1880 - 1940
Syrian politician.
Born in Damascus, Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar attended the Syrian Protestant College (later the American University of Beirut). He received his medical degree in 1906 and became a professor of medicine. He was one of the most prominent nationalists in Damascus after World War I, serving Amir Faisal I ibn Hussein as chief liaison with Britain, and as an interpreter for the King-Crane Commission in 1919. Shahbandar was appointed minister of foreign affairs in 1920 by the newly crowned King Faisal. The French promptly disbanded this government, and Shahbandar fled to Egypt. He returned to Damascus under French amnesty in 1921 and founded the first nationalist organization in Syria, the Iron Hand. Shahbandar was arrested and sentenced to twenty years in prison for nationalist activities in 1922. The sentence was changed to exile, and after seeking support for Syria's independence in the West, with the help of his friend Charles R. Crane, he returned to Damascus in 1924.
In 1925, Shahbandar organized and led the People's Party, which played a central role in the revolt (1925 - 1927). He spent ten years in Cairo, then returned to Damascus in April 1937. His proHashimite stance put him in direct confrontation with the ruling National Bloc, and he was placed under house arrest in 1938. Shahbandar's quest for Britain's support for a confederation of Syria, Transjordan, Palestine, and Lebanon under Amir Abdullah I ibn Hussein, and his denunications of his more hard-line nationalist rivals, led to his assassination in Damascus (June 1940). Ultimate responsibility for the assassination was never fixed, though National Bloc members may have been involved.
Bibliography
Khoury, Philip S. Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics ofArab Nationalism, 1920 - 1945. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987.
— CHARLES U. ZENZIE
