Sultan Pasha al-Atrash (10) Sultan Pasha al-Atrash

• Sultan Pasha Al-Atrash was born in the village of Al-Qarya in Al-Suwayda Governorate, Salkhad region in the Levant in 1888 AD, and died on March 26, 1982 AD.
• From the famous Druze Al-Atrash family, his father was Zoukan bin Mustafa bin Ismail II, the founder of the Tarshani sheikhdom in 1869, and his mother was Sheikha bint Ismail II.
• Ali, Mustafa, and Zaid are his older brothers, and he has two sisters, Samia and Na’im
• At the age of nineteen, he married his cousin Fayez Ghazieh, but she died shortly afterward without children.
• After his return from compulsory service, he married the daughter of Sheikh Ibrahim Abu Fakhr from the town of Najran, Syria, whose name was Turkiya, with whom he had all his male children: Talal, Fawaz, Youssef, Jihad, Mansour, Nasser and Talal, and females: Ghazia, Batla, Zumurrud, Turkia, Nayfa, Aida and Muntaha.
• He joined the Ottoman army and performed military service for the Ottoman state in Anatolia to be awarded the title of Pasha in recognition of his services in Eastern Europe (the Balkans).
• After his service ended, he returned to the Levant and began actively contacting Arab movements.
• Thanks to its long-standing relationship with Damascus, Qarya became a refuge and stronghold for militants joining the Arab revolt in Aqaba.
• He was the first to raise the flag of the Arab Revolution on the land of the Levant (Syria) before the entry of King Faisal’s army, as he raised it on his house in Al-Qurayya, and was at the forefront of the revolutionaries who entered Damascus in 1918.
• After he raised the Arab flag in Marjeh Square above the Government House in Damascus, King Faisal I granted him the title of Pasha in 1918 in the Arab Army for his bravery.
• After the division of the Middle East and the Levant into five federations, the French offered him, as the most prominent Druze leader at the time, the rule of the Druze Mountain in Sweida governorate, but he flatly refused.
• He was with the Arab Islamist movement that sought to abolish the state of Greater Lebanon to create an alternative Arab-Syrian state, driven by the idea of unity and the rejection of fragmentation and colonization.
• In July 1920, he prepared large forces to rescue Yusuf al-Azmah at Maysalun and arrived with his cavalry to Baraq, south of Damascus, but there he heard the news of the resolution of the battle, the defeat of the Arab army, and the martyrdom of Commander Yusuf al-Azmah, the Minister of Defense.
• He opposed the establishment of the Druze state in 1921, and before and after that, he strongly opposed the French Mandate.
• He sent his comrades to join King Faisal I with a message to invite the king to Sweida-Jabal al-Arab to establish an Arab state there and to continue the resistance, but King Faisal’s response was: “Say to Sultan, it’s too late.”
• On March 4, 1921, Colonel Quattro, who was sent by General Gouraud to Jabal al-Arab, sought to isolate the Druze from the Syrian national movement, and concluded a treaty with the Druze tribes that stipulated that Jabal al-Druze would form a special administrative unit independent of the State of Damascus, with a local governor and an elected representative council, in exchange for the Druze’s recognition of the French mandate, and as a result of the treaty, Salim al-Atrash was appointed as the first Druze governor of the mountain.
• The first clash with the new French administration occurred in July 1922 with the arrest of Adham Khanjar, who was coming to Sultan al-Atrash carrying a letter to him, and the French arrested him on charges of his participation in the attack on General Gouraud in Horan.
• Sultan al-Atrash asked the French commander in Sweida to hand over Adham Khanjar, who informed him that he was on his way to Damascus. Al-Atrash assigned a group of his supporters to attack the armed convoy escorting the detainee, but the French managed to transfer him to Lebanon and on May 30, 1923, they executed him in Beirut.
• The French destroyed Sultan Pasha Al-Atrash’s house in Al-Qarya in late August 1922 in response to his attack on their forces.
• He then led the Druze rebels for a year in a guerrilla war against French forces, and France brought in large forces to eliminate the rebels, forcing al-Atrash to take refuge in Jordan in the late summer of 1922.
• Under British pressure, he surrendered to the French in April 1923 after agreeing to an armistice with them.
• Salim al-Atrash was poisoned in Damascus in 1924, and the French appointed Captain Carbillet as governor of the mountain, contrary to the agreement with the Druze.
• Because of Carpier’s unjust policy, the people of Sweida took to the streets in a massive demonstration to protest the practices of the French authorities, which hastened the outbreak of the revolution.
• A delegation from Sweida was sent to Beirut on June 6, 1925, to present a document demanding that High Commissioner Maurice Paul Saray appoint a Druze governor over the mountain instead of Captain Carbillet.
• High Commissioner Sarai expelled the mountain delegation, refused to meet with them, and told them that they must quickly leave Beirut and return to their country or he would exile them to Palmyra, which was the direct cause of the outbreak of the Syrian revolution.
• Sultan Pasha al-Atrash called for a meeting in Sweida, demonstrations were held throughout the mountain, and contact was made with a number of political leaders in Damascus, headed by Dr. Abdul Rahman al-Shahbandar, head of the People’s Party, to consult and coordinate positions.
• The two sides agreed to cooperate to expel the French from Syria and achieve independence and unity.
• Sultan al-Atrash declared that he seeks to realize his principles and program through legal and legitimate means.
• On July 11, 1925, French High Commissioner Maurice Paul Saray sent a secret message to his delegate in Damascus asking him to summon some of the mountain leaders under the pretext of discussing with them about their demands in order to arrest them and send them into exile to Palmyra and Hasaka.
• As a result of French policies and practices, Sultan Pasha al-Atrash announced the revolution on July 21, 1925, by broadcasting a political and military statement calling on the Syrian people to revolt against the French Mandate.
• The statement reads:
  (O Syrian Arabs, remember your ancestors, your history, your martyrs and your national honor, remember that the hand of God is with the group, that the will of the people is from the will of God, and that civilized and rising nations will not be harmed by the hand of tyranny, the colonizers have plundered our money, monopolized the benefits of our country, erected harmful barriers between our one homeland, divided us into peoples, sects and states, and prevented us from freedom of religion, thought, conscience, trade and travel even in our countries and regions. To arms, patriots, to arms in order to fulfill the aspirations of the country, to arms in support of the sovereignty of the people and the freedom of the nation, to arms after the foreigner stole your rights, enslaved your country, broke your covenants, did not keep the honor of official promises, and forgot the national aspirations.)
• Al-Atrash began launching military attacks on French forces and burned and occupied the French Legation in Salkhad, the second largest city in the mountain after Suwayda.
• In early September 1925, Al-Atrash attacked a French force in the town of Kufr led by Captain Norman, and his men killed them. Only a few individuals escaped from the French, and the number of revolutionaries did not exceed two hundred, while the number of soldiers exceeded two hundred and sixty, including a large number of French officers.
• Sarai was enraged by the defeat of his troops and ordered the preparation of a large expedition to discipline the rebels, numbering more than 5,000 soldiers.
• The French forces were annihilated, and only about 1,200 soldiers were spared, who fled to the railroad in the village of Azraa to board the train to Damascus.
• Hamad al-Barbour from the village of Umm al-Rumman, who was Sultan Pasha al-Atrash’s right-hand man, was killed in the battle.
• On August 20, 1925, the People’s Party sent a delegation to meet with Sultan Pasha al-Atrash and discuss Damascus joining the revolution. The delegation included Tawfiq al-Halabi, Asaad al-Bakri, and Zaki al-Droubi, and the delegation coincided with the presence of Captain Renault, Saray’s representative, who was negotiating with the revolutionaries on behalf of the French authorities to conclude a peace treaty.
• In late August 1925, the leaders of the People’s Party, including Dr. Abdul Rahman Al-Shahbandar, met with Sultan Pasha Al-Atrash in the village of Kafr Al-Lahf and agreed to mobilize five hundred mujahideen to attack Damascus from three axes, but this number did not meet with Sultan Pasha, and the military forces that General Gamlan began to gather along the railway in Horan made the rebel leaders abandon the plan to attack Damascus and devote themselves to confronting the French campaign.
• On September 17, 1925, the revolutionaries agreed to march towards the village of Al-Musayfra to confront the new French campaign. On September 17, 1925, they launched a night attack on the French forces entrenched there, and victory would have been their ally if not for the intervention of French aircraft, which forced them to withdraw.
• The Syrian revolutionaries entered a stage of attrition as the revolution prolonged, and suffered from a shortage of ammunition and supplies, which helped the French forces to tighten the noose on them by bringing in more troops and supporting reinforcements, which forced the revolutionaries to flee to Azraq in the Emirate of Transjordan, and the English did not allow them to stay for long, so Sultan al-Atrash and his group fled to Wadi al-Sarhan and Nabk in northern Saudi Arabia, then to Karak in Jordan.
• Sultan Al-Atrash and his comrades returned home after France issued a comprehensive amnesty for all Syrians following the signing of the Syrian-French treaty in 1936.
• Sultan and his companions were received in Damascus on May 18, 1937, with great popular celebrations.
• Sultan Al-Atrash’s struggle did not stop after the revolution, but he also participated actively in the Syrian protests of 1945, and Jabal Al-Arab, under his guidance, was the first Syrian province to expel the French, as its sons surrounded their centers and drove them out, under the leadership of Prince Hassan Al-Atrash, the governor of the mountain at the time.
• France retaliated against this mountain coup and the liberation of Sweida by bombing Damascus, Sweida, and parts of Syria on 05/29/1945. This was the beginning of their exit from Syria.
• In 1948, Al-Atrash called for the establishment of a unified Arab army to liberate Palestine, and indeed hundreds of young men volunteered and went to participate in the 1948 war, and about 80 young men from the mountain were martyred there.
• During al-Shishakli’s rule, Sultan Pasha al-Atrash was subjected to many harassments as a result of his opposition to the dictatorship’s policies, and he left the mountain to Jordan in January 1954.
• He returned to his country after the fall of Shishakli.
• He supported the national uprising led by Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt in Lebanon in 1958 against the policy of Camille Chamoun.
• He blessed the Arab unity that was established between Egypt and Syria in 1958, and stood firmly and steadfastly against the process of separation in 1961.
• Toward the end of his life, Sultan devoted himself to social activities and development in the mountain.
• Al-Atrash refused any political positions offered to him after independence.
• The late President Gamal Abdel Nasser visited Sultan Pasha al-Atrash during the unity era in Sweida.
• In December 1966, after the military coup led by Hafez al-Assad and Salah Jadid, and following the arrest of a large number of Druze officers and politicians, Sultan Pasha al-Atrash sent a telegram to the new staff leadership led by Hafez al-Assad and Salah Shadid, in which there is a veiled threat of revolution if the detainees are not released and if the arrests and sectarian liquidations continue, and this is the text of the telegram: “Our children in prisons are on strike and we hold you responsible for the consequences. The mountain used to and still does revolts to expel the traitor and the colonizer, but its magnanimity prevents it from directing its weapons against its brother and betraying its own people. This is the only deterrent, we are initially limited to negotiations.”
• The relationship between the ruling Syrian regime and Sultan al-Atrash remained frosty throughout Hafez al-Assad’s time in power, and it was only after Sultan Pasha al-Atrash’s death that Hafez al-Assad visited the Druze Mountains to pay his respects.
• Sultan Pasha al-Atrash died on March 26, 1982, and his funeral, which took place on March 28, 1982, was attended by more than half a million people.
• Hafez al-Assad issued a personal letter of mourning for the General Commander of the Great Syrian Revolution, after he felt that the arena was empty with his death. He also named a square in Sweida after him, and ordered the construction of a monument to the martyrs of the Great Syrian Revolution and the remains of its General Commander in the town of Al-Qarya opposite the house of Sultan Pasha al-Atrash, which was inaugurated on the occasion of Evacuation Day on April 17, 2010.
• On the day of his funeral, Lebanon’s then-president awarded him the Lebanese Cedar Medal.
• Yasser Arafat inaugurated a monument in Ramallah to the martyrs of the Druze garrison sent by Sultan Pasha al-Atrash to defend Palestine who fell near Nablus.

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, the Sultan of Mount Arab “Sultan Pasha al-Atrash” in a sequential file we present to you to include the symbols and flags of the Syrian state. 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.