Symbols and Flags of the State in Syria (8) Fakhri Baroudi

• Fakhri Al-Baroudi (March 30, 1887 – May 2, 1966) was born in Al-Qanat neighborhood in Damascus. His father, Mahmoud Al-Baroudi, was a notable man, and his mother was from the Palestinian Al-Alami family, and her father was an advisor at the court of Sultan Abdul Aziz in Istanbul.
• He married Safiya Dalati, a cousin of First Lady Bahira Dalati, wife of President Shukri al-Qutli, and had no children.
• Fakhry El Baroudi was his father’s only child, so he treated him with excessive pampering, hiring nannies, assistants, and cooks to ensure his service and comfort.
• He asked his father to travel to France to specialize in agriculture, but Mahmoud Al-Baroudi refused, so Al-Baroudi ran away from his father’s house in February 1911 and enrolled in the University of Montpellier in France.
• He was forced to return to Damascus after just one year when his father cut off his allowance and his mother was unable to provide him with any material assistance.
• After returning from France, he worked as an editor at Al-Muqtabas newspaper before founding a weekly satirical newspaper called “Hut Balkhar”, which he edited himself in the Damascene vernacular, signing all his editorials with the pseudonym “Azrael”.
• When his father found out, he forced him to abandon his journalistic project. He worked as a clerk at the Damascus courthouse and then joined the Ottoman army as a volunteer, although he was exempt from compulsory military service because he was his mother’s only child.
• The Ottoman military command deployed him to the Palestinian city of Beersheba in the Negev desert, and he fought with the Ottomans in World War I, where he was captured by the British army in 1917.
• He was taken handcuffed to Egypt and remained in the hands of the English until the end of the war and the fall of the Ottoman state in Syria in 1918.
• Baroudi then returned to Damascus and pledged allegiance to Prince Faisal ibn al-Hussein, son of the leader of the Great Arab Revolt, Sharif Hussein ibn Ali, as Arab ruler of Syria. During his visits to Damascus
• Before the war, Prince Faisal was a guest in the house of Mahmoud Al-Baroudi in the Canals area, where he got to know and love Fakhri Al-Baroudi, so he appointed him as his personal escort throughout his reign in Damascus from October 3, 1918, until the Battle of Maysaloun on July 24, 1920.
• Mahmoud al-Baroudi was elected as a deputy from Damascus in the First Syrian Congress and participated with his son in the coronation of Prince Faisal as King of Syria on March 8, 1920.
• After Faisal’s rule was overthrown by the French army, in accordance with the Sykes-Picot Agreement signed between France and Britain during World War I, King Faisal left to the Palestinian city of Haifa and then to Europe, in search of a new throne for himself and his family, and Fakhri Baroudi was sentenced to death by the French Mandate government.
• He fled to Transjordan before an arrest warrant was issued for him and remained in Amman until 1923.
• Two years later, Fakhri al-Baroudi returned to Syria and joined the People’s Party, the first Syrian political party to emerge during the occupation, led by Dr. Abdul Rahman al-Shahbandar, whom al-Baroudi knew well through their joint work in the court of King Faisal, when al-Shahbandar was foreign minister.
• Al-Baroudi participated in the Great Syrian Revolution with its general leader Sultan Pasha al-Atrash, was sentenced to death again, and fled again to Amman, where he stayed for nearly two years.
• He opened a restaurant for intellectuals in the Jordanian capital, called “Al-Nadwa”, in which he served sandwiches and refreshments. However, financial worries continued to surround Al-Baroudi from all sides, so he resorted to a new job and agreed with his friend, the Palestinian poet Ibrahim Tuqan, director of the Arabic language section of the British Radio, to present a series of awareness episodes for Arab children to encourage them to good citizenship and fight colonialism through culture and the pen instead of the rifle.
• The French Mandate authority cut off the electricity supply to Damascus on the day of the broadcast, to prevent Baroudi’s voice from reaching his family over the airwaves, fearing his influence on Syrian youth, and then pressured the British radio station to stop the program.
• In the last stages of despair, Baroudi decided to volunteer for the Iraqi army, as he was a former companion of King Faisal I, who took over the throne of Baghdad after he was deposed from the throne of Syria, but the Iraqi government rejected the proposal because Baroudi did not hold Iraqi citizenship.
• After his return to Damascus, Fakhri al-Baroudi joined the National Bloc, the most prominent political organization that emerged in Syria to fight the French mandate through peaceful rather than military means, and was elected as a deputy from his city in the Constituent Congress tasked with drafting the country’s first republican constitution.
• He was re-elected as a deputy from Damascus in all legislative sessions from 1928 to 1943 and won an absolute majority in each session, due to his great popularity among young people and intellectuals.
• Al-Baroudi refused to accept any government position throughout his life, despite the various ministries that were offered to him during the reign of Hashim Atassi (1936-1939) and President Shukri al-Qutli (1943-1949), preferring to remain a deputy under the dome of the Syrian Parliament, defending the rights of the poor, the poor, the creative and the free patriots.
• Al-Baroudi opposed the rule of Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hasani, who was aligned with the Mandate Authority and was appointed prime minister in 1928.
• When Sheikh Taj returned to power in 1934 and tried to pass a friendship agreement with the French government to legitimize the French mandate, Fakhri Al-Baroudi announced his rejection of the project, saying: “The friendship agreement with France will not pass even if they set up 70 cannons on the walls of Damascus!”
• After the death of Aleppo leader Ibrahim Hanano in November 1935, Fakhri Al-Baroudi participated in his funeral, which turned into a popular demonstration against the French occupation, which was led by Al-Baroudi and his comrades in the National Bloc.
• France considered Baroudi the first instigator against it and ordered his arrest on January 20, 1936, which sparked the 60th strike in the length and breadth of the country, which demanded the release of the detainees and the recognition of the rightful demands of the Syrian people.
• Negotiations took place at the headquarters of the French High Commission in Beirut between the head of the bloc, Hashim Atassi, and High Commissioner Henri de Martel, which led to the end of the strike and the issuance of an amnesty for all political prisoners, led by Fakhri al-Baroudi.
• In 1934, Fakhri Al-Baroudi founded the first study and research center known to the Arab world, called “Al-Baroudi Office for Propaganda and Publishing,” with the main goal of securing a media and intellectual base for the Syrian national movement.
• He rented a corner of the National Bloc’s office near his home in the al-Qanat neighborhood, announcing the launch of an “intellectual revolution” in Syria, based on scientific research and publication, the destruction of the artificial borders imposed in the Arab Mashreq (i.e. the Sykes-Picot borders), and the rejection of sectarianism, tribalism, and clannishness.
• He bought a private printing press to print the periodicals and studies issued by his office and distributed them free of charge to universities, mosques, churches and Jewish houses of worship, in addition to major Arab newspapers and all Syrian state institutions.
• The topics that Al-Baroudi wrote about ranged from the criminality of the Zionist gangs in Palestine, through the right of self-determination for the peoples of the Third World, to the issue of the Iskenderun Brigade, the Syrian region that was annexed to Turkey in 1939.
• He hired a group of young intellectuals to manage his office and supervise his research, such as Dr. Nazem al-Qudsi, a young jurist recently returned from the University of Geneva, and Dr. Farid Zainuddin, a graduate of the American University of Beirut who became Syria’s ambassador to both Washington and Moscow. Al-Baroudi’s office also included lawyer Edmond Rabat, who participated in the 1936 negotiations, lawyer Ahmad al-Saman, a Sorbonne graduate who became president of Damascus University during the unity with Egypt, journalist Munir al-Rayyes, owner of the newspaper Barda, and Dr. Constantine Zurayk, one of the most prominent theorists of Arab nationalism who became president of Damascus University and the American University of Beirut. As for young Arabs, Baroudi contracted Akram Zaiter from Palestine, who later became his country’s ambassador to the Arab League, and Kazem al-Solh from Lebanon, the founder of the National Call Party. These young men formed the general body of al-Baroudi’s office and elected him as their president for a five-year term.
• In addition to scientific research, Baroudi employed several young photographers inside Palestine to take photographs of the Jewish gangs’ transgressions against the Arab population and their confiscation of land and property. Al-Baroudi would collect these photos in Damascus and then send them to major American and British newspapers requesting their publication, accompanied by an official letter bearing the words: “With the compliments of Baroudi’s office.”
• He established a special room to preserve Syrian maps, before and after the demarcation of borders when the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and another room to preserve the ownership papers of Palestinian lands, which are included in the Jewish Agency’s covetousness.
• At the beginning of every summer, after the annual graduation of students from Damascus University, Fakhri al-Baroudi would hold an official reception in his house, bringing together new graduates and the owners of factories and major companies in Syria. The graduating student would enter wearing a rose on the buttonhole of his coat, indicating that he was looking for work, and would penetrate among the factory owners to introduce himself and his specialty. Thus, Fakhry Al-Baroudi was the owner of the first “employment” office in the Arab world, providing free services to students.
• He divided the work in his office into three committees, the first economic, concerned with studies of industry, trade, customs tariffs and transportation, the second cultural, concerned with the arts, acting, encouraging young talents, sports, singing and playing, and the third political, aimed at governance, the constitution and party and parliamentary life.
• Baroudi also created rooms for specific studies according to geographic regions: North Africa, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Hijaz, Iraq, Europe, and the Americas: North Africa, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, Hejaz, Iraq, Europe, and the Americas.
• To provide information for young researchers, Baroudi built a huge library and subscribed to several international and local newspapers: 24 from Lebanon, 17 from Damascus, 9 from Brazil, 8 from Baghdad, 7 from Aleppo, 5 from Cairo, 2 from Latakia and Tripoli, and one each from Antakya, Zahle, Homs, Ragharta, Jerusalem, Jaffa, Mosul, Amman, Libya, Algeria, Greece, Italy, and Chile.
• As for the funding of Al-Baroudi’s office, it was through subscriptions to periodicals and donations from Syrian notables and institutions, in addition to Al-Baroudi himself, who supported the office that carried his name with an amount of 40,000 Qirsh, and the surplus money was spent on gifts, such as a Damascene sword presented to the leader of the Great Syrian Revolution, Sultan Pasha Al-Atrash, and a Syrian flag made of Damascene silk presented to Hashem Atassi when he was elected President of the Republic in 1936.
• Al-Baroudi’s office also printed a book about the Bludan conference and a booklet called “The Policeman’s Handbook” by Fakhry Al-Baroudi himself, which contains instructions for security and police officers on how to deal with citizens and illustrated instructions on all the details of their profession, from shining shoes to how to put the gun on the waist.
• Finally, the office published a study titled “The Palestine Catastrophe” by Baroudi and a translation of Adolf Hitler’s memoirs from the German language, Mein Kampf
• His name is associated with the franc project that emerged in the 1930s and the “Made in Syria” project. In his first project, Baroudi asked each citizen to donate one Syrian franc per month to raise a fixed and respectable amount of money on a regular basis for a public benefit project such as repairing a bridge, paving a road, or buying teaching materials for a remote school.
• Al-Baroudi refused to accept donations of more than one Syrian franc, always saying: “This project starts from the poor and returns to the poor, I want the monthly donation to continue and I am not looking for large numbers of individuals, everyone can donate one Syrian franc, whether rich or poor. I want to involve the poor in the renaissance of the Syrian nation, and I don’t want the donations of the rich to overshadow the donations of the middle class and the donations of the needy themselves.”
• Al-Baroudi promoted the franc project himself by printing pictures of him holding a large Syrian franc, which he distributed to Syrian newspapers and magazines, but due to the great success of the “franc project”, France prevented it from continuing, and it ended at the end of 1939.
• His second project, “Made in Syria,” aimed to encourage and support national industry. Baroudi began by drafting an “economic charter” and distributed it to Damascus merchants, asking them to use it as a guiding light in their commercial work.
• The charter asked traders not to import what was available in local markets and encouraged people to buy it, including crops, cheeses, cotton and clothing.
• He would go around the capital’s markets and address the people himself, saying: “Jihad is not only about arms, social, cultural and economic jihad is no less sacred in fighting the enemy.”
• In 1938, he traveled to the United States to register Syrian companies and factories at the New York World’s Fair.
• With lawyer Ahmed Izzat al-Ustad, he founded the Oriental Musical Club, which became the Conservatory after the evacuation and was based in the ancient Saroja market, outside the walls of the old city of Damascus.
• He hired a professor from Austria to teach piano and violin, and brought in lawyer Najat Kassab Hassan to manage the project, along with a number of experts such as Yahya Al-Saoudi, who teaches oriental music theory, Youssef Batrouni for western music, Saleh Al-Mahbak for mushahas, Hassan Al-Darkazli for solfege, Said Farhat for percussion, and Mohamed Al-Nahas for the oud.
• He received financial support from the government during the days of President Shukri al-Qutli, but this item was removed from the general budget at the end of the summer of 1949, when Baath Party founder Michel Aflaq took over the Syrian Ministry of Education, which he saw as wasteful and useless expenditures.
• Baroudi wrote to Aflaq in reproach:
  The evacuation of the deputies of my people
  They disobeyed my words and did not understand my intention
  To establish an institute of art that revives
  the heritage of our ancestors among the slaves
  But what excuse do I wish my hair
  For the people of knowledge, the people of sound judgment
  If they remained like others in confusion
  And they did not work to reform corruption
  Woe to the ministry with its people
  And woe to knowledge and the country.
• Fakhri al-Baroudi’s relationship with art dates back to the time of his father Mahmoud al-Baroudi, who used to gather musicians in his palace, such as the qanun player Omar al-Jarrah and his brother, the oud player Ibrahim al-Jarrah. Al-Baroudi repeated the experience years later, by adopting the comedian Abdel Latif Fathi in the 1940s, who was encouraged to replace the Egyptian dialect or classical dialect prevailing in the theater at the time with the spoken Damascene dialect. He supported a group of young artists, including Riad Shahrour, Saad al-Din Bakdounis, and Nihad Qalai, who was so influenced by Fakhri al-Baroudi that he borrowed his “soprano” tone of voice to portray the character “Hosni al-Borzan” in the black and white works with Duraid Laham on Syrian television.
• In addition, Al-Baroudi supported the talented monologist Salama Al-Aghwani, the artist Fahd Kaikati, and the singer of Qudood and Mushahat, Sabah Abu Qus, who adopted him when he saw his talent and brought the most important professors of oriental music to teach him the art of singing, introduced him to Damascus Radio as a professional singer, and invited him to sing before President Shukri Al-Qutli after giving him an artistic name inspired by Al-Baroudi’s own name, so that the Halabi boy became known as “Sabah Fakhri” from that day on.
• Between 1943 and 1963, Fakhry al-Baroudi’s house in Qanat became a haven for all Arab artists and intellectuals, with Umm Kulthum visiting whenever she visited Damascus and Muhammad Abdel Wahab and Ahmed Shawky coming to him. In the spacious grounds of his home, discussions on politics and intellectual matters of all kinds took place. From the 1930s to the mid-1960s, the Baroudi soirees were one of the main stops for every Arab intellectual visiting Syria.
• Forced to sell the house he inherited from his father due to the accumulation of debts, the house was turned into a printing press for Syrian journalist Wajih Baydoun, and Baroudi moved to a modest house in the Kiwan district, which was burned to the ground in 1963.
• With lawyer Munir al-Ajlani, he founded what was then known as the National Youth, the paramilitary arm of the National Bloc, which Baroudi wanted to be the nucleus of the future Syrian army.
• In 1936, the idea evolved into the “Iron Shirts,” inspired by the brown shirts of Italy and black shirts of Nazi Germany.
• In the Syrian version of these organizations, the boys wore a black tie and iron-colored shirt with military boots and a Faisalist hat, similar to those worn by King Faisal I and his officers during the Great Arab Revolt. On their right arms, the young “shirts” wore a red band similar to that of Hitler’s men, but instead of a swastika, the Syrians put a hand holding a torch of light on it.
• With their regular military gait and Nazi salute by extending their right hand forward, tight and erect, they roamed the streets of Damascus to protect the people from any harm and preserve the city’s security, heritage, and civilizational identity, considering themselves a companion to the disbanded Syrian army since 1920.
• The founders of the Iron Shirts promised a “holographic generation” like the Renaissance men of Europe, proficient in poetry, politics, literature, math and modern science, as well as chivalry and street fighting.
• Due to the many similarities between the Iron Shirts and the Nazi Party, the organization was said to be one of Hitler’s arms in Syria, and the French authorities dissolved it and confiscated all its offices and property.
• When the French army bombed the Syrian capital Damascus on May 29, 1945, and hit the Syrian Parliament with bombs in an attempt to assassinate the Speaker of the Council, Saadallah al-Jabri, and the President of the Republic, Shukri al-Qutli, Al-Baroudi took to the street wearing iron shirts and carried weapons with gendarmes and volunteers in an attempt to save the prisoners of the Damascus Citadel, where he was injured by a shrapnel in his neck, he also transported the injured and wounded to the English hospital in the Qassaa neighborhood and brought candles from churches to heal them after France cut electricity supply to Damascus.
• The Syrian government honored him with the Order of Merit with an honorary rank in the fledgling Syrian army after independence.
• Al-Baroudi did not differentiate between one ruler and another, despite his friendship and long association with the men of the National Bloc. He considered that he was working for the Syrian state and not for individuals, and he did not interrupt the public scene after the military came to power with the coup of leader Hosni al-Zaim in 1949, which ousted President Shukri al-Qutli, an old friend of Fakhri al-Baroudi.
• Hosni al-Zaim appointed him director of the Syrian army’s propaganda office. Al-Baroudi contracted with the young director Ismail Anzour to produce documentaries about the army and its combat capabilities, which were shown by his order in Syrian cinemas during the Palestine War.
• In 1956, he worked in the “Armament Week” committee to raise money for the military, along with Nasouh Babil, the head of the Journalists Syndicate, and the Mufti of Syria, Dr. Abu Al-Yasser Abdeen, and they collected 25 million Syrian pounds from the people, which were presented to the Syrian army.
• One of the clerics’ accusations against Fakhri al-Baroudi is that he wrote a book in his youth, titled “The Separation of the Discourse Between Safur and Hijab,” in which he defended women’s voyeurism.
• In 1951, there was a confrontation between Al-Baroudi and the excellent judge of Damascus, Sheikh Ali Al-Tantawi, over the Samah dance, which Al-Baroudi intended to revive, after it was once the exclusive preserve of sheikhs and mystics, as Al-Baroudi decided to adopt this dance and teach it to the female students of the Doha Al-Adab School, where the elite daughters of Damascene families were studying, as he saw that this Andalusian dance would become extinct and die if it remained confined to the world of elders, and decided to modernize it in cooperation with Adla Behm Al-Jazairy, president of the Women’s Union and founder of the Doha School.
• He brought Sheikh Omar al-Batsh from Aleppo, the custodian of mushahat and the greatest authority on ancient singing, to train the girls to sing, and he made them brightly colored silk dresses to appear on the stage of al-Azm Palace and perform a dance concert in the presence of Prime Minister Khaled al-Azm and Colonel Adib al-Shishakli, Syria’s military ruler, in the presence of Prime Minister Khaled al-Azm.
• Instead of prayers and supplications, Baroudi modified the words of the mushawat, introducing phrases of adoration and love.
• Despite the disagreement, Sheikh Ali al-Tantawi recognized in his memoirs Baroudi’s social and political status, and that he was one of the sheikhs of the struggle against the colonialists.
• After al-Tantawi’s sermon, which was broadcast on the radio, a fierce campaign was launched against al-Tantawi in most pro-Baroudi newspapers, led by the newspaper al-Naqal, which is affiliated with Interior Minister Sami Kabara, which called for al-Tantawi to be referred to the judiciary. The debate then moved inside the parliament, and the first to defend Ali al-Tantawi’s position was Minister Muhammad Mubarak, a Muslim Brotherhood deputy.
• Al-Baroudi was found guilty of incitement against the state and sentenced to a fine of one-tenth of his salary for two months.
• After unification with Egypt and the issuance of the Agrarian Reform Law in September 1958, seven months after the establishment of the United Arab Republic. Baroudi dared to write an open letter to Gamal Abdel Nasser opposing the law. The Vice President of the Republic, Akram al-Hourani, sent him a notice through the Damascus Governorate demanding that he vacate his house in the Kiwan area, under the pretext that the municipality intends to build a road in his place.
• The secessionist coup came before Akram al-Hourani implemented his plan, and Baroudi remained in his home until the summer of 1963, when he was forced to leave after the house was burned down during the bloody confrontations between Baathists and Nasserists at the entrance to the TV building in Umayyad Square.
• Baroudi was unharmed because he was out of the house, but his precious library was lost, along with most of his handwritten papers and diaries.
• He then rented a small apartment in the Rukn al-Din neighborhood at the foot of Mount Qasioun, where he stayed until his death on May 2, 1968.
• Al-Baroudi left a number of works, including: “The Separation of the Discourse between Safur and Hijab” (Damascus, 1934), “Memoirs of a Policeman” (Damascus, 1938), “The Disaster of Palestine” (Damascus, 1950), “Al-Baroudi’s Memoirs: Sixty Years Speaks (Beirut, 1951), Reconciliation with Israel (Damascus, 1957), and History Speaks (Damascus, 1960). His most recent work was the republication of the cookbook by Muhammad Hasan bin Muhammad al-Baghdadi, which was followed by a small book on Levantine cuisine, published in 1964.
• He compiled a dictionary of oriental music, which was burned in the fire of his house in 1963.
• He received the first medal in his life during World War I, when the Ottoman Empire awarded him the Ottoman Iron Medal, followed by the Independence Medal and the Arab Renaissance Medal, both of which were presented by King Faisal I in 1920, and in 1948 he received the Syrian Order of Merit of the Excellent Class, presented to him by President Shukri Al-Qutli, followed by the Lebanese Order of Merit, presented by President Bechara Al-Khoury in 1949.
• The people of Damascus gathered in front of the Badr Mosque in the Abu Rummana neighborhood to await the arrival of the funeral procession from his brother’s house in the Muhajireen area, until it was said that no Damascene at the time was present to bid him farewell.
• He was known by many nicknames including: Mr. Funnyman and Sheikh of the Youth of Syria.
• The coffin was wrapped in the Syrian flag and hoisted on the shoulders of men chanting: “There is no god but God … My pride is in you, the beloved of God.”
• After the prayer, the procession, accompanied by the police and gendarmerie, marched to the Adli Palace, where a group of young people snatched the coffin and marched it to the Bazouriya market, the Medhat Pasha market, and the Hamidiya market, in a popular parade during which all markets and shops were closed until the body arrived at the Umayyad Mosque.
• He is buried in the Little Gate Cemetery.

We at Syrian Future Movement, as we recall the memory of the founding statesmen of Syria, we recall one of Syria’s influential statesmen, and one of the symbols of the flags of the first Syrian state that contributed to influencing its structure, “Fakhri al-Baroudi”, within a sequential file that we present to you to include the symbols and flags of the Syrian state, in our desire to link our contemporary revolutionary present to a solid past and historical stations. We hope to revive in our people the need to build and create statesmen par excellence, to learn from their experiences, benefit from their negatives, and build on their positives, so that they preserve the homeland, safeguard the gains, and restore the Syrian state to its glory after years of oppression, tyranny, and corruption.