not start this battle, and that the American attitude should be the reverse of what it was. President al-Koudsi asked him to inform Israel that future aggression would meet a fiercer and more prolonged response. Of course, the Ambassador was surprised by this attitude from the President of the Syrian Arab Republic and quickly withdrew in obvious confusion.

On the following day President Nazem al-Koudsi called on the officers of the army at the front; this did not please the army commander but he accompanied him nonetheless. The President kissed the heads of the officers and congratulated them on their courage and had lunch with them before returning to Damascus. One week later the army commanded decided to transfer the commander at the front, Brigadier General Mustafa al-Dawalibi, and attach him to a Syrian delegation at the United Nations to explain there what had happened at the battle of al-Kursi. This was the response of the commander of the army to the question of the President on this subject.

During March, discussions continued in the Chamber of Deputies and in the cabinet on how to deal with the socialist measures that had been issued during the period of unity. The majority in the Chamber of Deputies and in the cabinet supported the modification of some of these laws and the repeal of others. President al-Koudsi asked the cabinet to study the matter and to take time because he would prefer to consider the political feelings of the poorer classes of the country. It was not easy to take back what had been given to these classes of society. Meanwhile the trumpets of Egyptian propaganda – radio, television and newspapers – Egyptian and Lebanese, attacked and set elements of the Syrian people politically against one another. President al-Koudsi insisted that the government should issue instructions that there be no response and that they ignore what the Egyptian press and radio said, especially Saut al-‘Arab, Voice of the Arabs.  The strange thing in this matter is that throughout this period of the Presidency of al-Koudsi the Egyptian press and radio did not vilify him, or even mention him when they were accusing the majority of Syrian politicians of all sorts of political crimes.  

In the middle of the night of 28 March 1962 the telephone rang in the President’s bedroom. It was a call from the security guards of the palace who informed the President that a group of army officers wanted to see him. With all his political experience he reckoned that a coup was under way and that that was the reason for this visit. When he met them, they told him he was invited to a meeting of the army command at their army headquarters. He answered, “This means a coup. I am not being invited to a meeting, but I am being forced to come.” He accompanied them to the army headquarters.

The officers who had carried out the secession were present, including the commander of the army who remained silent throughout the meeting. The officer who spoke was ‘Abd al-Karim al-Nahlawi. He said that the army was not happy with the discussions in the Chamber of Deputies, especially about repealing the socialist laws. They asked him to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies, and to ask the Prime Minister to submit his resignation. The President replied that the free and fair elections had been recognised by the army, and that the elected deputies would not submit to the orders of the army. This was a source of army discomfort. Moreover, this demand was a matter for the political authorities not for the military authorities. He then took out a piece of paper and wrote on it his resignation as President of the Republic. He told the officers that the road to the prison at Mezze knew him well. This was better and more honourable to him than submission to the orders of officers who had reneged on their commitment to refrain from politics.

President al-Koudsi left the meeting after daring the officers to send him to the Mezze prison. He was in their custody. Some officers followed him in order to parley with him. He told them, “Finish what you have started. May Allah help the country that is now in your hands.” He got into the car that had brought him from the Guest Palace. The same officers accompanied him to the military hospital in the prison at Mezze.  

Next morning, 28 March, it was announced that the army leadership had decided to reform and correct the political situation in the country. It accused the Chamber of Deputies and the cabinet of planning to repeal the socialist legislation for agricultural reform and nationalisation, arrested ministers and dissolved the Chamber of Deputies.

The Damascus officers who had led the coup of 28 March did not know that day the extent of the hatred harboured by army officers from the Syrian countryside, most of them from materially poor classes, for the army officers from the cities. Two days after the coup, sections of the army in Aleppo announced that they were revolting against the leadership in Damascus and were using for this purpose the radio station in Aleppo. They were then joined in this revolt by other sections of the army from the north east of Syria, from Hama and from Homs.

The army leadership in Damascus threatened to crush the rebels, but to no effect. Then after about a week of talks held by the officers among themselves, a meeting for senior officers was held in Homs that was called the Homs Conference. They agreed that all the army officers who had carried out the coup should be dismissed and sent out of Syria. The next decision was that they would only return to barracks when President al-Koudsi withdrew his resignation. That did not please the officers of the coup who said in their turn they would not accept their dismissal unless President al-Koudsi withdrew his resignation. This meant that the President, who was under arrest in the military hospital at Mezze, had become a unifying point for the Right-wing army officers from the cities and the officers from the rural areas.  

The army’s negotiations with President al-Koudsi were conducted through the Minister of Defence, Rashad Barmada, who had been a member of the dissolved People’s Party. The army insisted that the President dissolve the Chamber of Deputies whereas he insisted that he would not dissolve the Chamber for “it is part of my oath of office to uphold the constitutional institutions of the state.” At this Rashad Barmada suggested that all the deputies submit their resignations so that new elections may be held within three months. The President replied that this was something that should be referred to the deputies, as he had neither the authority nor the wish that the deputies submit their resignations. He remained in the military hospital as he insisted, and he did not meet ‘Abd al-Karim Zahr al-Din, the nominal commander of the army, or so claimed Zahr al-Din afterwards.

The deputies met with Rashad Barmada and after much discussion it was agreed that the President would withdraw his resignation and that the deputies would submit their resignations collectively provided that parliamentary elections would be held within three months. Barmada then brought the deputies’ resignations to the President who accepted them, in order to safeguard the unity of the army and the nation. He agreed in writing to the decisions of the officers in Homs in order to avoid bloodshed in the army. But he no longer had the same enthusiasm, since the authority of the President of the Republic in the 1950 constitution – the composition of which he had personally supervised and issued – vested the executive powers in the cabinet. He had been unable to convince the constitution committee at that time to maintain the presidential system which gave the president the greatest executive jurisdiction.

President Nazem al-Koudsi withdrew his resignation and returned to the Presidential Palace. The officer who had come in the middle of the night to the Guest Palace came to him, kissed his hand and asked for indulgence. The President told him, “Whoever gave you your orders had already been punished.” He forgave him and kissed his head. Celebrations were held to mark Independence Day on 17 April 1962 under the auspices and in the presence of the President of the Republic. He gave a speech to mark the withdrawal of his resignation after the dismissal of all the officers of the coup and their departure from Syria as military attachés in Syrian embassies abroad. It should be noted that the President did not agree to anyone forming a government until after all the other ministers, at the head of whom was Dr Ma’ruf al-Dawalibi, had been released from the prison at Mezze.

After that a government was formed by Dr Bashir al-‘Azma who had been a minister in the period of the union. All the previous and current ministers realised that it was not that easy to repeal the socialist legislation that had been agreed in the period of the union. Over the previous three months the Egyptian broadcasting services issued the most violent attack on Syria and on Syrian right wing and secessionist currents in the army, describing them as “reactionaries” and “agents of imperialism”. The ministry that was formed had a high proportion of socialists in it. Also in it was ‘Abd al-Karim Zahr al-Din as Minister of Defence. He proposed to the cabinet that he promote himself to the rank of Lieutenant General. The cabinet agreed to this.

After that the pressure from the military intelligence services increased on the ministers, especially on the socialists, for they did not agree with the holding of new parliamentary elections that followed the agreement to this when the President was under arrest.

Also after the dismissal and expulsion of the officers who had undertaken the failed coup, there were more divisions between groups of officers in the army. Officers from the rural areas of Syria formed one bloc together against officers from Syrian cities. A bloc of Nasserite officers were opposed to secessionist officers and Ba’thist officers who, seeing the popularity of ‘Abdel Nasser in the Syrian street, came out to demonstrate that they were with the Nasserite officers but in fact “they were opening a shop on their account secretly” in the army.

In the summer of 1962 on the occasion of the graduation of classes of officers at the Military College in Homs, the Air Force College in Aleppo and the in Lattakia, President al-Koudsi, accompanied by the head of the army, toured the Syrian governorates. He gave speeches that were both written and off the cuff at the military colleges and before crowds that welcomed him in each governorate, especially on his return to the Guest Palace at Damascus. He said in unwritten speeches in Aleppo and in Damascus, when the crowds began to chant slogans against President ‘Abdel Nasser that he did not accept that an Arab should be cursed in the Arab land of Syria, and that it was not in the nature of the Syrian people. Photographs and film footage taken of this visit are available on this site.

             

After three months of waiting the former deputies began to move and claimed that they were forced to submit their resignations by the army. Rashad Barmada had informed the President, when he was under arrest, that they had presented their resignations collectively and voluntarily in order to make it easy for the President to return after his resignation.

At the beginning of the summer of 1962 most of the former deputies met at the house of Khalid al-‘Azm and addressed a letter to the President of the Republic, requesting that he task Khalid al-‘Azm with forming a new ministry. Dr Bashir al-‘Azma, safeguarding his reputation and dignity, went against the advice of the Minister of Defence, Lieutenant General ‘Abd al-Karim Zahr al-Din, and submitted his and his ministry’s resignation to President al-Koudsi. President al-Koudsi acceded to the wishes of the Chamber of Deputies and asked al-‘Azm to form a ministry, though there was no great love between them, and even though the army commander had advised against his appointment because he was not loved in army circles. 

Khalid al-‘Azm formed the last government of the era of President Nazem al-Koudsi in September 1962 and included ministers from the different political currents, Right, Ba’thists and socialists and Muslim Brothers. But in fact the Syrian political community was divided amongst themselves. President ‘Abdel Nasser used to set these currents one against the other through his propaganda and through his Ambassador in Beirut, ‘Abd al-Hamid Ghalib, who used to send funds to Nasserite officers and to syndicates of workers and peasants, egging them against the secessionist regime, that were in the hands of agents of imperialism, according to the trumpeting of Egyptian propaganda.

The cabinet, against the advice of the President and without his agreement, submitted a complaint to the Council of the Arab League against Egypt for interference in Syria.  The country sent a delegation made up of socialist former Ministers who had served in the days of unity. ‘Abdel Nasser sent Nasserite Syrian ministers who had stayed on in Egypt to represent Egypt at the meeting of the Arab League held in the town of Chtaura in Lebanon. At the meeting the Syrians hurled accusations at each other and abusive curses were exchanged, something that had not happened before in the history of the Arab League.

At the end of 1962 rumours circulated in the Syrian street about the divisions in the army and about a coup. The commander of the army came to the Republican Palace or to the President’s house at night to inform him about this revolt or that, in Qatana or Damir. He told the President that he no longer had authority over the sectors of the army. The President phoned the commanders of the sectors to listen to their demands. In every conversation he ended by advising them that if they wanted to work in politics in the country, they should first resign from the army, and then they would be able to take part in the political process that could lead to a transfer of power democratically.  Of course this did not please many officers. Their commander believed that the army was the legitimate guardian of the politicians.

And so at the end of 1962 the Prime Minister, Khalid al-‘Azm, visited a number of governorates; there were demonstrations of Nasserite, socialists and Ba’thists against him everywhere. Indeed in Dera’a his car was pelted with eggs and tomatoes. At the same time the cabinet discussed the new election law and reviewed the nationalisation law and the agricultural reform law.  There grew a divergence between the right wing ministers including the Muslim Brothers on the one hand, and independent and socialist ministers on the opposing side. President al-Koudsi met the ministers and leading politicians from all political parties at his house, and at night mostly, and tried his best to obtain agreement between these currents through compromise. But there was no trust or common ground between the two sides: it all rested on the issue of the secession of Syria from Egypt. 

On 13/01/1963 the Putchit Army officers lead by Colonel Abdel Karim Nahlawi and who were ordered out of Syria at the Army Conference in Homes in 1962 returned to Damascus and managed to stage military insurrection against army command in the barracks of Kattanah, Kaboun and Al Kuswa.

The government, top political leaders and the top army command were called to a meeting at the presidential palace.  The deliberations between top army officers showed how divided the army was.  At this point President Nazem Al Koudsi scolded them strongly in angry terms and said, “Damn you Army Officers you are leading this country to loose its sovereignty and independence by your criminal insubordination and destructive actions.  We invited the German Economic Delegation to help the economy of our country, which you are destroying by your actions and what you are portraying in front of all other nations”.   

At the beginning of February 1963 there was the Ba’thist Nasserite coup in Iraq. It later became clear that it happened with the support and blessing of the United States, especially as ‘Abd al-Karim Qasim had been hand in glove with the Communists in Iraq. ‘Abd al-Karim Zahr al-Din requested an urgent meeting with President al-Koudsi and asked him in the name of the army to recognise the new regime in Iraq. The President immediately rebuked him and said, “This is no concern of yours. It is no concern of the army.” He concluded by telling him, “Sometimes you speak in the name of the army, sometimes you say you have no authority in the army. Which of these two positions is the truth?” Zahr al-Din replied saying that in that case he wanted to resign. He submitted his resignation, left and never came back.

Differences between ministers intensified, especially during February 1963. Meanwhile the Prime Minister, Khalid al-‘Azm, feigned illness at his house, and no longer attended cabinet meetings. As’ad al-Kurani, Deputy Prime Minister, chaired them. At the end of February, reports came in from the civilian intelligence services that Colonel Ziyad al-Hariri would carry out a military coup. President al-Koudsi sent him a verbal message through the man’s father, asking if he would be good enough to come to the Republican Palace in his personal capacity in order to take over power. But Ziyad al-Hariri swore before his father on the Holy Qur’an that these reports were false. But in actual fact they were true for he later led the coup.     

      

At the beginning of March 1963 the American Ambassador in Damascus, Mr Ridgeway Knight, got in touch with Dr Nihad Ibrahim Pasha, Minister of Planning and nephew of President al-Koudsi, in the middle of the night. He asked him to inform President al-Koudsi that Washington had informed him that there would shortly be a coup, and that the United States had no involvement in it. Meanwhile there were assessments coming from the political security apparatus that there were large sums of money flooding in from outside the country to some army officers.

Also in 1963 the engineer Saad Nazem al-Koudsi, eldest son of the President, was working in the Ministry of Public Works in Kuwait. He and his wife had recently returned from America. They were on good terms with some members of the American Embassy in Kuwait. Saad al-Koudsi received a telephone message from his friend, the First Secretary in the American Embassy, on 7 March to say that he was coming to Saad’s house so they could spend that evening together. Saad was surprised at this message, but he agreed to invite his American friend to his house that evening. The friend did not leave the house until after midnight. But the following morning after Saad learned that there had been a coup, he was no longer surprised.

At three in the morning on 8 March there was a phone call from the officer on duty at the army base to President al-Koudsi at home to say that there were movements of military units at the entries to Damascus. He was no longer able to make contact with the commander of the army who had resigned, ‘Abd al-Karim Zahr al-Din, or with the Chief of Staff, Major General Namiq Kamal, or Major General Musallim al-Sabbagh who had just been appointed commander of the army but he had not taken up the post.

At about four in the morning there was another phone call from the officer on duty at police headquarters at Damascus Citadel. He said there had been a coup, and asked for the order to engage with the officers of the coup. But President al-Koudsi, based on his deep beliefs of not shedding any blood between military units in order to remain in power, did not give him any orders.

Early in the morning gunfire could be heard in Damascus and the radio started to broadcast military bulletins. At nine o’ clock the aides arrived at the President’s house as usual, and the President did not leave the house that is today called al-Rawda Palace at the top of Shari’ Abu Rumana next to the al-Rawda Mosque.  At noon the secretary came with the daily post but in the afternoon the telephone communications were cut.

In the evening a delegation of some officers who had made the coup arrived. They included the Nasserite officer, Rashid al-Qutaini, then head of military intelligence, and the former Nasserite Minister, Dr ‘Abd al-Wahhab Hawmad. They gave a military salute and reassured him that he was still their President. But the situation in the country obliged them to undertake these measures in order to get rid of the government. With all courtesy and respect they asked him to remain at al-Rawda Palace until the situation became clear. Indeed the guards remained as they had been before and the Palace’s telephone communications were restored.

The following day demonstrations came to the house of the Prime Minister, Khalid al-‘Azm which was no more than 200 meters from the President’s house. The Prime Minister was forced to take refuge in the Turkish Embassy on the ground floor of his house. The demonstrations stopped there and did not come to the President’s house. 

The official portraits of the President of the Republic continued to appear in the official media for seven days. Salah al-Bitar, the coup’s Prime Minister, spoke at the first press conference two days after the coup. The official portrait of President al-Koudsi was displayed above his head.

Seven days later the President was granted his wish to leave the Palace but the Revolutionary Command Council asked him to remain in Damascus. He stayed for three weeks at the house of his niece in Damascus, Hidaya, wife of Dr ‘Abd al-Sattar Adi. After that he was permitted to leave Damascus and he went to Aleppo in the second week of April.

Meanwhile, a Syrian delegation, headed by Salah al-Bitar, and the Iraqi delegation negotiated in Cairo with President ‘Abdel Nasser to restore the union with what they called “The Triple Unification”. President ‘Abdel Nasser mocked the two Ba’thists who treacherously mumbled about unity. He told them, “You’re negotiating to restore unity, while the leaders of secession and the leaders of the Syrian Right are sitting at home, glorified and honoured.”

What happened was that the Syrian delegation returned to Damascus and issued decrees for the dismissal of President Nazem al-Koudsi, Khalid al-‘Azm, ministers and former politicians, officers and businessmen, stripping them of their civil rights. In the middle of that night in Aleppo, some of President al-Koudsi’s relations tried to persuade him to leave with them over the border to Turkey. But the President refused to do so, insisting that he preferred prison to flight outside Syria, especially as he had a clear conscience for all his conduct during the period of his presidency.

In mid April 1963, at about two in the morning, his house was surrounded by the military police under the command of Lieutenant ‘Abdullah ‘Umarayia, who asked him to accompany them to the military hospital in Aleppo. The President left his house in his car, accompanied by his son, Fa’iz and some relatives. The next day he also left Aleppo in his car with his son for the Staff headquarters in Damascus and from there to the military hospital in the Mezze prison. There he was not exposed to any constraints but given a private room. The officers in charge of the hospital and the detainees came to his room to greet him or to check whether he needed anything.

There is a saying, “Be on your guard against those to whom you have been most generous”. In late 1962 he received a letter from the owner of his house in Aleppo that had been his security. He was asking him to hand the house over and threatened to take legal action against the President for “delay in handing the house over”. That was the reward for him having done two good deeds. The first was when he did not buy the house and gave the owner the required capital. The second was when he gave him a letter of recommendation to the Emir of Kuwait the result of which was that he became a millionaire. The house was handed over to the owner while President al-Koudsi was still in detention.

On the morning of 18 July 1963 Nasserite officers attempted a coup against the Ba’thist officers in the army. Plenty of gunfire could be heard in Damascus following a military clash in front of the Staff headquarters in broad daylight. After that there was an attempt to purge Nasserite officers from the army. A Large number of Nasserite officers were executed inside the Mezze prison that day. After that the Ba’th Party monopolised authority and many Nasserite politicians including the former Minister, ‘Abd al-Wahhab Hawmad, were placed under arrest, as also were a large number of Nasserite officers including Rashid al-Qutaini. They were consigned to dormitories at the Mezze prison.

President al-Koudsi received visits periodically from his sons, Fawwaz, Fa’iz and Faisal, and from his son-in-law Dr Sami Zakaria and Dr ‘Abd al-Sattar ‘Adii, his brother’s son-in-law. He was allowed to have all the Syrian and available foreign newspapers as well as a transistor radio set. One morning in August 1963 Radio Israel broadcast that the military Prosecutor General had demanded the death penalty for President al-Koudsi. At noon that day the military Prosecutor General came to President al-Koudsi’s room, gave him a military salute and said the news was false. “Basically,” he said, “there is no court, and the Prosecutor General has made no legal pronouncement.” In short there was no trial of President al-Koudsi.

Meanwhile Major General Amin al-Hafiz was appointed Military Commander and then President of the State. He used to come to visit President al-Koudsi or to send from time to time one of the officers of his command to check on him. At the end of the summer the President was transferred to a bigger room in the hospital and they placed with him ‘Abd al-Karim Zahr al-Din who was also being detained.

On the 30th of November 1963, Colonel Ahmad Suwaidani, head of the office of Major General Amin al-Hafiz, came to President al-Koudsi’s room bringing greetings. He told him, “Major General Hafiz offers you his best wishes, and says that you are completely free to go wherever you wish from this moment.” President al-Koudsi left Mezze prison shortly afterwards in Colonel Suwaidani’s car for his niece’s house in Damascus where the former Prime Minister, Lutfi al-Haffar, came to greet him. The next day the President left Damascus to return to his house in Aleppo after having been forcibly detained for seven months, the longest period he had spent under arrest throughout his thirty-five years of political activity.

Groups of well-wishers came to the house of President Nazem al-Koudsi and he knew that this would greatly embarrass the military. He asked Major General Amin al-Hafiz, through his relative, Dr ‘Abd al-Sattar Adi, to agree to him going to Beirut to visit his son Farid, who was then studying at the American University. The agreement came after a few days but the military authorities did not inform the airport at Aleppo about it.

    

After a few days he left Aleppo on a Lebanese Middle East Airlines flight after an hour’s delay until permission from the army command was received. The aircraft was also delayed in the air over Beirut until permission to land at Beirut airport was obtained from the President, Fu’ad Shihab.

The Head of the Presidential Palace protocol, Mr Georges Haimari, came to Beirut airport, sent by President Fu’ad Shihab and with the President’s car that transported him to the house of his nephew, the former Minister of Planning, Dr Nihad Ibrahim Pasha. After a few days the hero of this memoir called on President Fu’ad Shihab in the Republican Palace to thank him for his warm welcome. A few days later the Head of Protocol, Haimairi, called on him and offered President al-Koudsi political asylum and a residence with bodyguards. But President al-Koudsi thanked him and replied that he preferred to be a visitor like any other visitor to Lebanon. It may be mentioned that after an announcement of his arrival, the Lebanese press started to write about him and about Syria. But he refused to give any interviews or statements to the press, Indeed he announced his retirement from political work after thirty-five years passed in resisting the French Mandate and after taking on responsibilities and many offices, not enjoyed by any other politician in Syria.

President al-Koudsi kept up his contacts with Arab Kings and Presidents. At the head of these was Prince Faisal who had become the Saudi Crown Prince. Their friendship went back to the days of the San Francisco Conference to set up the United Nations in 1945. In 1966 President al-Koudsi went on pilgrimage with his wife. Prince Faisal had now become the King. He invited him to Riyadh and work with him in the Royal Palace, but he excused himself, saying that he preferred to live in Beirut and respond to any matters on which the King wanted his advice. As well former President al-Koudsi advised King Faisal to meet Dr Ma’ruf al-Dawalibi, the former Syrian Prime Minister , who later on became his adviser at the Royal Court in Riyadh, and to the Saudi kings afterwards until his death in 2004. 

In Beirut President al-Koudsi picked up old acquaintances from the past such as his friend and old legal partner and professor, Edmond Rabbath, and also with his old colleague in the Syrian Embassy in Washington in 1945, Dr Constantin Zureiq – who had become Vice-President of the American University of Beirut. He also got to know the literary figure and philosopher, Mikha’il Na’imi. On the political side he made several calls on the Lebanese Prime Minister Sa’ib Salam, Hajj Husain al-‘Uwaini, as well as President Charles Helou and Sulaiman Frangieh and Hajj Amin al-Husaini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

During the June 1967 war President al-Koudsi was spending the summer in Geneva. King Faisal was on a visit to the Presidents of Europe, explaining the Arab and Saudi position. Former President al-Koudsi went to see King Faisal in Geneva, meeting him with the word, “The Arab situation requires that all Arabs back Egypt especially after the disaster of the war.” King Faisal replied, “This is the Saudi position and I have told President ‘Abdel Nasser so.” King Faisal finished his European tour and did persuade the French President, General Charles De Gaulle, to change his political position. He then attended the summit conference in Khartoum and asked that President ‘Abdel Nasser’s speech should represent the Saudi message, even though there had been an estrangement between the two because of the Yemen war.         

Shortly after the June 1967 war, President Shukri al-Quwatli died in Beirut of grief and despair over the loss of the villages of Golan. After prayers over the body, President al-Koudsi took part in the funeral and was in the leading car as it went to the Syrian border. At the house of President al-Quwatli in Beirut a condolence ceremonies were held for the mourners who included Lieutenant General Amin al-Hafiz who had been overthrown in Syria the previous year.

After his son Fa’iz moved to live in the Jordanian capital Amman in 1970, he used to visit Jordan and to call on King Hussein who hosted him a number of times, as also at that time did his brother Crown Prince Hasan.

Also while President al-Koudsi was resident in Beirut up to 1975 King Faisal used to send some of the leading Saudis Ministers and Princes to call on him and to seek his advice on international political matters so long as they did not concern Syria. During the visit of King Faisal to Beirut in 1972 the hero of this memoir was present at all the banquets and official events. He was always at the principal table in his capacity as a former President of a Republic. In the late 1960s his eldest son Saad and later another son, Farid, went to work in Saudi Arabia and he used to visit them there numerous times. He also called on other friends in Saudi Arabia at the head of whom was Dr Ma’ruf al-Dawalibi, the Royal Adviser, as well as dozens of Syrian writers, professors, politicians and others who were living in Saudi Arabia.

In the late 1960s his son Fawwaz moved from Aleppo to Abu Dhabi to work in the office of Research and Archives in the Royal Court of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan. This was before the establishment of the state of the United Arab Emirates. When the federation was set up Fawwaz Nazem al-Koudsi became Head of Protocol in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. President al-Koudsi used to visit him at his house there continuously.

At the beginning of the troubles in Lebanon, President Nazem al-Koudsi left Beirut for Amman as the guest of King Hussein, then to Tunis as the guest of President Habib Bourguiba who had been his friend from university days in Geneva. After his first visit to Tunis he left for London in the summer of 1976 and stayed at the house of his son Faisal who was working in the Arab Bank there. He then decided to settle in Tunisia for a year, especially as his youngest son, Faris, was pursuing his studies there. From Tunis he moved to Nice in France in 1978 where he lived with his wife, his son Faris and only daughter Ahd, and her children until 1983. During this time he was always travelling to Switzerland which he had greatly loved ever since his student days. With his wife he used to see his children and grandchildren in Amman, Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and London. In Europe he used to travel on public transport, buses and trains, which he liked very much.

When the former President al-Koudsi reached the age of eighty, the family took on the task of moving his place of residence to one of his children or near them. He chose to move from Nice to Abu Dhabi where he lived at the house of his son Fawwaz. There he was in touch with his Syrian friends and used to call on Sheikh Zayed Al-Nahyan and exchange calls on Ahmad Khalifa al-Suwaidi, the UAE Minster for Foreign Affairs. He also used to spend the summer at Fawwaz’s house in the resort of Gstaad in Switzerland.    

After that, in view of the intense heat and humidity of Abu Dhabi, he decided to move to be beside his son Fa’iz in Amman. He settled there permanently in a private capacity from 1987. In the Jordanian capital, he had a house open to any visitors, especially from the Syrian community in Jordan. Those who came to see him included ‘Umar Baha al-Amiri, Dr Ma’ruf al-Dawalibi, Akram Zu’aitar and Crown Prince Hasan as well as many cultural figures, businessmen and especially ‘Abd al-Majid Shuman, Chairman of the Arab Bank. He used to accept invitations from King Hussein to call on him at the Royal Palace and also on special occasions.

While President al-Koudsi was in Amman he received the news of the death of his friend and political partner, the late Rushdi al-Kikhya, in Cyprus in 1988. He wrote a tribute to him that was highly emotional, moving and heartfelt. In the end he decided not to publish it during his lifetime. It can be found on this site. His last visit to Switzerland was in 1990 after which he never left Amman for the rest of his life. In 1997 his wife, Mrs Shahira al-Koudsi, daughter of Hajj ‘Abdullah Salahiya, died. She had been his wife and comrade for sixty-three years. From that year his health began to decline, and his children would take turns in seeing him regularly. But his memory and mind continued to be alert until the last days of his life. He called on people and was called on, and used to leave the house on outings until the last year.

On 7 February 1998 Nazem al-Koudsi passed away, surrounded by his children and grandchildren at the age of just under ninety-two. His Majesty King Hussein offered the family a plot at the Royal Cemetery in Amman. The Syrian Ambassador also proposed that he be buried in Syria. But his wish had been that he be buried alongside his wife in the family cemetry in Amman. That gave no pleasure to the Syrian regime in Damascus, to such a degree that they forbad the publication of any news of his death in the press or on television.

Mourners flocked to his house from Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia. The Arab and international press wrote about his death, and the British journalist, Patrick Seale, the specialist in Syrian affairs, wrote an obituary in The Guardian. Telegrams of condolence poured in from Syria and from wherever in the world he had had friends, acquaintances and relations.

May Allah have mercy on our precious loss. May He give the ample space at His side as much as he gave in his life to Syria and his Arab nation.

The Family Committee