Symbols and Flags of the State in Syria (7) Taj al-Din al-Hasani

• Born in Damascus, Taj al-Din al-Hasani studied the sciences of Sharia and Arabic language under his father, Sheikh Badr al-Din al-Hasani, one of the most famous scholars of his time in the Levant.
• He studied Islamic jurisprudence under Sheikh Muhammad Rashid al-Attar.
• In 191 AD, he was appointed as a teacher at the Sultaniya School in Damascus and a member of the School Reform Council.
• Jamal Pasha, the military ruler of Syria during World War I, chose him to be the editor-in-chief of Al-Sharq, a newspaper established by the Ottoman Empire in Syria.
• He collaborated with the nationalist thinker Shakib Arslan, who became an assistant editor-in-chief
• The first issue of Al-Sharq was published on April 27, 1916.
• After Prince Shakib resigned from his position, in protest against Jamal Pasha’s execution of a group of Arab leaders in Damascus and Beirut, Sheikh Taj assigned his friend, the journalist Muhammad Kurd Ali, to edit the newspaper, which continued to be published until the Ottomans left Syria on September 26, 1918.
• Al-Hasani was one of the delegates representing Damascus at the General Syrian Congress in 1919, which called for the independence of Syria (from Antioch to Gaza) under the rule of Prince Faisal bin al-Hussein.
• Prince Faisal pledged allegiance to Damascus on October 3, 1918, and placed himself at the disposal of his father, Sharif Hussein bin Ali, the leader of the Great Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire.
• Prince Faisal appointed him director of the royal palace in Muhajireen, at the foot of Mount Qasioun.
• Sheikh Taj was named a member of the Sharia Court of Cassation and the Syrian Shura Council.
• During the years of the Faisali era (1918-1920), he joined the Syrian National Party, founded by Amir al-Hajj Abd al-Rahman Pasha al-Yousef, who advocated for the unity of the Syrian territories and their complete independence from any European domination.
• In 1919, he ran in the parliamentary elections held in Syria and won a parliamentary seat representing Damascus in the General Syrian Congress, the first legislative authority in Syria’s modern history.
• He participated in the coronation ceremony of Prince Faisal as king on March 8, 1920.
• He traveled from Syria after King Faisal was deposed from the throne of Syria in the summer of 1920, after a military confrontation with the French army in the Battle of Maysaloun on July 24, 1920, to France and met most of the influential men of the Mandate, who asked him to return to Damascus and form a government of national unity in the early days of the Great Syrian Revolution, succeeding the government of President Subhi Barakat.
• The formation of the French request was rejected due to the political tensions and the armed uprising across the length and breadth of the country.
• A few months after the end of the revolution, he was reassigned a second time, and Sheikh Taj accepted the task and formed his first government on February 15, 1928.
• The government consisted of only six ministers, all of whom were notables.
• This ministry was tasked with overseeing the general elections for the Constituent Assembly, which was supposed to draw up Syria’s first republican constitution that would fulfill national demands.
• Elections were held on April 24, 1928, where Sheikh Taj was able to put his name on all electoral lists in Damascus, including the list of the National Bloc, and became known as “Sheikh of the lists.”
• Of the nine MPs from Damascus, the National Bloc won eight seats, with the ninth seat going to Sheikh Taj himself.
• The elected committee held its first meeting on June 9, 1928, and began working on writing the new constitution under the supervision of Hashim Atassi, the president of the conference, representing the National Bloc. They drafted a modern constitution within a period of two weeks, without mentioning the French mandate either near or far
• The French High Commission in Beirut was angered and asked them to amend six articles of the constitution, but Hashim al-Atassi refused to do so. France objected to giving the President of the Syrian Republic, rather than the French High Commissioner, the right to conclude international treaties and declare peace and war, and demanded that the legitimacy of the mandate be constitutionally recognized.
• Sheikh Taj proposed accepting the French amendments to avoid any clash with the mandate authority, and was attacked by Damascus deputy Fakhri al-Baroudi, forcing him to leave the conference in protest and anger.
• Then, when the nationalists persisted, France dissolved the Constituent Assembly and suspended the constitution indefinitely.
• On August 14, 1930, Sheikh Taj made a slight reshuffle in his government, after abandoning some of the ministers defeated in the elections. He took over the interior portfolio himself, replacing Said Mohassen, and brought the great jurist Shaker al-Hanbali as Minister of Justice, instead of Subhi Nayyal, and transferred Tawfiq Shamia from the Ministry of Public Works to the Ministry of Finance, and assigned the independent Fuad al-Adli the portfolio of Works, but retained both Muhammad Kurd Ali and Abdul Qader al-Kilani in their positions.
• On October 27, 1930, he ousted al-Kilani and named former Shura Council Chairman Badie Muayyad al-Azm as Minister of Agriculture in his third government.
• Sheikh Taj was very proud of the urban achievements of his government, and he asked the government press to write a book about them, which was published in Damascus in 1931.
• These achievements included the establishment of the Ibn Rushd Hospital for communicable diseases in Aleppo, the Razi Hospital for skin and eye diseases, a mental hospital in al-Qusayr and another in Deir ez-Zor.
• During his reign, 24 schools for boys, four schools for girls and three schools for Bedouins were inaugurated, along with the Higher School of Arts in Damascus, which he inaugurated on November 9, 1929.
• Achievements included the construction of the Damascus-Aleppo road and the Quneitra-Baniyas road, and the establishment of Saraya al-Hakam in Aleppo (in Souq al-Juma’a opposite the citadel), Idlib, Qamishli, Ras al-Ayn, Afrin, al-Bab, Manbij, and Jarablus in the north, and Qatana and Douma in the Damascus countryside. Finally, the modern parliament was located in Damascus, built on the ruins of an old movie theater.
• He ran for parliamentary elections in 1932 and won his usual seat representing Damascus.
• He also ran in Syria’s first presidential election. He ran against Hashim al-Atasi, representing the National Bloc, former Prime Minister Ali Rida al-Rikabi, representing the Royal Umma Party, former Damascus President Haqi al-Azm, representing the pro-French movement, former Syrian Union President Subhi Barakat, representing the Northern Forces, and independent candidate Mohammad Ali al-Abid, former Ottoman ambassador to Washington.
• Al-Abid won the first presidency on June 11, 1932, and Sheikh Taj was absent from the scene again until 1934, when the President of the Republic asked him to form the new Syrian government to replace the government of President Hakki al-Azm.
• Sheikh Taj changed his policy and did not rely on any of his traditional allies except for his loyal friend Jamil al-Elishi, who was appointed Minister of Public Works. The rest of the portfolios went to figures affiliated with the National Movement, which had previously been highly critical of Sheikh Taj, accusing him of collaborating with and working for the French.
• One of the pillars of the National Bloc, Hosni al-Barazi, was appointed Minister of Knowledge and Atta al-Ayoubi, who was close to Hashim al-Atassi, was appointed Minister of Justice. However, this government came under great attack from the street when the leader of Aleppo and the leader of the Northern Revolution, Ibrahim Hanano, died in November 1935.
• Most of the political forces came out in his farewell and chanted slogans against the prime minister and the mandate system, and France responded by arresting the demonstrators and putting them in prisons, which sparked larger and wider demonstrations in all Syrian cities, Sheikh Taj tried to contain the situation, without any success, and the demonstrations turned into a general strike known as the Sixty Strike.
• After the French arrested Damascus deputy Fakhri al-Baroudi, one of the pillars of the National Bloc. In the end, France abandoned Sheikh Taj to appease the street and agreed to appoint a new prime minister accepted by the leaders of the bloc, Atta al-Ayoubi, on February 24, 1934.
• In 1941, the country was experiencing violent unrest as a result of World War II and the entry of Free French forces into Syria to liberate it from the Vichy regime affiliated with Nazi Germany. The leader of the French resistance, General Charles de Gaulle, came to Damascus and promised the Syrian people independence, but he insisted that the French army remain in Syria until the war in Europe was over, and Hashem Atassi was invited to return to the first presidency, but he refused saying: The French had broken their promises in the past! Sheikh Taj was chosen to be president of Syria, on the condition that he would rule without a parliament or a constitution until the end of the battles in Europe.
• Sheikh Taj had spent the World War years in Paris and returned to Damascus under Vichy rule, where his movements aroused the suspicion and concern of pro-German officials, who placed him under house arrest in his palace in the Halbouni area.
• The ban was lifted with the arrival of General Charles de Gaulle in Syria in 1941, who met at length with Sheikh Taj and asked him to reach an agreement with the leaders of the National Bloc to legitimize his new rule.
• Sheikh Taj agreed and offered yesterday’s rival Jamil Mardam Bey to be the head of government under his reign, but the deal fell through due to Hashim Atassi’s opposition.
• Sheikh Taj stipulated to the French to unify the Syrian country under his presidency and to include both the Alawite state and the Druze state in the Syrian Republic.
• In his response to the French, Sheikh Taj said: “Since I am an appointed president and not elected, you can abandon me with the stroke of a pen, so I would like to be formally invited to take over the reins of affairs, just as the government of England invited King Faisal I to assume the throne of Iraq.” Indeed, Charles de Gaulle agreed to his request and sent a written letter to Sheikh Taj, officially inviting him to take over the presidency on September 12, 1941.
• The letter began by addressing Sheikh Taj as “Mr. President” as a former prime minister, and ended with the words: “With all due respect, Mr. President.”
• To gain added legitimacy, Sheikh Taj asked Hassan al-Hakim, one of the most honest and experienced Syrian politicians in managing state affairs, to be the first prime minister under his reign. Hassan al-Hakim was a friend and ally of the late Dr. Abdul Rahman al-Shahbandar, one of the leaders of the national struggle in Syria, who was assassinated in 1940.
• Sheikh Taj cooperated with him and the Abd al-Rahman al-Shahbandar Movement, and brought one of its figures, lawyer Zaki al-Khatib, to be minister of justice. He also cooperated with some members of the National Bloc, naming four of its figures to government positions.
• Sheikh Taj cooperated with minorities and invited them to hold government positions during his reign for the first time in Syria’s history.
• He appointed Munir al-Abbas, a member of the Alawite community, as minister of works, and Abdul Ghaffar Pasha al-Atrash, a leader of the Great Syrian Revolution, from the Druze community, as minister of defense.
• On January 12, 1942, a large ceremony was held at the Government Serail to celebrate the annexation of the two mountains to Syria, and a postage stamp was issued on this occasion, bearing the drawing of Sheikh Taj, then Foreign Minister Fayez al-Khoury telegraphed to the capitals of the world, declaring Syria’s independence from the French Mandate in the name of President Taj al-Din al-Hasani.
• Official responses came from world monarchs and presidents, adding international legitimacy to the new covenant and its president.
• President Taj al-Din al-Hasani’s relationship with Prime Minister Hassan al-Hakim began to crack due to the latter’s insistence on reopening the investigation into the assassination of Dr. Abdul Rahman al-Shahbandar, which Sheikh Taj rejected in order not to embarrass the French authorities in Syria.
• Hassan al-Hakim resigned and Sheikh Taj, one of the leaders of the National Bloc, appointed Hosni al-Barazi to form the government, but it also lasted only a short time, due to a conflict between al-Barazi and the president over the powers of the prime minister.
• After the resignation of Al-Barazi on January 8, 1943, the choice fell on Jamil Al-Alshi, an old friend of Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hasani, who participated with him in all his previous governments and was head of the government at the beginning of the French era.
• The government was short-lived due to the death of the President of the Republic just nine days after its formation on January 17, 1943.
• President Taj al-Din al-Hasani was buried in Damascus with an official and popular funeral attended by Lebanese President Emile Adeh and a number of Iraqi, Saudi and Jordanian leaders.
• He was buried in al-Bab al-Saghir cemetery, and it was said at the time that he had suffered from blood poisoning, following the diagnosis of Lebanese doctors coming from Beirut.
• Jamil al-Alchi was acting president until March 1943.
• Presidential elections were held in the summer of that year, bringing Shukri al-Quwatli to the first presidency, succeeding Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hasani.

We at Syrian Future Movement, as we recall the founding statesmen of Syria, we recall one of the men of independence and one of the symbols of the flags of the first Syrian state, President Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hasani, in a sequential file that we present to you to include symbols and flags of the Syrian state, in order 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 to its glory and glory, after the years of oppression, tyranny and corruption.