page_title: Shukri al-Quwatli
section_title: Family
hierarchical_section_title: Shukri al-Quwatli / Personal life / Family
caption_attribution_description: English: President Shukri al-Quwatli and members of his family in Beirut 1966. From Left: Huda, Mahmud, Shukri al-Quwatli, Hassan, Bahira al-Dalati, Hala and Hana.
context_page_description: Shukri al-Quwatli was the first president of post-independence Syria. He began his career as a dissident working towards the independence and unity of the Ottoman Empire's Arab territories and was consequently imprisoned and tortured for his activism. When the Kingdom of Syria was established, Quwatli became a government official, though he was disillusioned with monarchism and co-founded the republican Independence Party. Quwatli was immediately sentenced to death by the French who took control over Syria in 1920. Afterward, he based himself in Cairo where he served as the chief ambassador of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress, cultivating particularly strong ties with Saudi Arabia. He used these connections to help finance the Great Syrian Revolt. In 1930, the French authorities pardoned Quwatli and thereafter, he returned to Syria, where he gradually became a principal leader of the National Bloc. He was elected president of Syria in 1943 and oversaw the country's independence three years later.
  Quwatli was reelected in 1948, but was toppled in a military coup in 1949.
context_section_description: The Quwatlis were a Sunni Muslim mercantile family from Baghdad which moved to Damascus in the 18th century, establishing itself in the district of al-Shaghour. Their initial wealth in Damascus stemmed from trade with Baghdad and Arabia. After 1860 the family invested part of its wealth in large land tracts in the Ghouta farms surrounding Damascus. The first member of the family to own extensive tracts was Shukri's granduncle Murad (d. 1908). The family's notable status was owed to their wealth, rather than an aristocratic or religious lineage, and their traditional spheres of activity were commerce and the Ottoman civil service.
  Shukri's grandfather Abd al-Ghani was involved in finance, as was his granduncle Ahmad, who was appointed the president of the Agricultural Bank of Damascus in 1894, and another granduncle, Hasan, president of the Chamber of Agriculture and Commerce, while Murad had become a member of the Administrative Council of the city in 1871 and was re-elected in the early 1890s. Shukri's father's wealth rested on the highly fertile lands he owned and later bequeathed to Shukri and his siblings in the Ghouta. His elder brother Hasan was elected President of the Damascus Chamber of Commerce and Agriculture. Despite the substantial wealth accrued toward the end of the 19th century, the family remained in the working class al-Shaghur and developed networks there which contributed to its future political ambitions.
  In 1928, Shukri married Bahira al-Dalati, the 19-year-old daughter of nationalist Said al-Dalati, whom Quwatli met while in jail in 1916. Shukri and Bahira had five children; Hassan (the oldest, born in 1935), Mahmud, Huda, Hana and Hala. Bahira al-Dalati died in 1989.
caption: Quwatli and members of his family in Beirut 1966. From Left: Huda, Mahmud, Shukri al-Quwatli, Hassan, Bahira al-Dalati, Hala and Hana.
exif: {}