First President of the Syrian Arab Republic “Muhammad Ali al-Abid”
- He is Muhammad Ali bin Ahmad Izza Pasha bin Hulu Pasha al-Abed, from the Masharafa clan, one of the branches of the Arab Mawali tribe that settled in the Badia al-Sham since the Abbasid period.
- He was born in Damascus in 1867, and his family is considered one of the Syrian bourgeoisie that formed the local government under the Ottoman Empire.
- He was reputed to be “the richest man in Damascus, if not in all of Syria” in his time, and his wealth was estimated at one million English gold liras; his wealth was distributed among shares he owned in the Suez Canal, a real estate group spread across Europe, large agricultural lands including villages in Damascus Ghouta, especially in the Douma area, and gardens in the Canals neighborhood, as well as the Victoria Hotel, the oldest and most famous hotel in Damascus, which generated a large annual income.
- His great-grandfather Omar Agha played a role in quelling the sedition and providing relief to survivors during the massacres of 1860.
- He received his primary education in Damascus, then in 1885 he moved to Beirut and studied under Sheikh Muhammad Abduh.
- He moved with his family to Istanbul and entered the Galatasaray Sultanate School.
- He was sent to Paris, where he studied law, Roman legislation, and the principles of Islamic jurisprudence, from where he graduated in 1905.
- From Paris, he returned to Istanbul, where he was appointed as a judicial advisor in the Ottoman Foreign Ministry.
- During the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, he was appointed the Ottoman Empire’s ambassador to the United States.
- Due to the coup against Sultan Abdul Hamid II on July 23, 1908, his duties as ambassador were terminated.
- Fearing for his life, Muhammad Ali, his two brothers and his wife did not return to the Ottoman Empire, but moved from Washington to California and then to Europe, where he met his father.
- Abed spent the First World War traveling between Switzerland, France, and England, rubbing shoulders with European politicians and diplomats during his travels.
- After the end of the war, Abed and his family moved to Egypt, where his father died, and then returned to Damascus in 1920, shortly after the fall of the Syrian Arab Kingdom and the departure of King Faisal I.
- In Barakat’s first government, formed in June 1922, Abed became finance minister.
- After Sobhi Barakat was elected president for a year, he assigned Abed the Ministry of Finance.
- On August 1, 1922, he approved the agreement of the “Bank of Syria and Greater Lebanon”, which was established in Paris with French capital to serve as a central bank through which the Syrian pound is issued, on August 1, 1922.
- He left Barakat’s government and did not undertake any political work between 1925 and 1932.
- When the 1930 constitution was adopted, Abed decided to run for Damascus and received the support of former President Damad Ahmed Nami. He was active in his charitable work and participated with financial men in establishing a national bank and visited the spiritual institutions of various sects in Damascus, providing financial subsidies for mosques and churches to distribute to the poor and needy.
- He was elected as a consensus president. His inauguration ceremony took place in the palace courtyard with the firing of seventeen rounds of artillery to mark the beginning of the republican era, during which he raised the new Syrian flag, inspired by the flag of the Great Arab Revolt but with three red five-pointed stars in the center instead of the red triangle on the left.
- French President Albert François Le Brun awarded him the Order of the French Republic in October 1932, and he received it through French Commissioner Henri Ponsot.
- On December 21, 1935, the National Bloc organized a large memorial service to mark the fortieth anniversary of the death of Ibrahim Hanano.
- Al-Abed called for parliamentary elections, the third in the history of Syria (the first in 1928 and the second in 1932), which the National Bloc won with an overwhelming majority. One of the direct results of the agreement between the Bloc and France was the return of the Alawite Mountain State and the Druze Mountain State to the Syrian Republic on December 5, 1936, while retaining their administrative and financial independence.
- The new parliament opened its work on December 21, 1936. On the same day, Al-Abid sent his letter of resignation to the council, which accepted it.
- At the session in which the resignation was accepted, Hashim al-Atassi was elected president, while al-Abid left Syria for Paris.
- Al-Abed died on October 22, 1939, following a heart attack in a hotel in Rome.
- His body was taken to Damascus and buried there.
We at Syrian Future Movement, as we recall the memory of the founding statesmen of Syria, we recall one of the men of our country and one of the symbols of the flags of the first Syrian state, His Excellency President Muhammad Ali al-Abid, within a sequential file that we present to you, which includes symbols and flags of the Syrian state, with the desire to link our contemporary revolutionary present to a solid past and historical stations, hoping to revive in our people the need to build and create statesmen par excellence, to preserve the country, safeguard the gains, and restore the Syrian state its glory and glory, after years of injustice, tyranny and corruption.
