Factionalism among Syrian Nationalists during the French MandateAuthor(s): Philip S. KhourySource: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Nov., 1981), pp. 441-469Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/162909 .Accessed: 12/10/2011 13:56

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toInternational Journal of Middle East Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

Int. J. Middle East Stud. 13 (1981), 441-469 Printed in the United States of America

Philip S. Khoury

FACTIONALISM AMONG SYRIAN NATIONALISTS DURING THE FRENCH MANDATE

INTRODUCTION

It is ironic and perhaps telling that the one national independence movement largely ignored by historians of the Arab Middle East is the Syrian nationalist movement. The irony, of course, is that the birthplace of Arab nationalism was Syria; it was to Damascus that Arab nationalists in Palestine, Iraq and elsewhere looked for inspiration, guidance, and moral support in the interwar period; and out of the Syrian movement sprang the radical nationalism of the Ba'thists. Intellectual histories of the precursors, birth, and content of Arab nationalism abound, and, insofar as these histories deal with the birthplace of Arab na- tionalism, they must discuss Damascus and Syriajust prior to and during World War I. But once the intellectual birth of Arab nationalism has been discussed, interest in the history of Syria wanes to be revived only after World War II, with the emergence of Ba'thism and the military in politics. What follows is by no means a comprehensive analysis of the nature and organization of the Syrian national independence movement; rather, it is a preliminary investiga- tion of some salient characteristics of the politics of Syrian-Arab nationalism in the early years of the French Mandate.

Arab grievances with the Ottoman imperial government in Istanbul in the last years of the Empire had been of sufficient magnitude to add nationalism to the cauldron of effective political ideologies in the Arab provinces. But it was the Mandate system which ensured that nationalism was the overwhelming flavor of the stew. French control in Syria, contrary to French design, made of nationalism the chief political instrument of a large segment of the Syrian political elite, members of the absentee landowning and bureaucratic classes in Damascus and in other Syrian towns. Nationalist slogans - "unity" and "independence" - were used as a crude, lowest-common-denominator appeal to rally the Syrian masses behind the traditional elite. Although the ideological tool to muster support was new, and the words and content truly different from before, the short-run political goal of the Syrian elite was as old as the hills: the monopolistic control of local political power.

Indeed, the French invasion and capricious policies imposed on Syria in the early years of the Mandate let this new sentiment of nationalism spread faster than ever before at the expense of other loyalties. Yet, the Syrian national

? Cambridge University Press I981 0020-7438/81/040441-29 $02.50

442 Philip S. Khoury

independence movement was unable to achieve a high degree of unity, cohe- sion, and organization. Not only did the movement become increasingly isolated from parallel movements in Palestine and Iraq, but its leaders became increas- ingly embroiled in personal and ideological disputes which the French suc- cessfully exploited.

The primary purpose of this article is to trace the origins and growth of factionalism among Syrian nationalist politicians in the early 1920s and, by so doing, to explain the divisions which eventually sapped the Syrian indepen- dence movement of much of its strength and vitality.

In Faisal ibn al-Husain's short-lived Arab State in Syria (1918-1920) the internal power configuration was dominated by three nationalist extragovern- mental organizations: the predominantly Palestinian Arab Club (al-Nadi al- 'Arabi), the Syrian-led al-Fatat fronted by The Arab Independence Party (Hizb al-Istiqlal al-'Arabi), and the Iraqi-run officers' association, al-'Ahd. Although these organizations made concerted efforts to paint a picture of Arab national unity for the European Powers, the way they related to one another and to the Amir Faisal and their political ambitions betrayed local and regional tendencies which had begun to overshadow their professed pan-Arab sentiments.' With the collapse of the Arab State and the European partition of the Fertile Crescent into separately administered French and British mandates, these tendencies were greatly accentuated. The idea of a unitary Arab nation rooted in a common language and culture, which had been disseminated through schools, barracks, the Ottoman Parliament, exile in Cairo, the Arab Revolt, and in Damascus after the War, was now forced to compete with the growth of narrower, ter- ritorially defined ideas of an Iraqi or a Palestinian or a Syrian nation.2

The Anglo-French division of the Arabic-speaking provinces of the Ottoman Empire had a different impact on Baghdad and Jerusalem than it had on Da- mascus. The deposed Faisal willingly accepted a British offer of a throne in Iraq, enabling him to establish a legitimate institution around which Iraqi na- tionalist officers who had been at Faisal's side since the days of the Arab Revolt could rally. Indeed, Baghdad became a place to which these officers could return quite conveniently, despite the presence of the British. Though some Syrian and Palestinian nationalists chose to follow Faisal to Baghdad,3 most did not. For these leaders, Iraq was politically and socially unfamiliar, and geographically distant from the primary focus of their attention. Furthermore, Iraqis had an obvious political edge on their home turf; and Faisal's own brand of compromise diplomacy in I919 and I920 in Europe followed by his sudden appearance in 1921 on a British-built throne in Iraq doubtless weakened his political credibility in the eyes of more than a few hardline Syrian and Pales- tinian nationalists. Baghdad could and would be looked to for support, but it was not a place from which to launch their struggles.

Palestinians residing in Damascus during the Faisal interlude also found few obstacles to their return. Syrian nationalists, however, were not so fortunate. Scores were forced to flee Damascus and other towns in the Syrian interior either to avoid death sentences or arrest, or simply because political life under

Factionalism among Syrian Nationalists during the French Mandate 443

the French quickly proved intolerable. Indeed, the Syrian nationalist movement in the early I920S was to a great extent a movement in exile. For most of its leaders, Amman and Cairo were more congenial towns from which to steer their movement.

In Amman the Amir 'Abdullah, outraged that his younger brother had netted Iraq which had originally been earmarked for him at the General Syrian Con- gress in Damascus in March 1920, refocused his sights on a Syrian throne after setting up shop east of the Jordan River in March 192I. At the time 'Abdullah gathered around him a group of ex-Ottoman functionaries from Syria who ran his administration in the absence of trained and experienced Transjordanian bureaucrats.4 Some of these men were radical nationalists from Damascus and elsewhere and belonged to the Istiqlal Party, which was more or less an amal- gamation of leaders from the clandestine al-Fatat and a few Syrian officers from al-'Ahd.5 They urged the Amir to engage in an active policy vis-a-vis French- ruled Syria. But the British, on whom 'Abdullah was increasingly reliant, grad- ually and inexorably forced him to break his relationship with the more radical Syrian members in his entourage. Some were driven out of office and eventually out of Transjordan. The Istiqlalists thus learned two important lessons: the British were clearly unwilling to support Syrian nationalist aims, and 'Abdullah could not be depended on or trusted.

While Amman proved to be little more than a temporary refuge for a handful of Syrian nationalists, Cairo was the one Arab city which almost all important exiled nationalists could be expected to pass through or reside in at one time or another. Before the outbreak of World War I, Cairo had served as the major coordinating center of the infant Syrian-Arab independence movement. Its cultural and political permissiveness and its large Syrian emigre community with its newspapers and clubs were attractive drawing cards for political exiles and refugees. Cairo was the most convenient and comfortable capital in the Arabic-speaking world from which to steer a political movement that had suf- fered setbacks first at the hands of the Young Turks and now at the hands of the European Powers. Given the state of disarray in which the nationalist movement found itself by the end of I920, a greater coordination of activities was desperately needed. The occupied territories had no apparatus by which to mobilize popular forces, and funding for a network of internal organizations was lacking. A propaganda arm in Europe was also called for. Thus the estab- lishment of the Executive Committee of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress in I92I was heralded by nationalists everywhere as the correct step toward res- urrecting the hopes and ambitions of the Syrian-Arab peoples.

THE SYRIAN-PALESTINIAN CONGRESS: ITS ORIGINS AND FACTIONS

The origins of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress can be traced to the end of I918, when a number of Syrian exiles in Cairo - several of whom had been connected to the defunct Ottoman Party of Administrative Decentralization (Hizb al-Lamarkaziyya al-Idariyya al-'Uthmani) - founded a successor orga-

444 Philip S. Khoury

nization, the Party of Syrian Unity (Hizb al-Ittihad al-Sfri). Channeling their energies into support and propaganda work on behalf of the fragile Arab gov- ernment in Damascus, the leaders of this Party appeared to be more concerned with a Greater Syria union scheme and with maintaining contact with the British than with espousing pan-Arabist ideas such as those being promoted by more overtly anti-imperialist associations like al-Fatat/Hizb al-Istiqlal and the Arab Club.6 With the collapse of the Arab State in the summer of I920, the Party of Syrian Unity sought to fill the political void by offering to coordinate the activities of all Syrian and Palestinian nationalist organizations whose activities had suddenly been curtailed or reduced. A general Syrian-Palestinian Congress was called in early 1921. Its first major session took place in June in Geneva, where demands for Syrian unity and independence were presented to the League of Nations. At this session its participants decided to establish an Executive Committee to coordinate all future activities of the Congress.7 Not surprisingly, the officials elected to the Executive were the same ones at the helm of the Party of Syrian Unity.

The Syrian-Palestinian Congress Executive, though in principle devoted to both Syrian and Palestinian affairs, focused more attention on events in French- occupied Syria and Lebanon. This concentration reflected the strong Syrian and Lebanese component in the Congress leadership which, incidentally, con- trolled Congress purse strings.8 Indeed, the Syrian-Palestinian Congress soon reproduced many of the same political divisions and regionalist tendencies that had already begun to surface among Syrian, Palestinian, and Iraqi nationalists east of Suez. The first major schism occurred in I922, when Palestinian rep- resentatives chose to withdraw from the Congress, protesting the insufficient attention it devoted to Palestinian affairs.9 From the days of the Arab Revolt in I916, few Palestinian leaders sincerely acknowledged the Hashemites as their legitimate representatives.10 Faisal's dealings with the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann just after the War were regarded as a betrayal of their cause. Many Palestinian leaders had then been convinced that the Amir was willing to trade Palestine for a secure, internationally recognized Arab monarchy in Syria. Consequently, the first nationalist organization to begin withdrawing its support for Faisal was the Palestinian-led Arab Club." Now in Cairo in the early I920s, the Syrian-Palestinian Congress Executive also seemed preoc- cupied with Syria under French hegemony to the detriment of the question of Palestine. In fact, while the Congress continued to foster the idea of a Greater Syria by stressing the need for a unified Syrian-Palestinian front, certain Syrian nationalists in 1921 and I922 applied pressure on Palestinian leaders to reach an accommodation with the Zionists. Some Syrians even met independently with Zionist leaders in London and in Palestine to discuss prospects for a compromise solution. 2

The rift between Syrians and Palestinians was by no means absolute; nor was it the only rift to appear in Congress ranks. Personal and ideological differences, whose origins in some cases lay in the Arab Revolt or in rivalries formed in Damascus after the War, eventually split the Syrian membership of the Congress in two. By looking at the two major factions in the Congress,

Factionalism among Syrian Nationalists during the French Mandate 445

their orientations and allies, more light can be shed on the nature and extent of these divisions.

The Lutfallah-Shahbandar Faction

Michel Lutfallah, the eldest of three politically active sons of Habib Pasha Lutfallah, a Lebanese emigre in Cairo, was perhaps the leading personality on the Congress Executive; he also represented one of the two major competing trends to emerge within the Syrian nationalist movement after I920. Michel's father, a Greek Orthodox Christian of modest extraction, had made a fortune as a moneylender during the Anglo-Egyptian expedition to the Sudan which he then used to purchase rich cotton plantations, making him one of the weal- thiest landowners in Egypt. After 1908, Habib Lutfallah developed close links with Sharif Husain in the Hijaz, serving as an adviser and banker to his family. Michel grew up in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Levantine Cairo where he later married the daughter of a rich Syrian Christian merchant of Alexandria. When the Arab Revolt erupted, Michel devoted most of his time to fund raising and publicity work on behalf of the Hashemite cause.'3 Meanwhile he began to cooperate with the British authorities, as many Syrians in Cairo did during World War I. Michel's brother, Habib junior, was appointed by Husain as his personal envoy to Paris in I919, where he used his family's fortune to publicize the Hashemite cause. King Husain in I920 awarded Habib senior the title of amir (later inherited by his sons) in return for his services.

Michel Lutfallah, together with several other Syrian emigres in Cairo, founded the Party of Syrian Unity at the end of the War; he was also the inspiration behind the Syrian-Palestinian Congress. Not only was he elected President of the Congress Executive but he and his other brother, George, were its major financial backers.'4

Associated with the Lutfallah family was 'Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar who first met the Amir Michel and his brothers during a brief exile in Cairo toward the end of the War. A brilliant physician trained at the Medical Faculty of the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut, Shahbandar came from a middling merchant family of Damascus.'5 He had been an early supporter of the Committee of Union and Progress but later became an outspoken critic of Unionist "Turk- ification" policies in the Syrian provinces of the Empire and was forced to flee Damascus in I916 shortly after a number of Syrian opponents of the Young Turks were sentenced to death and hanged for "conspiring" with the European Powers against the Ottoman State. 6 Shahbandar soon surfaced in Cairo, where he would reside on and off for the next twenty-five years. There he joined his nationalist colleagues in their propaganda work in support of the Arab Revolt, and developed friendly relations with Hashemite representatives as well as English political officers of the Arab Bureau.'7 It was this British connection - one he would never sever - which caused Shahbandar, a cautious Anglophile and a loquacious Anglophone, many difficulties with other nationalists and with the French, for whose culture he had little appreciation and whose language he had trouble speaking.

446 Philip S. Khoury

On his return to a liberated Damascus in early I919, the thirty-nine-year-old Shahbandar took an active part in nationalist politics, playing a major political role on behalf of the Amir Faisal. His first task was to prepare key personalities, parties, and interest groups in Syria to receive the United States Commission of Inquiry (King-Crane Commission) in the summer of 1919. He also served as the special interpreter for Charles Crane, one of the Commission's co-chair- men, with whom he developed amiable relations.'8 Soon thereafter, Faisal also assigned Shahbandar to be his chief liaison with the British forces in Syria.'9 Later in May I920, when Faisal was obliged to permit the formation of a more radical nationalist government after his coronation as King of Syria by the Syrian Congress in Damascus two months earlier, Shahbandar was chosen as Minister of Foreign Affairs. But he barely had time to try out his new job; six weeks later the French occupied Syria, extinguishing the Arab Kingdom. Like so many other nationalists, Shahbandar was sentenced to death by the, French, and to avoid capture he sought refuge in Egypt.20

During his second exile in Cairo, Shahbandar joined other Syrian nationalist exiles and emigres, including Michel Lutfallah, in activating the recently es- tablished Executive of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress. But with the an- nouncement of a major French amnesty, Shahbandar decided to give up his activities and to return to Damascus in the autumn of 1921. There he founded the first nationalist organization since the French occupation, the Iron Hand Society, which was financed largely by donations from the Syrian-Palestinian Congress, or, in other words, from the pockets of the Lutfallah family.

The Iron Hand's life was short. The French began to curtail its activities after it conducted violent anti-French demonstrations in the wake of Charles Crane's second visit to Damascus in April 1922. Among the first nationalist leaders arrested was Dr. Shahbandar who was sentenced to twenty years in prison for his role in inciting the Damascus population to "riot." After spending seventeen months in jail he was released and exiled from Syria in the fall of 1923. Shahbandar left for France and then England. In London he was invited by some British Conservative Party members to attend a session at Westminster which caused an outcry from the Quai d'Orsay. If the French had suspected him of being a British agent, it was now clear to them that he was one. After London, Shahbandar paid a brief visit to the United States where he met his good friend, Mr. Crane. While he was abroad, Shahbandar devoted most of his time to publicizing the cause of Syrian independence on behalf of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress, which financed his travels.21

'Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar and Michel Lutfallah were linked by more than a financial relationship and a mutual fondness of Cairo. Both men were educated in Western rather than Ottoman professional schools and thus were neither intimates of high Ottoman-Arab culture nor members of the Ottoman aristoc- racy of service. Moreover, their social backgrounds and intellectual upbringing placed them among the leading advocates of a purely secular nationalism.22 Finally, due to their personal interests and their rivalries with other Syrian nationalists, Shahbandar and Lutfallah chose to remain close to the Hashemites and did not sever their ties with the British after 1920. Much the same could

Factionalism among Syrian Nationalists during the French Mandate 447

be said about the personalities closest to Dr. Shahbandar: nationalists like his brother-in-law Nazih al-Mu'ayyad al-'Azm, a landowner of Damascus and also a graduate of the Syrian Protestant College; Hasan al-Hakim, an Ottoman- trained civil servant from the Midan quarter of Damascus; and Sa'id Haidar, a wealthy Istanbul-trained lawyer from a Shi'i notable family of the Ba'labakk region.23 It was these men and others like them who joined Shahbandar in establishing the first legal nationalist political organization of the Mandate in the spring of 1925. The People's Party (Hizb al-Sha'b), as it was called, deserves most credit for transforming a local, isolated rebellion in the Jabal Druze that summer into a nationwide popular revolt against French rule in Syria. Quite naturally, the People's Party received its greatest external support from the Syrian-Palestinian Congress Executive in Cairo, headed by Michel Lutfallah.

The Arslan-lstiqldlist Faction

The other political faction in and around the Syrian-Palestinian Congress was headed by Shakib Arslan, the leading member of the Congress delegation stationed at the League of Nations. Arslan was born in the Lebanese mountain village of Shuwayfat in I869, to a family of Druze amirs. His father preferred, however, to spend several months each year in Beirut's Musaitbih quarter, enabling his children to grow up in a fairly cosmopolitan Sunni Muslim envi- ronment.24 Indeed, in spite of his Druze origin, Shakib was a proclaimed Sunni. He first attended an American mission school in his village and then the Ottoman Sultaniyya in Beirut. On completing his education, which included an intensive course of study in Turkish, he spent two years traveling abroad, during which time he paid the first of many visits to Paris and Cairo, before settling down to a career as an essayist and political activist.25

Between 1913 and I918 Shakib Arslan was an elected deputy from Mt. Le- banon to the Ottoman Parliament in Istanbul. His refusal to break with the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) underscored one of his conflicts with the Lutfallah-Shahbandar faction. At the time of the Arab Revolt, Arslan was of the firm conviction that the Arab provinces should not try to break from the Empire, despite the CUP's intensified "Turkification" policies, which he did not favor.26 He sincerely believed that such a rupture would leave the Arab peoples, their territory and their civilization, open to further European assaults and encroachment. Arslan asserted that the breakup of the Ottoman Empire would enable the European Powers to extend their control over the whole region, including the Holy Places in the Hijaz. Even after the collapse of the Ottoman State, the Amir Shakib - a cosmopolitan Ottoman-Arab intellectual - continued to look to Turkey for political support. He regarded Turkey's national struggle against the European Powers as critical to the future of the Arab nation. Turkey, after all, was still a Muslim nation bent on protecting its territory against European imperialism and it therefore offered the Arabs an excellent example to follow.27

Shakib Arslan's pronounced anti-British tendencies, his reluctance to align with the Hashemites, his use of Berlin28 as a major center for his propaganda

448 Philip S. Khoury

campaign against the French, his interest in gaining Turkish support for the nationalist movements in the Arab territories, and his emphasis on an Arab nation whose underlying moral principles were based on the Divine Law of Islam, were bound to clash with the Lutfallah-Shahbandar faction's British and Hashemite links, its suspicion of the Turks, and its secularism. In the early I920s, however, Arslan kept these tensions subterranean, mainly because the delegation he headed in Geneva was almost completely dependent on financial subsidies from the Lutfallah family.29

In Shakib Arslan's camp could be found two other prominent personalities, Shaikh Rashid Rida and Ihsan al-Jabiri. Rashid Rida's contribution to the Syrian nationalist movement lay mainly in the intellectual domain where he concen- trated on the ideological articulation of nationalism and particularly on the importance of the Islamic content in its formulation. His beliefs and ideas were expressed candidly over the years in al-Manar, the periodical he published in Cairo from I898 (a year after he emigrated there from Tripoli, Syria) until his death in I935. Rida's link to Shakib Arslan, who was four years his junior, came through their intellectual mentor, Shaikh Muhammad 'Abduh, whom both met (and in Arslan's case studied with) during the Egyptian religious reformer's exile in Lebanon in the early i88os. Rida and Arslan eventually became friends and in the process discovered a profound intellectual compatibility, despite differences in social background and education. Arslan was absorbed by Rida's powerfully articulate defense of the primacy of the Arabs in Islam, their great historical contribution to its birth and expansion, and the need for the nation to be governed by Islam's highest principles.30

The two men did not always agree, however, on matters of political strategy. For instance, Arslan was not particularly pleased by Rida's rather harsh attitude toward the Turkish Unionists and his willingness to cooperate with the British during the War to secure Arab independence. But after the War and the Eu- ropean division of Greater Syria, Rida's atttude toward the British underwent a fundamental change. More important, he became an outspoken critic of the Hashemites whom he regarded as corrupt and incompetent, and destined to continue their sacrifice of the Arab nation's interests by completely identifying their personal fortunes with those of British imperialists.31 Thus, Rashid Rida, who was elected Vice-President of the Executive Committee of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress, provided an important check on the activities of the pro-Hashemite faction around Michel Lutfallah.

Ihsan al-Jabiri, who was thirteen years younger than Shakib Arslan and his colleague on the Congress delegation at the League, was also an Ottoman-Arab aristocrat, with an Istanbul education and an advanced degree in law from Paris. He had been a ranking Ottoman bureaucrat, serving in Istanbul and in the Syrian provinces, who had remained faithful to the idea of Empire almost until its very end. His family's prominence in Aleppo where Ihsan had most recently been mayor, his familiarity with Europe, and his willingness to adopt the nationalist mantle, convinced Faisal to make him head of his diwdn and his Chamberlain in 1918. But, driven into exile by the French, Jabiri chose to devote himself to propaganda work in Europe while following with great interest

Factionalism among Syrian Nationalists during the French Mandate 449

news of events in and around his hometown, where an anti-French revolt in which his relatives were active raged in I920-21. Like Arslan, Ihsan Bey sincerely believed that an alliance with the Turks, who were also fighting the French while supplying material support to the rebels in northern Syria, had to be encouraged.32 But while Arslan emphasized the need for an Islamic front with Turkey against European penetration, Jabiri, whose family had strong social links in Istanbul, was more concerned with reviving commercial relations between Syria and Turkey, the postwar disruption of which was ruining the economy of the Aleppo province.33 Obviously, this Turkish connection irritated the Lutfallah-Shahbandar group who despised the Turks against whom they had revolted during World War I, and whose territorial designs on northern Syria they seriously feared.34

The Arslan faction in the Syrian-Palestine Congress included one other im- portant grouping, members of the pan-Arab Istiqlal Party who had been forced to seek refuge in Amman, Cairo, and even in Jerusalem. These men tended to be Syrian activists of a younger generation than Arslan's and Rida's (though not Jabiri's) who were all of an ultranationalist persuasion. Although few Is- tiqlalists looked to Turkey for salvation or stressed the Islamic character of the Arab nation as espoused by Arslan, Rida and others - a clear reflection of their age and more secular intellectual formation - all were, in contrast to the Lutfallah-Shahbandar faction, anti-British, anti-Hashemite (though not nec- essarily against Faisal), and outspokenly pan-Arab, which at the time was synonymous with being totally devoted to the Palestinian-Arab national move- ment. Indeed, the Istiqlalists continued to be intimately connected to like- minded radicals in Palestine, notably 'Izzat Darwaza and 'Awni 'Abd al-Hadi, who had been active members of both the Istiqlal Party and the Arab Club in Damascus after the War.35

Among the most important Istiqlalists forced into exile in I920 by the French was 'Adil Arslan, the younger brother of Shakib.36 Born in 1882 in Shuwayfat, 'Adil Bey was educated in French mission schools and in Paris where he specialized in literature before graduating from the Miilkiye in Istanbul. Like his brother, he faithfully served the Ottoman State until the end of the War: first as Secretary of the Ministry of Interior in 1913, then as a director of immigration services for the Syrian provinces in I914, and finally as qd'imaqdm of the Shuf district in Mt. Lebanon in I915 and 1916. After the Allied occupation of Syria in 1918, Faisal appointed 'Adil Bey as mutasarrifof Mt. Lebanon and just before the collapse of the Arab State he became a close political adviser to the Amir and one of his chief intermediaries with the French and the British. During this period he also became an active member of the Istiqlal Party. With French occupation, the younger Arslan took up residence in Transjordan where he and several other exiled Syrian Istiqlalists, including the Damascene Nabih al-'Azma, the Director of Public Security in Amman, formed a new branch of the Party. Between I92I and 1923, 'Adil Arslan served as a political adviser to 'Abdullah until the Amir was obliged, under considerable British pressure, to exile him along with his comrades for anti-French activities. Arslan followed 'Azma, who had also been banished, to the Hijaz.37

450 Philip S. Khoury

It was through 'Adil Arslan and another Istiqlalist, Shukri al-Quwatli, that Shakib Arslan maintained direct contact with the younger group of radical Syrian nationalists. From different angles, members of the Arslan faction began to challenge Lutfallah and Shahbandar for control of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress and the overall Syrian nationalist movement. Despite Shakib Arslan's age and the fact that he and Ihsan al-Jabiri chose to spend most of their time in Europe, both men were looked to by the younger group of ultranationalists as leaders of political and intellectual integrity who steadfastly opposed the idea of cooperating with either Britain or France. Equally impressive to the Istiqlalists was that both notables, but especially Arslan, refused to shy away from the burning issue of Palestine.

Radical Nationalists, the Hashemites, and Ibn Sa'ud

As early as October 1922, French Intelligence observed that the Amir Michel Lutfallah was beginning to lose the direction of the Syrian-Palestinian Con- gress.38 But it was not until early March 1924 when Sharif Husain laid claim to the Caliphate, that lines of division within the Congress and the overall Syrian national movement became more visible.

Husain's claim, which immediately followed the abolition of the Caliphate by the Turkish National Assembly, sparked a lively theological debate which caused powerful political and ideological undercurrents to pull at the Muslim religious establishment in the Arab countries. There was no unanimity on the resurrection of the Caliphate - whether the present time was propitious or whether the institution should be resurrected at all. Arab religious experts who believed that the Caliphate had to be revived because it was the one central institution in Islam that provided the Muslim community with unity amidst the wide diversity of its local interests, believed equally that control of the insti- tution should be returned to its rightful heirs, the Arabs.39 But there was no unanimity on whether Sharif Husain was qualified to become Caliph, despite the publicity campaign he orchestrated in his own support which met with more than slight approval in the territories directly influenced by his family. In fact, significant support for Husain's claim came from many religious leaders in Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo.40 But the leading opinion among mem- bers of the Arab Muslim religious establishment was that his claim was inop- portune and ephemeral.4' Several prominent religious scholars, among them Shaikh Rashid Rida, openly opposed Husain's bid for the Caliphate. The Hash- emites were accused of being intellectually unqualified to deal with critical theological questions of the spiritual domain and incompetent, self-seeking, and mercenary in the temporal domain. For Rida and other theologians, the very fact that the Hashemites had chosen to align with Britain in an attempt to realize their personal ambitions and that they continued to do so long after all promises made to the Arabs had been broken, was sufficient evidence to render them ineligible for Islam's most esteemed office.42

But rather than political-theological reasoning, it was the sudden shift in the balance of power in the Arabian peninsula which sapped Sharif Husain's claim

Factionalism among Syrian Nationalists during the French Mandate 451

of its force. 'Abd al-'Aziz ibn Sa'ud, who had already consolidated his position of political paramountcy in key parts of Arabia, overran the Hijaz in a few months, captured Mecca, and forced the Sharifs abdication. Husain's eldest son, 'All, desperately tried to hold Jidda, but a year later was himself driven out. In January I926, Ibn Sa'ud added Husain's title, King of the Hijaz, to his own title, Amir of Najd. Although the question of reviving the Caliphate lin- gered, Husain was no longer a serious contender. His loss of authority over the Holy Places removed yet another feather from the Hashemite cap.43

Ibn Sa'ud's victory gave political rivalries within the Syrian nationalist move- ment and in the Congress greater definition and dimension. His conquest was highly acclaimed in Muslim reformist circles and by secular nationalists in the Istiqlalist, anti-Hashemite mold. Despite the provincialism of his regime, these elements regarded Ibn Sa'ud as the one Arab statesman who remained untainted by foreign control.44 Moreover, he not only regarded the Hashemites as ille- gitimate spiritual and temporal authorities, he also subscribed to and defended a religious ideology and set of dogmas, Wahabism, which was particularly attractive to Salafiyya reformers like Rida and his disciples.45 Meanwhile, younger radical nationalists, aside from being impressed by Ibn Sa'fid's ability to prevent Arabia from falling under European hegemony, began to look to him as a solid source of political support, especially given their dislike and distrust of the Hashemites and their Syrian allies. Not only did Ibn Sa'ud serve as a strong check on Hashemite designs and particularly those of 'Abdullah in Trans- jordan, but he did not seem to entertain any ambitions in Syria.

With respect to the Hashemites, Husain and 'Abdullah were the Sharifs most disliked and distrusted by Arslan, Rida, and the Istiqlalists. Husain was re- garded as a collaborator and intriguer; the loss of his mini-kingdom in the Hijaz also proved his incompetence. 'Abdullah not only continued to serve British interests in the region, he even began to conciliate the French; the very fact that he agreed to expel from Transjordan several Istiqlalists was a perfect indication of his lack of pan-Arab solidarity. Soon thereafter, he confirmed the opinion of radical pan-Arabists by failing to come to the aid of the Syrian rebels during the Great Revolt.

The Arslan-Istiqlalist faction's attitude toward the other important Hashemite prince, Faisal, was less black-and-white. Faisal was still highly esteemed by many pan-Arabists, particularly by men like Ihsan al-Jabiri46 and 'Adil Arslan, who had been part of his inner political circle in Damascus. After several years of exile, these nationalists yearned for the reestablishment of an independent monarchy in Syria around which they could rally and whose progress they would inevitably hope to guide. Despite the political turbulence in Faisal's Syria, those days were fondly recollected. It was the one time that these na- tionalists had been able to combine their administrative training with their political ideals in the service of an Arab state. After all, they were urban notables of a particular upbringing and social class who were used to exercising independent influence in their societies. In Europe or in Cairo their political careers had been severely disrupted or drastically reoriented. What had been most familiar and preferred was that brief period when they had cooperated

452 Philip S. Khoury

with Faisal in the struggle for Arab independence. As for Faisal, he was thought to be more honest and straightforward than his father or his brother, 'Abdullah, to whom the Lutfallah-Shahbandar faction was linked. He had never forced Syrian nationalists out of Iraq as 'Abdullah had in Transjordan, and many pan- Arabists did not regard him as a British stooge. In fact, because Faisal had sought in the opening years of the Iraqi monarchy to "interweave" his dynastic ambitions with those of the Arab nationalist movement, the monarchy's inter- ests were seen as "antithetical" to those of the British.47

There were others, however, who, because of their age or lack of prominence, or both, had never really known Faisal intimately and could only recall that he was a moderate who had shown a willingness to cooperate with the Euro- peans to save his monarchy in Syria. Though driven from Damascus, he was now well ensconced in Baghdad, but still harboring ambitions in Syria. To these men, one Hashemite prince was like another: they were all, in the final analysis, self-seeking agents of the British. By contrast, Ibn Sa'ud, who had no identifiable territorial or dynastic ambitions beyond Arabia and who seemed willing to give "unconditional" support to the Syrian nationalists, was a more acceptable statesman with whom to do business.48 In any case, these younger radical nationalists, frustrated by Hashemite intrigues, had lost their interest in the idea of monarchy. Though they did not hesitate to play one Arab monarch against another in their quest for control over the Syrian nationalist movement, republicanism was rapidly becoming a more attractive alternative to monarch- ism.49

Thus, on the eve of the Great Revolt in Syria, the Arslan-Istiqlalist alliance within the Syrian-Palestinian Congress had already crystallized. It could be characterized by its pan-Arabism, its reluctance to collaborate with the British in the struggle to oust the French from Syria, and its various shades of op- position to the Hashemites.

IMPACT OF THE GREAT REVOLT: A CHASM IN NATIONALIST RANKS

The Great Revolt was the longest and most far-reaching political upheaval of the French Mandate.50 It lasted for nearly two years, from July 1925 until June 1927, originating in the remote Jabal Druze but quickly spreading to Damascus, Hama, and Aleppo, and spilling into the southern districts of Leb- anon. The Revolt was profoundly anti-imperialist in character, the culminating expression of five years of widespread resentment to capricious French rule. Indeed, it attracted participants from nearly all walks of life in Syria: the urban absentee landowning class and commercial bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia- both Western-educated professionals and Muslim religious leaders - artisans and members of an incipient modern working class, peasants, and even some bed- ouin tribes. Each of these classes or communities had been alienated by French policies. Among the many grievances fueling the Revolt, some stood out more than others. There was strong opposition to those French policies which fos- tered and exacerbated traditional sectarian conflicts in the country, showed a

Factionalism among Syrian Nationalists during the French Mandate 453

distinct favoritism toward the religious minorities, promoted a series of ad- ministratively isolated minority enclaves, tampered with the internal affairs of Syria's various communities, and humiliated and emasculated the Muslim ma- jority by seizing control of their institutions while debasing the symbols of their pride. Other grounds for provocation concerned France's inability or unwill- ingness to promote any recognizable financial and economic interests other than her own. French monetary policy, which tied a new Syrian paper currency to a continuously depreciating French franc, appeared to be melting away a considerable portion of Syria's national wealth. Meanwhile, the devastation wrought by World War I, the debilitating reorientation forced on the Syrian economy by the arbitrary partition of Greater Syria in its aftermath, and the continued erosion of Syrian industry by the spread of the European economy, helped to create and maintain a situation of widespread unemployment and skyrocketing inflation in the country. On the one hand, the French supported a tightfisted fiscal policy in areas such as education, agricultural development, public works, and industry; on the other, they spent profusely on the repressive arms of the state, the army and police, on unwieldy and overlapping state administrations, and on such useless propaganda as the display of "democratic" institutions which were in fact completely under French control.

In the early years of the Mandate, the French imposed a Moroccan method of rule in Syria which meant that behind the facade of native administration power ultimately rested with the French High Commission. It focused not only on isolating Syria's compact minorities, the Druzes and the Alawites, from the mainstream of Syrian-Arab political culture, but on playing a more malleable countryside against the towns - the strongholds of nationalism - and on playing cooperative urban notables against the leaders of the nationalist movement. In this period, the French neither adapted nor refined their method of rule to fit the Syrian context which happened to be more socially and politically advanced than the Moroccan one. France's North African experience proved unsuitable to Syria, and the French officials sent out to govern, many of whom were military officers whose previous assignments had been in the Maghrib, were insufficiently trained. Some officials never grasped the idea of Mandate while others knew hardly anything about the political and social landscape in Syria. They regularly offended the personal sensibilities of the Syrian populace. The measures they employed to control the population were especially repressive when carried out by French colonial troops like the Senegalese. In such ways, the French managed to elicit a violent response from a variety of classes and communities, urban and rural, Muslim and Christian, rich and poor.

On the political level, French policies were specifically tailored to weaken and isolate the forces of nationalism. During the early years of French occu- pation, nationalist leaders were regularly frustrated in their efforts to assert an effective claim to adequate consideration from the ruling system in Syria. De- spite their high degree of independent influence, especially among the politically conscious and active populations in the large towns of the interior, and their recognition as "natural" leaders of urban society, nationalists were completely ignored by the French High Commission which refused to appoint them to the

454 Philip S. Khoury

top posts in government they so coveted and felt they deserved. Although the French reinforced the narrow parameters of political life known in Syria in late Ottoman times by confining the summit of politics to interactions between themselves, as replacements for the Turks, and the urban notables who formed the backbone of the absentee landowning-bureaucratic class, they still managed to deny the nationalist fraction of this class an effective resource base in gov- ernment. In fact, the High Commission widened the scope for intraclass conflict which had been the moving force behind the rise of Syrian-Arab nationalism in the last years of the Empire by rewarding with government posts and special privileges those urban notables who were prepared to collaborate uncondi- tionally. Collaborating notables in this period were often those elements who had been rendered politically marginal by their nationalist rivals during the Faisal interlude in Syria and who, with the arrival of the French, found a golden opportunity to reestablish their power and influence by hanging onto the coat- tails of the High Commission.

Naturally, Syrian nationalists were always on the lookout after 1920 for opportunities to shift the political balance in their favor. One such opportunity arose in early 1925 when a new French High Commissioner, General Maurice Sarrail, departing from the hardline policies of his predecessors, granted Syrians the right to freely organize political parties in preparation for national elections. Inspired by Dr. Shahbandar, who had been granted his second pardon by the French in the summer of 1924, nationalist leaders founded the People's Party.51 The structure and aims of the People's Party were characteristic of the national independence movement at large. Its leadership resembled an ad hoc, loosely knit alliance of urban notables and middle class professionals, most of whom had spent time in prison and in exile on account of their political beliefs and activities, and who were regarded, at least in Damascus society, as dedicated nationalists. Whether absentee landowner, merchant, or intellec- tual, each leader was the representative of his class or interest group and the exponent of its grievances against the French. Each possessed, in varying degrees, sufficient independent influence to contribute a personal support sys- tem to the cause of the Party. And each perceived the Party as the symbol of his own power. The People's Party was essentially an elitist organization through which its leaders could press their demands on the High Commission, and discredit their rivals in government, the collaborating notables. The Party had a primitive political platform calling for Syrian unity and independence, no social and economic program, and no organized cadres, just the personal followings of its individual leaders. Under such conditions, political mobili- zation could have only been on an intermittent basis.

One indication of the rather low level of organization and preparedness among nationalists in Syria was that the People's Party was caught off guard by the rebellion in the Jabal Druze.52 Although popular discontent in Damascus and other towns was increasing daily, as the result of economic paralysis and re- newed political repression (in spite of the High Commissioner's promises that greater political freedoms were imminent), the People's Party had no plans at the time to launch an armed uprising against the French. It was only after Dr.

Factionalism among Syrian Nationalists during the French Mandate 455

Shahbandar and his comrades received strong indications that the Druze rebels were scoring military successes against the French army that the People's Party shifted its strategy from one of political mobilization for elections in October to one of full-scale rebellion.

But despite its lack of preparation, the People's Party moved quickly. In a short time it forged a military and political alliance with the Druze insurgents led by Sultan al-Atrash. The ease with which this alliance was constructed had much to do with the nature and orientation of the rebel Druze leadership. Although the objectives of their uprising were local in origin - to prevent the French from breaking the traditional power structure in the Jabal Druze - Sultan al-Atrash and other Druze chiefs had become increasingly infected by the idea of nationalism radiating from Damascus. Indeed, by World War I the Jabal Druze had been irretrievably lured into the political orbit of Damascus. Druze political links with Damascus were facilitated by the growth in the late nineteenth century of commercial ties which brought members of the Druze elite into touch with the Ottomanized elite of the city. By the early 1920s, one section of the Druze elite represented by Sultan al-Atrash had become attracted to the idea of Druze political integration in a unified Syria free of foreign suzerainty. Opposition to the dissident Druze leaders came from that section of the Druze elite which had been cultivated by the High Commission and stood for continued Druze separatism. Encouraged by nationalists in Damascus, Sultan Pasha began to express the goals of his rebellion in terms of Syrian national unity, terms at the heart of People's Party ideology. By early Septem- ber I925, six weeks after the outbreak of revolt, Syrian nationalist and Druze leaders established a Provisional National Government in the Jabal Druze, with Sultan al-Atrash as president and Dr. Shahbandar as vice-president. The Pro- visional Government's flag was the same one that had flown over Syrian Con- gress headquarters in Damascus in 1920. Its proclaimed goals included a na- tional government with a freely elected representative assembly, a national army, and the evacuation of the French Army of occupation. Shortly thereafter, the Revolt assumed national dimensions.

Since the People's Party was in exclusive control of the national indepen- dence movement inside Syria at the time of the Great Revolt, the Lutfallah- Shahbandar faction in the Syrian-Palestinian Congress Executive was able to maintain a political edge over the Arslan-Istiqlalist faction of radical pan-Ar- abists. Since the French occupation, sustained nationalist resistance in Syria had been organized almost exclusively by Dr. Shahbandar and his closest allies, men who were of a similar political persuasion. Simply, those nationalist leaders whom the French permitted to return to Damascus after I920 were the only ones able to construct a political apparatus through which the grievances and frustrations of the urban populations could be channeled into political resis- tance. Although Arslan and the Istiqlalists were increasingly successful in their bid to challenge the Lutfallah group outside Syria, they were unable to build a political base inside the country because they and other radical nationalists were not granted pardons by the French. At the outbreak of the Great Revolt they remained isolated in exile. Furthermore, they had no choice but to throw

456 Philip S. Khoury

their full weight behind the People's Party leaders who had taken charge of the Revolt. Their personal rivalries and ideological disputes were placed on the back burner and, as long as the Revolt seemed to be making progress, a unity of nationalist ranks was preserved.

It was only after the military balance inside Syria began to shift irreversibly in France's favor in the spring of I926 that factionalism became dangerously divisive, splitting the Syrian independence movement wide open, and ultimately crippling it for a whole generation. But even before the Revolt's prospects soured, two new developments occurred which were eventually to give fac- tionalism fuller expression, precipitating the schism: one was the Arslan-de Jouvenel meeting, and the other was the establishment of a rival fund-raising organization to the Lutfallah-controlled Syrian-Palestinian Congress.

Arsldn-de Jouvenel Meeting

In November 1925, Shakib Arslan, the nationalists' chief emissary and pub- licist in Europe, was invited to an exclusive audience with M. Henry de Jou- venel in Paris, just before the newly appointed French High Commissioner's departure for Beirut. Arslan's candid conversation with de Jouvenel, a liberal politician and journalist who most recently had been a French delegate to the League of Nations, concerned what Amir Shakib claimed was an "official" Syrian formula for resolving the Syrian question.53 He proposed that if France granted Syria independence, allowed the Alawite territory to become part of a unified Syria, and permitted the Syrian districts attached to Lebanon in I920 to choose by plebiscite the state to which they wished to belong (either Syria or Lebanon), then the nationalists would be willing to concede to France ex- clusive economic and strategic advantages in Syria such as the right to issue loans, train the Syrian army, establish a naval base on the Syrian coast, and conclude a mutual defense treaty. Never before had a Syrian nationalist leader offered such compromises and demonstrated such moderation. In response, M. de Jouvenel said that while he could not sign an agreement immediately, he would study Syria's claims carefully and work for an accord.54

Arslan's proposals created much confusion and consternation back at Con- gress headquarters in Cairo and in the Jabal Druze where the Provisional Na- tional Government of Sultan al-Atrash and Dr. Shahbandar was steering the Revolt. Both Michel Lutfallah and Shahbandar felt that their own political prestige and influence had been undercut by Amir Shakib's maneuvers in Paris. Their angry reaction was not so much to Arslan's proposed compromises - though many nationalists felt that he had conceded too much - but rather to his success at securing access to a high-ranking French official, something they both had failed to achieve.

Lutfallah attacked Arslan for approaching de Jouvenel without first seeking permission of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress Executive and for reformulating the Congress's most important principle of "no compromise" with the French. Subsequently, when de Jouvenel decided to meet with Congress leaders during a brief stopover in Cairo at the end of November, Lutfallah saw to it that his

Factionalism among Syrian Nationalists during the French Mandate 457

faction on the Executive Committee took a hard line; from the first moments of their meeting, the Lutfallah group antagonized the High Commissioner by calling for the immediate evacuation of French troops from Syria, a nationalist demand Arslan had assiduously avoided in Paris.55

But even though the Congress Executive opposed Shakib Arslan's compro- mises, Michel Lutfallah's motives were quite suspect. By this time he had already lost much of his personal influence over the Congress. His enormous wealth and his relations with 'Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar and not his politics enabled him to retain the Congress presidency. Lutfallah's uncritical support of the Hashemites and his reputation for secretly playing politics with any European power or Arab political party that could further his own ambitions which, by 1925, included a hereditary throne for himself in Lebanon, was damaging to his reputation.56 So was the revelation that the wealthy Sursuk family of Beirut and Cairo, with whom the Lutfallahs were intermarried, had recently sold more fertile land in northern Palestine to the Zionists.57 Michel Lutfallah did harbor more compromising political tendencies than virtually any prominent Syrian nationalist leader. For example, though in his public pro- nouncements on Syrian unity he called for the return of the territories annexed to Lebanon in I920, his actual preference was for the preservation of a Greater Lebanon in conjunction with his dynastic ambitions.58 Lutfallah's rather fan- ciful dreams were, when stripped of their fancy, in step with the ongoing crystallization of the Beirut commercial bourgeoisie's support for an inde- pendent Lebanon.59

Dr. Shahbandar was equally annoyed by Arslan's diplomatic coup. Later he would assert that de Jouvenel's promise to Arslan to scrutinize Syria's claims and to work toward a mutually acceptable solution only "threw dust in the eyes of the nation and dampened the force of upsurging public opinion."60 But Shahbandar was really perturbed because de Jouvenel had decided, even before setting foot in Syria, that he was to have no dealings with the leadership of the national revolt. From Shahbandar's perspective, Shakib Arslan was only a paid publicist living comfortably in Europe while he and his comrades were the leaders with whom the High Commissioner must come to terms.

There is little doubt that had Arslan been a member of the Shahbandar network then his overtures to de Jouvenel would have been far less objection- able. But such a liaison had never been possible. Shahbandar intensely disliked Arslan and the feeling was mutual. For years, the Syrian rebel leader had accused Arslan of being a Turkish agent, one of those who had advised the Turkish Governor, Jamal Pasha, during the War to execute his nationalist comrades, the vanguard of the infant Arab nationalist movement. In Shahban- dar's view, not only were Arslan's hands stained with Arab blood, but lately he had become a paid agent of the Germans. The Amir Shakib, of course, could no longer hide the fact that he suspected that Shahbandar and the Lutfallahs were British agents and Hashemite propagandists; in the final analysis, they were responsible for inviting the Europeans to occupy and dismember the Arab homeland.61

M. de Jouvenel's invitation to Shakib Arslan showed a definite French aware-

458 Philip S. Khoury

ness of the different tensions and conflicts within the Syrian nationalist move- ment, which they sought to exploit to their full advantage. By snubbing Dr. Shahbandar, the French were making it quite clear that they had no intention of recognizing and thus legitimizing their main enemy in Syria, the nationalist leadership steering the Great Revolt. To this policy the French remained faithful until the very end of the Revolt.

Financing the Great Revolt

The other major bone of contention aggravating tensions between the Lutfallah-Shahbandar and Arslan-Istiqlalist factions during the course of the Great Revolt concerned the control and distribution of financial assistance. Throughout the early 1920s, fund raising on behalf of the national independence movement conducted outside Syria was an integral function of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress. Indeed, this had been one of the main reasons for the establishment of the Congress. Normally, funds collected in the Amer- icas, the Arab countries, and in the rest of the Muslim world were sent directly to Congress headquarters in Cairo where a percentage was then secretly chan- neled to nationalist leaders in Syria. A certain sum was always reserved to cover expenses of the permanent delegation of the Congress in Geneva and Congress operations in Cairo which included financial assistance to political exiles and their families. Some funds and material aid did reach nationalists in Syria without ever passing through the Congress network, especially from Turkey and Transjordan, but this flow tended to be more erratic than that which came from Cairo.62

Before the Revolt it is unclear how dependent on external funding nationalist organizations in Syria were for their various activities. The French authorities tended to stress and exaggerate the extent of external and especially of foreign meddling. They were convinced that nationalist activities were all orchestrated and financed by the Syrian-Palestinian Congress which the Quai d'Orsay felt was little more than a front for the Hashemites and their British patrons.63 One matter is clear, however: once the Revolt erupted and the leadership of the nationalist People's Party assumed its direction, there was suddenly a much greater demand for regular external assistance. A much greater burden was placed on the Cairo Congress which had to exploit its existing contacts and to explore new ones in the Arab world and the West.64

There was one promising source still to be tapped in the Arab world, Ibn Sa'ud. Although the Lutfallahs were in charge of Congress financial affairs, their relations with former King Husain and the fact that they were Christian bankers made them ill-suited candidates to approach the conservative mon- arch.65 Other leaders also found themselves in a poor position to appeal to Ibn Sa'fid. For instance, Dr. Shahbandar and rebel chiefs like the aristocratic Bakri family of Damascus were known to be proponents of the idea of an Arab federation headed by Husain or possibly his son 'All. Shahbandar had already sought Ibn Sa'fd's aid personally when he secretly journeyed from his Jabal Druze hideout to the Hijaz in November 1925, only to return empty-handed.66 Ibn Sa'ud had little tolerance for friends of the Hashemites.

Factionalism among Syrian Nationalists during the French Mandate 459

There were, however, several exiled Syrian activists either on or connected to the Executive Committee of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress who were in contact with Ibn Sa'ud and in a strong position to cultivate him. Not surpris- ingly, all were radical pan-Arabists and anti-Hashemite, the most important individual being the Istiqlal Party leader, Shukri al-Quwatli. Quwatli was born in Damascus in 1891 into a family of prosperous landowners, merchants, and bureaucrats of the popular Shaghur quarter who made their ascent onto the social and political scene in the city after the midnineteenth century.67 Shukri studied in a Jesuit elementary school in Damascus and then at the city's elite government prepatory school, Maktab 'Anbar, before going on to Istanbul for higher training in public administration. Like many qualified young men of his generation from the Syrian upper classes, however, he was unable to secure a respectable post in the Ottoman provincial administration. Unionist "Turk- ification" policies in the Syrian provinces had limited his possibilities. Toward the end of his student days in Istanbul, Quwatli had already come into contact with members of al-Fatat. On his return to Damascus, he decided to join the secret nationalist society. In I916, with no stake in the Ottoman state, he joined the Arab Revolt, seeing brief action in Suez and participating in underground activities with his al-Fatat comrades. Eventually, however, he was arrested and jailed. In prison he is said to have been tortured for months and even to have attempted suicide rather than divulge any secrets to the Turks, an act which, even if apocryphal, vaulted him into the limelight as a nationalist hero.68

With the Allied victories and the establishment of an Arab government at Damascus, Shukri al-Quwatli became an official in local administration, though he devoted most of his time to extragovernmental nationalist activities as an official of the Istiqlal Party and as a member of the Damascus branch of the Palestinian-led Arab Club. But, forced to flee Syria in July 1920 under sentence of death, Quwatli took up residence in Cairo. During the next five years he became a sort of roving ambassador for the Syrian-Palestinian Congress, trav- eling between the Arab countries and Europe. In Europe his preference was for Berlin where he collaborated with Shakib Arslan, whom he much admired, in anti-French propaganda campaigns, causing the French to rank him with Arslan and Ihsan al-Jabiri as the "most dangerous" Syrians in exile. In this period, Quwatli served as the key link between exiled nationalists in Europe and different nationalist organizations operating in the Arab countries.69

Shukri al-Quwatli's access to Ibn Sa'fid was facilitated by his family's com- mercial relations with the Sa'ufd family, and more immediately through one of Ibn Sa'fid's most trusted advisers, Shaikh Yfisuf Yasin, himself a Syrian, a former Istiqlalist, and someone that Quwatli originally had sent to Ibn Sa'ud as an aide.70 An avowed anti-Hashemite who had an intense dislike for the British, Quwatli was greatly encouraged by Ibn Sa'fid's easy and rapid conquest of the Hijaz. By the outbreak of the Revolt, Quwatli had positioned himself as the main go-between for Ibn Sa'fid and the Syrian-Palestinian Congress; in the process he posed a challenge to Michel Lutfallah, the Congress's chief fund raiser.7T

This challenge, however, was only to assume serious proportions toward the end of 1925 when two of Quwatli's fellow Istiqlalists and close personal friends,

460 Philip S. Khoury

'Adil Arslan and Nabih al-'Azma, convinced their Palestinian nationalist ally, al-Hajj Amin al-Husaini, to establish a special finance committee for the Syrian Revolt in Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Committee (Lajnat al-Quds) was obviously designed to counter the influence of the Lutfallah-dominated Executive Com- mittee of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress, though its founders justified its creation as critical to the progress of the Revolt because of Jerusalem's prox- imity to Damascus. Indeed, once the new finance committee had been set up, both Arslan and 'Azma moved to Jerusalem to take over its day-to-day oper- ations and to assist its treasurer, 'Azma's older brother, 'Adil Bey.72 Mean- while, Shukri al-Quwatli, who was already engaged in smuggling money and arms to rebel leaders in Syria from the Hijaz, began to divert money to the Jerusalem Committee.73

As long as the Syrian rebels seemed to be making progress in their struggle, personal quarrels and political conflicts between the Congress Executive and the Jerusalem Committee were kept to a minimum in order not to disrupt the Revolt's momentum. But once the nationalist forces began to suffer setbacks in the spring of 1926 and more and more rebel leaders had to seek refuge beyond Syria's frontiers in Jerusalem or Cairo, these quarrels and conflicts could no longer be contained. Soon they were to be expressed publicly in mutually recriminating terms. The Lutfallah-Shahbandar faction dominating the Cairo Executive accused the Jerusalem Committee (which by this time had usurped the financial role of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress) of using its contacts, especially in the United States and Brazil where large Syrian emigre commu- nities resided, to divert to Jerusalem funds collected for the Revolt in the name of the Istiqlal Party. This enabled Party members to appropriate funds for their personal affairs instead of for the Revolt. Cairo accused 'Adil Arslan, for example, of banking ?E 6,000 raised by his brother Shakib, while Shukri al- Quwatli was supposed to have pocketed money he raised in Arabia. Cairo also accused him of using funds raised by the Jerusalem Committee to pay a rebel band leader to protect the Quwatli family's extensive apricot orchards near Damascus from raiding.74

Rebel chiefs, who began to pour out of southern Syria into Palestine as the Revolt teetered on collapse, also joined the attack on the Jerusalem Committee, and specifically on the Istiqlalists. The Bakri family, who had had six homes destroyed and whose large landholdings had been confiscated by the French, expected financial assistance from their comrades in exile, as did many other rebel leaders obliged to flee the embattled areas to avoid capture. Instead, they learned that there was to be little or no aid available for refugees because the Jerusalem Committee had decided to continue financing the Revolt. The na- tionalists who had recently risked their lives in the name of Syrian independence reacted bitterly as they helplessly watched those who had not carried arms or known the hardships of rebellion dictate strategy. In their estimation, the Revolt was a lost cause and it was urgent that they cut their losses.75

Indeed, the Great Revolt was a very costly venture with no tangible divi- dends.76 The number of Syrians killed, wounded, and uprooted during the Revolt was staggering. At least 6,000 rebels were killed, over Ioo,ooo persons

Factionalism among Syrian Nationalists during the French Mandate 46I

were left homeless, and one-fifth of the homeless flooded Damascus from dev- astated rural areas around the Syrian capital. Sections of Damascus were burnt- out shells, the result of punishing French air bombardments and artillery shell- ing. Similar scenes could be witnessed in Hama. The immense physical de- struction wrought by the Revolt in the towns and countryside paralyzed an already enfeebled economy. Commerce and industry were at a standstill. Ag- ricultural production was dangerously low, the result of severe summer drought exacerbated by damaging French military operations in the Hawran, the gardens around Damascus, and in central Syria near Homs and Hama. The physical and psychological exhaustion coming from nearly two years of full-scale re- bellion led to a general demoralization of the Syrian masses. Their "natural" leaders could no longer rally them to battle. The French government, which had increased the number of French troops in Syria and Lebanon from 14,00 in the summer of I925 to 50,000 by early I926, was clearly determined to retain its Mandate despite significant and humiliating military losses, the growing financial burdens of quelling a popular, mass-based uprising, and the pressures of internal and international criticism of its handling of the "Syrian question." For the Revolt leadership, this all became starkly apparent after the French army captured the military offensive in the spring of 1926 and the Paris gov- ernment decided that there were to be no diplomatic dealings or political com- promises with Syrian nationalists until the Revolt had been completely crushed.

Under such conditions, rebel leaders like Dr. Shahbandar and the Bakris, now in exile, viewed all efforts to keep the Revolt alive as fundamentally suicidal, both in military and political terms. They accused the Jerusalem Com- mittee and its supporters, such as Shukri al-Quwatli, Shakib Arslan, and Shaikh Rashid Rida, of being schismatics, men of a "doctrinaire literary type" who were never in touch with the realities of the Revolt. Although Shahbandar and his comrades admitted that they had called off the Revolt - an admission that provoked accusations of betrayal and national treason from their critics - they claimed that they really had no alternative since the Jerusalem Committee had withheld the funds and provisions required to keep it going.77 These rebel leaders accused the Jerusalem Committee of misappropriating funds for the Revolt and demanded that a new financial organization be established, one dedicated to assisting those individuals who had actually participated in the Revolt and were forced to take refuge outside their homeland.78

The Jerusalem Committee and its Istiqlal Party supporters also had a set of accusations, equally venomous. They claimed that had the Syrian-Palestinian Congress Executive continued to give priority on financial assistance to rebel forces inside Syria trying to keep the Revolt alive rather than to rebel leaders forced into exile, there would have been no reason to establish the Jerusalem Committee. In fact, Jerusalem accused Cairo of doing just what Jerusalem had been accused of- withholding funds earmarked for the Syrian insurgents.79 To make matters worse, the radical pan-Arabists bitterly criticized the Revolt's leadership for calling off the Revolt before the Syrian rebels had been decisively checked and defeated.

The charges, hurled back and forth between the two rival factions as to who

462 Philip S. Khoury

had diverted, withheld, or pilfered funds designated for the Revolt, illustrated the depth of division within the Syrian nationalist movement. The internecine rivalries also reflected the extent of frustration and hopelessness that pervaded the movement as the Revolt began to lose its strength, and its leaders their determination. But the nationalist movement was not only wracked by divi- sions; it had again lost its territorial base. Its leaders were left with little to do but argue as to who deserved the blame, and to fight among themselves for control of the movement in exile.

Radical pan-Arabists associated with the Istiqlal Party and Shakib Arslan were only able to seize the offensive in their struggle with the Lutfal- lah-Shahbandar faction on the Syrian-Palestinian Congress once the Great Revolt began to lose its momentum. In fact, the Istiqlalist call for renewed armed resistance inside Syria at a time when the Revolt's leaders were fleeing the country in droves was calculated to discredit these leaders, and their allies on the Congress Executive, at their weakest moment. Thus it was not an irrational plea made by misinformed individuals who had sat out the Revolt on the sidelines and, as Shahbandar and others claimed, were ignorant of the immense military obstacles to keeping it alive. There is no evidence to suggest that the Istiqlalists sincerely intended to prolong the Revolt. They were per- fectly aware that such efforts would only be wasted.

CONCLUSION

On the surface, differences between the Istiqlalists and the People's Party or the Jerusalem Committee and the Lutfallah-dominated Executive Committee of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress seem to reflect little more than the personal ambitions and struggles for power of Syrian nationalist leaders at home and in exile. While personal rivalries were certainly at play, a closer investigation reveals a more profound set of conflicts underlying these rivalries. These con- flicts focused on the diplomatic and political strategy of the Syrian national independence movement, its direction and ideological orientation. Moreover, they had existed, albeit in a somewhat more latent form, before the Great Revolt of 1925-1927. On one hand, the Arslan-Istiqlalist branch of the move- ment was avowedly pan-Arabist, anti-Hashemite, and opposed to cooperating with the British. It stood for the complete liberation of all Arab peoples and territories from foreign rule and the establishment of a unitary Arab state. Though for obvious reasons these radical nationalists were more directly con- cerned with Syrian affairs, they never shirked their "duties" toward Palestine, where by 1925 several of their most important members were based. On the other hand, the People's Party of Dr. Shahbandar and the dominant faction on the Syrian-Palestinian Congress Executive, were close to the Hashemites and willing to cooperate with the British to accomplish their more limited goal, the establishment of an independent Syrian state. Whether the Lutfallah-Shahban- dar wing of the Congress was willing to agree to a permanent separation of the Alawite territory from such a state, as the Istiqlalists claimed, cannot be as- certained. On the question of Lebanon, there is some evidence to suggest that

Factionalism among Syrian Nationalists during the French Mandate 463

the Lutfallah-Shahbandar group, under the influence of Michel Lutfallah, was willing to accept a Greater Lebanon.8?

These rivalries and conflicts were sufficiently pronounced by the end of 1926 to create permanent lines of division in the Syrian nationalist movement. In early I927 the movement's leaders - most of whom were now in exile in Cairo - began to wash their dirty linen in public. With the death of Najib Shuqair, the Lebanese Druze Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Congress and the one person who had managed to hold its factionalized members to- gether, the Congress began to break apart. The following October Shakib Arslan resigned from the Executive, a move intended to provoke Shaikh Rashid Rida and the Istiqlalist wing of the Executive to seize the leadership by deposing Michel Lutfallah. An embittered Lutfallah responded quickly by announcing the formation of his own Executive Committee from among his partisans and the exiled leadership of the Revolt. By December I927 two separate and an- tagonistic Committees were operating in Cairo, each one claiming to be the legitimate Executive of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress. One was Lutfallah's 'Abdin Committee (its office was located near the 'Abdin Palace) which in- cluded Dr. Shahbandar and other Revolt chiefs; the other was composed of Rashid Rida and various Istiqlalists headed by Shukri al-Quwatli.8' For all intents and purposes the Congress was now out of commission.

The collapse of the Great Revolt led to the final rupture in the Syrian-Palestinian Congress and the division of the Syrian nationalist leader- ship into two hostile formations. Furthermore, it left the Syrian people without an immediately identifiable local leadership and instrument of political expres- sion.

Although radical nationalists associated with Shakib Arslan and the Istiqlal Party now had political leverage over the Lutfallah group and Dr. Shahbandar's People's Party which they had managed to discredit, their political prospects were no more hopeful than those of their bitter rivals. Indeed, without recourse to armed struggle after the Revolt's failure, they helplessly watched the French reassert their control over Syria. It soon became obvious to Syrian nationalist leaders - regardless of their political persuasion or ideological perspective - that they could not expect to achieve the consideration they sought from the French-dominated ruling system unless they completely dropped their tactics of direct confrontation.

To be permitted to return to Syria and to participate in political life, nation- alists had to find different ways to make themselves more attractive political actors. First and foremost, they had to resign themselves to playing politics by the rules of the French High Commission. They had to seek and accept the need for more "delicate relationships." The idea of achieving complete inde- pendence immediately was no longer feasible, if it ever had been. The most nationalist politicians could hope to achieve was a "gradual relaxation" of French control. Nationalists, in a sense, were back to square one. They had to concentrate their energies on discrediting all local rivals, those urban notables who had been propped up by the High Commission in the first place. Only then could nationalists gain sole access to the French. This required an assertion

464 Philip S. Khoury

of their independent influence in Syrian society and subtle diplomatic bargain- ing.

Instead of immediate independence, nationalist leaders now ultimately aimed to govern alongside the French in anticipation of their eventual departure. The Mandate system, after all, was by its very nature transitional. And though nationalism, with its need for strong and broadly based alliances, still served as the best instrument for diminishing the influence of narrower loyalities to religious community, ethnic group, or region, it nevertheless had to be refash- ioned to conform to new political and military realities. Whatever revolutionary appeal nationalism had assumed during the Great Revolt this clearly had to be diluted.

Fortunately for most Syrian nationalists, the French made the difficult task of seeking a more cooperative spirit easier than they had anticipated. The pressures of the Great Revolt convinced the French government to reconsider its political strategy. Supported by the rise of a new climate of political thought in postwar French policy-making circles, the older, more costly methods of direct colonial rule were severely criticized. In the case of Syria, the Quai d'Orsay was prepared to discard these outmoded methods in favor of more "delicate relationships," based on diplomacy and not the overt threat of con- tinuous military domination.82 Thus, while the French set the rules of the political game in Syria, they also had to change them to accommodate those forces with real independent strength and influence in Syrian society, the na- tionalists.

This shift in French Mandate strategy was first revealed in March I928 when the High Commission announced a General Amnesty for Syrian rebels. Many prominent nationalists in exile hurriedly packed their bags and rushed back to Damascus to organize their supporters for upcoming national elections. Tacked on to the Amnesty declaration, however, was a "blacklist." Prevented from returning home were the most influential leaders of the Great Revolt, including Dr. Shahbandar and Sultan al-Atrash. Also barred were Shakib Arslan and all members of the Istiqlal Party.83 The French had conveniently decided that they were to pay the price of the Revolt. Isolated and frustrated, most of these politicians were left to hurl abuses at one another from their respective head- quarters in Cairo or from Geneva, and to watch a new nationalist organization, the National Bloc (al-Kutla al-Wataniyya), rebuild the independence movement inside Syria without their support and generally free of their pressures.

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

NOTES

Author's note: This article is a revised version of Chapter VII of my unpublished doctoral dissertation, "The Politics of Nationalism: Syria and the French Mandate, I920-I936" (Harvard University, I980), II, 585-63I. I wish to express my thanks to Albert Hourani and Mary Christina Wilson for their helpful suggestions at different stages in its preparation.

Factionalism among Syrian Nationalists during the French Mandate 465

'For a discussion of these tendencies, see my "Politics of Nationalism," I, 121-125. 2Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798-1939 (London, I962), p. 293. 3Most notably, Rustum Haidar, a Sorbonne-educated member of a leading Arab Shi'i family of

Ba'labakk. See Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (Princeton, I978), p. 319.

4Among those Syrians who held high posts in 'Abdullah's government or diwan were 'All Rida al-Rikabi, Nabih al-'Azma, 'Adil Arslan, Mazhar Raslan, Rashid Tali'a, and Hasan Pasha Abu'l Huda.

5Conversation with Farid Zain al-Din (Damascus, 14 April 1976); Muhammad 'Izzat Darwaza, Hawla al-Haraka al-'arabiyya al-haditha (Sidon, 1950), I, 30, 77-78.

6y. Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 1918-1929 (London, I974), I, I 6.

7For the activities of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress in Geneva, see Marie-Ren6e Mouton, "Le congres syrio-palestinien de Geneve," Relations Internationales, I9 (Autumn 1979), 3I3-328. The announcement of the establishment of the Congress met with negative reaction in Lebanese Maronite circles. Meanwhile the French authorities forced local government officials in Damascus to protest the existence of the Congress by sending a telegram to Geneva. However, a second telegram was also sent to Geneva supporting the Congress; this was done secretly and with the knowledge of the Directors-General of the Damascus State and most members of the Consultative Council. See PRO, FO 371/II977, vol. 6457, Palmer to FO, 12 October 1921.

8Besides Michel Lutfallah, the Congress Executive included Shaikh Rashid Rida (Vice-Presi- dent); Najib Shuqair (Secretary), a Druze from Mt. Lebanon; As'ad al-Bakri, son of Fawzi and nephew of Nasib; Dr. Khalil Mishaqa, a Damascene Protestant, members of whose family had served as American Consul and as Dragomans of the British Consulate in Damascus in the nine- teenth century; al-Hajj Adib Khair, a wealthy merchant of Damascus; Sa'id Tali'a, a Druze from Mt. Lebanon and cousin of Rashid Bey; Shukri al-Quwatli; As'ad Daghir, a Lebanese Greek Catholic writer; and Khair al-Din al-Zirikli, a Damascene writer of Kurdish extraction. See France, Ministere des Affaires etrangeres (hereafter MAE), Levant, I918-I929, Syrie-Liban, "Note," 10 December 1926, vol. 211, p. 22; Salname: siiriye vilayeti, 1302/I885, pp. 98-99.

9Porath, The Emergence, pp. 121-122.

'?Elie Kedourie, England and the Middle East (London, 1956), p. 153. "See my "Politics of Nationalism," I, 122.

'2Porath, The Emergence, pp. 112-114. Porath's account and analysis of the meetings and of the reactions of Palestinian leaders to the maneuvers of their Syrian comrades is revealing.

'3MAE, Syrie-Liban, "Renseignement," 24 October I922, p. 68. '4George Lutfallah personally contributed ?S (Syrian lira) 30,000 (600,000 French francs) to the

Congress's permanent delegation in Geneva in 1922 (MAE, Syrie-Liban, "Note," 20 July 1925, vol. 211, pp. 94-97).

'5Shahbandar married into one of the most prominent absentee landowning families of Damascus, the Mu'ayyad al-'Azm family. He derived an income from his wife's lands and from property he inherited from his paternal grandmother. Markaz al-Watha'iq al-ta'rikhiyya (Damascus, Syria), al- Qism al-khass, Nazih Mu'ayyad al-'Azm Papers, 'Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar (Paris) to Mu'ayyad al-'Azm, 27 December 1923, no. 5I. For information on the Shahbandar family see Muhammad Adib Taqi al-Din al-Husni, Kitdb muntakhabdt al-tawdrikh li-dimashq (Damascus, 1928), II, 901.

'6Hasan al-Hakim, "Mfijaz tarjama hayat al-za'im al-khalid al-maghffr lahu al-duktfir 'Abd al- Rahman al-Shahbandar" (unpublished biographical sketch of Shahbandar given to me by the author), p. I; Virginia Vacca, "Notizie Biografiche su Uomini Politici Ministri e Deputati Siriani," Oriente Moderno, 17 (1937), 473-474; The American University of Beirut, Directory of Alumni 1870-1952 (Beirut, 1953), p. 42; PRO, FO 684/7/I, vol. 2257.

'7Including David Hogarth, at the time the Director of the Arab Bureau and a noted Oxford archaeologist. In a letter to the British Foreign Office dated 22 June I924 Hogarth wrote that Shahbandar was a "Syrian Patriot," and "honourable and cultivated man," and a "very loyal admirer of ourselves" (PRO, FO 371/5774, vol. IOI64). Shahbandar was also one of seven na- tionalists who on I I June 1917 met Sir Mark Sykes in Cairo and received from him a British pledge (known as the Declaration to the Seven) which supposedly contained "assurances" that the Arab

466 Philip S. Khoury

provinces liberated by the military actions of their inhabitants during the War would become completely independent. See T. E. Lawrence in The Times, 1 September 1919, p. II.

"8Vacca, "Notizie," pp. 474-475; al-Hakim, Mljaz tarjama, p. 3. '9PRO, FO 371/2043, vol. 10164, 19 September I923. 2"Hasan al-Hakim, Mudhakkir(dt sacfatlndt min ta'rikh srrlyya al-haditha (Beirut, I966), II, 151. 2Oriente Moderno, 17 (I937), 32; PRO, FO 371/2043, vol. IOI64. 22Shahbandar, who was assassinated in 1940, was accused by some of his enemies of being an

atheist. 23MAE, Syrie-Liban, "Note," 20 July 1925, vol. 211, pp. 222-223; PRO, FO 371/7847, vol. 7578,

28 July 1922.

24This quarter also contained a large Greek Orthodox community of merchants. 25Adham al-Jundi, A'lam al-adab wa al-fann (Damascus, 1958), II, 373-375. 26Hourani, Arabic Thought, pp. 303-304. 27MAE, Syrie-Liban, "Renseignement," 24 October 1922, vol. 208, p. 68. 28Ibid.

29Ibid., Hourani, Arabic Thought, pp. 298-307. 3?Ibid., pp. 222-224; al-Jundi, A'lam, II, p. 374. Arslan was also Rida's biographer. See Shakib

Arslan, Rashid Ridd aw ikha' arbd'n sana (Cairo, 1932). 3'Rida was president of the General Syrian Congress in Damascus in 1919, though this position

was largely ceremonial (PRO, FO 371/3149, vol. 6453, IO March 1921). 32MAE, Syrie-Liban, "La Propagande," 19 April 1923, vol. 208. Both al-Jabiri and Arslan used

Turkey as a base to make propaganda against the French in the early I920s. Also see MAE, Syrie- Liban, "Sarraut Telegram," I8 November 1925, vol. 210, p. i8.

33PRO, FO 371/600, vol. 2IO, I2 January 1923. 34Jurj Faris, Man huwa fi Suriyya 1949 (Damascus, 1950), p. 78; Markaz al-Watha'iq al-

ta'rikhiyya, al-Qism al-khass, 'Abd al-Rahmdn Shahbandar Papers, Shahbandar (Baghdad) to Hasan al-Hakim, I5 March 1927, no. 7/23; ibid., 28 March 1927, no. 9/25.

35The Arab Club had branches in Damascus and Jerusalem. Until April 1920, the Jerusalem branch was headed by al-Hafi Amin al-Husaini. See Porath, The Emergence, p. 78.

36Other members of the Istiqlal Party included Khair al-Din al-Zirikli, As'ad Daghir, Riadh Sulh, Rashid al-Husami, Amir Mustafa al-Shihabi, Wasfi al-Atasi, Ahmad Muraiwid, Ahmad Qadri, Sa'id Tali'a, Tawfiq al-Yaziji, Khalid al-Hakim, 'Izzat Darwaza, Mu'in al-Madi, Shukri al-Quwatli, and 'Awni 'Abd al-Hadi. Two members who dropped out of the informal organization early on were Sa'dallah al-Jabiri and 'Afif Sulh. See al-Musdwwar (Damascus weekly youth magazine), 14 (9 September 1936), 20.

37Adham al-Jundi, Ta'r?kh al-thawrdt al-suriyya (Damascus, I961), pp. 240-241, 541. 38MAE, Syrie-Liban, "Renseignement," 24 October 1922, vol. 208, p. 68. 39PRO, FO 684/11I /98, Smart (Damascus), to FO, I5 March 1923. 40Information on support in Syria for Husain's claim comes from the following sources: PRO,

FO 684/111/98, Smart to FO, I5 March 1923; FO 371/276I, vol. I003, Satow (Beirut) to FO, I5 March 1924; FO 371/4141, vol. IOI64, Damascus Consul to FO, 28 April 1924; FO 684/111/121, Smart to FO, 20 March 1924; FO 684/11II/208, Smart to FO, 22 April 1924; Alif B' (Damascus daily newspaper), I5, I6 March 1924; Oriente Moderno, 4 (1924), 236-237; MAE, Syrie-Liban, "Telegram," 2 September 1922, vol. 274, p. II.

4'PRO, Air Ministry/2340o5, "Note on Pan-Islamism," High Commissioner (Baghdad) to Reed, 14 November 1931.

42Muhammad Rashid Rida, al-Khildfa (Cairo, 1341/1922-23), pp. 73 ff., cited in Hourani, Arabic Thought, p. 305. Another prominent critic of the Hashemites was the Damascus religious leader, Shaikh Kamil al-Qassab, who in 1924 was in exile in the Hijaz. He had opposed Hashemite dealings with the British since Faisal's days in Damascus. See, al-Jundi, A'ldam, II, 77-78.

43The Caliphate question was finally set aside in May 1926, when a Caliphate Congress was held in Cairo, attended by delegates from Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, the East Indies, British India, the Yemen, the Hijaz, Palestine, Syria, and Iraq, but with no representatives from Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, the Najd, or the Muslim communities in the Soviet Union. Although the Congress confirmed a continuing need for such an institution, it concluded that conditions were not ripe for

Factionalism among Syrian Nationalists during the French Mandate 467

its reestablishment. The Caliphate question remained dormant with intermittent agitation for its revival in times of trouble or at future Islamic Congresses. See PRO, Air Ministry/23/405, High Commissioner (Baghdad) to Reed, 14 November 1931; A Sekaly, "Les deux Congres Musulmans de 1926," Revue du Monde Musulman, 64 (1926), 3-219; Hourani, Arabic Thought, p. 184.

44Actually, Ibn Sa'fd's two governments in the Najd and Hijaz were soon to receive large British subsidies. See Khaldun S. Husry, "King Faysal I and Arab Unity, 1930-1933," Journal of Con- temporary History, 10 (I975), 328-329.

45Hourani, Arabic Thought, p. 305. 46According to one keen observer of political life in Damascus after the War, when lhsan al-

Jabiri was Faisal's Chamberlain, he instructed the Amir in all forms of protocol. "He told him what to say and whether or not to stand when greeting someone in his office" (Muhammad Kurd 'All, al-Mudhakkirdt [Damascus, 1948-195I], II, 327).

47Batatu, The Old Social Classes, p. 25. 48MAE, Syrie-Liban, "Interview with Edmond Rabbath, 12 July 1927," vol. 213, pp. I6-24.

49Owing to their traditional connections to Turkey, Aleppine nationalists depended much more on external assistance from Turkey than from the Hashemites or Ibn Sa'ud. See my "Politics of Nationalism," I, 315-335.

5?On the general causes of the Great Revolt of I925-I927 see ibid., II, 527-553. For an excellent analysis of the influence of French Moroccan policies on Mandate policy in Syria, see Edmund Burke III, "A Comparative View of French Native Policy in Morocco and Syria, I912-I925," Middle Eastern Studies, 9 (May I973), 175-186.

5'The following analysis of the People's Party (Hizb al-Sha'b) leadership is drawn from my "Politics of Nationalism," II, 414-427.

52The following analysis is drawn from ibid., pp. 445-453. 53Henry de Jouvenel was born in Paris in I876. He began his rise to prominence after the turn

of the twentieth century, becoming editor of the Paris daily, Le Matin. In 1921 he was elected Senator from Correze, joining the Groupe de la Gauche democratique, and briefly served as Minister of Public Instruction in March 1924. See PRO, FO 371/6954, vol. 10852, Crewe to Cham- berlain, 10 November 1925.

54Edmond Rabbath, "Courte Histoire du Mandat en Syrie et au Liban" (Part I, untitled), pp. 8-12, unpublished manuscript lent to me by the author who was a Syrian student in Paris at the time of the Arslan-de Jouvenel rendezvous.

55Ibid., pp. I3-I6. Before de Jouvenel left Cairo for Beirut, the Syrian-Palestinian Congress set forth its demands: the formation of a unified Syrian state, and a plebiscite in Lebanon to decide whether it would join the Syrian state; the immediate establishment of a national government and an organic law based on the principles of national sovereignty; elections for a Constituent Assembly by direct universal suffrage; the abolition of the Mandate and a Franco-Syrian accord of limited duration safeguarding the principles of national sovereignty; and the evacuation of the army of occupation. De Jouvenel responded with the assertion that these proposals were "perfectly un- acceptable" and that France was unable "to forget the obligations she assumed before fifty nations of the League."

56Conversation with Sabri Farid al-Bidaiwi (Damascus, 9 July 1977). 57The Sursuks were also Greek Orthodox merchants. See Y. Porath, The Palestinian Arab

National Movement 1929-1939: From Riots to Rebellion (London, 1977), II, 83. 58MAE, Syrie-Liban, "Interview with Edmond Rabbath, 12 July 1927," vol. 213, pp. 16-24;

ibid., "Bulletin d'Information de la Direction du Service des Renseignements," Beirut, i6 January 1927, vol. 201, p. 182; ibid., "Note," 20 July 1926, vol. 2 11, pp. 94-96; PRO, FO, 371/4744, vol. 12303, Henderson (Cairo) to Chamberlain, 29 December 1927.

59I have tried to trace the development of this attitude in my "Politics of Nationalism," I, 209-210, 282-283; III, 985-987.

6"Rabbath, Courte Histoire, p. Io. 6'MAE, Syrie-Liban, Beirut, 16 January 1927, vol. 201, p. 182; PRO, FO 371/2142, vol. 20849,

6 May I937. To complicate matters, the Druze clans of Arslan and al-Atrash had been on bad terms for some time. See, MAE, Svrie-Liban, "Interview with Edmond Rabbath, 12 July 1927."

62Ibid., 'Note," 20 July 1926, vol. 21 1, pp. 94-96.

468 Philip S. Khoury

63Ibid., 1922, vol. 40, pp. 48-49. The French claimed that one of the British "secretaries" at the League of Nations - a former Professor in Cairo, received money for distribution to the Syrian-Palestinian Congress from the British Consul in Geneva on Lloyd's Bank of Geneva checks. See ibid., "Note," o1 December 1926, vol. 211, pp. 222-224.

64Although accurate figures for the amount of money raised outside Syria for the Great Revolt are unavailable, French sources (ibid., I6 August 1927, vol. 213, pp. 85-86) estimated that at least ?E Ioo,ooo was sent to Syria from the following:

Cairo Committee ?E io,000* United States 40,000 Iraq 4,000 Brazil 17,000 Arabia (including the Hijaz) I5,ooo Hyderabad 2,000 Jerusalem Committee 12,000

Total ?E 00,000

*Although this figure seems small, much of the money raised in the Americas at first passed through the Cairo Executive Committee network.

65In fact when Michel Lutfallah, who had served Sharif Husain as his banker and adviser, proposed to Ibn Sa'fid that he open a bank in the Hijaz after its conquest, he was flatly turned down. See ibid., 27 January 1926, vol. 210, p. 105.

6H. St. John Philby Papers, Rosita (McGrath) Forbes to Philby 23 May 1927, Box XIV, File 3, Middle East Centre, St. Antony's College, Oxford.

6*Al-Husni, Kitdb muntakhabat, II, 861-862; Salname: suriye vilayeti, I288/187I-I872, p. 72;

ibid., I308-1309/I890-1891, p. 66; ibid., 1309-1310/1892-1893, pp. 102, 124; ibid., 1312/1894-1895, p. 71.

68Faris, Man huwa, pp. 6-8; Vacca, "Notizie," p. 490. 69MAE, Syrie-Liban, 10 December 1925, vol. 210, pp. 38-40. 70Patrick Seale claims that Yasin was one of several Syrians al-Quwatli sent to Ibn Sa'ud as

aides and advisers (The Struggle for Syria: A Study in Post-War Arab Politics [London, I965], p. 26).

71MAE, Syrie-Liban, Cairo to Briand, 2I January 1926, vol. 210, p. 93; ibid., Cairo, 24 August I927, vol. 213, pp. 82-83.

72'Adil al-'Azma had been a member of the Istiqlal Party in Damascus. Imprisoned by the French on occupation, he was soon exiled to Transjordan where he assisted his brother Nabih and 'Adil Arslan in forming a branch of the Istiqlal Party. For biographical sketches of the 'Azma brothers, see al-Jundi, Ta'rikh, pp. 539-541.

73Shahbandar Papers, Shahbandar to Hasan al-Hakim, 22 April 1927, no. 10/26. Al-Quwatli was assisted by two other Istiqlalists: al-Hajj Adib Khair, a wealthy Damascene merchant, and Khalid al-Hakim, an Istanbul-trained engineer from Homs, who was also instrumental in getting Ibn Sa'iud to support the Syrian independence struggle.

74MAE, Syrie-Liban, Cairo, 24 August 1927, vol. 213, p. 159; Shahbandar Papers, Shahbandar to Hasan al-Hakim, 22 April 1927, no. 10/26. 'Adil al-'Azma was also accused of pilfering a large sum of money as was the Mufti, al-Haij Amin al-Husaini. See MAE, Syrie-Liban, 16 August 1927, vol. 213, pp. 85-86; Porath, The Emergence, I, 203.

75MAE, Syrie-Liban, French Consulate (Jaffa) to Consul-General (Jerusalem), 10 October 1927,

vol. 23, pp. 202-205. 76See my "Politics of Nationalism," II, 520-527, 550-553. 77Shahbandar Papers, Shahbandar to Hasan al-Hakim, I5 March 1927, no. 7/23. The Shahbandar

group claimed that when the Jerusalem Committee did send money for the Revolt, it went to rebels operating in the gardens (known as the Ghiuta) around Damascus, and not to the Jabal Druze because it considered the Jabal to be much less critical to the success of the Revolt. See MAE, Syrie-Liban, I6 August, vol. 213, pp. 85-86.

Factionalism among Syrian Nationalists during the French Mandate 469

78Markaz al-Watha'iq al-ta'rikhiyya, al-Qism al-khass, Nazih Mu'ayyad al-'Azm Papers, "Pe- tition of Zu'ama of Ghuta and Damascus," I August 1927; ibid., Nasib al-Bakri Papers, Nasib al-Bakri to Michel Lutfallah, 12 March 1927, no. 30.

79MAE, Syrie-Liban, Muhammad Trabulsi to 'Adil Arslan and Nabih Bey (most likely al-'Azma), 29 December 1925, vol. 211, pp. 142-150.

8?Ibid., "Notice par Enkiri," 25 October 1927, vol. 214, pp. 18-21; Oriente Moderno, 7 (1927), 564-566. In the early 1920S the Lutfallahs and their in-laws the Sursuks, who were among the wealthiest members of the Lebanese comprador bourgeoisie with branches in Beirut and Cairo, had already begun to engage in joint ventures with French capitalists in Lebanon. For the Lutffllahs, whose activities on the Syrian-Palestinian Congress made them personae non gratae with the French High Commission, there was a growing need to mend their fences in order to pursue their various financial ventures unencumbered by travel restrictions and other obstacles which the High Commission may have imposed. See PRO, FO 371/9712, vol. 10162, Lord Allenby (Cairo) to Beirut Consulate, 8 November 1924. As for other Lutfallah-Sursuk financial links, together the families owned the Cairo Agriculture Company, which had a capital of ?E 250,865 at the end of 1928.

Michel Lutfallah was its president and Nicholas and Victor Sursuk were members of the Board. See MAE, Syrie-Liban, "Bulletin of the Cairo Agriculture Company," 1929, vol. 216, no. IO.

8'PRO, FO 371/4744, vol. 12303, Henderson (Cairo) to Chamberlain; Oriente Moderno, 7 (1927),

564-566, and 8 (1928), 56; Conversation with Hasan al-Hakim (Damascus, 12 March 1976); Con- versation with Nasuh Babil (Damascus, 20 February 1976); Nazih Mu'ayyad al-'Azm Papers, "Diary (1927)," no. 15. Other members of the " 'Abdin Committee" included Hasan al-Hakim, Tawfiq al-Yaziji, Khalid al-Khatib, Tawfiq Haidar, and Niqila Haddad. The Istiqlalist-dominated "Committee" included Khair al-Din al-Zirikli, As'ad Daghir, 'Abd al-Latif al-'Asali, al-Hajj Adib Khair, Nabih al-'Azma, Sa'id Awda, and Sa'id Tarmanlni.

82Albert Hourani, "Revolution in the Arab Middle East," in P. J. Vatikiotis, ed., Revolution in the Middle East and Other Case Studies (London, 1972), p. 70.

83Markaz al-Watha'iq al-ta'rikhiyya, al-Intiddb al-faransi, 80/943/1864, 14 March 1928, which includes a copy of Arrete no. I817 of 14 March 1928. Among those nationalists linked to Dr. Shahbandar on the blacklist were Hasan al-Hakim, Nazih Mu'ayyad al-'Azm, Sa'id Haidar, and 'Uthman al-Sharabati. Members of the Istiqlal Party refused amnesty by the French were Shukri

al-Quwatli, Nabih al-'Azma, 'Adil al-'Azma, Sami Sarraj, and 'Adil Arslan. Other blacklisted notables and Revolt leaders included Mustafa Wasfi, Yahya al-Hayati, Shaikh Kamil al-Qassab, Sa'id al-'As, Muhammad 'Izz al-Din al-Halabi, Fawzi al-Qawuqji, and Ihsan al-Jabiri. The total number of Syrians and Lebanese denied amnesty at this time was sixty-four.