The San Remo conference was an international meeting of the post-World War I Allied Supreme Council as an outgrowth of the Paris Peace Conference, held at Villa Devachan in Sanremo, Italy, from 19 to 26 April 1920. The San Remo Resolution passed on 25 April 1920 determined the allocation of Class "A" League of Nations mandates for the administration of three then-undefined Ottoman territories in the Middle East: "Palestine", "Syria" and "Mesopotamia". The boundaries of the three territories were "to be determined [at a later date] by the Principal Allied Powers", leaving the status of outlying areas such as Zor and Transjordan unclear.
The Emirate of Transjordan, officially known as the Amirate of Trans-Jordan, was a British protectorate established on 11 April 1921.
Faisal I bin Al-Hussein bin Ali Al-Hashemi was King of the Arab Kingdom of Syria or Greater Syria in 1920, and was King of Iraq from 23 August 1921 to 1933. He was the third son of Hussein bin Ali, the Grand Emir and Sharif of Mecca, who was proclaimed as King of the Arabs in June 1916. He was a 38th-generation direct descendant of Muhammad, as he belongs to the Hashemite family.
The McMahon–Hussein Correspondence is a series of letters that were exchanged during World War I in which the Government of the United Kingdom agreed to recognize Arab independence after the war in exchange for the Sharif of Mecca launching the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire. The correspondence had a significant impact on Middle Eastern history during and after the war; a dispute over Palestine continued thereafter.
The Churchill White Paper of 3 June 1922 was drafted at the request of Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for the Colonies, partly in response to the 1921 Jaffa Riots. While maintaining Britain's commitment to the Balfour Declaration and its promise of a Jewish national home in Palestine, the paper emphasized that the establishment of a national home would not impose a Jewish nationality on the Arab inhabitants of Palestine. To reduce tensions between the Arabs and Jews in Palestine the paper called for a limitation of Jewish immigration to the economic capacity of the country to absorb new arrivals. This limitation was considered a great setback to many in the Zionist movement, though it acknowledged that the Jews should be able to increase their numbers by immigration as of right and not on sufferance.
The Faisal–Weizmann Agreement was a 3 January 1919 agreement between Emir Faisal, the third son of Hussein ibn Ali al-Hashimi, King of the short-lived Kingdom of Hejaz, and Chaim Weizmann, a Zionist leader who had negotiated the 1917 Balfour Declaration with the British Government, signed two weeks before the start of the Paris Peace Conference. Together with a letter written by T. E. Lawrence in Faisal's name to Felix Frankfurter in March 1919, it was one of two documents used by the Zionist delegation at the Peace Conference to argue that the Zionist plans for Palestine had prior approval of Arabs.
Southern Syria is the southern part of the Syria region, roughly corresponding to the Southern Levant. Typically it refers chronologically and geographically to the southern part of Ottoman Syria provinces.
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 (1925–1927). 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.
The Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon (1923−1946) was a League of Nations mandate founded in the aftermath of the First World War and the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, concerning Syria and Lebanon. The mandate system was supposed to differ from colonialism, with the governing country intended to act as a trustee until the inhabitants were considered eligible for self-government. At that point, the mandate would terminate and an independent state would be born. In reality, the Mandate was treated more like a French colony rather than an official mandate, partly due to French involvement in the region. It was also one of the two French colonies in Asia, the other being French Indochina, though the latter was an official colony compared to the former.
The Great Syrian Revolt or Great Druze Revolt (1925–1927) was a general uprising across Mandatory Syria and Lebanon aimed at getting rid of the French, who had been in control of the region since the end of World War I. The uprising was not centrally coordinated; rather, it was attempted by multiple factions – among them Sunni, Druze, Alawite, Christian, and Shia – with the common goal of ending French rule. The revolt was ultimately put down by French forces.
The Franco-Syrian War took place during 1920 between the Hashemite rulers of the newly established Arab Kingdom of Syria and France. During a series of engagements, which climaxed in the Battle of Maysalun, French forces defeated the forces of the Hashemite monarch King Faisal, and his supporters, entering Damascus on July 24, 1920. A new pro-French government was declared in Syria on July 25, headed by 'Alaa al-Din al-Darubi and eventually Syria was divided into several client states under the French Mandate of Syria and Lebanon. The British government, concerned for their position in the new mandate in Iraq, agreed to declare the fugitive Faisal as the new king of Iraq.
Al-Fatat or the Young Arab Society was an underground Arab nationalist organization in the Ottoman Empire. Its aims were to gain independence and unify various Arab territories that were then under Ottoman rule. It found adherents in areas such as Syria. The organization maintained contacts with the reform movement in the Ottoman Empire and included many radicals and revolutionaries, such as Abd al-Mirzai. They were closely linked to the Al-Ahd, or Covenant Society, who had members in positions within the military, most were quickly dismissed after Enver Pasha gained control in Turkey. This organization's parallel in activism were the Young Turks, who had a similar agenda that pertained to Turkish nationalism.
Jamil Mardam Bey, was a Syrian politician. He was born in Damascus to a prominent aristocratic Sunni Ottoman Muslim family. He is a descendant of the Ottoman general, statesman and Grand Vizier Lala Mustafa Pasha. He studied at the school of Political Science in Paris and was a founder of Al-Fatat, the leading opposition party in Ottoman Syria.
Subhi Sa'id al-Khadra was a Palestinian Arab politician, lawyer, and newspaper columnist. As an Istiqlal leader, he helped organize anti-British and anti-Zionist activities in Palestine, including the 1936–39 Arab revolt, which resulted in his three-year imprisonment.
The Arab Kingdom of Syria was a self-proclaimed, unrecognized state that began as a "fully and absolutely independent... Arab constitutional government" announced on 5 October 1918 with the permission of the British military, gained de facto independence as an "Emirate" after the withdrawal of the British forces from OETA East on 26 November 1919, and was proclaimed as a Kingdom on 8 March 1920.
This is a timeline of major events in the history of the modern state of Jordan.
The Mandate for Palestine was a League of Nations mandate for British administration of the territories of Palestine and Transjordan, both of which had been conceded by the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I in 1918. The mandate was assigned to Britain by the San Remo conference in April 1920, after France's concession in the 1918 Clemenceau–Lloyd George Agreement of the previously-agreed "international administration" of Palestine under the Sykes–Picot Agreement. Transjordan was added to the mandate after the Arab Kingdom in Damascus was toppled by the French in the Franco-Syrian War. Civil administration began in Palestine and Transjordan in July 1920 and April 1921, respectively, and the mandate was in force from 29 September 1923 to 15 May 1948.
The Palestine Arab Congress was a series of congresses held by the Palestinian Arab population, organized by a nationwide network of local Muslim-Christian Associations, in the British Mandate of Palestine. Between 1919 and 1928, seven congresses were held in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa and Nablus. Despite broad public support their executive committees were never officially recognised by the British, who said they were unrepresentative. After the British defeat of Ottoman forces in 1918, the British established military rule and (later) civil administration of Palestine. The Palestine Arab Congress and its organizers in the Muslim-Christian Associations were formed when the country's Arab population began coordinated opposition to British policies.
Nasib al-Bakri (1888–1966) was a Syrian politician and nationalist leader in the first half of the 20th century. He played a major role in establishing al-Fatat, an underground organization which sought the independence and unity of the Ottoman Empire's Arab territories. As the chief envoy between al-Fatat and the Hejaz-based Hashemites, al-Bakri became a close aide to Emir Faisal when the latter became King of Syria following the success of the 1916 Arab Revolt. Al-Bakri opposed the establishment of the French Mandate of Syria and became one of the chief commanders of the Great Syrian Revolt, leading the rebels' brief capture of Damascus. He escaped a death warrant in Syria in 1927, but returned the following year after being amnestied.
The Sharifian or Sherifian Solution, as first put forward by T. E. Lawrence in 1918, was a plan to install three of Sharif Hussein's four sons as heads of state in newly created countries across the Middle East: his second son Abdullah ruling Baghdad and Lower Mesopotamia, his third son Faisal in Syria, and his fourth son Zeid in Upper Mesopotamia. The Sharif himself would not wield any political power in these places, and his first son, Ali would be his successor in Hejaz.
