Akram al-Hawrani

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Akram Al-Hourani
أَكْرَم الْحَوْرَانِي
Minister of Defence
In office
28 December 1949 – 4 June 1950
PresidentHashim al-Atassi
Prime MinisterKhalid al-Azm
Preceded byAbdullah Atfeh
Succeeded byFawzi Selu
Personal details
Born4 November 1911
Hama, Ottoman Syria
Died24 February 1996 (aged 84)
Amman, Jordan
Political partyArab Socialist Party (1936–52)
Syrian Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party(1952–62)
Arab Socialist Party (1962–63)
SpouseNaziha Al-Houmsi

Akram Al-Hourani (

RMIT University
in Australia.

Background

An Al-Hourani family tree from 1519 claiming the family is descended from Muhammad.

Al-Hourani's family had its origins in the

Hawran region around 1510s (hence the surname Al-Hourani.)[1] The Al-Hourani family claimed to be descended from Muhammad in a family tree displayed in the museum of Hama. Akram Al-Hourani himself was born in Hama and grew up in modest circumstances as the family's wealth had dissipated. He was educated in Hama and Damascus. His father Muhammad Rasheed Al-Hourani was a merchant who gradually bought agricultural lands and was fluent in Arabic and Turkish languages owning a large book collection, he died one year after the start of World War I (in 1915) due to an infection while distributing aid to the Armenian genocide survivors in Hama, Al-Hourani was only 4 years old when his father died.[2]

In 1936, he enrolled in the Damascus Law School, and became a member of the

Syrian Social National Party which he regretted later.[3]
In 1938 he left the party and returned to Hama to practice law. There he took over the Hizb al-Shabab (Youth Party) founded by his cousin Othman Al-Hourani which constituted the seed for the Arab Socialist Party.

The province of Hama in the earlier part of the twentieth century was characterised by

Syrian Parliament
. He retained his seat in the elections of 1947, 1949, 1954, and 1962.

While it was in defence of social justice in his home region that Al-Hourani made his name, he also had a strong Arab nationalist outlook.[4]

A digital reconstruction of Al-Hourani family tree, the original document is created back in 1519 and displayed in the National Museum of Hama. The tree is partially updated in 2022.

Closer to power

In 1950 Al-Hourani renamed his party the

Arab Socialist Party; at that point, Batatu states, "it counted no fewer than 10,000 members and was able to attract as many as 40,000 people from the countryside when in the same year it convoked at Aleppo the first peasant congress in Syrian history."[5]

Between 1949 and 1954 Syrian politics was punctuated by four military coups. Based on his strong influence in the army, Al-Hourani was wrongly considered to have played a part in these coups, there is no concrete evidence to support his involvement. He was initially particularly close to the leader of the third and fourth coups,

Adib al-Shishakli, who effectively ruled Syria from 1951 until 1954. Al-Shishakli's decision to sign a decree distributing state lands to the peasantry in January 1952 appears to have been under al-Hawrani's influence.[6] However, as the dictator grew more autocratic his influence waned, and when al-Shishakli decided to ban the Arab Socialist Party in April 1952, he went into exile in Lebanon. There, in November that year, he agreed to merge the Arab Socialist Party with the Arab Ba'ath Party led by Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar. The latter thus gained a substantial base of active supporters for the first time. The unified party adopted the name Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party. It was disbanded, along with all Syrian political parties by president Nasser in 1958. The relation between Al-Hourani and Aflaq ended acrimoniously in 1962. In fact, Al-Hourani firmly rejected the ascension to power using military coups, this is exemplified by his firm opposition to what is known as the "Qatna mutiny" [7]
which was a series of events and military deployments in 1957 orchestrated by high ranking officers in the army (which were members / sympathizers with the Arab Socialist Party) to take control of the government.

The Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party

Al-Hourani was a member of the

better source needed
]

The United Arab Republic

After the treaty of union between Syria and Egypt in 1958 Al-Hourani became vice-president of the United Arab Republic (UAR) under Gamal Abdel Nasser, a post he held until 1959. After Nasser launched a bitter verbal attack on the Ba'ath Party in December that year, followed by a campaign of repression against its members, he resigned his position and went into exile in Lebanon. He subsequently differed with Aflaq and al-Bitar over the party's position regarding the UAR, due to his support for secession from the UAR.

When a 1961 military coup in Syria led to the dissolution of the UAR, Al-Hourani publicly supported it and signed a statement in favor of the secession (as did Bitar, but he later withdrew his signature). The Ba'ath Party split into several competing factions, but as the national command decided in favour of reunification, Al-Hourani left it. He was officially expelled in June 1962, whereafter he and his loyalists re-established the Arab Socialist Party. However, popular support for unity hampered its growth and it was strong only in his original stronghold of Hama.[citation needed] In September 1962 he joined the "secessionist" (infisali) cabinet formed by Khalid al-Azm, drawing strong criticism from the Ba'athist and Nasserist movements.

In the year 1963, and following the military coup that brought the Ba'ath to power, Al-Hourani was arrested and put in the Mezzah Prison, before being exiled from Syria. He spent the final years of his life in Amman Jordan, where he eventually died in 1996.

Notes

  1. ^ Batatu, 1999, p. 370.
  2. ^ Al-Hourani, 2000, Part-I, p. 47.
  3. ^ Al-Hourani, 2000, Part-I, p. 197.
  4. ^ This section is based on the account of Hawrani's origins and early political career given by Batatu, pp. 728-729.
  5. ^ Batatu, p. 729.
  6. ^ Seale, p. 47.
  7. ^ Al-Hourani, 2000, Part-III p. 2283-2288.
  8. ^ Al-Hourani, Akram (2000). Akram Al-Hourani Memoirs. Cairo: Madbouly Bookshop.

Sources

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Akram al-Hawrani.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Akram_al-Hawrani&oldid=1226530646"