- He was born in the Qaimariya neighborhood in Damascus in 1879, from a middle-income Damascene family, his father being Mr. Saleh Al-Shahbandar.
- He received his primary and secondary education in Damascus, and traveled to Lebanon to study medicine at the American University of Beirut, where he graduated in 1906.
- In 1910, he married Sarah al-Muayyad al-Azm, the daughter of Taqi al-Din Bey Muayyad al-Azm.
- He joined the anti-Ottoman reformist circle headed by Sheikh Tahir al-Jazairy at an early age.
- He was brought to trial on charges of co-authoring a thesis on jurisprudence and mysticism and was almost imprisoned for an article in the Egyptian newspaper al-Muqattam about the succession of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, but his young age saved him from imprisonment.
- He traveled to Lebanon to study medicine at the American University of Beirut in 1902, and after his graduation, the university chose him as a professor and doctor for its students.
- In 1908, he returned to Damascus and contacted some opponents of Ottoman rule, such as Abdul Hamid al-Zahrawi, and free Arabs after the Ottoman coup in July of that year.
- He participated in the establishment of Arab societies.
- After the outbreak of World War I, the Federalists resorted to a policy of oppression and abuse, prompting Dr. Abdul Rahman al-Shahbandar to flee to Iraq to escape the Federalists’ pursuit of him.
- From Iraq, he went to India and then to Egypt.
- In Egypt, he became editor-in-chief of Al-Kawkab newspaper, which he left after realizing its dependence on English politics.
- With six of his Syrian brothers, he sought to take a covenant from Britain called the Covenant of Seven, which stipulated that every Arab country conquered by the Arab army would remain an independent Arab country.
- Because of this, he openly advocated for cooperation with the British in World War I.
- He later supported Sharif Hussein’s revolution against the federalists and called for volunteers to join his army in order to confront the Turks and secede from them.
- He returned to Damascus in 1919 after Syria’s independence from Turkish rule.
- He and his patriotic comrades contributed to the American referendum committee (King-Crane Committee) to prove Syria’s ability to become independent during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference to determine the views of the people of Syria and Palestine on the future of their country.
- In the Syrian government headed by Hashim al-Atassi in May 1920, Shahbandar took over the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
- The government fell when the French entered and imposed a mandate on Syria after the Battle of Maysaloun.
- He left Syria for Cairo, but returned a year later and began organizing political actions to resist the French occupation.
- As a result of his political and patriotic activity, and following the arrival of Mr. Crane to Damascus in 1922, and his reception by the masses demanding freedom and independence, the fulfillment of the promise of the Allies in general and the promise of the Americans in particular, and the Syrians calling for the fall of the mandate, the French arrested many Beirutis and Damascenes, including Dr. Abdul Rahman Al-Shahbandar, who was sentenced to twenty years in prison and exiled to Beit al-Din in Lebanon, then to the Syrian island of Arwad.
- Nineteen months later, he was pardoned and traveled to Europe and America to promote the cause of the homeland and Arabism, as he was one of the first Syrian leaders in those countries to present the national cause before international forums.
- In July 1924, Al-Shahbandar returned to Damascus, where he formed a political party called the People’s Party and assumed its chairmanship, and called himself the leader. He started working again in organizing political work and calling for Arab unity and demanding the abolition of the mandate and the establishment of a Syrian Republic within the scope of union with all independent Arab countries. To achieve this, Dr. Abdul Rahman Al-Shahbandar began contacting the leaders and notables of Syrian cities urging them to revolution against French colonialism, charging them and strengthening their national feeling and asking them to start the armed struggle to gain independence and achieve the national dream of establishing an independent Syrian state.
- Dr. Abdul Rahman Al-Shahbandar’s biggest step was the establishment of the People’s Party in July 1924.
- He was in contact with the leader Ibrahim Hanano in the northern region, and met with al-Wajih Muhammad Bey al-Ayash in Damascus and agreed with him to extend the revolution to the eastern region, and was in contact with Commander Fawzi al-Qawqji, who was preparing to ignite the revolution in the city of Hama despite the fact that he was known for his strong loyalty to the French and had attained a high rank in their army However, according to Shahbandar’s memoirs, al-Qawuqji was unhappy with the imprisonment and humiliation of the dignitaries and scholars of Hama, the division of the country into governments, the use of lowly people in jobs, raising taxes on the taxpayers, and stoking sectarianism among the Syrian people.
- Shahbandar supported the Syrian revolution with all his capabilities and energies, but after a year of its establishment, the revolution began to weaken, so Shahbandar withdrew with Sultan al-Atrash and their companions to Azraq in Jordan, and from there he traveled to Iraq and then to Egypt, after a French sentence was issued to execute him.
- He was forced to stay in Cairo for almost ten years, during which time he worked for the Arab cause in cooperation with the Executive Committee of the Syrian-Palestinian Conference in addition to his medical practice.
- After the death sentence was revoked, he returned to Damascus on the eleventh of May 1937, and the masses gave him a warm reception, and his comrades, brothers and supporters began organizing mass celebrations for him every day, attended by thousands of neighborhood men, dignitaries and various classes.
- In his speeches, he attacked the 1936 treaty with France, refuted its clauses, and enumerated its disadvantages, which led to an uproar in the country, after which the people were divided into two factions, one supporting the treaty and the National Bloc led by Hashim Atassi, and the other rallying around Dr. Shahbandar and convinced by his view of the treaty’s disadvantages and flaws and the need to struggle to achieve full independence and absolute sovereignty.
- He gave forty speeches in twenty-one consecutive days, and in all of them not a single grammatical error was counted, not a single repeated idea, not a repeated opinion.
- On the morning of July 6, 1940, a group assassinated Dr. Abdul Rahman Al-Shahbandar in his clinic in Damascus in the Al-Shaalan neighborhood.
- Three of the leaders of the National Bloc, namely: Saadallah al-Jabri, Jamil Mardam Bey and Lotfi al-Haffar, which forced them to flee the country after arrest warrants were issued against them by the French authorities on the night of October 15/16, 1940.
- This incident had a great impact on Syrians, who took part in large demonstrations denouncing his assassination and demanding that the French government and authorities reveal his killers.
- A large funeral was held for Dr. Shahbandar and he was buried next to the tomb of Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi, near the Great Umayyad Mosque.
- The perpetrators were later arrested and confessed to the crime. They claimed that Shahbandar had attacked Islam in one of his sermons, that he was an agent of the British, and that they acted in retaliation and revenge for the true religion and patriotism.
- Al-Shahbandar was the mind of the Great Syrian Revolution and Syrian society, and he continued his work without stopping since the beginning of the century, and he did not leave any field to try to enlighten and influence and did not knock on its door, as he worked in medicine, politics, journalism, teaching, translation, and collected his articles in a book published under the title “The Great Arab Issues” and “Al-Shahbandar Memoirs”.
- A square in the heart of Damascus is named Shahbandar Square.
We at Syrian Future Movement, as we recall the memory of the founding statesmen of Syria, we recall one of Syria’s influential men and one of the symbols of the first Syrian state’s flags who contributed to influencing its structure, Dr. Abdul Rahman al-Shahbandar, in a sequential file that we present to you to include the symbols and flags of the Syrian state, in order to link our contemporary revolutionary present with a solid past and historical stations. We hope to link our contemporary revolutionary present with a solid past and historical stations, hoping to revive in our people the need to build and create statesmen par excellence, learn from their experiences, build on their history, preserve the homeland, safeguard the gains, and restore the Syrian state to its glory after years of injustice, tyranny and corruption.
