1889 - 1933
King of Iraq, 1921 - 1933; also known as Amir Faisal, leader of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks, 1916; king of Syria for a brief period in 1920.
The third son of Sharif Husayn of the Hijaz, Faisal was from a prestigious, wealthy family (Hashimite) that traced its lineage back to the Prophet Muhammad. He spent his early boyhood among the bedouin in Arabia, educated by private tutors, and, at age six, moved to Istanbul, capital of the Ottoman Empire, where he lived during his father's exile until 1908. Faisal completed his education in Istanbul, becoming multilingual and well versed in court etiquette and politics. Life in cosmopolitan Istanbul and his later service as representative from Jidda in the Ottoman parliament, where he was an early spokesman for Arab interests, provided valuable political experience that served Faisal well in his later negotiations with the European powers.
In January 1915, Faisal was sent by his father to Istanbul to determine the political situation of the Hijaz and to contact secret Arab societies in Damascus, Syria, to ascertain if there was support for an Arab uprising against the Ottoman Turks. At first, signs were positive; but at a second meeting in Damascus in January 1916, after these groups had been disbanded by Cemal Paşa, the few remaining nationalists indicated via the Damascus Protocol that Hussein should initiate a revolt for Arab independence. Hussein incorporated these ideas in his correspondence with the British. Faisal was less sanguine about British support than was his brother, Abdullah I ibn Hussein, but Ottoman Turkish moves to strengthen their hold on Medina made action more imminent. (The Turks were fighting on the side of the Central powers - Austria-Hungary and Germany - and against the Allies, including Britain and France, in World War I.)
Faisal's note to Cemal Paşa advocated an Arab umma (community). His statement and the cutting of the railroad lines between Damascus and Medina launched the Arab Revolt on 10 June 1916. Concern in Cairo that the Arab troops in Arabia needed military training led to the dispatch of the British Colonel T. E. Lawrence, who by December 1916 had joined Faisal and suggested to the British that the amir become the field commander of the Hijaz. The suggestion was taken, and, though unable to take Medina, Faisal's troops later occupied Aqaba on 6 July 1917, a victory that provided the Arabs credibility with the British. Faisal was deputized a British general under the command of General Edmund Allenby, commander in chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. Faisal's troops, some 1,000 bedouin supplemented by approximately 2,500 Ottoman ex-prisoners of war, proceeded to harass the Ottoman Turkish army as the British moved to take Gaza, Beersheba, and Jerusalem.
On 25 September 1918, Allenby ordered the advance on Damascus. As party to the Sykes - Picot Agreement, Britain attempted to assign organized administration of the city both to the French and to the Arabs, but in the confusion of the British advance and the Ottoman retreat, the Damascus Arabs hoisted their own flag before Faisal and his army had time to reach Damascus. With the aid of Faisal's supporter, Nuri al-Saʿid, pro-Faisal officials controlled the city and were later confirmed by the French. Lawrence asserted that Faisal's men had slipped into the city on 30 September to 1 October and had liberated it in advance of the British and Australian troops.
At the Versailles conference in 1919, Faisal was caught between British - French international diplomacy and events in the Middle East that were taking their own course. As the Arab representative to Versailles, Faisal pressed claims for Syrian independence, but under British sponsorship. Discussions with American proponents of Zionism and with Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann elicited Faisal's support for Jewish immigration to Palestine, culminating in the Faisal - Weizmann Agreements signed on 3 January 1919. To the published document, Faisal added a handwritten addendum that Arab support for Jewish aspirations would be conditional upon the achievement of Arab independence. Faisal continued to support Jewish immigration within the context of his later pan-Arab federation programs.
In May, Faisal called for a general congress to be held in Damascus to endorse his position at Versailles. Convened in June, the meeting was dominated by the prewar Arab nationalist clubs - the primarily Iraqi al-Ahd, the Palestinian Arab Club (al-Nadi al-Arabi), which tried to persuade Faisal to relinquish his support for Zionism, and the alFatat (youth) dominated Istiqlal Party. The congress called for an independent Syria that also would include Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. Backed by the British, who wished to exclude the French from the Middle East, Faisal received a grudging acquiescence for an Arab regime from the politically weakened French president, Georges Clemenceau.
Still in session in March 1920, the congress declared Syria (including Lebanon and Palestine) an independent kingdom ruled by Faisal as constitutional monarch. Some Arabs in Palestine proclaimed Palestine a part of Syria, and Basra and Baghdad were declared independent by a group of Arabs in Iraq who wished to be ruled by Faisal's brother, Abdullah. In spite of the international repercussions, Faisal accepted the Syrian draft and allowed Arab nationalists to harass French troops in Syria while he began to negotiate with the forces of Kemalism in Anatolia who had proclaimed an independent Turkey. As the British withdrew their support from the Arabs in Syria, and a new government in Paris followed a more vigorous policy in Syria, the French ordered their high commissioner in Syria, General Henri-Joseph-Eugène Gouraud, to confront Faisal. Occupying Damascus on 26 July 1920, the French forced Faisal into exile the following day and proclaimed Syria to be under French rule.
A shift in British priorities affected policy after 1920, influenced by an Arab revolt in Iraq against the British occupation and the policies of Winston Churchill, newly appointed colonial secretary, which included leaving Syria to the French and installing Hashimites elsewhere as local rulers who would "reign but not govern" in order to save the expense of full-scale occupation. At the Cairo Conference in March 1921, Churchill and his aides proceeded to redraw the map of the Middle East and to plan the installation of Faisal as king of a newly created Iraq.
The British looked to Faisal as a malleable vehicle for their Mesopotamian/Iraqi policy, which was to secure the area and its oil for themselves. He was deemed suitable to both the Sunni and Shiʿite Iraqis because of his Hashimite lineage and his Arab nationalist credentials as leader of the Arab Revolt. Any local candidates, such as Sayyid Talib of Basra, were duly eliminated. The British contrived a plebiscite in July 1921 to authorize Faisal's candidacy. In August 1921, Faisal arrived in Iraq to a lukewarm reception and was proclaimed king.
The leader of the Arab Revolt brought with him to Iraq a coterie of Iraqi (former Ottoman) Arab nationalist army officers who had supported him in Syria and who now took top positions in the new Iraqi administration. Jaʿfar al-Askari became minister of defense; perennial cabinet minister Nuri al-Saʿid became chief of staff of the new Iraqi army; and Ottoman educator Sati al-Husari instituted an Arab nationalist curriculum in Iraqi schools. Faisal's tenure in Iraq was a tightrope walk between nationalism and cordial relations with Britain, without whose financial and military support and advisers he could not rule. Always maintaining his own goals, while remembering the bitter Syrian experience, Faisal worked from 1921 until his death in 1933 to create a modernized, unified country with a centralized infrastructure, to achieve immediate political independence from Britain, and to continue his dream of uniting Arab areas of the Middle East into a pan-Arab union under Hashimite aegis. From the beginning, the British regretted their choice, as Faisal proved to be less docile than they had anticipated.
Throughout the 1920s, Faisal was preoccupied with the fact that Iraq was a British mandate and not an independent state. Faced with local nationalist opposition to himself and to the British presence in the country, he used his considerable personal charisma to garner the support of urban nationalists and tribal leaders in Shiʿite areas. Comfortable both in traditional dress meeting with bedouin and in Western-style clothes playing bridge with British officials in Baghdad, Faisal negotiated for independence. He also understood the necessity for British political and military support to ensure the territorial integrity of the new state until Iraq was able to build up its own army and defend its interests against the Persians, Saudis, and Turks, from whom Britain managed to secure Mosul for Iraq.
During treaty negotiations in 1922, delayed by his appendicitis attack, and again in 1927, the king encouraged the anti-British nationalist opposition, all the while advocating moderation by both sides. The result was an agreement signed in 1930 that gave Britain control of Iraqi foreign policy and finances but also resulted, in 1932, in Iraq's nominal independence and admission to the League of Nations.
The Iraqi constitution gave Faisal the power to suspend parliament, call for new elections, and confirm all laws. During his tenure, the king attempted to forge a united Iraq with a nationalist focus instead of the patchwork of disparate religious and ethnic groups. Once independence was assured, Faisal used his prestige and his position as king of an independent Arab state to engage in foreign policy.
Faisal never abandoned his interest in Syria. In contact with the French in Syria over the possibility that a Hashimite such as Abdullah or Ali (especially after the latter lost his throne in Arabia to the Saudis) might be installed there as he was in Iraq, Faisal was also active in local Syrian politics. In 1928 he organized a monarchist party aimed at making him ruler both in Iraq and in Syria. To Faisal, Iraqi independence in 1932 would be but the first step toward an Arab union to include not only Syria and Palestine, but possibly Arabia as well. From 1929 until Syrian elections in 1932, Faisal sent emissaries to lobby Syrian politicians, conducted an intense propaganda campaign to promote his interests, and used the Islamic Congress that met in Jerusalem in 1931 to advance his cause. Plans were made for another congress to meet in Baghdad in 1933, despite British opposition to Faisal's pan-Arab plans. The defeat of his cause in the Syrian elections, anti-Saudi revolts in the Hijaz, and his untimely death put Hashimite unity attempts on hold.
In June 1933, Faisal left for London on a pre-arranged state visit, leaving an anti-British government in power in Baghdad. He then spent the summer in Switzerland for reasons of health. When word reached him of the crisis with the Assyrian minority in Iraq, Faisal pleaded for moderation. But the exploits of the new Iraqi army that resulted in hundreds of Assyrian civilian deaths were popular in Baghdad, where there were demands for Faisal's resignation. On 7 September 1933, Faisal died of a heart attack in Geneva. He was succeeded by his son, Ghazi ibn Faisal.
Bibliography
Kedourie, Elie. England and the Middle East: 1914 - 1921. Has-socks, U.K.: Harvester Press, 1978.
Muslih, Muhammad Y. The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.
Nevakivi, J. Britain, France, and the Arab Middle East, 1914 - 1920. London: Athlone, 1969.
Simon, Reeva S. Iraq between the Two World Wars. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.
Sluglett, Peter. Britain in Iraq, 1914 - 1921. London: Ithaca Press for the Middle East Centre, St. Antony's College, Oxford, 1976.
— REEVA S. SIMON
