Ali Sulayman al-Assad
Ali Sulaiman al-Assad ( Arabic علي سليمان الأسد, DMG ʿAlī Sulaimān al-Asad , originally Ali Sulayman al-Waḥsch ,علي سليمان الوحش; born 1875 in Qardaha , Syria ; died 1963 ) was a leading Alawit in Latakia Governorate . He is the father of long-time Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad and the grandfather of incumbent President Bashar al-Assad .
biography
The al-Assad family belongs to the Kalbiyya tribe and lived in Qardaha, a mostly Alawitic village in the mountains east of the port city of Latakia . Ali Sulaiman was one of the few residents of Qardaha with an education and the only one in town who had a newspaper subscription. He was called al-Asad (Arabic for "the lion") by the rest of the Alawites and made this nickname his family name in 1927. Together with Sulaimān Murschid , the poet Badawi al-Jabal (1903-1981) and three other notables, he demanded in a 1936 statement to the French Prime Minister Léon Blum that the French mandate be retained and at the same time advocated greater autonomy for the Alawite state . The letter to Léon Blum also addresses the difficult situation of the Jews in Palestine , who are exposed to persecution by hateful Arab Muslims. This letter was mentioned on August 31, 2012 in a statement from Gérard Araud , then the representative of France at the UN headquarters , to the Syrian diplomat Bashar al-Jafari .
Ali Sulaiman was married three times and had a total of eleven children. With his first wife Sa'ada, from the al-Haffa district, he had three sons and two daughters. His second wife Na'issa, twenty years younger than him, came from the nearby mountain village of Al-Qutailibiya. From this marriage there are a daughter and five sons. Hafiz, born October 6, 1930, was the fourth child.
literature
- Thomas Collelo: Syria: a country study . Washington, DC: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress 1988. ( Online )
- Stefan Winter: The Asad Petition of 1936: Bashar's Grandfather Was Pro-Unionist , in: Syria Comment , June 14, 2016
Individual evidence
- ^ Diana Darke: The Merchant of Syria: A History of Survival . Oxford University Press 2018. p. 137
- ^ Fouad Ajami: The Syrian Rebellion . Stanford, 2012, pp. 19f.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Assad, Ali Sulaiman al- |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | al-Waḥish, Ali Sulayman; علي سليمان الأسد |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Syrian Alawite, father of Hafiz al-Assad |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1875 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Qardaha , Syria |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1963 |