Syria Lebanon: Under The French Mandate

‘This excellent study is a welcome addition to the scholarship
Idir Ouahes
under the French Mandate

SYRIA AND LEBANON
Cultural Imperialism and the Workings of Empire
on the inter-war mandates of Syria and Lebanon.’
Syria and
Patricia M.E. Lorcin, Professor of History and Samuel Russell Chair in
Humanities, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
‘Ranging from classrooms and museums, to archaeological

sites and vernacular journalism, in this richly evocative text
Idir Ouahes reveals how Syrians contested the imposition
of French mandate rule in the realms of cultural heritage,
Lebanon
educational provision and print media.’
Martin Thomas, Professor of Imperial History, University of Exeter
French rule over Syria and Lebanon was premised on a vision of a special
French protectorate established through centuries of cultural activity:
archaeological, educational and charitable. Initial French methods of
organising and supervising cultural activity sought to embrace this vision
and to implement it in the exploitation of antiquities, the management and
promotion of cultural heritage, the organisation of education and the control
of public opinion among the literate classes. However, an examination of
the first five years of the League of Nations-assigned mandate, 1920–25, Cultural Imperialism and the
reveals that French expectations of a protectorate were quickly dashed by
widespread resistance to their cultural policies, not simply among Arabists Workings of Empire
but also among minority groups initially expected to be loyal to the French.
The violence of imposing the mandate de facto, starting with a landing of
French troops in the Lebanese and Syrian coast in 1919 – and followed by
extension to the Syrian interior in 1920 – was met by consistent violent revolt.
Examining the role of cultural institutions reveals less violent yet similarly
consistent contestation of the French mandate. The political discourses
emerging after World War I fostered expectations of European tutelages
that prepared local peoples for autonomy and independence. Yet, even
among the most Francophile of stakeholders, the unfolding of the first years
of French rule brought forth entirely different events and methods. In this
book, Idir Ouahes provides an in-depth analysis of the shifts in discourses,
attitudes and activities unfolding in French and locally organised institutions
such as schools, museums and newspapers, revealing how local resistance
put pressure on cultural activity in the early years of the French mandate.
Idir Ouahes is Lecturer in History and International Relations at MIUC

Spain. He received his PhD in History from the University of Exeter and
also studied at SOAS, University of London.
Cover image: General Maxime Weygand, Commander in Chief Levant,

French mandate in Syria and Lebanon. Outside the church in Beirut,
Lebanon, after a Te Deum sung in his honour.
Idir
(Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)
www.ibtauris.com
Ouahes
Ouahes/Syria and Lebanon artwork.indd 1 18/07/2018 17:12

Idir Ouahes is Lecturer in History and International Relations at
MIUC Spain. He received his PhD in History from the University of
Exeter and also studied at SOAS, University of London.
‘This excellent study is a welcome addition to the scholarship on the
inter-war mandates of Syria and Lebanon. Ouahes focuses on the cultural
institutions through which the French authorities imposed their rule,
ably demonstrating the ways in which the mandate system was
transformed into a political and cultural framework akin to colonialism.
While tracing the disillusion and contestations that ensued, he
nonetheless discusses the impact and disparate legacy of the period on
both the French and the diverse populations of the two mandates.’
Patricia M.E. Lorcin, Professor of History and Samuel Russell
Chair in Humanities, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
‘Resisting the imposition of French imperial control in 1920s Syria was

never solely a matter of violent opposition. Ranging from classrooms and
museums, to archaeological sites and vernacular journalism, in this
richly evocative text Idir Ouahes reveals how Syrians contested the
imposition of French mandate rule in the realms of cultural heritage,
Martin Thomas, Professor of Imperial History,
University of Exeter
SYRIA AND
LEBANON
UNDER THE
FRENCH
MANDATE
Cultural Imperialism and the
Workings of Empire
IDIR OUAHES
Published in 2018 by
I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
London • New York
www.ibtauris.com
Copyright q 2018 Idir Ouahes
The right of Idir Ouahes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted
by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part
thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book.
Any omissions will be rectified in future editions.
References to websites were correct at the time of writing.

Library of Middle East History 76
ISBN: 978 1 78831 097 0

eISBN: 978 1 78672 410 6
ePDF: 978 1 78673 410 5
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available
Typeset in Garamond Three by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
For my father, Rbah At-Mansūr.
_ ˙
Among the last of the Atlas Lions.
CONTENTS
Map and Figures xi

Preface xiii
Notes on the Text xv
List of Abbreviations xvii
Introduction Cultural Institutions and the Struggle to

Define the Mandate 1
Discursive and Political Opportunity Structures 2
The Formative Mandate Years: 1920– 5 7
Historical Background 12
Historiography of the Mandate 17
The Shifts in Early Mandate Administration 28
Structure of this Book 35
1. Antiquities Protection and Excavation 37

Antiquities, Orientalism and Cultural Imperialism 38
Archaeological Activity in the Ottoman Period 42
League of Nations and Law 44
Protecting Antiquities 47
French and International Excavations 52
‘And our antiquities, will they return?’
Antiquities in the Press 55
Local Government Contestation of Claims of Culture 61
Conclusion 63
viii SYRIA AND LEBANON UNDER THE FRENCH MANDATE
2. Controlling Cultural Heritage: Museums, Tourism and

Exhibitions 65
Museums and Mise en Valeur 66
Organisation of Museums and Institution of Protection
in the Early Mandate 67
Compartmentalisation of Culture 69
Tensions and Initiative in Local Preservation Efforts 71
Tourism at the Outset of the Mandate 75
Exhibitions in the Early Mandate 81
The Beirut Fair and Mise en Valeur 84
Conclusion 87
3. Classrooms, Curricula and Content 89

French Instruction: ‘The Most Certain and
Efficient Way to Assure Our Influence’ 89
Classroom Control 96
The Fight for Arabic 103
Higher and Technical Education 107
Education and the Desire for Development 112
Conclusion 115
4. The Politics of Pedagogy 117

Political Capital, Funding and Clientelism 117
Organisation and Local Government Intervention 122
Women’s Education 126
Networks of Dissenting Education 127
Instrumentalising International Networks 132
Conclusion 136
5. Surveillance, Subsidies and Censorship: The Domestic

Arabic Press 138
Open Source Intelligence: The Service de la Presse 139
A Cantankerous and Informed Press 141
Syrian Unity in the Press 146
Censorship and Press Laws 151
Opposition to the Press Laws 153
Conclusion 161
CONTENTS ix
6. Subservience and Sanction? The Francophone Press 162

The Levantine Francophone Press 163
Syro-Lebanese Press Activity in Europe 170
The Republican and Right-Wing Metropolitan Press 179
The Leftist Press 188
The Colonial Lobby and Newspapers 192
Conclusion 195
7. Internationalism: The External Press 196

Suspicion of the British Press 196
Newspapers in the British Middle East 198
Russian Influence 202
The US-Based Press 204
The Mahjar American Press 209
The Regional Press 217
Conclusion 223
8. General Conclusion 224

Implementing and Contesting Mandatory Methods
through Cultural Institutions 224
Competing and Changing Visions of the Mandate 225
Notes 229
Select Bibliography 295
Index 305
MAP AND FIGURES
Map
Map 1.1 The Sykes– Picot Agreement of 1916 in regard to
Syria and Palestine (held at the National Archives, Kew,
MFQ 1/388/2). 14
Figures
Figure 1.1 A local labourer looks over the cover of the
sarcophagus of Ahiram in Jbeil supervised by Père Raphaël
Savignac (1923). 59
Figure 2.1 Temple of Baalbek from the air c.1925. 80
Figure 3.1 Tripoli from the air c.1925. 93
Figure 4.1 American University of Beirut (AUB),
College Hall c.1920. 134
Figure 5.1 Beirut from the air c.1925. 142
Figure 6.1 Syro-Palestinian Congress meeting in Geneva
from 25 August to 21 September 1921, q Hassan El-Taher. 175
Figure 7.1 Results of French bombardment of Damascus
in 1925, q Hassan El-Taher. 205
PREFACE
French protectorate established by centuries of cultural activity:
archaeological, educational and charitable. This vision translated into a
meaning of the mandate as colonial protectorate, integrated into the
French Empire. Initial French methods of organising and supervising
cultural activity sought to embrace this vision and to implement it in
the exploitation of antiquities, the management and promotion of
cultural heritage, the organisation of education and the control of public
opinion among literate classes. However, in-depth examination of the
first five years of the League of Nations-assigned mandate reveals that
French expectations of a protectorate were quickly dashed by consistent
and widespread contestation of their mandatory methods within cultural
institutions, not simply among Arabists but so too among minority
groups initially expected to be loyal clients. The violence of imposing
the mandate de facto, starting with a landing of French troops on the
Lebanese and Syrian Mediterranean coast in 1919 and followed by
extension into Syria ‘proper’ in 1920, was followed by consistent violent
revolt and rejection of the very idea of a mandate over local peoples.
Examining the cultural institutions’ role reveals less violent yet
similarly consistent contestation of French meanings ascribed to the
mandate through challenges to methods of executing it. Tracing the
mandate administrators’ and surveillance and diplomatic apparatus’
point of view, this analysis shows the significant pressure put on French
expectations through contestation of such policies as the exportation of
antiquities; the expansion of French instruction over Arabic learning;
xiv SYRIA AND LEBANON UNDER THE FRENCH MANDATE
and the censorship of the press. This did not quite unite the infamously
tapestry-like Syrian stakeholders into a nationalist or even anti-
imperialist framework. Yet there was a unity in contesting mandatory
methods perceived to be wrecking the meaning of a League of Nations
mandate. The political and de jure discourses emerging after the tragedy
of World War I fostered expectations of European tutelages that
prepared local peoples for autonomy and independence. Yet, even among
the most Francophile of stakeholders, the unfolding of the first years of
mandate rule brought forth, de facto, entirely different events and
methods. In conjunction with the ongoing violent refusal to accept even
the premise of a French mandate, this contestation, partly occurring
through cultural institutions, ultimately contributed to a fundamental
reduction of French expectations in the formative five years. An in-depth
horizontal and synchronic analysis of the shifts in discourses, attitudes
and activities unfolding in French and locally organised cultural
institutions such as schools, museums and newspapers thus signals the
need for mandate studies to give greater consideration to shifts in
international and local meanings, methods and capacities rather than
treating them as a single unit of analysis.
NOTES ON THE TEXT
For the flow of writing, certain interchangeable official names are

rendered in alternative forms. For instance: Ministry of Foreign Affairs
also appears as Foreign Ministry, Damascus State as State of Damascus,
Alexandretta Sanjak as Sanjak of Alexandretta, Chamber of Deputies as
Assembly, Lebanon Governor as Governor of Lebanon and so on. Certain
numbers have exceptionally retained Arabic numeral forms in certain
cases to ensure comprehension, particularly when referring to treaty
articles (e.g., Article 11 of the League of Nations Covenant), for the ease
of the reader. Though care has been taken to edit uncommon Arabic
names and words according to appropriate phonetic transliterations,
effort has equally been made to render Arabic nouns in accessible and
popularly recognisable forms (i.e., Quran instead of al-Qurʾān, Aleppo
not Halab, Shia not Shı̄ʿah).
˙
Archival material is described in English except when the exact title
in the original language is quoted in full. Certain situations, where an
archive document’s title already declares its date, makes the need for
listing a date redundant. Similarly, when a specific document is cited
more than once, it takes a shortform version of: ‘Title [date]’. Shorthands
and abbreviations are used throughout the text and notes after initial full
spelling.
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
People and Organisations Archival Locations
Name in French
Short (If Applicable) English Meaning Short Archive Name
AL Armée du Levant Levant Army AHE Archivo Historico de
España, Madrid
BR Bulletin de Intelligence AN-P Archives Nationales
Renseignements Bulletin de France, Pierrefitte-
Sur-Seine
DA Délégation Delegation BDIC Bibliothèque de
du Haut to State of Documentation
Commissaire Aleppo Internationale
auprès de l’État Contemporaine,
d’Alep Nanterre
DD Délégation du High BL British Library
Haut Commissaire Commissioner’s (IOR) (India Office
auprès de l’État de Delegation to the Records),
Damas State of Damascus London
DEA Délégation du Delegation to the CADL Centre des Archives
Haut Commissaire Alawite State Diplomatique, La
auprès de l’État Courneuve
Alawite
xviii SYRIA AND LEBANON UNDER THE FRENCH MANDATE
DGL Délégation du High CADN Centre des Archives

Haut Commissaire Commissioner’s Diplomatique, Nantes
auprès de l’État du Delegation to the
Grand Liban State of Greater
Lebanon
DP Délégation du High HCSC Haverford College
Haut Commissaire Commissioner’s Special Collections,
a Paris Delegate in Paris Haverford, PA
DSA Délégation du High HU Harvard University
Haut Commissaire Commissioner’s Archives, Cambridge
auprès du Sanjak Delegation to the MA
d’Alexandrette Sanjak of
Alexandretta
DSF Délégation du High MEC St Antony’s College
Haut Commissaire Commissioner’s Oxford Middle East
auprès de la Delegation to the Centre Archives
Federation Syrienne Syrian Federation
EdA État des Alaouites State of the Alawites NARA- National Archives and
CP Records
Administration,
College Park MD
EGL État du Grand State of Greater NYPL New York Public
Liban Lebanon Library Manuscripts
(Government) and Archives Division
G-S Secrétaire Générale General-Secretary PHS Presbyterian Historical
Society Archives,
Philadelphia PA
HC Haut-Commissaire High Commissioner RAC- Rockefeller Archives
(Beirut) RFR Centre-Rockefeller
Foundation Records,
Sleepy Hollow NY
H-C Haute Commission High Commission UNOG- United Nations Office
(Beirut) ALON in Geneva-Archives of
the League of Nations
MAE Ministre des Foreign Ministry
Affaires Étrangères (Quai d’Orsay, Paris)
MFA Président du Minister of Foreign YUMC Yale University
Conseil et Affaires Affairs (also the Manuscript
étrangères/Ministre Prime Minister Collections, New
des Affaires during the 1920s) Haven CT
INTRODUCTION
CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS
AND THE STRUGGLE TO DEFINE
THE MANDATE
Examining cultural institutions operating during the formative years of

the French–League of Nations mandate over Syria and Lebanon suggests
that disparate imperial, national and communal factions were ultimately
united in contesting mandatory means and methods. Examining the
historically cohesive period between the 1920 French invasion and the
1925 Great Syrian Revolt provides a lens for horizontal and synchronic
analysis of the shifting positions, opportunities and conditions producing
contested meanings and implementation of mandate rule. Such shifts
could be considered efforts probing and resulting from political and
discursive ‘opportunity structures’.
These shifts emerged through the efforts of varying stakeholders
operating in stratified echelons. Such stakeholders consisted of a
constellation of individuals who, acting together and through
institutions, perceived themselves to have a stake in the meaning and
method of unfolding mandate rule. Among these were particular groups
of French, British and American politicians, lobbyists and publics,
French and British colonial administrators, military officers, Lebanese
communal leaders, Syrian newspaper editors and so on. These
stakeholders operated internationally in cities with significant Syrian
and Lebanese migrant communities such as New York, Rio de Janeiro,
Buenos Aires, Santiago and Bogota. They were active in ideological
centres such as Geneva, Moscow and Berlin. The metropolitan and
2 SYRIA AND LEBANON UNDER THE FRENCH MANDATE
imperial hubs of Paris and London were of evidently primordial

importance. Regional locations such as Baghdad, Jerusalem, Istanbul
and Cairo provided refuges for those opposed to the mandate while
French colonial centres such as Marseille, Algiers and Rabat housed
capitalists and administrators seeking its extension. Finally, the
elemental sites were those hosting mandatory (Beirut), local (the
Greater Lebanon, Damascus, Aleppo, Jabal Druze and Alawite regions)
and provincial activity.
Discursive and Political Opportunity Structures

Before introducing the specific subject to be examined, it is worthwhile
to very briefly consider some conceptual framework underlying the
present work. Classic historians tended to expect that history revealed
itself untouched, thus making their mission one of ‘telling it as it was’.
‘Structural’ approaches, particularly those of Karl Marx and Max Weber,
have been considered as examples of a shift from these narratives to
analytical history: ones which subjugated the historical events to
categories of rational analysis. The limits of such approaches were
elegantly outlined by later historian Michel Foucault:
The old questions of traditional analysis (what links to establish

between events [. . .] questions about continuity [. . .]) are replaced
[. . .] by another type of investigation [. . .] What type of logics
[series] should be imposed? What criteria for periodisation for
each of them? [. . .] let us say [. . .] briefly that traditional history
undertook a ‘memorisation’ of the monuments of the past
by transforming them into documents [. . .] in our times, history is
the activity that transforms documents into monuments [. . .] a
deployment of a mass of elements [archival documents] that
require isolation, consolidation, making pertinent, putting into
relationships, constituting together [i.e., analytical, or interpretive
history].’1
Foucault’s answer to the problem of the biases inherent to overarching

frameworks or narratives, which he claimed would accumulate into what
he called ‘discourses’, was a combination of historical approaches that he
termed ‘archaeology’ and ‘genealogy’. For Foucault, ‘archaeology’ in this
INTRODUCTION 3
historiographical sense sought out ‘discernible identities, analogies, sets of

differences that must be described [. . . and, with this effort], an overall
configuration emerged.’ Alongside this broader effort, there was a more
microscopic effort at: ‘genealogy, or rather a multiplicity of genealogical
researches, a painstaking rediscovery of struggles together with the rude
memory of their conflicts’.2
These words were closely foreshadowed by Antonio Gramsci, an
adherent of Marx’s method, who wrote that:
Unity between ‘spontaneity’ and ‘conscious leadership’ or

‘discipline’ is precisely the real political action of the subaltern
classes, in so far as this is mass politics and not merely an
adventure by groups claiming to represent the masses [. . .]
(‘spontaneous’ in the sense that they are not the result of any
systematic educational activity on the part of an already conscious
leading group, but have been formed through everyday experience
illuminated by ‘common sense’ [. . .] what is unimaginatively
called ‘instinct’, although it too is in fact a primate and elementary
historical acquisition).3
In contrast to Foucault’s focus on discourse, however, Gramsci’s view of

the historian’s task stressed the unearthing of the shifting political
balance of forces between groups. He wrote that:
The historical unity of the ruling classes is realised in the state

[. . .] Unity [. . .] results from the organic relations between [. . .]
political society [i.e., the state and its representatives] and civil
society [cultural institutions, public institutions] [. . .] the
subaltern classes, by definition, are not unified [. . .] Hence it is
necessary to study: 1. The objective formation of the subaltern
social groups [. . .] their quantitative diffusion and their origins
in pre-existing social groups, whose mentality, ideology and aims
they conserve for a time. 2. Their active or passive affiliation to
the dominant political formations, their attempts to influence
the programmes of these formations in order to press claims of
their own, and the consequences of these attempts [. . .] 3. The
birth of new parties of the dominant groups, intended to
conserve the assent of the subaltern groups and to maintain
control [. . .] 4. The formations which the subaltern groups

themselves produce, in order to press claims of a limited and
partial character.4
For Gramsci:
The historian must record, and discover the causes of, the line of
development towards integral autonomy [of dominant groups . . .]
the history of the parties of the subaltern groups is very complex too.
It must include all the repercussions of party activity, throughout the
area of the subaltern groups themselves taken globally, and also upon
the attitudes of the dominant group [. . .] the repercussions of the far
more effective actions [. . .] of the dominant groups upon the
subaltern [. . .] the history of subaltern social groups is necessarily
fragmented and episodic. [. . .] Subaltern groups are always subject to
the activity of ruling groups [. . .] only [seemingly] ‘permanent’
victory breaks their subordination [. . .] Every trace of independent
initiative on the part of subaltern groups should therefore be of
incalculable value for the integral historian. Consequently, this kind
of history can only be dealt with monographically, and each
monograph requires an immense quantity of material which is often
hard to collect.5
These somewhat dense historiographical points can be more concisely

considered by examining the political science literature on political
and discursive opportunity structures. Following Sidney Tarrow, Bart
Cammaerts defines the concept of a political opportunity structure as
referring to ‘dimensions of the political environment that provide situations
allowing people to undertake collective action by affecting their expectations
for success or failure’.6 Cammaerts extends this definition to the sphere of
the media, characterising this as a ‘discursive opportunity structure’. In a
Gramscian and Foucauldian sense, this notion of ‘opportunity structures’
neatly summarises the way in which the historical process, including the
one under present scrutiny, is the result of conflicting movements and
periodic moments of dominant and subjugated actors.
The concern to unearth both the dominant exercise of power, and the
consequent resistance and contestation by local peoples, is particularly
relevant to the analysis of imperial ventures. Echoing Foucault, Gyan
INTRODUCTION 5
Prakash notes that local peoples’ ‘“minor” knowledges and subjugated

practice can be gleaned from archives by observing the “tenuousness” of
colonial power [which] bears testimony to the pressure exercised silently
by the subordinated’.7 This method, which emerged from Gramscian
studies of British India (the so-called ‘Subaltern School’), was described
by Gayatri Spivak as a ‘historical reinscription [strategy] the historian
must persist in his efforts in this awareness that the subaltern is
necessarily the absolute limit of the place in which history is narrativized
[sic]’.8 In other words: the place where the colonial state’s gaze and
memory leaves out the subjugated.
A fellow post-colonial critic, Edward Said, equally channelled
Foucault when discussing the role of culture as an avenue for imperial
subjugation and subsequent contestation:
By looking at culture and imperialism [. . .] we may discern the

various forms [. . .] of the imperial experience [. . .] if the obdurately
material natives are transformed from subservient beings into
inferior humanity, then the colonizer is similarly transformed into
an incisive scribe, whose writing reports on the Other and insists on
its scientific disinterestedness and [. . .] the steady improvement
[. . .] of primitives [. . .] For the colonizer the incorporative
apparatus [that records colonial history, ethnographic ‘facts’ and
subsumes the ‘subjugated’] requires unremitting effort to maintain.
For the victim, imperialism offers these alternatives: serve or be
[physically, psychologically, culturally] destroyed.9
Examining the initial five years of mandate rule through the prism
of management and contestation of cultural institutions can provide
insights into clashing meanings of the mandate: meanings that shifted as a
variety of events unfolded, culminating with the Great Syrian Revolt of
1925.
Defining, circumscribing and researching the cultural sphere or
public sphere is inevitably open to a great deal of debate. The concept of
a ‘public sphere’ has become a cachet in sociologically inspired historical
investigation. Haim Gerber’s attempt to introduce it to the Ottoman
Muslim world reveals how it can only awkwardly be imposed on non-
European developments: ‘the [. . .] public sphere, [. . .] may be loosely
defined as the area of societal activity that is relevant to the social and
political order in general [i.e., all activity! . . .] rather than just groups
[. . .] these new approaches make the society itself the focus of study’.10
Such a loose definition results from an ex post facto attempt at imposing
this concept on other societies. Yet its most convincing exposition, by
Jürgen Habermas, is resolutely rooted in the European early modern
experience, and intrinsically tied to the shifts that a capitalist mode of
exchange and circulation effected upon social orders in the European
mercantile towns.11 Certainly, parallel or alternative shifts in social order
could be discerned in Islamic, or other, societies. There is nevertheless a
need for empirical and conceptual depth of the kind deployed by
Habermas preceding any attempt at conceptualising a Muslim public
sphere. Much the same can be said about any ‘cultural sphere’ that may
exist. One major oversight prompted by discussions of such ‘spheres’ is
that, though they provide a window into societal dynamics as Herber
suggests, they also forget that the (colonial) state remains an active, and
perhaps dominant, participant in the societal arena.
As Theodor Adorno reminds us when discussing the cultural sphere:
Whoever speaks of culture speaks of administration as well,

whether this is his intention or not. The combination of so many
things lacking a common denominator [. . .] the inclusion of the
objective spirit of an age in the single word ‘culture’ betrays from
the outset the administrative view, the task of which, looking
down from on high [i.e. a state or societally organised hierarchy],
is to assemble, distribute, evaluate and organize [. . .] At the same
time, however [. . .] culture is opposed to administration. Culture
would like to be higher and more pure [not] tailored [. . .] to any
tactical or technical considerations.12
Despite these challenges, a degree of cohesion in examining the

management of cultural affairs by French authorities in Syria and
Lebanon is helpfully provided by the mandatory’s own administrative
schemata; though such an approach must always bear in mind the
selective interpretations inherent to the colonial administrative gaze and
any archives it leaves behind. Focusing on institutions rather than
spheres allows for an examination of the functional role of schools,
museums and newspapers, their oversight by mandate authorities and
use as platforms for voicing alternative visions of mandate rule.
INTRODUCTION 7
The Formative Mandate Years: 1920– 5

Violence established Franco-British control of the post-Ottoman Middle
East. However, a new international sphere prompted by Bolshevik anti-
imperialist rhetoric and the subsequent Wilsonian moment required a
dilution of imperial aims and methods.13 Though initial mandate
sponsors and administrators in Paris and Beirut interpreted it as a
Levantine protectorate, they soon encountered opposition emanating
from local and international stakeholders. Local government actors
intended to become clients for the mandate authorities used the League
of Nations principle of tutelage to challenge French protectorate
interpretations and colonial methods.
French budgetary constraints meant that the scope for forceful
intervention was restricted. Metropolitan and global public opinion
also affected the capacity to deploy violence, as was demonstrated by
the international outrage over French repression of the 1925 Great
Syrian Revolt. Domestically, the metropolitan French election of a
Cartel des Gauches socialist government in 1924 threw plans for a
Catholic Levantine protectorate into disarray. The sardonic new Prime
Minister, Edouard Herriot, nominated the secularist General Maurice
Sarrail, who immediately sought to make a firmer intervention by the
mandatory state.14 Ironically this both antagonised the previously
favoured Catholic cultural institutions, such as the Jesuit missionaries
and Maronite religious leadership, as well as awakening the ire of
traditionally autonomous groups such as the Druze people of southern
Syria.
Alongside the constrictions and alterations forced upon governmental
and administrative decision makers by international economic or
political pressures, groups and individuals within the mandate
territories overtly opposed French protectorate methods. This included
non-violent contestation in cultural institutions such as the press,
schools and museums. They organised associations, wrote petitions and
letters, and undertook strikes and protests. Such activity reached the
League of Nations’ Geneva headquarters as well as New York, Paris, Rio
de Janeiro, Beirut, Damascus, Aleppo and Homs. Each chapter herein
attempts to shed new light on the struggle over a French protectorate in
what was termed a League of Nations mandate drafted, and in theory
overseen, by a Permanent Mandates Commission.
Defining the meaning of this mandate was thus a fundamentally

political, and not simply a legal, matter. The meaning of the mandate was
malleable according to who was doing the defining.15 Working with a
singular definition of the mandate may be legally apposite but risks
obscuring the historically complex and multiple meanings expressed by
the overseeing powers, as well as by international competitors and
transnational anti-imperial activists. Natasha Wheatley and Andrew
Arsan have noted the role of petititons in crafting alternative meanings
and expectations of mandate rule.16 Indeed, even if petitions did not reach
the eyes and ears of the Permanent Mandates Commission in Geneva, they
still represented a capacity to mobilise individuals and groups in order to
challenge mandatory meanings and methods at the local level.
From the French point of view, claims of cultural affinity and
governmental competence were fundamental to their ability to gain
and retain their League of Nations mandate. Many French civil and
military officials in the Levant sought another French Mediterranean
protectorate. This vision was rooted in a romantic-orientalist reading
of history which sought to ‘resurrect’ and ‘conjure’ a forgotten past of
Roman Mediterranean supremacy. This rhetoric encouraged, and
was itself sustained by, long-embedded French cultural institutions
in the region: archaeological research efforts and educational
establishments.17 As the Ottoman Middle East broke apart and
French planners eyed a stake in the region, claims of cultural
attachment to the Levant were mobilised in order to gain another
strategically placed and seemingly wealth-generating Mediterranean
protectorate for the French Empire.18
Secret negotiations and public talk of a protectorate translated into the
reality of a League of Nations mandate over Syria and Lebanon. French
officials relied on the country’s long-established regional presence to
buttress their vision of a Levantine protectorate. France’s influence on
Levantine cultural institutions resulted from extensive engagement
beginning with the first Ottoman capitulations.19 Traditional trade
between Lyon, Marseille and the Holy Land, the French Catholic presence
in Jerusalem and Lebanon, the 1860 ‘humanitarian’ intervention, and the
opening of archaeological and educational establishments such as
Jerusalem’s École Biblique et Archéologique and Beirut’s Saint Joseph
University were all interpreted by French publicists, lobbyists and
politicans as material evidence of their primacy in the Levant.
INTRODUCTION 9
The discussions among French cultural representatives, political

appointees and mandate administrators reveal a romantic-orientalist
mentality that fed the passion for acquiring Syria. A consistent level of
distance, if not disdain, toward local peoples, even the seemingly favoured
Maronites, is evident in administrative correspondence. Appropriating
their pasts through the organisation of antiquities and the management of
heritage served a double function; it both affirmed France’s claims of
supremacy as a result of historic links and it afforded the mandate power
the opportunity to boost its claims to singular governmental competence
over ‘incapable’ local peoples.
The French project for the Levant was a paternalist one that sought to
forge ‘colonial citizens’ in countries envisioned by imperial diplomacy
and imposed through violence.20 Yet scrutinising instances of this
project’s execution in the cultural institutions reveals difficulties in its
implementation, particularly in the formative five years when initial
French aims and methods were successfully contested. This fundamental
reality is continually evident in the case of attempts at controlling Syro-
Lebanese communities in the Levant and abroad via cultural institutions
such as museums, schools or newspapers.21
French publicists, planners and administrators faced difficulties
translating talk of a Levantine protectorate into effective control over
established and new clients.22 At the heart of clientelism lies a dialogue
between patron and protectee. The very nature of this delicate process
discourages long-term planning and, given the need for a client’s
consent, can only be secured by careful calculation.23 An example of this
concerns the leader of France’s most favoured minority, the Maronite
Patriarch Monsignor Elias Hoyek. Hoyek was described by British
authorities as ‘shrewd [. . .] ably supported by clever [. . .] Bishops, whose
time is devoted more to temporal than to spiritual matters [. . .] Though
primarily devoted to French interests, he has always shown a strong
disposition to be on friendly terms with H[is] M[ajesty’s] Consul.’24
The clientelist dialogue was certainly one between unequals yet, in
stark contrast to the tabula rasa methods employed by the military
and colonial settlers in the early Algerian colony, it was premised on the
recognition of dialoguing participants.25 This was particularly the
case following the growth of an international arena and norms that, in
theory, regulated imperial actions and brought previously obfuscated
domestic affairs into broader consciousness.26 Alongside direct
nationalist, violent or international disputes, clientelist contestation in

the cultural institutions should not simply be considered as a set of
granular and disparate fights over mandatory methods. They were in fact
united, whether vocally or tacitly, by a protest against administrators’
interpretations of the mandate as a protectorate.
Just six months into mandate rule over Syria and Lebanon,
discussions in the French Parliament were outlining clashing views of
the mandate mission. Orientalist and classicist scholar-turned-senator
Victor Bérard complained that the Syrian budget had doubled from 338
million francs in July 1920 to 611 million in December, while France’s
post-World War indebtedness to the USA grew. Accused in the Senate of
being defeatist by President Alexandre Millerand’s Prime Minister,
Georges Leygues, Bérard defended himself and denounced the initial
policy as ‘Algerianisation’. Predicting that this policy would fail to meet
France’s needs and anger local peoples, including communities seen
as traditional Francophiles, Bérard filibustered the Senate debate on
renewing credits for the mandate administrators until he received
reassurances.27 Georges Leygues’ government also faced opposition from
Raymond Poincaré, the ex-French president and then a senator on a
committee examining Syria. Poincaré pointed out that even Francophile
groups had complained about French enslavement, urging Leygues to
reconsider aims and methods in the Levant.28
Evidence of such difficulties is available throughout the diplomatic and
mandatory archives. One Syrian student, Badrih Talih, protested the
˙ ˙
violent French repression of the 1925 Great Revolt. Talih had headed an
˙
Arabist society at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and was
29
thereafter studying in Paris. Instead of becoming a model Francophile
member of the elite, the American-educated Talih outlined his outrage.
˙
Talih explained that the:
˙
Druze revolt [. . .] its importance for the Christians and the diverse
Muslims sects [. . .] was [. . .] a phase of the Syrian question. It is a
significant manifestation of a general discontent [. . .] a
misunderstanding has taken hold; this is proven by the fact that
events in Damascus, protests in Beirut, and frequent agitations
clearly reveal that the Revolt is not always limited to the Jabal
[Druze]. Only France can respond to this malaise, but the Syrian
youth that love her [France] and are educated by her have,
INTRODUCTION 11
I believe, the duty to become the interpreters of [Syro-Lebanese]

public opinion for the French authorities.
For Talih, High Commission general-secretary Robert De Caix had

˙
alienated originally open-minded local peoples who had accepted a
mandate that would allow them to ‘collaborate with the [. . .mandatory]
power’. Talih added that: ‘the different classes of the people equally
˙
asked for reforms, expressed their wishes, but the responses were not
favourable [. . .] instead, the voices raised were strangled by exile,
deportation and imprisonment. Censorship is so severe [. . .] that it
has become a governmental bureaucracy [machine gouvernementale]’. The
situation could be ameliorated if French authorities revised their
approach to the meaning of their mandate; according to Talih:
˙
‘all Syrians, without distinction, will believe in the termporary mandate
principle, as an apprenticeship toward independence’. France could
retain the status of tutor if it reformed the mandate towards autonomous
development. This would include the unity of Syria, elections on a
universal suffrage basis, the replacement of military high commissioners
by civil ones and the election of a parliament.30 Three of these four
demands would be met by 1928.
In that same year, 1928, the diverging approaches to the mandate were
acknowledged by intelligence officer Captain Maurice Gros De Vaud.
Gros De Vaud noted that ‘the intellectuals in mandate territories have,
from the outset, put into doubt the discussion of the scope of the
mandatory [power]’s rights’. These ‘intellectuals’ wanted to ‘shake off
the tutelage’ approach in favour of ‘making of their tutor a simple advice
giver’. In contrast to this, French ideas of the mandatory power were ‘as
per the letters and spirit of the mandate charter, not as an expectant
mother, incapable of deciding [ personage expectant, incapable de vouloir], but
as an aide, an active collaborator, and sometimes as a substitute with full
powers’.31 Gros De Vaud believed that ‘future historians will recognise
one day’ the nuances of the French approach and the League of Nations’
Permanent Mandates Commission’s ‘painstaking yearly controls’.
Examining methods of mandatory control of cultural institutions
undermine his expectation of historians’ conclusions. Officials managing
cultural institutions nakedly emphasised promoting French claims of
culture and governmental competency, thereby asserting their protecto-
rate. This met significant local pressure and pushback as Gros De Vaud
acknowledged. After outlining the challenges to French implementation

of a protectorate in Syria, he wrote that: ‘from a less realistic point of view,
and one which would accord more with our tradition, we can conceive a
certain pride of maintaining in these regions the French language and
culture of this “soft France” which, I hope, will one day become a second
fatherland for Libano-Syrians – perhaps even all Syrians’.32
Historical Background
The lengthy French engagement with the Levant forms a critical part of
the formation of the modern Middle East. The now (in)famous Sykes–
Picot Agreement is too often solely seen as the departure point for the
modern Middle East. It can equally be understood to be a landmark for
two centuries of Franco-British jostling in this keystone region linking
the Mediterranean Basin with the greater Indian Ocean theatre.
The ever-entrepreneurial British authorities were the first to establish
‘protectorates’ in the Persian Gulf region in the late eighteenth
century.33 The Napoleonic invasion of Egypt and Syria in the late 1790s
was a more direct statement of French interests.34
French interests in the Middle East matured from enlightenment-era
adventurism to imperial domination in the nineteenth century,
particularly after the 1860 deployment to Lebanon.35 One mandate-era
report claimed that 1860 was ‘one of the best examples of France’s
disinterested policy toward oppressed peoples [. . .] by affirming our role as
protectors of Christianity [. . .] it gave us [. . .] priority [. . .] in Syria’.36 In
truth, this intervention was undertaken at the height of Anglo-French
sparring that accelerated after Germany’s entrance into the theatre in the
1880s.37 Anglo-French co-operation to contain German imperialism did
not, for instance, translate on the subject of Ottoman debts.38
Germany’s growing influence over the Ottoman authorities never-
theless destabilised a somewhat placid French– British tension in the
region.39 The German destabilisation invigorated an otherwise
diplomatically hamstrung Ottoman government. Ironically, however,
this Ottoman– Turkish irredentism (climaxing after the 1908 Young
Turk Coup), sparked a fresh wave of ethno-nationalism.40 The break-up
of the Ottoman Balkans in the decade prior to the World War
foreshadowed a wave of post-Ottoman ethno-linguistic nationalisms:
Arab, Kurd, Armenian and Zionist Jewish.
INTRODUCTION 13
The Ottoman entry into World War I sealed its fate. Despite early
success at Gallipoli, the Ottoman offensive in Egypt was disastrous.
It was followed by eventual British domination of Mesopotamia and the
British– Hashemite push through the Sinai Desert into Palestine and
Syria. French officers were present among this British– Arab army,
seeking to stake France’s territorial claims. The Franco-British division
of the spoils had been formally put to paper by two mid-level Foreign
Office and Quai d’Orsay officials: Sir Mark Sykes and Franc ois Georges-
Picot. This (in)famous Sykes–Picot Agreement (see Map 1.1) also made
provisions for Italy and Russia to hold spheres of influence in parts of
today’s Turkey; though Bolshevik Russia revealed and renounced these
imperialist designs, Italy kept a watchful eye on Asia Minor, which
included the French-mandated Levant.
The Sykes – Picot Agreement stood alongside two other ill-fated
agreements. The first of these, the 1915 Henry McMahon – Sharif
Hussein correspondence, which had motivated the Hashemite Arabs to
revolt against Ottoman rule, was not a governmental agreement.
It was a series of promises made by a local colonial bureaucrat in Cairo
to the Hashemite Sharif Hussein, whose claim to represent the Arab
nation was certainly disputable.41 The other significant diplomatic
coup of the period was a formal statement of governmental intent at the
cabinet level signed by the British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur
James Balfour.
This November 1917 Balfour Letter, not an agreement either, ‘viewed
with favour [. . .] a national home for the Jewish people’ in Palestine after
months of Zionist lobbying in Whitehall, Philadelphia, New York and
Paris. Indeed, the Balfour Letter was released months after a similar
though buried letter was sent by French Foreign Ministry mandarin
Jules Cambon to Zionist leader Nahum Sokolow: a letter that similarly
promised France’s ‘sympathy’ for the Zionist cause.
These conflicting promises were not resolved as ad hoc British and
French military administrations were erected. This was organised by
Britain as the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA).
General Allenby’s forces held control in OETA South; Sharif Hussein’s
Hejaz Army took over the eastern zone, based at Damascus. French
military officers were placed in charge of the North (later renamed West)
OETA zone. However, the small number of French military contingents
accompanying Allenby meant that they could not effectively occupy
t;
i n ne
r i
P nl
o O
on ur
M lo
o
C
Map 1.1 The Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916 in regard to Syria and Palestine (held
at the National Archives, Kew, MFQ 1/388/2). Available online: https://images.
nationalarchives.gov.uk/assetbank-nationalarchives/action/viewAsset;jsessionid ¼
1D9BBEA8DE71D4F4E5ABA85DC77DD9D6?id¼43923&index¼60&total¼
100&popularityId¼2.
their regions, thus requiring integrated British troops and thereby

subordinating the French officers to Allenby’s command. According to a
retrospective French report, this meant their interests in the Levant and
their mandatory authority was fundamentally undermined. leading to
France’s first foray as mandatory power being perceived as the efforts of a
‘poor parent’ by local communities. The situation was made worse by the
‘occult work, later openly advertised, of English, Sherifian [sic, i.e.,
Hashemite] and other propagandists’.42
Further pressure on French claims in the region came from the USA’s
King–Crane Commission.43 The report claimed that these various
international and local pressures undermined France’s stock, especially
among its favoured Catholic communities in Lebanon. French officers
did not take kindly to the Hashemite King Faisal’s attempts at holding
on to the Beqaa Valley, which had been given to the independent Arabs
by Allenby as a result of France’s skeletal military presence.
With the arrival of the Armée du Levant in Beirut and following the
exchange of skirmishes in the Beqaa as well as accusations that Faisal
harboured fugitives from French Lebanon in early 1920, the independent
Arab Kingdom was swept aside in the summer at the Battle of Maysalūn.
Yet, as French administrators acknowledged, their hold on the country
remained tenuous since troops were needed in the north to fend off any
incursion by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s forces.44 The 1921 Ankara Accord
recognising Turkey’s sovereignty and evacuating French troops from Cilicia
was thus a means for French authorities to give up this agriculturally rich
province in order to retain the strategically placed Syrian interior.
A report on the internal organisation of Syria by a member of the
intelligence service recalled that two fundamental events were the creation
of autonomous Levant states in September 1920 and the organisation of a
Syrian Federation in July 1922. The report’s author, the aforementioned
Gros De Vaud, claimed that the separation of Syria into five states (Greater
Lebanon, Damascus, Aleppo with the Sanjak of Alexandretta, the Alawite
State and the Jabal Druze) had been a logical solution to the country’s
centrifugal ethnic makeup. According to him, High Commissioner
General Henri Gouraud had sought to create a Syrian Federation with the
aim of uniting all five states as early as 1921. However, this project had
met Lebanese and Druze disdain, given their newfound post-Ottoman
autonomy from the Levant’s Sunni Muslim majority. He also claimed that
this project was further harmed by the ‘rudimentary’ public opinion in
INTRODUCTION 17
Syria, a reference to the Aleppo-Damascus press’ rivalry (to be discussed

later, in Chapter 5).45
Gros De Vaud traced the further developments of the Federation as it
changed from being purely consultative to gaining governmental
powers. The appointment of Subhi Barakat al-Khalidi, a Turcophone
politician from Alexandretta who had been sentenced to death in absentia
in 1920, as president of the Syrian Federation was another sign that
France’s efforts at forging a facade of democratic politics were instead
providing an arena for challenging mandate meanings and methods.
Though Gros De Vaud glossed over this contestation in his schematic
outline, other archives speak volumes of the important challenges
enabled by this admittedly limited political arena, in conjunction with
cultural institutions.
Admitting the increasing encroachment of the Federation on the
governmental competencies previously assigned to the states of Damascus
and Aleppo (each with an ‘advisor’ acting as the French High
Commissioner’s éminences grises), Gros De Vaud described the decision by
the third High Commissioner, General Maxime Weygand, to launch a
Syrian Union. However, although the united State of Syria was announced
on 1 January 1925, Gros De Vaud noted that these concessions only served
to further encourage the ‘question of Syrian Unity, which had become the
leitmotif of the Damascene intriguers of the 1925–26 rebellion [Great
Syrian Revolt], and who had even succeeded in getting the approval of
[Druze chieftain] Sultan [Al-]Atrash [. . .] who had, nonetheless, remained
stubbornly independent [of Syrian-Arab nationalism] until then’.46
Historiography of the Mandate

Mandate historiography can be considered as fitting along two broad axes:
institutional or personal ‘biographies’ and thematic studies. Certain
accounts trace personal or institutional legacies with great precision, yet
they sometimes lack analytical criticism. Philippe Gouraud’s biography of
his uncle, the second High Commissioner Henri Gouraud, presents
developments in a matter-of-fact way that ignores the contestation behind
alterations in mandatory methods. His book reiterates contemporary fears
that an ‘Anglo-Saxon’ plot sought to undermine France’s stock with Syrians.
It uncritically parrots French communiqués, such as one that claimed
that Hama inhabitants had vigorously celebrated General Gouraud’s
entry into the city. Such an approach also fails to understand the tensions
at the heart of clientelism. When Philippe Gouraud discusses Rwalla
Bedouin leader Nuri Shaalan’s positioning as a French client, for
instance, he writes that Shaalan became ‘a loyal ally’ without noting that
this was at a heavy financial cost and even this did not buy Shaalan’s
continuing quiescence.47
The bulk of mandate studies are thematic, a result of the enormous
archive, whose declassification in the 1970s, 1990s and 2000s has
spurred fervent research.48 Jean-Davide Mizrahi’s examination of the
French intelligence bureaucracy leads him to trace what he terms
the ‘morphology’ of this indispensable mandate state institution. The
Services des Renseignements’ deep presence in Syria was influenced by
the North African precedent, and fit a broader imperial trend of
increasing dependence on technocratic state mechanisms predicting,
reacting to and steadying socio-political turmoil in the aftermath of
the World War and before the further shock of the Great Depression.
The intelligence services were thus critical for the High Commission to
monitor and order affairs beyond the new state’s frontiers and within
its territorial administration.49
Despite the depth of research, Mizrahi’s approach tends to emphasise
the characteristics and vista of these intelligence services. This should be
supplemented with an examination of their relations with Syro-Lebanese
clients and informants in case-by-case examinations. As Martin Thomas
explains, though this ‘information order’ theoretically promised an
extension of imperial rule and stability, the very need for relying on
security-intelligence apparatuses betrayed ‘a recognition of the limits of
colonial state power [. . .] governed through systems of uneasy clientage’:
what Fred Cooper termed the ‘long arms [imperial planning] and weak
fingers [colonial realities]’ paradox.50
Nacklié Bou Nacklié’s study of the Troupes Spéciales can be
considered the sole study of auxiliary troops.51 Other cadres, such as the
Légion Syrienne, Légion Arménienne or the Gendarmerie Mobile,
remain little studied. The French Armée du Levant itself, and its
colonial (Senegalese, Algerian and Vietnamese) troops, await compre-
hensive examination.52 Some work has looked into the specialist
intelligence-military unit named the Contrôle Bédouin.53 French-
language institutional histories have been written about the antiquities
service and French Institute in Damascus, though both tend toward
INTRODUCTION 19
description of their French bureaucrats.54 Several works have examined

the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and even German Christian missionary influence on
education in Ottoman and French Syria.55
Other studies are thematic and include cross-sections of mandate-
era developments through the lens of a particular discipline, set of
events or notion. Surveys of the international context have placed the
mandate within broader questions of French – British rivalries, though
they tend to focus on the outline and execution of imperial policies
crafted by Paris and London.56 The USA’s nascent interests in the
Middle East have been examined, primarily through its increasing
conversion of educational and humanitarian networks into political
assets.57 Italy has also received deserved attention given its role as the
main Catholic adversary to France in the Levant, and its own lengthy
engagement with the Ottoman Levant.58
The émigré (mahjar) Syro-Lebanese community has been exhaustively
studied in various locales as outlined in Chapter 7. A uniting theme of
mahjar studies is the examination of the creation of ‘homes away from
home’ in the Ottoman period which transited into confused, though
politically fertile, communities. The clientelist relationship between the
French diplomatic apparatus and mahjar leaders is examined in the
current work. Surprisingly, given the popularity of these communities
for academic research, the legal limbo in which mahjaris found
themselves following Ottoman collapse and the Treaty of Lausanne’s
provision for a choice between Syrian or French nationality is yet to
receive attention.
In terms of domestic policies, the classic works on the mandate,
by British oilman Stephen Longrigg and Syrian-American historian
Philip S. Khoury, stressed the political confrontation enacted by the
precedence that the Sykes –Picot order took over the promise of Arab
independence.59 Further studies refined this narrative of the Arab
awakening (against Ottoman and European domination) to examine
its protagonists. James Gelvin’s in-depth examination of the Faisalian
inter-regnum (1918– 20) in Damascus, for instance, revealed how
centrifugal mass politics in the streets, cafes, clubs and newspapers of
Damascus actually pressured King Faisal and his Ottoman-trained
Arabist bureaucratic clique into refusing to reach realpolitik agreements
with France, leading to the violent downfall of an independent Arab
Syrian state at the Battle of Maysalūn.60
An examination of the theme of violence unites studies by Lenka

Bokova, Michael Provence and Daniel Neep. Bokova’s work stressed
the ideological stakes of the Revolt. She explains that the: ‘Syrian
insurrection [. . .] found its roots in [. . .] The new division of the world,
leading to and resulting from the First World War [. . .] The Franco-
British rivalry continued [. . .] the United States made the Rights of Man
their leading cause’.61 For Bokova, skirmishes over the meaning of the
mandate as progressive tutelage or colonial carapace conjoined the
effervescence of culturally and politically mature Arab urbanites and
traditionally irredentist Druze and produced the 1925 Great Revolt.
Provence’s study of the revolt seeks to reduce the influence of what he
detects as an ‘Alawi-influenced nationalist narrative of Assadist Syria:
a narrative that sees the Revolt as the greatest of several disruptions to
mandate rule beginning with the 1919– 20 rebellion by Kurd Ibrahim
Hanano and ‘Alawi Salih Al-Ali revolts as well as the failed spring 1922
˙
uprising.62 Noting the Revolt’s impact in international as well as
domestic political consciousness, a phenomenon recently examined by
Reem Bailony, Provence disagrees with this view of the Revolt’s place in
history.
He argues that: ‘despite its [. . .] failure [. . .] [it did have] the lasting
effect of [. . .] drawing disparate regions together under the idea of a
Syrian-Arab nation’. However, according to him, this idea was put on
hold in the aftermath of French repression in the late 1920s.63 Itamar
Rabinovitch suggested a more pessimistic viewpoint, suggesting that
the ‘close alliance [. . .] created by Sultan al-Atrash and [. . .] Syrian Arab
nationalists [. . .] The political programme [. . .] was couched in Syrian
and Arab nationalist terms [. . .] but the Druze [did not seek to]
amalgamate [. . .] into the Syrian state [. . .] Since the Revolt ended in
defeat the divergence of Druze and Nationalist outlooks hardly became
manifest.’64
Detailed examination of the cultural institutions suggests that the
Revolt was in fact a climactic rejection of mandatory methods that had
already incited various parts of Syria from the outset, as Lenka Bokova
intimated. Rejection, and particularly contestation, of the methods of
mandate rule was undertaken in a range of political avenues including
violent rebellion and cultural organisation. The post-Revolt reorgan-
isation of Syria and Lebanon suggests that it was not a failed first effort
but a mitigated and costly rejection of the first five years of protectorate-
INTRODUCTION 21
style style methods that had been widely understood to be a betrayal of

the meaning of the mandate as a tutelage leading to autonomy. Also at
stake was the definition of what Syria was supposed to represent; a Syrian
state was still going through its birth-pangs as French and multiple
stakeholders sought to contribute to its definition.
Examining the mandate’s multiple violent confrontations, Daniel
Neep emphasises the immediate ‘creative-destruction’ role of French
violence while retaining the voice of Syrian rebels by noting how their
asymmetric warfare forced rethinks by French military officers including
the organisation of a gendarmerie mobile that could chase the guerrillas.65
Neep’s analysis of the role of violence in forging the modern Syrian state
shows the continual implementation and contestation of the mandate by
violent means.66 Even in the safer sphere of activity carved out by
cultural institutions, French authorities ultimately relied on violent or
repressive state apparatuses to coerce local populations. This included
the imprisonment or exile of nationalist newsmen, the use of troops for
the guarding and supervision of French excavation work, and the police
repression and military-diplomatic surveillance of students’ activism.
Autochthonous nationalism and nationalist notions of territoriality
have nevertheless received a great deal of attention, though the internal
political organisation of French Syria and Lebanon has been inexplicably
less popular. Conceptualisations of what Syria signified have been
scrutinised.67 The internal organisation of parliaments, constitutions
and other administration has received some limited attention.68 Philip
S. Khoury’s other contribution to mandate studies stressed the lineages
of urban notable politics in the period leading up to the mandate, in
parallel to Albert Hourani’s influential work.69
This expansion of the urban notables’ politics from late Ottoman-era
familial-political intrigues to wider political awakenings are seen as
evidence of an increasing affiliation to (supra)nationalist identities such as
Westernism, pan-Arabism, pan-Islamism or anti-imperialism.70 Indeed,
for Keith Watenpaugh, this change even encouraged the development
of an amorphous and self-referential urban middle-class ‘modernity’
expressed through newspapers.71
Surveys exist that examine the development of economic and
agricultural policies. Rural –urban relations were at the heart of Hanna
Batatu’s extensive study of Syria’s peasantry. Michael Van Dusen’s
framework for understanding Syria by emphasising the relation between
the ‘hub’ cities of Aleppo, Damascus and Beirut with their agricultural
and commercial ‘spokes’ merits in-depth examination for the mandate
era.72 James Whitaker’s thesis looks at the role of agricultural policies in
the longer term of Syrian state development, including a discussion of
the mandate era.73 Elizabeth Williams’ study places French agricultural
technocracy within the context of Ottoman precedent and French
imperial scientistic rhetoric.74
Economic examinations of the mandate itself have often sought to
frame the Syrian mandate within the question of France’s empire.75
Syria-centric studies have shifted this French-Empire lens. Nourredine
Bouchair’s examination of what he terms that ‘merchant and
moneylending class’, those rich members of the regional and urban
Syro-Lebanese notability, provided an interesting addendum to the
urban notable nationalism thesis outlined earlier. Bouchair reveals the
significance of the mobilisation of financial means for contesting
French capital.76 Geoffrey Schad’s study examined similar concepts
within a framework of Syro-Lebanese demands for industrialisation as
part of France’s mandatory obligations.77 Simon Jackson’s thesis traced
similar tensions between French ‘concessionary capitalism’ and a wider
field of Syro-Lebanese that included popular protestors, boycotters and
strikers as well as an increasingly nationalist notable class.78
The provision of healthcare and welfare have seen increasing attention
in recent studies. Robert Ian Blecher argues that healthcare entered the
public sphere in late Ottoman Syria and became a defining political issue
during French rule; French officials sought to use healthcare provision as
a symbol of governmental competency while Arab nationalists and
Bedouin traditionalists sought to preserve their own medical knowledge
to sustain claims of their culture’s validity.79 Keith Watenpaugh’s study
of US institutions such as Near East Relief is the first comprehensive
study focusing on humanitarian welfare, though there is an increasing
interest in the topic.80
In contrast to post-Independence Syrian nationalist narratives that
have canonised and incorporated Kurd Ibrahim Hanano and Druze
Sultan al-Atrash, ethno-religious angles have traditionally informed
Lebanese communal histories. The Maronites’ proud independence has
long fascinated observers of Lebanese politics and history. Earlier histories
written by Maronites tended to seek a historically reasoned affirmation of
their exceptionality. Thus one Maronite history described the end of
INTRODUCTION 23
Ottoman rule as ‘the end of the Turkish night’.81 The same account passed
over wholesale the first five years of mandate rule, including the role of
Maronite politicians and newspaper editors in pressuring French
authorities to delegate further autonomy to Lebanon.82
It also ignored the clearly political role played by Patriarch Elias
Hoyek, favouring the word ‘saint’, ‘apostle’ and ‘man of God’ to
describe him. This entrenched a Maronite and French orientalist
narrative emphasising this community’s victimhood and political
innocence. Intellectuals such as Michel Chiha assimilated this picture
of comparatively refined yet needy Maronites surrounded by imposing
waves of Semitic-Islamic peoples: a thesis originating in French
orientalist works and characterised as an attempt to ‘revive Phoenicia’
by Asher Kaufman.83
This emphasis on communal perspectives has seen more of a critical
renaissance in recent scholarship. Extending Itamar Rabinovitch’s thesis,
Benjamin Thomas White argues that the mandate state’s clientelist
approach allowed the emergence of compact minorities as fully fledged
political communities.84 The role of de facto and de jure clientelist
mandate methods is evident in the organisation of states for the Druze
and Alawites and favouritism toward the Maronite minority in Greater
Lebanon. The policy of buttressing communal affiliations as political
units is further examined by Nadine Méouchy.85
‘Heterodox’ Islamic religious groups such as the Alawites and Druze
have remained relatively less examined, perhaps owing to their security-
minded self-imposed secrecy, though Michael Provence notes that some
recent Arabic Druze accounts of the Great Revolt have sought to
understand it as an ethno-communal uprising.86 Research on Kurds
suggests that this community developed an ethno-nationalist
consciousness only gradually, beginning with intellectual elaborations
in the 1920s and reaching mass audiences through the Kurdish press in
the 1930s and 1940s.87
The Shia community in south Lebanon has also been scrutinised. Max
Weiss argues that the incorporation of the Ja‘fari Shia Sharia court
system in the Jabal ‘Amil led to a degree of legal-communal autonomy
while keeping an increasingly self-aware Shia community at a certain
distance from Lebanese political debates over the 1920s and 1930s.88
However, this approach risks reducing Shia logics to religious affiliation.
As Tamara Chalabi notes, and in keeping with the dialogic nature of
clientelism, Lebanese Shias were negotiating their path between the

Arab Sunni Faisalians and the French High Commission as early as
1918. Indeed, divisions within the Shia secular leadership allowed the
French to encourage those among them seeking Shia religious autonomy
and separation.89
Such ‘divided loyalties’, as well as a growing inter-communal
contestation between the newly empowered Francophile Maronites and
other south-Lebanese groups such as the Shia and Greek Orthodox,
suggests that minorities could in fact be just as complex as they were
compact.90 Even religiously akin communities could demonstrate
different characteristics as Ottoman regionalism gave way to French
clientelism. The Greek Orthodox communities of Beirut and Damascus,
deeply involved with the Ottoman trade between these capitals, protested
French policies that separated Greater Lebanon from Syria. Unlike the
religiously organised Maronites, who invoked their concerns through their
Patriarch Elias Hoyek, the Beirut-based Greek Orthodox Patriarch held
less sway with his more commercially minded constituents who had
developed a degree of financially induced autonomy.91
In contrast, traditionally Russophile Orthodox Armenians were
mostly quiescent, even as they brought with them Communist ideas
into their makeshift suburbs in Beirut, since they depended on French
and Anglophone welfare.92 In fact, French-sponsored Catholic
Armenians and Assyrian-Chaldeans were encouraged to settle in the
northern parts of Syria in order to ‘dilute’ the Sunni Muslim population
and thereby create Francophile Christian buffer zones separating
Aleppo, Deir Ez-Zor and the new Turkish Republic: a policy that may
have seemed like a good strategy on maps but actually fuelled inter-
communal contestation in rural villages, as will be seen in the case of
school budget disputes.93
Two studies of cultural politics in the mandate have been undertaken
by Jennifer Dueck and Elizabeth Thompson in a welcome extension of
the field of political activity to include cultural institutions such as
cinemas, scouting groups, schools and newspapers. Jennifer Dueck’s
study of the claims of culture makes a fundamental point regarding the
role of claims of cultural appropriateness and dominance for French
oversight of their mandate tutees. Dueck offers a functional approach
to culture along institutional lines, writing that cultural politics
encompasses: ‘the negotiations and networking [. . .] between public
INTRODUCTION 25
leaders [. . .] in cultural institutions [. . .] whether in a small community

or on the [inter]national stage’.94
Dueck’s framework serves as the blueprint for the frequent reference
herein to French claims of cultural affinity and consequent
governmental competency in the Levant. However, the current work
also complicates that of Dueck since her focus is on ‘the last decade of
French mandate rule’, the 1930s. This distinction is not merely
temporal; the meanings, conditions and expectations of mandate rule
were under a great deal of contestation in the formative five years.
By the 1930s, a negotiation between Syro-Lebanese stakeholders and
their mandatory administrators may have replaced a previous political
culture characterised by contestation; the combination of various
controversies and centrifugal local, émigré, regional and international
forces evident in cultural institutions as well as violent outbursts had
spelt the death-knell of genuine French expectations of a Levantine
protectorate.
Elizabeth Thompson’s sweeping history of cultural institutions does
cover the earlier period of the mandate. The gender-based analysis of the
exercise of French paternalist power over what she terms constructed
‘colonial citizens’ is a welcome revision of uncritical histories that ignore
women’s organising in cultural and political instiutions.95 Her core claim
that the mandate period ‘was [. . .] seminal in laying the foundations of
postcolonial states and citizenship’ is critical in encouraging a revision of
imperial and nationalist narratives that portray it as a tragic and mistaken
part of modern Syro-Lebanese and French imperial history.96 The mandate
was not simply a blundered French effort to do good hampered by a
budgetary crisis or a period of stifled communal or nationalist identity
awaiting renaissance. It was formative in even conceptualising Syria and
Lebanon: Syria without Lebanon and Palestine, Syria as democratic and
unified, Syria as a pan-Arab or pan-Islamic province, and communal,
territorial and religious disputes born with these states.
However, Thompson’s suggestion that France created a political
culture that constructed a ‘colonial civic order’ which embodied ‘norms
and institutions’ that ‘expressed and continually renegotiated’ the ‘terms
of citizenship’ may more properly apply to the later period of mandate
rule, when local government functions, the notion of Lebanese and
Syrian citizenship, and other basic state-societal frameworks had begun
to be agreed upon.97 Thompson acknowledges this shift occurring in the
1930s from what she characterises as ‘simple opposition to French rule’

to ‘attempts to transform the colonial civic order’.98 The opposition to
French rule in the early years was not simple; it was a complex of
alternative interpretations of what the French mandate, imposed by
colonial violence, would mean and how it would be implemented.
Syro-Lebanese individuals working through cultural institutions drawn
up by colonial administrators mostly contested, rather than negotiated,
the vision of a new French Mediterranean protectorate. Their efforts,
supplementing consistent and costly violent rejections, emasculated
initial French expectations.
It is perhaps a sign of the difficulty of encapsulating the shifting
mandate actors, intentions and circumstances that most histories tend to
skip the formal dates of modern Syrian-Lebanese state development.
The oft-recalled Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916 was a culmination of
Franco-British sparring for the Middle East stretching back centuries.
Yet, though it signified a rethink of granting Arab nationalists
independent sovereignty over the Levantine mosaic, it also signalled the
beginning of a period of inter- (and intra-)imperial uncertainty that
lasted at least until a treaty formalised British– French mandate borders
in February 1922.99 Before this, a French High Commissioner was
installed in Beirut to oversee the French OETA from 1918 to 1919. This
oft-forgotten first High Commissioner was the selfsame Franc ois
Georges-Picot who lent his name to the infamous 1916 accord. Picot’s
symbolic presence and small staff were replaced by General Henri
Gouraud and the Levant Army in October 1919.
The year 1920, however, was when political talk of a French mandate
was enforced as imperial reality. Following spring skirmishes, the San
Remo Accord and the Arab defeat at Maysalūn in the summer allowed
France to expand from its Lebanese foothold. Legally, however, France
would wait until July 1923 before a League of Nations mandate charter
was promulgated in Geneva. In short: culturally and economically,
France was long established in what was termed the Echelles du Levant
(Mediterranean Syria); diplomatically, France initially negotiated its
stake in 1916; administratively, it was present in the littoral from 1918;
militarily, France took over the rest Syria in 1920; legally, the mandate
only began in July 1923.
Domestically, alongside the sweeping aside of Faisal at Maysalūn
and the outbreak of the Great Revolt of 1925, important internal
INTRODUCTION 27
uprisings occurred. The Ibrahim Hanano revolt in Aleppo in 1919 – 20

was but one of a chain of limited regional uprisings that succeeded the
Faisalian attempt to forge an Arab state in Damascus. Prior to Hanano’s
revolt, a major uprising occurred in Antioch, inspired by the Faisalians
and supported by Kemalist forces in Anatolia. These uprisings may
not have reflected a mature nationalist consciousness, yet they were
certainly anti-imperialist ones that set the tone for fractious Syro-
French relations.100 Perhaps the most overlooked event in mandate
studies is a set of revolts in spring – summer 1922 with striking
similarity to the Great Syrian Revolt which could be considered as
representing a Lesser Syrian Insurrection.
Several accounts note the outbreak of violence at this time, but treat it
as a disparate set of grievances. Philip S. Khoury describes these as
‘political disturbances’ that caused France to tinker with the political
system.101 Lenka Bokova explains that spring 1922 witnessed what she
terms ‘the Damascus protest movement’, following a French amnesty of
exiled nationalists and the visit of Charles Richard Crane, the Chicago
millionaire, Wilsonian surrogate and King– Crane Commission leader.
At the same time, the protagonist of the Great Syrian Revolt, Druze
Sultan Pasha Al-Atrash, actually first rebelled in July 1922 following
disagreements with French authorities which had striking similarities to
those he expressed in 1925.102
It is fascinating to note that this chronological division seems to
be clearer in Arabic histories of the mandate. Lebanese nationalist
Muhammad Jamil Beyhum’s account of Lebanon’s position agrees with
the importance of the 1920– 5 encounters, though he stresses a divide
between a period of delinquency between 1919 and 1923 and
outright war from 1923 to 1925. Beyhum notes particularly that the
heavy-handed French policing and repression had unveiled the mandate’s
meaning as being unconcerned with emancipation. Interestingly,
Beyhum’s phrase to refer to the contestation, both civilian and violent, is
Al-Tandim Al-Madani (the civil organisation).103
˙
Yusuf Al-Hakim’s history of the mandate provides an overview of
the key characters that recognises the importance of the first five years
prior to the Great Revolt. Hakim’s history, however, placed
particular emphasis on the importance of individual leaders such as
the Maronite Archbishop, French governors General De Lamothe
and Billote, and Kurdish rebel Ibrahim Hanano.104 Shams Al-Din
Al-Rifaii noted the great influence of the press protests in the

initial years of the mandate.105 In her examination of the brothers Nabih
and ‘Adel Al-Azmah, historian Khairiya Qasmiya makes a similar divide
between the 1918–20, 1920– 5, 1925– 7 and 1927– 30 periods.106
The Shifts in Early Mandate Administration

The need for mandate historians to connect seemingly disparate
contestations, whether violent or civil, and the shifting nature of the
mandate is made evident by contemporary bureaucratic historiogra-
phies. Two contemporary bureaucratic observers’ reflective accounts of
the early mandate underline the consideration of the 1920–5 period as a
distinct, formative bloc for determining initial visions and challenges to
mandatory techniques. In 1924, Britain’s former military attaché in
Beirut, Major Callum, reflected on his four-year posting during a Royal
United Services Institute conference in Whitehall. He summarised the
initial French approach as being characterised by the patronage afforded
to favoured local elites. A key part of this strategy was the division of
Syria into four territories: Greater Lebanon, Damascus and the Druze
State, Aleppo and Alexandretta and the Alawite territory. According to
Callum, plans were made to unite the territories under a federation of
Syrian states yet, as soon as these were announced, the Christian Lebanese
had protested in fear of a retrogression toward a Sunni Muslim
domination that had not even existed under the Ottomans. Lebanon was
thus allowed to avoid incorporation into the federation.
Major Callum also noted the difficulties found in accomplishing even
the basic task of appointing a governor for Lebanon, given the country’s
31 non-Muslim sects. This led to the appointment of Frenchman Albert
Michel Trabaud as Lebanese governor. Ironically and despite claims of
particular French cultural attachment and governmental trust among
the Lebanese Catholics, it was in the Syrian interior that locally sourced
governors were first appointed. Further divisions of the interior states
occurred, for instance, the separation of the Jabal Druze occurred in
1923 for a short period and the direct administration undertaken in
the Alawite State. This was noteworthy for Callum because he had
personally seen and been told by the ‘mountain warrior race’ Alawites of
their fierce resistance to the French, and subsequent quiescence and
indeed their disproportional conscription into the auxiliary Troupes
INTRODUCTION 29
Spéciales in the Levant Army. Callum intimated that this Alawite

readjustment toward mandate authorities might have resulted from a
recalculation of circumstances as they faced being dissolved into the
Sunni-dominated Syrian Federation (1922 – 4), later becoming the
Syrian state.107
A year after the outbreak of the 1925 Great Revolt, the architect of the
early mandate, general-secretary Robert De Caix, wrote a reflective report
that also emphasised the outlined period. He admitted that the Revolt had
triggered the country’s reorganisation. His review nevertheless defended
the claims of culture and competency by reiterating the ‘patrimoine that has
to be defended in the Levant’. He expressed his surprise at finding Lebanon
to be even more Francophone than fully colonised Algeria. De Caix
claimed that in exercising the mandate, France was undertaking an
onerous duty against her will. He added that none of those among the
initial administrative corps in Syria really knew the Orient. Gouraud’s
team thus had assumed that there was ‘a need to get a firm grip on Syria
first, before they could “see” it [il fallait metre la main sur la Syrie et que l’ont
verrais ensuite]’. In reality however, De Caix wrote, Syria very quickly
revealed herself.
Those French administrators advocating a ‘light’ mandate, ‘who
expected real powers for local people’ soon realised the need for direct
control. They had proposed finding a king to replace the deposed Faisal
in the Syrian interior. Their case for ‘lighter[,] more distant’ French rule
was given credence by Britain’s tactical master stroke which saw Faisal
whisked away from Damascus to Baghdad. Furthermore, the Beirut
authorities received ‘brutal’ budget reductions from Paris. De Caix
claimed that Gouraud had been counselled by his fellow military top-
brass, including the Levant Army’s chief of staff, to undertake this light
mandate and, remarkably given the depth of French intrusion evidenced
in the forthcoming chapters, De Caix claimed that this had been the
initial policy.108
Instead of facing the facts of French interference, De Caix focused on
British promotion of Arab nationalism as a framework for explaining the
difficulties encountered in the first five years. According to De Caix,
Britain encouraged an Arab nationalist opposition, manipulated by T.E.
Lawrence ‘of Arabia’ and other officers.109 De Caix continued his
conspiratorial tone by suggesting that British attempts at destabilising
Syria had continued throughout. De Caix noted that Sultan Al-Atrash’s
1922 rebellion had been sustained with the help of a Transjordan-based

British officer.110 These officers had been the agents of a British policy
that saw Syria as an intolerable blight on an otherwise coterminous
British Asian Empire. The 1925 ‘Druze insurrection’ was seen as another
result of such British agitation. These ‘political officers’ had had the
advantage of having been trained in the Orient, as opposed to French
specialism in North African affairs. For De Caix, French administrators
too often relied on North African colonial habits.
The minorities in each of these Syrian states were seen as a bridge into
ruling the territory, just as the European settlers had been in North Africa.
Cognisant of the dialogue at the heart of clientelism, De Caix noted that
this organisation bound France to assuring the autonomy of these clients.
However, there was a need to unite the various territories that emerged in
order to assure the flow of commerce between the new ‘states’. Since the
French government had ruled out a monarchy, High Commissioner
Gouraud had announced the Syrian Federation in May 1921. Unlike
Major Callum’s schematic outline, De Caix acknowledged that the
Federation resulted from nationalist pressure who argued that Syria’s
division had contravened the League’s mandate. De Caix complained that
this solution had also come under instant criticism from an ill-informed
metropolitan French parliament and press.
De Caix added that, though Christians in Lebanon had a clearer
communal conscience, there were evident moments of doubt about
French policy even among Maronites, for instance, when Faisal was
beginning to take over in Damascus. De Caix quipped that this
communal political opportunism should come as no surprise since the
sunflower (a flower that turns toward the power of the sun over the day)
was the most common plant in the Levant. Alongside this, there was a
need to win over the opinion of the mass of indifferent Sunni Muslims
who were being misled by opportunist nationalists. De Caix again
admitted the role of the nationalists in pressuring the authorities to
move from Federation to Syrian Union. This had led to a commission
convening in May 1924 at the French Foreign Ministry (the Quai
d’Orsay) with High Commissioner Weygand to outline plans for union.
Peculiarly, given his own penchant for micro-management, De Caix
complained that a majority of the French bureaucrats serving him had
never understood the limited intervention intended by the mandate
framework. Echoing some of the Lebanese press’ criticism, De Caix
INTRODUCTION 31
claimed that bureaucrats were driven by self-interest, particularly in

terms of privileges such as the use of automobiles. Local bureaucrats
posted to the states were able to benefit from the confusion over budgets
and personnel organisation to gain greater funds for various projects and
salaries for employees through special central bursaries. De Caix also
criticised the confusion of military and civil roles for the early high
commissioners.
In particular, the Services des Renseignements had excercised a
‘megalomaniac interest in political affairs, outside of its proper role’
and the high commissioners had too often depended on it to fulfil
governmental tasks that should have been undertaken by civil
authorities. Rather, they had given themselves a remit that went
much wider than the mandate, with coverage of Turkey, Iraq and
Palestine. They had flooded the High Commissariat with endless
‘information notes that were supposed to keep it up to date with an
endless stream of indigenous intrigues, intrigues that had not lasted
longer than the ink written on the notes had taken to dry out’.
De Caix was outlining the shifting power structure of the colonial
bureaucracy in the mandate. France primordially imposed its plans on
the country through the force of the metropolitan and colonial toops of
the Armée du Levant (Levant Army) and a range of auxiliary forces such
as the Syrian Legion, Troupes Spéciales, Gendarmerie Mobile and
Contrôle Bédouin, as well as a ‘judicial’ apparatus composed of military
tribunals, local police forces and a renovated Ottoman prison complex.
The defeat of the erstwhile anti-Ottoman allies and Faisal-led
independent Arabs at Maysalūn in 1920 was but one of many
resistances, rebellions and revolts met with Senegalese goums, Algerian
and Vietnamese tirailleurs, French méharistes, howitzers, airplanes,
ethnic-minority auxiliary troops, death sentences, years of hard labour,
house arrests and exile.
Civil policy was outlined by the High Commission at Beirut’s
Residence des Pins with the approval of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
located at the Quai d’Orsay in Paris, on important decisions. Ultimately,
the state-building functions of the mandate authorities were at the
mercy of the French Parliament’s approval of budgetary submissions
made on behalf of Beirut by the Quai d’Orsay, a significant fact since
the skeletal post-World War I French economy led to immediate
reductions in finances beginning in 1922. The high commissioners, their
general-secretaries and the various functional central departments (for

instance, for public works, education or healthcare) in Beirut extended
their oversight of the various local ‘states’ in the Levant through advisors
and attachés.
Parallel to this initially formed political apparatus that generally
approached the mandate as a protectorate in internal and external
discussions, there was a vast intelligence apparatus filling up the Beirut
offices with endless, minute and often sober notices of developments
at nāhiyah (village) qadāʾ (district), muhāfaza, mutasarifiyah, sanjak
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
(municipal or provincial), dawliyah (state) and intra-state levels. This
was undertaken by the Services des Renseignements: primarily
composed of the Levant Army’s intelligence bureaucracy usually referred
to as the Deuxième Bureau, but also inclusive of the Service des
Renseignements Central, housed in Beirut.
Intelligence documentation, including weekly selective summaries of
press articles and reports from informants, form the pillar of French
mandate archives. Inevitably, these sources had a fundamentally French
bias, beginning in the possibility of accuracy of intent and meaning
being lost in translation but also in the orientalist and hierarchical
mentalities that shaped intelligence officers. As Michael Provence has
noted, there was a tendency for French officials to seek explanations of
Syro-Lebanese developments within a framework that reiterated French
claims of cultural dominance and governmental competency; in contrast
to Arabic language sources that demonstrate much greater reflexivity.111
Similarly, Caesar Farah notes how non-Arabophone Ottoman press censors
tended to assume that complex Arabic poetry republished in Damascus
and Beirut was encouraging pan-Arabism. Their harsh crackdowns on the
press ironically encouraged Syro-Lebanese disloyalty.112
However, there needs to be an acknowledgement of the division of
attitudes between officials like Robert De Caix, who staked their
political fortune on successfully realising their projects for a French
Levant protectorate worthy of metropolitan investments, and
intelligence officers whose success was judged in their ability to control
and contain Syro-Lebanese developments. As a result of their smaller
scale of concentration, the depth of overlapping documentation they
produced, their recruitment and use of local Arabic-speaking dragomans
and informants and their success being judged on accurate reporting,
these intelligence officers offered less idealistic depictions.
INTRODUCTION 33
Priya Satia’s characterisation of British intelligence gathering seeks

to counter such an emphasis on bureaucratic regularity by highlighting
the romantic-orientalist impulse guiding officers like Harry St John
Philby and Captain William Shakespear. This means that British
success in the region during and after World War I resulted from a
flexible bureaucracy that allowed locally grounded specialist officers to
gain ‘a particular epistemological framework for knowing and governing
the Middle East’.113 Inevitably, if Satia’s account is correct, then much of
this intelligence gathering was thereby due to contingent knowledge,
making the documentation of the colonial archive particularly treacherous.
Though this is certainly a major obstacle to unearthing accurate
information, an examination of French and British methods reveals that
Satia’s own reliance on individual romantic-orientalist adventurer officers
may have led to oversights concerning the ongoing bureaucratisation of
information gathering, a phenomenon especially evident in the massive
surveillance bureaucracies of the mandate administrations.
As Martin Thomas explains, this web of local, colonial and imperial
intelligence apparatuses was seen as a fundamental source of control and
prediction of potential pitfalls.114 Indeed, the French did have their own
Lawrences and Bells, and after the War many of these culturally
embedded experts became part of the mandate bureaucracies, as is shown
here.115 It is equally worth noting that, even when the ‘expert’
orientalist-romantic adventurers such as Philby and Lawrence distanced
themselves from their wartime roles, the interwar British and French
information-gathering machines rolled on unperturbed.
A deeper challenge posed by heavy reliance on colonial archives
has been noted by Ann Laura Stoler, who, reflecting on her experiences
with the Indonesian material, explains how archives were not simple
documentations of events. Rather, they were built by bureaucrats
with deep biases that affected their information gathering. Stoler
particularly notes the importance of internal colonial administrators’
reflections, often in the form of ethnographic mises-en-état, meaning that:
‘Documents honed in the pursuit of prior issues could be requisitioned
to write new histories, could be reclassified for new initiatives’.116 By
seeking out instances of a breakdown in colonial logics, which she
summarises as ‘epistemic practices’, Stoler proposes to flesh out patterns
of colonial administrative mentalities, and the legacy effects they had on
history and history-writing.
She looks in particular at instances where the complex social fabrics of

colonial territories challenged administrators’ rationalities:
Colonial agents constantly sought new ways to secure the qualities

of social kinds – most clearly when assigned attributes fell short of
differentiating the gradations of exclusions and exemptions that
new colonial administrations sought to make. Such reassessments
called into question the epistemic habits on which they were based
[. . .] these were not passive inhabitings but achieved, anticipatory
states [. . .] As such, these archives are not simply accounts of
actions or records of what people thought happened. They are
records of uncertainty and doubt in [. . .] a changing imperial
world. Not least they record anxious efforts to ‘catch up’ with what
was emergent and ‘becoming’ in new colonial situations.117
To reduce the risk of misinterpretation, it is thus important to examine

overlapping sets of French reports and summaries of local press
commentary. By using US and British consular reports to confirm or
contradict French interpretations, trends can be discerned even if details
and specific cases cannot be fully accurate. It is to be noted that many of
the newspapers of this era are lost to posterity. Though (primarily US-
based but also Latin American) émigré newspapers of the 1920s have
been conserved, Levantine newspaper archives for the early 1920s are
scanter.118
When considering Syrian voices through French press summaries, the
accumulation of dozens of summaries drawn from various newspapers
serves to underscore the general sentiment being expressed, even if there
are inaccuracies of specific interpretation. Indeed, unearthing the
voluminous mandate surveillance of cultural institutions underlines
administrators’ clear awareness of the opening of political and discursive
opportunity structures through peaceful activity within French and
Syro-Lebanese organised institutions. Ann Laura Stoler suggests that by
examining ‘unorthodox’ situations emerging in the colonial archive as
challenges to colonial logics we can reach the kind of ‘minor history’, or
‘subaltern’ voices that Foucault and the Indian historians were seeking.
Stoler explains that: ‘such histories should not be mistaken for
trivial ones. Nor are they iconic, mere microcosms of events played out
elsewhere on a larger central stage. Minor history [. . .] marks a
INTRODUCTION 35
differential political temper and a critical space. It attends to structures

of feeling and force that in “major” history might be otherwise
displaced’.119 With a closer look at Gramsci’s discussion, and his much
more specific use of the term ‘subaltern’ as outlined previously, one
can flip Stoler’s formula on its head; we can also read archives against the
grain. Finding moments of clashing ‘subaltern’ and colonial adminis-
trative logics certainly provides illuminating insights to flesh out the
limits of colonial thinking and practice. Yet a comprehensive and
granular history, as Gramsci recommended, can provide us ‘structures of
feeling and force’ that incorporate both the dominating and subjugated
discursive and political dynamics within emerging and diminishing
opportunity structures. The following account of the first five years of
the Mandate seeks to achieve such a history.
Administrators drew up various services within the High
Commission which would direct dependent services in local govern-
ments. Civil services included: the Service du Habous to oversee waqfs
(Muslim mortmain perpetuities), the Service du Cadastre looking into
property ownership, the Services Speciaux set up after 1925 to attempt
to retain administrative oversight over increasingly autonomous local
governments, a Service Technique for engineering works, a Service
des Travaux Publiques for road and water provision and a Service de la
Santé Publique for healthcare. Oversight of cultural institutions was
undertaken by the Service des Antiquités, examining the excavation
of antiquities and managing museums; the Office du Tourisme; the
Service de l’Instruction Publique overseeing education; and the Service
de la Presse, an open source intelligence bureau housed in the High
Commission that complemented the covert intelligence officers’ efforts.
Structure of this Book

Each chapter herein is structured to consider French attempts at
establishing and consolidating their claims to particular attachment to
the Levant and claims of governmental competency through these
institutions. Each chapter equally considers how international and Syro-
Lebanese stakeholders responded through communal action, local
government and the press as well as regional and international channels.
Chapter 1, on antiquities protection and preservation, examines the
organisation of an antiquities service intended to buttress French claims
to an historic protectorate over the Levant that were key elements to

securing mandatory rule. The chapter examines foreign nations’ and
local peoples’ contestation of these methods, particularly the Lebanese
press’ campaign against French exportation of antiquities to foreign
museums.
Chapter 2, dealing with controlling cultural heritage through
organisation and oversight of museums, tourism and colonial exhibitions,
shifts the discussion to three cultural institutions that were more
informally administered by the French authorities and local governments.
The same theme is pervasive: the attempt to utilise the creation of
museums, the promotion of tourism and the exhibition of French action in
the Levant as cultural ‘claims’ to exercise a protectorate.
Chapter 3 examines content, curricula and classrooms. A further
chapter on the politics of pedagogy (Chapter 4) moves the discussion
toward more overt political-cultural activity. The chapter looks at
‘political grants’ for study in Lebanon and metropolitan France. The
analysis then shifts to the role of schools as a site of domestic political
opposition to French mandatory methods, followed by a consideration
of the international element. Chapter 5, on surveillance, subsidies and
censorship of the domestic Arabic press, begins by introducing the
press service which monitored and condensed press commentary. This
is followed by an overview of the Arabic press in the various Syrian
states at the outset of the mandate. The chapter discusses the increasing
dependence on censorship as these first years unfolded.
Chapter 6, ‘Subservience and Sanction?’, shifts the analysis to the
Francophone press, both in the Levant itself and the Francosphère.
Surprisingly, to the French themselves in fact, several French-language
newspapers proved to be willing to contest French methods. The
discussion shifts to cover Syro-Lebanese exiles and émigrés in Geneva
and Paris and the metropolitan French press, demonstrating the range of
pressures facing administrators in Beirut and Paris. The final chapter
(Chapter 7), on internationalism, extends the scope of analysis to what is
considered the ‘external press’ showing how French administrators
recognised the political importance of contestation to their methods in the
international and regional press.
CHAPTER 1
ANTIQUITIES PROTECTION
AND EXCAVATION
As a new era of mandatory rule began in 1920, the historical artefacts

and fortifications covering the cities, tell mounds and deserts of Syria and
Lebanon were the subject of renewed battles. The first five years of
mandatory rule over Syria and Lebanon witnessed a casual and ultimately
vague formulation of antiquities law. There was a deep-rooted
orientalism present in French, and even international, scholarly and
regulatory circles. This combined to impede effective encouragements of
local concern for the conservation and promotion of antiquities.
Efforts were certainly made to protect archaeological resources by
the newly organised Service des Antiquités. Yet, despite rhetorical
aloofness, French administrators largely adopted Ottoman approaches
to antiquities regulation. Although the League of Nations’ mandate
charter had included a general stipulation requiring protection of
antiquities, precise details remained undefined. The French therefore
relied on continuing an Ottoman-era law that provided for a split
allowing half of all items found at excavations to go to foreign, especially
French, missions.
Widespread excavations had already occurred before World War I and
the mandate encouraged (particularly French) archaeologists to
undertake further digs. By affording the new mandatory authorities
the ability to establish themselves as protectors of a forgotten ancient,
and even Islamic, past, such activity conveniently buttressed claims to a
civilising mission. Yet local opinion, in the local government apparatus
and press, did not idly allow French dominance of these antiquities. This
phenomenon of political use of malleable claims of culture was thus well
established in the first five years of the mandate, before the later mandate
period.1
French encouragement of archaeological activity for the consolidation
of cultural claims bolstering the mandate was not unique in the region.2
Yet whereas the Iraqi and Palestine mandates’ archaeological past have
been subjected to scrutiny, analytical accounts of mandate Lebanon and
Syria’s antiquities service are few.3 The fate of antiquities was subject to
cultural claims from the outset of the mandate. Newspapers in France
covered developments in Syrian archaeology, though not with the verve
shown in Anglophone reporting on British exploits in Egypt and Iraq.4
Finally, the local government bureaucracy of early mandate government,
one of several facets of early French rule grounded on Ottoman
foundations, provided a space for contesting exclusively French cultural
claims.
Antiquities, Orientalism and Cultural Imperialism

A storied French engagement with the Levant’s antiquities certainly gave
weight to claims of cultural affinity with the region. France’s engagement
with the Orient was centuries old. Antiquities exploration during the
French occupation of Egypt clearly served to underpin Napoleon’s
political ambitions.5 His expedition to Syria sparked a flurry of European
scholarly and governmental interest in the region. A key component of
this Napoleonic orientalism was the assumption that local peoples had
neither an interest in their ancient past, nor the capacity to preserve it.
This was the result of orientalist prejudices rooted in a rationalist attempt
to categorise, and thus control, the past for the purposes of present
governance, an approach directly in opposition to the understanding of
ancient relics expressed by Islamic philosophers and Egyptian governors.6
As the French cultural and economic presence in West Asia became
firmly established over the course of the nineteenth century, orientalist
presumptions crystallised. Central to Egyptian reformer Muhammad
‘Ali’s push for modernisation was his patronage of orientalists such as the
Saint-Simonian Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin.7 Napoleon’s nephew
Louis Bonaparte also gazed eastward, sending Ernest Renan on a mission
alongside French troops during France’s intervention in the 1860
ANTIQUITIES PROTECTION AND EXCAVATION 39
Lebanese civil war.8 Demonstrating burgeoning military-savant ties,

Renan collaborated with the expeditionary army’s topographical brigade
to secure maps of Lebanon for his ethnographic studies.9 French interest
in Mediterranean antiquity resurged during the Third Republic (1870–
1940), in the face of German and British competition for the strategic
region.10
Such activity fit within the broadly described phenomenon of
orientalism best outlined by Edward Said’s eponymous book, which
evidences how the romantic-era European scholarly and governmental
gaze eastward tended toward dispossession and control by creating an
imagined division.11 The orientalism thesis has subsequently been
critiqued and refined by historians who stressed Said’s lack of attention
to particular empirical evidence from certain parts of the world and
across historical periods.12 European cultural arrogation through a
‘resurrection’ of locally forgotten, formerly glorious, pasts was eminently
possible in the nineteenth century. A range of contemporary archaeological
bulletins demonstrated this cultural imperialism. In an article on
Phoenicians, renowned British archaeologist Leonard Woolley suggested a
revision to previous French accounts of Phoenician development. Woolley
suggested race-based distinctions between Oriental (Asiatic) and Western
(Greek) influences; an Aegean Phoenician civilisation had first developed
in contact with Ancient Greece, before being ‘subject to an Asiatic influx’.
Woolley finished by explaining that it was this confusion of Asiatic and
Aegean Phoenicia that had led Greek histories to ‘falsely attribute to the
Phoenicians, thanks to the Aegean base [. . .] the great roles [in fact]
played by peoples of pure race’.13
By researching bygone glories that had seemingly been ignored by
local peoples, Europeans and, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards,
an increasing number of US scholars, laid claim to ownership of an
ancient and foreign past. They were also delimiting what Said noted
were the ‘pure’ and ‘impure’ ‘images of a privileged, genealogically
useful past [. . .] in which we exclude unwanted elements’.14 This was
neither dispassionate nor malevolent research. Despite the bias,
archaeologists (often working in difficult circumstances and driven by
researchers’ passions) made fundamental contributions to human
knowledge. Despite France’s interest in making political gains from
cultural claims and a rich archaeological tradition in the region,
antiquities exploitation was constrained by structural limits to
mandatory methods. These limits were imposed by dual pressure from

domestic Syro-Lebanese organisations and the principles of tutelage and
an ‘open door’ that the League of Nations oversight required.
The words of Talal Asad on anthropologists’ colonial encounters
resonate with archaeological activity:
The basic reality which made pre-[Second World] war social

anthropology a feasible and effective enterprise was the power
relationship [. . .] the colonial power structure made the object of
anthropological study accessible and safe [. . .] [yet it is too
simplistic to view anthropology] as primarily an aid to colonial
administration, or as the simple reflection of colonial ideology
[. . .] bourgeois consciousness [. . .] has always contained within
itself [. . .] the potentialities for transcending itself.’15
The deep imprint that orientalist narratives of the ancient world left upon
the official, often classically trained, minds points to the dialogic
relationship between imperial power-holders and researchers. The notion
of ‘official minds’ has been discussed in various imperial contexts. Classic
studies emphasised the political strategies, or their lacunae, among
Whitehall and Quai d’Orsay decision makers. More recent commentary
has absorbed the influence of cultural histories to consider the mentalities
shaping the multiple views of imperial planners, regional administrators
and local assimilators.16 Such ‘epistemic habits’, as Ann Laura Stoler terms
them, can be recovered by reading the archives critically.17
To give one example of such orientalist mindsets, consider the
comments made by high-placed US official Colonel Edward M. House,
an influential member of Woodrow Wilson’s post-World War I Inquiry
and an Ivy-League-educated Texan. He wrote that ‘while Europe was
bleeding [. . .] in every mosque, in every market place there was a quiet
exultation that Western Civilization seemed bent upon destroying itself
[. . .] we of the West are prone to think of those of the East as inactive
dreamers [. . .] we sometimes fail to reckon on that fierce courage which,
when aroused, will dare death and destruction [. . .] there is one
advantage the East has over the West, its people know how to wait. Time
is as nothing to them. Their History stretches through the centuries.’18
Echoes of these orientalist and romantic mentalities were equally
present among policy-makers in Paris and mandate executors in the
Levant. In February 1919, the then foreign minister and future president
of the Republic, Alexandre Millerand, spoke of a ‘centuries-old [French]
Protectorate’ in Syria, originating in the Crusades, one which continued
via protection of Christians, charitable works and the provision of relief
and education.19 In another note, he added that: ‘[France] brought the
benefits of civilisation [. . .] if France was able to achieve such a result,
she owes it, it is true to say, to the activity of her national missionaries,
professors and merchants who acted in conjunction to her political
activity and in constant liaison with her’.20
Key military administrators in Beirut and Damascus evinced similar
convictions. In 1920 General Mariano Goybet, fresh from the Maysalūn
victory, asked for more information about the renovation of indigenous
arts and industries.21 Five years earlier, General Henri Gouraud, who
would soon become the second High Commissioner, was reputed to
have ordered an archaeological dig in the backline while sending
troops to the disastrous frontline at Gallipoli.22 Upon his appointment
as High Commissioner, Gouraud also gave funding for a French dig at
Sidon by Georges Contenau ‘as soon as the political situation allowed
it.’23 Publicly, Gouraud boasted of the ‘permanent interest that the
ancient and beautiful land of Syria offers to history, archaeology’.
In private discussions, Gouraud did not hide his belief in the political
importance of antiquities and scholarly activity for justifying France’s
mandate.24 French archaeologist Georges Contenau reported that
Gouraud’s successor, General Maxime Weygand, was an equally assiduous
protector of antiquities.25
A report sent to the French intelligence services by Joseph Tyan,
likely a descendant of an eighteenth-century Maronite Patriarch,
outlined a history of the Levant that closely conformed to orientalist and
simplistic narratives of a civilising occident and stale orient. Tyan
assimilated and echoed a rehearsed theme that emphasised the struggle
between the sedentarised and civilised coastal peoples and the restless
Bedouins. He wrote that:
There can be no doubt that the formation of the current Syrian

mentality owes itself to the ancient times [. . .] when laws were
transmitted from father to son. This can be seen in the domain of
customs [. . .] from this point of view, the nomads occupying the
vast Syrian desert offer a snapshot of the patriarchal life of
Abraham [. . .] In contrast with the restlessly errant nomads, the

[. . .] sedentarised factions [. . .] suffered the shock of invasions and
wars, and furthermore, the inevitable consequences on their
mentalities [. . .] that is to say that already in primitive times, the
influences that pushed spirits differed completely between East
and West [. . .] the Roman domination [. . .] imposed the first
principles for a Bedouin policy [. . .] a chain of fortresses’.26
Multiple imperial, colonial and cliental mentalities propagated orientalist

dispossession of local peoples from the ancient past, conveniently allowing
for politically significant claims of culture and consequent governmental
competency.
Archaeological Activity in the Ottoman Period

Despite cultural claims seeking to dispossess local peoples of their
ancient past, a distinct governmental approach to antiquities research
had certainly already been introduced during the Ottoman period.27
Several key figures and institutions of French orientalist archaeology
operated in the Levant in the late Ottoman period. In Palestine and
Transjordan, the Dominican-run École Biblique Archaéologique,
established in the late nineteenth century, had a preponderant role and
some of its scholars would build connections to the French military
during World War I. French activity would maintain close ties with the
antiquities service in Syria.28 In Beirut the Saint Joseph University’s
oriental faculty had been established in 1902 to support the general
trend toward scientistic study of the religious past.29
Though diplomatic actors required cultural institutions to
substantiate their claims of culture, institutions such as the Dominican
school in Jerusalem were able to exercise more agility in negotiating the
multiple imperial benefectors competing for a Near East presence, as
well as having a degree of intellectual affinity with fellow archaeologists
that cut across national divides. For instance, William Albright, the
director of the American School in Jerusalem, reported that the
Dominicans had given his institute free access to their library.30
After World War I, additional French archaeological missions
were set up in Istanbul to compete with Germany’s postwar cultural
resurgence. This supplemented the French presence in Rhodes, Athens
and Cairo.31 The mandate antiquities service was thus not set up in a
French vacuum. Neither was the French antiquities service the first
such institution in the region. The initial director of the French-
instituted antiquities service, Joseph Chamonard, described the
nineteenth-century director of Ottoman antiquities, Osman Hamdi Bey,
as a ‘capable, intelligent and active creator of a service of surveillance
and protection.’32
Hamdi Bey had himself been educated in France and undertaken
excavations at Sidon alongside French archaeologists such as Franz
Cumont.33 In fact, Chamonard’s replacement as overseer of mandate
antiquities in 1920, the professional archaeologist and École Franc aise
d’Athènes affiliate Charles Virolleaud, had also participated in Ottoman
digs under the aegis of Osman Hamdi Bey.34 Despite this earlier
collaboration, however, Chamonard’s mandate-era account of the French
antiquities service sought to portray Hamdi Bey as being primarily
interested in enriching his Istanbul museum. Chamonard’s claims are
given a degree of credence by recent scholarly research that has detected
an ‘internal orientalism’ in the gaze cast upon the Fertile Crescent’s
archaeological riches by Istanbul’s Ottoman intellectuals.35
Chamonard noted in his 1920 report that, during the Ottoman years,
foreign museums acquired objects without listing their provenance,
which negatively affected their scientific value. He claimed that Syria
was the least regulated of all the Ottoman provinces despite being
among its richest.36 Chamonard admitted that: ‘In the hands of a man
like Osman Hamdi Bey [. . .] this [Ottoman] law provided [. . .] all that
one could expect of it. It was neither better nor worse than any such law
being applied in another country at the time.’37 However, he warned
that: ‘this law was nevertheless undermined by those skilled enough to
know how to put to sleep the vigilance of the Kaymakams and Wālis
[local administators]’.38 Chamonard avoided explaining who ‘those
skilled’ people were, perhaps because he was referring to fellow foreign
archaeologists.
Careful study of the 1884 and 1906 legislation validates the strength
of the Ottoman regulations on paper, if not in practice. In fact, only the
initial Ottoman antiquities law, in 1874, allowed for a distribution
of antiquities between the Istanbul museum and foreign excavators.
The later 1884 law enacted national ownership of all artefacts with
subsequent partitions to be judged on a case-by-case basis: a stricter
regulation, though it still allowed for their distribution as personal

favours. Another loophole allowed the retention of a share of antiquities
found by private landowners. This was exploited by foreign
archaeologists who promised lucrative sums for landowners, thus
encouraging private excavations.39
Mandate administrators reiterated Chamonard’s criticism of Hamdi
Bey, criticisms that provided convenient political cover for French
mandatory methods that maintained expropriations. A 1925 intelli-
gence report noted, for instance, that Osman Hamdi Bey had
transported two bas-reliefs from Syria to the Imperial Museum in the
Ottoman capital.40 Despite this rhetoric, it is noteworthy that French
administrators, fully aware of the failures of Ottoman legislation,
maintained the status quo. Chamonard, by his own admission, accepted
that the mandatory approach essentially continued Ottoman practice.
Mandate authorities in fact established a departure from Ottoman
legislation, which had required the hoarding of ‘national’ artefacts by
instituting a minimum 50 per cent ratio on antiquities to remain in the
territory. This was made possible by vague League of Nations legislative
oversight.
League of Nations and Law

Initial regulation of antiquities, from 1918 to 1922, was subject to ad
hoc martial law regulations before the formal implementation of the
League’s mandate. The administration of antiquities was nevertheless
addressed in Article 14 of the mandate charter. The article failed to
stipulate specific requirements, leaving this decision to the mandatory
power. Article 14 of the charter stated that:
The mandatory shall draw up [. . .] a law of antiquities [. . .] this

law shall ensure equality of treatment in the matter of excavations
and archaeological research to the nationals of all states members
of the League of Nations [. . .] (1) ‘Antiquity’ means any
construction or any product of human activity earlier than the year
1700 AD [. . .] (2) the law for the protection of antiquities shall
proceed by encouragement rather than by threat. Any person who,
having discovered an antiquity without being furnished with the
authorization [. . .] shall be rewarded according to the value of the
discovery [. . .] (5) no clearing of ground or digging with the

object of finding antiquities shall be permitted under penalty of
fine, except to persons authorized [. . .] (7) authorization shall be
only granted to persons who show sufficient guarantees of
archaeological experience. The mandatory shall not [. . .] act in
such a way as to exclude scholars of any nation without good
grounds [. . .] (8) The proceeds of excavation may be divided
between the excavator and the competent department in a
proportion fixed by that department.41
Indeed, the mandatory statute favoured excavations by citizens of

French, British and other League of Nations member states in the ‘most
liberal spirit’, though this meant the exclusion of non-League members
such as Germany and Soviet Russia. An exception was made for the USA
following the signing of a 1924 bilateral agreement that granted the
USA the same privileges as League members.42 The emphasis on
prioritising foreign excavators’ rights was consistently expressed in
charter drafts. An early draft of the charter written by Lord Robert Cecil,
an architect of the League and British diplomat, emphasised researching
rights among League member states’ citizens.43
A later draft resulting from exchanges between British, French and
US specialist delegates to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference talks
nevertheless reveals certain differences with the final mandate charter.
The definition of antiquities as being ‘any construction, any product of
human activity, dating from before 1700’ made the final cut in the
1922 mandate charter. However, though this 1919 draft law gave the
mandate authorities flexibility regarding the acquisition and sale of
antiquities, as maintained in the finalised charter, it also established
a system of export permits that did not appear in the final version.
In another instance, the draft expressly criminalised the destruction of
antiquities, whether through deliberate action or neglect, and limited
excavations to those with authorisation from the antiquities
department. When making any such decisions on authorisations, the
mandatory power was not allowed to discriminate against foreign
countries’ archaeologists.44
American archaeologist and delegate to the Paris Conference Howard
Crosby Butler’s report summarised the 1919 negotiations’ objectives as
seeking to provide:
Amply for the protection of historical monuments, for a degree of

international control through the British, French and American
schools of archaeology by representation on an advisory board, for
the encouragement of scientific research by competent and
suitably equipped scholars regardless of nationality, for the
establishment of a national museum [in each mandate state] [. . .]
for equitable division of movable objects discovered between the
national museum and the excavator, for suitable rewards to be
given to native finders of antiquities, and for the regulation of
exportation, possession and sale of antiquities by dealers.45
The League’s final mandate charter emphasised freedom of antiquities

exploitation while dropping potential protections. Provision for the
equitable division of movable objects on a site-by-site basis was present,
representing a gain for international excavators by diminishing Ottoman
laws requiring central governmental oversight. National museums were
set up by French administrators, as well as harsh restrictions on
unregulated dealing in antiquities.
Stipulation 7 of Article 14 enabled an interpretation of the mandate
in direct contravention of the spirit of tutelage. Stipulation 7 required
that mandatory powers handle access to antiquities fairly and recognised
the freedom to conduct archaeological work. Yet it also required that:
‘authorisation to excavate shall only be granted to persons who show
sufficient guarantees of archaeological experience’. By its very premise,
this created an emphasis on European archaeologists, allowing for the
neglect of improving local archaeology.46 Other stipulations in Article
14 that left the evaluation of excavation bids to the mandate authorities
gave them the manoeuvring space to favour French excavators over those
from other League countries.
The initial organisation of antiquities evaluation survived the
military rule period and was formalised after 1922. For instance, though
antiquities decisions were nominally in the hands of the Service des
Antiquités, the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres in Paris
remained the ultimate evaluator of excavation bids. This mechanism
allowed administrators to circumvent the ‘open door’ internationalism at
the heart of the mandate mechanism.47 Several records attest to the trial
of locals for their illegal handling of antiquities. This was in direct
contravention with the mandate charter’s requirement that ‘the law [. . .]
shall proceed by encouragement rather than by threat’. If the ‘stick’ of

repressing private excavations was wielded with fervour, the ‘carrot’ of
encouraging the development of local antiquities expertise was rarely
evident.
Protecting Antiquities
Antiquities director Chamonard presented a different narrative.
He wrote that, from the outset of the military occupation, the Levant’s
antiquities were protected. Specialist officers were selected to be
inspectors of antiquities, including the archaeologist Count Robert Du
Mesnil Du Buisson and Léonce Brosse, an architect who had undertaken
research at Qinnasrin near Aleppo in 1919.48 Captain Raymond Weill
was joined by two British captains, Reginald Engelbach and Lieutenant
Ernest J.H. Mackay, in undertaking surveys of the state of Syrian
antiquities.49
The civil executive agency enforcing antiquities law was initially
headed by Chamonard, before archaeologist Charles Virolleaud took over
between 1920 and 1929. Although notionally an auxiliary agency,
the Service des Antiquités was ultimately managed by the High
Commission. The Service’s decisions on antiquities were also subject to
oversight by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in Paris.
The Académie had the power to choose its director although the choice
had to be approved by the High Commissioner. Regardless of their
source of funding, all proposed digs had to go through the Académie or
the High Commission.50
The Académie’s experts, headed by its president René Dussaud,
made decisions on submissions for proposed excavations. For instance,
when William H. Albright, director of the American School for
Oriental Research (ASOR) in Jerusalem, applied to undertake a dig at
Tel Dan, antiquities director Charles Virolleaud had to wait for a green
light from the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.51
Virolleaud, who was supposed to both encourage excavations and
protect antiquities, derived his authority from the Académie, which
drew up the regulations for this mission.52 The antiquities service did
begin to develop a more autonomous structure in July 1921 under
Virolleaud, in anticipation of the formal promulgation of the mandate
charter a year later.
Claude Prost, a military officer who had participated in the Arab

Revolt and was now an inspector of antiquities, outlined the aims of
Virolleaud’s revised Service. These were to:
a) establish an inventory and classification of the historical

monuments in Syria [. . .] b) ensure the conservation of these
monuments [. . .] c) prepare a general antiquities law and, more
particularly, regulations targeting the commerce and export of
antiquities [. . .] d) to organise the archaeological museum in
Beirut and create museums in Damascus and Aleppo [. . .] e) to
administer the Archaeological Mission in Syria, founded at the
behest of the Académie Des Inscriptions Et Des Belles-Lettres [. . .] to
publish the results of these works in the Bulletin of the Service of
Antiquities [. . .] Syria.53
Mathilde Gelin’s organisational history noted that the Service had a dual
role of public administration of antiquities and promoting research.54 It
is clear that the authorities did successfully protect antiquities in several
instances, for example, by refurbishing the Umayyad Mosque in
Damascus.55 The French Institute for Arab and Islamic Arts in
Damascus undertook analysis of archaeological remains, such as a
cenotaph for Khalid Ibn al-Walid.56 The existence of limits on
transferring antiquities is evidenced in a notice on exports appearing in
the Algerian commercial newspaper, Le Mercure Africain. However, the
notice equally informed its colonial-capitalist readership that they could
be given exemptions allowing the export of Syrian antiquities.57
Illegal dealing in antiquities was prosecuted in certain cases, although
this focused on small-scale local smuggling. In October 1924, at Héracle
in the qadāʾ of Raqqa, during a dig led by French archaeologist Eustache de
˙
Lorey, an intelligence officer in charge of Raqqa province ordered the arrest
of certain Aleppine merchants and 30 locals who had been undertaking
unauthorised excavations. French administrators were unhappy with the
‘minimal’ fine imposed on this group by the local court, a derisory fine,
they claimed, that would not discourage illegal digs.58
Circulars stressing the need for protection were distributed to local
state administrations. One such circular emphasised the need for
protection of antiquities and the prohibition of illegal digs.59 A note
sent by the Lebanese state reminded the mutassarıf (regional) and state
administrators that both the 1906 Ottoman Law and the High
Commissioner’s January 1924 Order had prohibited the destruction
or deliberate neglect of antiquities. The note also encouraged local
administrators to prevent clandestine excavations.60 Given both the
mandate authorities’ and mandate charter’s emphasis on vetting digs,
local excavators were carefully scrutinised.
One case concerns an Iraqi antiquities dealer living in Paris, J. Elias
Gejou. He boasted that he was a ‘procurer for the major museums of
Europe and America’.61 In May 1922, he contacted the Académie des
Inscriptions et Belles Lettres asking for approval to excavate some
Elamite artefacts. Gejou sought to convince them by suggesting that he
had ‘gained from the ruling Prince [of Iraq, Faisal] [. . .] a concession for
archaeological excavations [in Iraq] in favour of France’. He had already
undertaken excavations in the mountains of Loristan province (in Iran)
and was hoping to descend onto the plateau of Susa.62 Gejou’s attempt to
gain the Académie’s approval failed.63
Protection of antiquities from small-scale digs was enforced by the
mandate authorities with greater vigour than had been the case under
the Ottomans. One reported incident described the implementation of
security measures by various museums to avoid thefts, after the looting
of four vases and a sacrificial bowl.64 Damascus authorities also reported
that Bedouins had damaged a lion statue of ‘exceptional importance’ in
Al-Shaykh Sa‘ad in the Jaulan.65 In another case at Tell Medjel, near Ras
Al-‘Ayn in Syria’s north-east, members of the Baqqarah Bedouins were
caught undertaking excavations of marble rocks to be used in building a
wealthy Christian resident’s path. Although the materials in question
were judged to be of no importance, their excavation was judged to
contravene prohibitions on illicit digging.66
Yet numerous formal exemptions allowed those with ‘special
authorisation’ to dig as much as they liked. Officials, particularly
military figures, were free to take objects for their personal collections.
The extent of this activity was displayed by the ease with which officers
such as General Bigault de Granrut, once head of the occupying troops in
Syria, passed on some of their spoils, in his case a Phoenician bronze
statuette taken from Beirut to the National Museum Council’s Oriental
Antiquities department in France.67 On another occasion a local citizen
in As-Suwayda, capital of the Jabal Druze region, decided to ‘donate’ a
Roman statue to the local museum after being encouraged to do so by
locally posted medical officer Etienne-Marie Deyrolle.68 Paul Perdrizet’s

mission in Antioch and As-Suwayda was described in a report as having
entailed the collaboration of Captain Picquet-Pellorce, the head of
French intelligence in the Sanjak of Jarabulus.69
A subtler, if pervasive, element that undermined the protection of
antiquities was the orientalist mentality framing authorities’
approaches. As with the influence of orientalist influences on official
minds in Paris, local officers’ reports betray an attempt to link glorified
ancient pasts to mandate methods. One description of mandate-era
Homs in an intelligence report explained the city’s role as a strategic
military outpost in antiquity.70 An order sent out by the authorities in
the Alawite State remarked that the orientalist works of Baron
Emmanuel Rey would be distributed to advisors in each of the State’s
aqdyāʾ (districts) to help them identify crusader castles. The order noted
˙
that similar analyses would be provided for other periods of history once
the necessary documents became available.71
The orientalist disdain that informed mandatory methods for
organising, preserving and exploiting antiquities ironically rested on its
own deep-set, unchanging foundations. Earlier orientalist Ernest Renan,
for instance, had described local peoples with similar disdain in his
Mission en Phéenicie. On several occasions, Renan related, the locals
reportedly preferred to smash monuments rather than surrender them to
him. To Renan this was indicative of the utter folly of these peasants.72
It is worth noting that such infractions by local diggers followed a
pattern established under Ottoman rule. Its root cause was the great
appetite of European and US museums and collectors, which continued
apace during the mandate. For instance, between July and September
1926, foundation work on a building near the port of Beirut led to the
discovery of a prized sphinx of Pharaoh Amenemhat IV.73 The sphinx
somehow found its way to a mystery antiquities dealer who subsequently
sold it on, two years later, for around £500.74 In 1928, H.R. Hall
reported the acquisition of the artefact on behalf of the British Museum
by the National Arts Collection Fund.75
Instead of acknowledging this deep-rooted cause for illicit private
digging, scholars and experts emphasised oriental incapacity as a means
to justify even greater expropriation. Famed US archaeologist James
Henry Breasted, for instance, wrote in 1919 that: ‘native vandalism, and
illicit excavation for profit by natives [. . .] [who] are much too ignorant
to feel any respect or reverence for the venerable association among

which they live, and a vast amount of destruction is constantly going on
at their hands without any conscious purpose to destroy on their part
[. . .] The buildings on the fringes of the mound covering the great
Syrian city of Kadesh on the Orontes have long been going block by
block to feed the neighbouring limekilns of the natives.’76
Breasted had nothing but praise for the introduction of what he
deemed the ‘modern’ (mandate) state regulation and heightened
economic activity to the area.77 Breasted’s classic orientalist rhetoric of a
timeless local people finding themselves being renewed by European
intervention was echoed in an article in French politician Georges
Clemenceau’s radical-republican newspaper L’Homme Libre. It noted the
increase in regular transport routes throughout the French Empire in
celebratory tone and highlighted in particular: ‘Syria, that ancient land
so rich in historical souvenirs and now criss-crossed by automobiles [. . .]
where in times past [. . .] the camel driver would navigate his slow
caravans, now, the din of the petrol driven machine is heard [. . .] is this
not proof of the work we have accomplished?’78
Some commentators were less haughty. The aforementioned
archaeologist and Paris Peace Conference delegate Howard Crosby
Butler, commented that ‘any law which would guarantee protection [. . .]
would be acceptable [. . .] but it may not be too optimistic to hope that we
shall see a law [. . .] which shall not only insure the safety of the
monuments, but shall render them accessible’.79 Yet the majority of voices
tended toward a self-assured orientalist narrative that fundamentally
shaped and buttressed mandatory attitudes toward antiquities. Original
antiquities service director Chamonard, for instance, suggested that the
traditional public-facing role of an antiquities service and attached
museums was not easy to replicate in Syria. According to him, unlike the
Greek peasant proud of his civilisation, and the Egyptian fellah (peasant),
˙
who supposedly ignored the great monuments, the Syrian peasantry
80
actively pillaged ancient artefacts for building material. Further, ‘the
mix of races and religions in Syria’ meant that the ‘popular imagination’
suffered because Syrians were unappreciative of antiquities.81
Orientalist disdain was not confined to scholarly opinion. An early
mandate report expressed disappointment at the ‘deplorable state’ in
which Tyre was found. This was followed by a lengthy report on the
city’s glorious ancient past, a juxtaposition that emphasised the
irresponsibility and ignorance of the city’s current inhabitants.82

Another report in Damascus decried the damage done to mosaics by local
peasants who had left them out in the rain.83 Yet views among mandate
officials differed just as they did between the two US scholars, Breasted
and Crosby Butler. Other administrators were less contemptuous and
more reflexive. A 1924 report from the Alawite State noted the digs at
Yahmour had been disappointing because many of the artefacts had been
pillaged by locals over the centuries. Yet the report’s author also made
note of the fact that the Crusader states had themselves pilfered ancient
ruins as material to build their fortifications.84
French and International Excavations

There were genuine scholarly instincts and a passion for Syrian antiquity
among such figures as Chamonard, Virolleaud and René Dussaud. Yet
political incentives for expropriation of antiquities worked in tandem
with a long-standing French tradition of ‘appropriating’ the Levant to
encourage Francocentric approaches to excavations.85 French metropolitan
institutions provided the resources to ensure that these claims of culture
were being fully established in what was seen as a new French overseas
possession. A state-directed effort at exploiting Syrian antiquities brought
together the Ministries of Education, in charge of the Académie Des
Inscriptions; Foreign Affairs, in charge of the mandate’s budget and High
Commission; and War, whose Armeé du Levant supplied the troops and
gendarmerie needed to protect excavations.
In 1919, a memorandum addressed to a senior civil servant at the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs by Alfred Coville, the Director of Higher
Education at the Ministry of Education, noted the ‘preponderant role’
played by France in Syrian, Palestinian and Mesopotamian archaeology.
Such was the extent of this influence that it could be construed as part
and parcel of ‘our [French] political activity’. Coville noted the
requirement to ‘safeguard this [French] scientific legacy’, and that this
was guaranteed in Syria since a special service [for Antiquities] was being
organised.86
Archives testify to the evident disorganisation of overlapping
departments and functions. The level of confusion in organising and
funding excavations is evidenced in one 1921 letter from the Minister of
Public Instruction to the French Foreign Minister. The former explained
that he had asked for details of the archaeological missions to be funded

by his department and had only received superficial replies. The
Education Minister added that the Commission for West Asian
Antiquities, which he had created within his Department in agreement
with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the High Commission in
Beirut, should have been informed of the details regarding prospective
archaeological missions to be funded, just as they had been when the
regulations on antiquities were being drawn up.87
Peter Magee has also noted the degree of competition among
archaeologists within the antiquities service, for instance suggesting that
a tension between Charles Virolleaud and René Dussaud over the
deciphering of the Ugaritic language had led to the former’s sacking.
He makes the important point that excavations during the mandate
represented a personal means for career advancement in the scholarly
fields of these experts. However fierce these disputes may have been, they
were confined to these specialists’ spheres and did not spill over into
broader methods of antiquities management.88
Another important feature was the intimate proximity of individuals
leading institutions intended to protect antiquities and those interested
in exploiting them. For instance, the French Association of Friends of
the Orient’s interests were looked after by Eustache de Lorey, the head of
the antiquities service in Damascus State who was noted by the US
consul as seeking a political opportunity for ‘occidental propaganda
in the Orient.’89 This assessment is confirmed by Renaud Avez’ later
research in the Institut Franc ais d’Archéologie et d‘Art Musulmans’
Damascus archives.90
Close relations between metropolitan institutions and the antiquities
service continued throughout the 1920s. To give a trivial example, in
1927 Mirreille Cavalier, the daughter of the Director of Higher Education
at the Ministère de l’Instruction Publique, was engaged to inspector of
Syrian antiquities Maurice Dunand.91 Such proximity paid off. Some
excavations, such as that of Maurice Pézard at Tell Nebi Mend in 1922,
modern-day Qadesh, were given emergency funds from the Ministry of
Education.92 Metropolitan institutions also played a role in promoting a
Francocentric agenda. The Société Ernest Renan savant association in
Paris delivered messages to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Paris
expressing ‘concern to maintain French scientific activity in the Orient’
and encouraging the dig undertaken by Georges Contenau at Sidon.93
During the years prior to the formal declaration of the mandate

(1919 – 22), administrative preference could be given to French
archaeological missions, regardless of the spirit of Article 14 of the
mandate charter. The extent to which French excavations were favoured
by the Foreign Ministry in these liminal years is evident in
correspondence. Every one of the three sites of archaeological importance
identified in 1920 were handed to French researchers. The work to be
done at Sidon had already been accorded to Georges Contenau in 1914
and this Ottoman-era authorisation was renewed.94 At Tartus, Simon
Balard, the director of the Museum of Comparative Sculpture at the
Trocadero, was given the job. In Qadesh, Maurice Pezard, an Iranologist
who was then working at the Louvre, took charge of the dig.95
High Commissioner Gouraud had hastily sought official sanction for
these excavations, after being advised by his general-secretary and civil
administration supremo, Robert De Caix, of possible rival British
excavations in Tyre.96 In 1921, senior Foreign Ministry mandarin
Peretti De La Rocca wrote a note requiring priority be given to the
Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres over US missions. It was
only when the Académie notified him that it was not interested in
excavating Tell el-Gadi that he relented, saying that his department
‘would not object to conceding these excavations to the American School
[of Beirut, hereafter AUB]’.97
Clearly, antiquities were a source of contestation between rival powers’
missions. Yet competition between Britain and France was somewhat
mitigated by the cultural complementarity between excavations in the
Palestine and Syrian mandates.98 On New Year’s Eve 1925, the Foreign
Ministry wrote to the Rector of the University of Paris requesting that
the he send a delegation to an upcoming Archaeological Congress. This
congress was to be held at Beirut, Damascus and Jerusalem as part
of a joint project sponsored by the British and French Mandate
administrations.99 High Commissioner Henri De Jouvenel had asked
for a university delegation to represent the national interest. In the
event, three professors were selected for their expertise and joined the
official delegation.100
Nevertheless, the rights innate to the League’s model meant that
French attempts at arrogating antiquities activity to themselves were
open to challenges. Researchers from other League member nations
undertook archaeological missions. A 1924 Czech mission is a case in
point. The mission was headed by Professor Bedřich (Friedrich) Hrozný,

attached to the University of Prague.101 In the same year Hrozný
proceeded to Al-Hassakah on Syria’s north-east border with Turkey.102
He also undertook excavations at Tell Rifaat, near the south-western
town of Al-Shaykh Saad.103 In another instance Danish archaeologists
took part in Maurice Dunand’s excavation at Palmyra.104 That Hrozný
was later celebrated as an external associate of the Académie des
Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres upon his death in 1952 denotes the
professional affinities that archaeological experts retained, regardless of
state competition.105
On another occasion, Belgian archaeologists were praised in Mouseion
for their excavations near the Orontes River, some of which were
transported to the Brussels Royal Museum of Art.106 However, when
local government powers sought to limit foreign excavations, the
principle of tutelage was undermined by the primordiality of Article 14
of the mandate charter. An attempt by Syrian Federation president Subhi
Barakat al-Khalidi to excercise local government powers to block the
Czech mission on the basis that they were employing a foreign team to
unearth antiquities failed as a result of Article 14’s protections.107
Ultimately, Le Matin reported that the Czech mission had found a great
number of small statues; they had legal rights to bring half of these back
to Prague.108
‘And our antiquities, will they return?’

Antiquities in the Press
The French press, whose role in sanctioning claims of a civilising
mission in Syria will be revisited in a later chapter, consistently
legitimised France’s antiquities activity. The Catholic newspaper La
Croix recounted the perceived splendour of the Orient under Christian
rule. It reminded its readers of:
Sidon, mother of Tyre and Carthage. This city, under the Roman
Emperors, had maintained its importance thanks to its open iron
works. Tyre was born of Sidon [. . .] and surpassed the grandeur of
its mother [. . .] in its art of dying the silk purple [. . .] Lyon had
inherited one of Tyre’s glories [. . .] [famed geographer Elisée]
Reclus explains [. . .] how this Orient was once the centre of the
world when Europe was a region of shadow [. . .] Indeed the night

has fallen on the Roman Asia which Christianity illuminated’.109
Another article in La Croix outlined ‘the resurrection of Palmyra’

underway as a result of antiquities efforts led by the University of
Strasbourg’s Albert Gabriel. He led a team that had ‘minutely restored’
the ancient town’s central forum.110 La Croix’s report ignored Harald
Ingholt’s near-simultaneous Danish expedition at Palmyra, though his
work was acknowledged in internal reports.111 The colonial press in
Algeria, also to be revisited in a later chapter, was equally devoted to
reporting excavations. A May 1924 article in L’Afrique Du Nord Illustrée
celebrated a discovery by Charles Virolleaud, to which ‘the major press,
all fixated on Tutankhamun and the British digs, has not paid enough
attention’.112
Public approbation was not confined to right-wing newspapers. The
popular magazine Le Monde Illustré also published an exposé of
archaeological activity at the beginning of the mandate. It suggested
that the High Commission’s investment in supporting excavations had
been repaid by the results achieved in 1921. Among the excavations
profiled were those of Eustache De Lorey at Oum el-Amad and Tyre
alongside Maurice Pézard’s excavation at Tell Nebi Mend (Qadesh), near
Homs. Le Monde Illustré ’s profile explained that ‘from the outset of his
mandate in Syria, High Commissioner General Gouraud demonstrated
himself to be preoccupied with continuing, at a much greater scale, the
magnificent effort already begun in earlier times by such archaeologists as
[Ernest] Renan and [Melchior] De Vogué’.113 In June 1925, Clemenceau’s
liberal L’Homme Libre praised René Dussaud’s voyage to Syria, despite
having been outdone yet again by Albion’s analogous discoveries in
Egypt’s Valley of the Kings.114
A journalist for the Le Matin, Jean D’Orsay, admitted that French
finds in Syria had received little publicity in contrast to British Lord
Carnarvon and Sir Howard Carter’s excavations of the Valley of the
Kings, leading to the unveiling of the tomb of Tutankhamun. D’Orsay
lamented the lack of interest from French academicians and the public
in the efforts of French archaeologists such as Georges Contenau,
Franc ois Thureau-Dangin and Maurice Pézard. The newsman ended his
intervention by noting the importance of money from different state
actors in encouraging antiquities activity: ‘The English, who have teams
already ready, have already asked to take our place [. . .] [As well as] [. . .]
“poor” Germany, who inundates the world with her resplendently edited
studies on prehistory and ethnography’.115 His words on a resurgent
German presence foreshadowed later official French concerns about the
reappearance of famed archaeologist, and World War I spy, Baron Max
Von Oppenheim, in 1926.116
Press commentary within the mandate territory, to be examined in
depth in a later chapter, featured consistent concern for antiquities in
contrast to aloof savant and official orientalism. Sections of the local
press actually praised the authorities’ actions and French excavations.
One report in the Lebanese press noted that the local government
had offered an antiquity as a gift for the Louvre and had set up a fund
of 3000 Syrian Pounds (S£) to encourage further expeditions.117 A
French administrator noted that archaeological work had been greeted
positively by the Lebanese Assembly, which voted in summer 1924 to
offer the French government twice the number of objects unearthed in
the Lebanese territory.118 In February 1923, Maronite priest Damien
R. Raphael, living in Beirut’s Hotel New York, sent a letter to the
French Foreign Minister expressing the ‘eternal attachment of the
Lebanese, and especially the Maronites, to France’. He also added a
clipping of an article he had written for local newspaper Le Réveil in
which he praised the greatness of Ernest Renan.119
Warm words in the domestic press for antiquities management
methods were far from being commonplace. Antiquities exportation was
usually carefully scrutinised. The Arabic Beiruti newspaper, Al-Hurriya,
published an article thanking the authorities for leaving some antiquities
in place, as they had been found, but also bemoaned the export of
antiquities to France, claiming that they were the sole property of
Lebanon.120 Fellow newspaper Sada al-Ahwal (Echo of the Circumstances)
˙ ˙
openly questioned how antiquities were being parsed and divided up by
the authorities.121 Another item in the newspaper expressed concerns that:
‘the forgers of the mandate [. . .] saw nothing more than antiquities in our
country’.122
One newspaper, discussing the antiquities found at Jbeil, wrote that
‘it is said that they will never return and if they do return they will be
faked’.123 These opinions were later echoed in a protest note sent by
famed anti-imperialist Emir Shakib Arslan to the League’s Permanent
Mandates Commission in Geneva.124 He wrote that the: ‘French in our
country act as though the country belongs to them [. . .] thus almost all
the gold that existed in the country was gathered and sent to France to
buttress the Franc [. . .] The same can be said of antiquities. We demand
a detailed enquiry on the subject, and the immediate restitution of these
treasures of inestimable value to our museums’.125
An article in the Beiruti press appearing in March 1924 directly
targeted the power given to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-
Lettres to oversee antiquities policy, rhetorically asking: ‘what is the
attitude of the Academy of Sciences [sic ] in France [?] [. . .] is it utterly
uninterested, seeking only gains for science [?]’.126 The article
demanded more effective antiquities laws, noting that the mandate
regulation was based on Ottoman legislation. This request was
repeated by several other Beirut newspapers, including Lisan al-Hal
(Word of the Latest, literally ‘Latest Tongue’) and Sada al-Ahwal.127 The
˙ ˙
press also published ‘digs’ at the Service des Antiquités. Al-Ahrar
˙
deplored the confused manner in which the mandate’s authority over
antiquities had been complicated by Francocentrism. It wrote that: ‘we
never knew who had been formulating policy, Mr. [Pierre] Montet
[head of the 1923 excavation of the Jbeil Royal Necropolis] or the
Government’.
The newspaper compared Pierre Montet’s freedom in the Byblos
excavation with that of Howard Carter, the famed Egyptologist.
It alleged that Carter’s digs in Egypt had been suspended when he had
invited English ladies to visit the tombs. The newspaper contrasted this
with a vague situation in the French mandates, opining that: ‘Either the
[local Lebanese] government has the right to have a direct hand in
[administering] antiquities which are in Lebanese territory [. . .] or the
authorisation given to the Academy of Antiquities [Académie Des
Inscriptions] [. . .] is not covered by the law, if it is the latter then we are
lost for words’.128
Al-Ahrar followed up on the Montet affair by reprinting a question
˙
put to the British prime minister in the House of Commons asking what
support the British government had given to the archaeologist Howard
Carter in his excavations of Tutankhamun’s tomb. The prime minister
replied that no support had been given to Carter’s private enterprise. The
article was entitled ‘Let Mr. Montet read this discussion’.129 In a
continuing focus that highlighted the difference between British and
French approaches to antiquities governance, Sada al-Ahwal wrote that:
˙ ˙
Figure 1.1 A local labourer looks over the cover of the sarcophagus of
Ahiram in Jbeil supervised by Père Raphaël Savignac (1923).
Available online: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10101092w.r¼ Père
%20Raphaël%20Savignac?rk¼128756;0.
[British archaeologist in Egypt] Lord Carnavon incurred huge costs

[. . .] yet the Egyptian government did not pay him [. . .] Here [in
Lebanon] we have no laws on antiquities other than the Ottoman
law, as modified by General Gouraud’s order [. . .] We ask the
mandatory power to rapidly pass this [new antiquities] law so that
the country can keep track of the increasing number of excavations.
We will benefit greatly [. . .] From our antiquities, not only in terms
of memories but as objects that attract the visits of foreigners.130
Al-Ra’y al-‘Am (The Public Opinion) reported what it said were words
‘from the mouth of [archaeologist Pierre] Montet’. Montet apparently
expressed surprise at his luck in having ‘taken all [the antiquities]
that I discovered to Paris’, whereas the British archaeologists who had
discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb ‘had not kept even one object’.131
When Al-Maʻrad (The Exposition) learned that Montet would not return
˙
to Syria following his promotion to the Académie des Sciences et des
Belles Lèttres, it asked its readers, ‘and our antiquities, will they
return?’132 The newspapers were not solely protesting French methods;
they vociferously proposed alternative ways of ensuring the protection of
antiquities. The press campaigned for the development of local expertise
and appreciation. One newspaper wrote: ‘it is regrettable that our
country, which has so many antiquities, does not have [Lebanese]
archaeologists. Yet foreign archaeological missions come to us from
everywhere’.133
Al-Maʻrad reproduced an article concerning the antiquities found at
˙
Jbeil as written in the French newspaper L’Excelsior. Al-Maʻrad was
˙
astonished that local people were not encouraged to increase their
knowledge of antiquities whereas French magazines were writing about
it ‘as if we were foreigners in our own country’.134 Al-Ahrar expressed
˙
the possibility of making use of great power rivalries to ensure the
conservation of these antiquities. It informed readers that the Lebanese
government had deputised bureaucrats to shadow US archaeologist and
dean of the US Presbyterian Mission George Ford, in the hope that he
might contribute money for conservation. Al-Ahrar supported the
˙
action, expressing its hope that the government would not send the
antiquities to France as had been the case with the Pierre Montet affair.
Al-Ahrar reported that a digger who had been working on the Jbeil
˙
excavations had tried to sell a golden statue. It called on the Lebanese
government to keep watch on such irregularities.135 The government
responded by informing Al-Ahrar that it was searching for the thief. The
˙
newspaper later reported that the authorities had recovered the stolen Jbeil
statue and called on the government to prevent a recurrence.136 Sada al-
˙
Ahwal noted that another stolen statue that had been in the midst of being
˙
auctioned in Beirut had been identified. The thief was a local man who
stood guard for French archaeologist Pierre Montet’s excavation of the
ancient city of Byblos. He was found to be hoarding a variety of other
items upon his arrest.137 A few days later, Al-‘Arz decried the transfer of a
sarcophagus found in the Byblos excavation away from Lebanon, which it
claimed would be to the detriment of the tourist economy.138
A month later, in March 1924, Lisan Al-‘Arab (Mouthpiece of the Arabs)
reported another theft in Tyre and called on the local government to
improve security.139 In this case, the plot thickened. Two days after the
theft, Sada al-Ahwal published a new report citing a local doctor named
˙ ˙
Ziadeh who said he had excavated the Sūr sarcophagus. He claimed to
˙
have had permission from the High Commissioner and explained that he
would offer the sarcophagus to the Beirut Museum if it was deemed to be
of great worth.140 In response to this relevation, Al-Ahrar encouraged
˙
the devolution of antiquities-related responsibilities to local government
and the sending of Lebanese gendarmes to guard the excavations.141
The newspaper also published an article questioning the method of
administering antiquities, which it claimed ‘did not accord with the spirit
of the mandate.’142 Al-‘Arz called on the Lebanese local government to
clarify its relationship to archaeological missions.143
Local Government Contestation of Claims of Culture

Such protests had their impact in governmental circles. An internal note
explained the transport of the Sūr sarcophagus and added that: ‘it is
˙
worth noting [. . .] all the attention that the Lebanese population is
dedicating to antiquities’. Demonstrating a concern for countering
public disapproval, the note encouraged spreading awareness of French
help given to Lebanese aims toward a museum in Beirut, which will be
explored in the next chapter.144 The mandate framework’s insistence on
tutelage provided an important avenue for contesting French methods of
antiquities management through local government structures. In 1921,
French archaeological work on Hittite remains sparked protestations
spearheaded by famed Arabist and Damascus State Education Minister,
Muhammad Kurd ‘Ali. Kurd ‘Ali demanded that any antiquities found
in the territory of Damascus State should remain there. These protests
were echoed by the Druze State local government.145
Commander Catroux, then acting as the High Commissioner’s
delegate to Damascus State, admitted that the Hittite excavation had
not gained local administrative approval, thus making Kurd ‘Ali’s stance
‘understandable’. Catroux’s suggested solution to this quandary revealed
the deep biases pervasive in administrative circles. To circumvent the
demands for sovereignty over antiquities found in Syria, the delegate
sought to assign Kurd ‘Ali and the local authorities to the Islamic
antiquities, proposing to bring all Islamic-era objects to a central
museum in Damascus while another museum would host pre-Islamic
antiquities from the Hittite, Assyrian, Chaldean and Greco-Roman
stages of Syrian history.146 This compartmentalisation of culture was an
important theme of museum organisation, as will be seen in the
following chapter. It also reflected a particularly French engagement

with Islamic archaeology. France had been the first official sponsor of
Islamic site excavations when Paul Blanchet excavated the capital of the
Bani Hammad Berber dynasty in Algeria in 1898.147
Working within these limitations, Kurd ‘Ali succeeded in creating
an epigraphical and numismatic museum in his Damascus Arab
Academy’s library.148 His efforts in restoring the Medrese-i Milliye, an
eighteenth-century Ottoman school, to house the Damascus museum
were praised even by French intelligence.149 Kurd ‘Ali’s complex
insider – outsider engagement with French administrators demon-
strated how, despite formal subservience, local authorities could
contest certain issues, particularly when acting in concert with press
commentary. When Nemer Mansour Frayha writes that in Lebanon
the Fine Arts department was attached to the Ministry of Public
Instruction and headed by a Lebanese inspector, but under the control
of the French advisor, this can only provide an organisational picture of
early mandate cultural control.150
Even those areas under more direct French control ultimately relied
on clientelist, if unmistakeably paternalistic, administration. Anti-
quities became entangled with regional politics in the Jabal Druze, for
instance. In October 1923, the secularist and Republican Captain
Carbillet, then the head of As-Suwayda intelligence and future ill-fated
governor of the Jabal Druze State, asked the High Commissioner’s
delegate in Damascus if he had received his updates on antiquities work.
His letters evidence his infamous interference with Druze governance
that are now widely judged to have sparked the uprising at the heart of
the 1925 Great Revolt. The unhappy Carbillet particularly highlighted
one unanswered letter that he had sent to the Damascus delegate. In it,
he had asked for official thanks to be sent to a Jabal Druze notable
who had ‘offered a relatively interesting bas-relief to the As-Suwayda
museum’. Carbillet noted this particular notable might be irritated if he
were not given the same praise as other Druze notable donors.
Following a lack of replies from Damascus, Carbillet sought to
circumvent the delegate by directly contacting French Institute director
Eustache De Lorey. He asked De Lorey to supervise the newly created
museum in As-Suwayda alongside the Damascus museum. De Lorey
returned a diplomatic rejection, saying that such an ‘annexation [. . .]
does not seem possible to me, that is why I think you might [instead]
suggest to the Druze to make occasional gifts [of antiquities] to the

Maison de France [museum in As-Suwayda]’. In reply, Carbillet noted
that there was a ‘political interest’ for French authority in the region if
Druze donations of antiquities were recognised by the authorities. ‘For
me,’ Carbillet wrote, ‘here, archaeology is a political means like any
other’.151 Carbillet’s fervour had a clear impact. In February 1925, just a
few months ahead of the outbreak of the Great Syrian Revolt, a French
intelligence report noted that antiquities in the Jabal Druze were now
almost fully excavated and known to French researchers.152
A level of consensus between the High Commission, states and local
administration was evident in other cases: for instance, when antiquities
were found in Sidon in 1923. These were found on the land of a man
named Michel Bustany, located in ‘vast underground tombs’ near a royal
necropolis at the Bzaz cave near Aadloun, halfway between Tyre and
Sidon: a site which had already been examined by nineteenth-century
researchers such as Ernest Renan.153 The excavation had begun in
Ottoman times and was continued during the mandate by Georges
Contenau. The first expedition had been made possible by funds from
the French Education Ministry and in collaboration with the Ottoman
Service for Imperial Museums, thus ensuring some of the antiquities
found were transported to Istanbul.154
Antoine Privat-Aubouard, then the French governor of Lebanon’s
representative, telephoned the mutasarrıf of South Lebanon district to
order that the antiquities be protected. He also assigned a member of
his own staff to ensure the protection of the antiquities and informed
the High Commission of his actions.155 In 1925 archaeologist Paul
Geuthner described how, when researchers from Chicago’s Oriental
Institute made their own significant finds in Sidon, the Lebanese
government decided to forswear claims to the hoard in order to appease
both US researchers and the Lebanese national museum in Beirut.156
Conclusion
In the context of orientalist predispositions and political interest in
cultural claims that could bolster French dominance in Syria, the early
mandate’s organisation of antiquities protection and expropriation had
mixed results. On paper, the League of Nations-derived law did not even
improve on Ottoman precedent, though French efforts to protect
antiquities are evident. Benefits from the organisation of local museums to

counteract the hoarding of Syrian antiquities to Istanbul were mitigated
by a vivacious effort at excavating and exporting Syro-Lebanese antiquities
at the earliest opportunity.
The extent to which the shock of the 1925 Revolt at the end of the
period under study had a role in reducing French domination of
antiquities is somewhat unclear. The disparity between claims of
protection and continuing excavation continued. In 1929 Ernest
Schoeffler, who had been a secretary for High Commissioner Gouraud
and was now governor of the Alawite State, sent 23 Palmyrene tesserae
and ‘an important lot of diverse objects’ emanating from Ras Shamra to
the Louvre.157 In 1934, a specialist magazine was praising René Dussaud
for his ‘admirable enrichment’ of the Louvre thanks to discoveries in
Syria and further afield.158 In 1935, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Jacquot,
delegate at the excavations at Deir Ez-Zor and Aleppo, was encouraged
to donate a Parthian vase to the Council of National Museums.159
Simultaneously, evidence points to the growing impact of press
protest and local government after the fundamental shock to initial
mandatory methods incurred by the 1925 Great Revolt. Asher Kaufman
describes the late 1920s appointment of Maurice Chéhab as the
conservator of the Lebanese National Museum as a watershed moment
for modern Lebanese cultural history symbolising the beginning of the
transfer of cultural management from French to Lebanese hands.160
Chéhab had already become the director of antiquities for the state of
Lebanon by 1926.161
CHAPTER 2
CONTROLLING CULTURAL
HERITAGE:MUSEUMS, TOURISM
AND EXHIBITIONS
French methods of organising cultural heritage were equally contested as

the first formative years unfolded. Museums were organised by French
authorities to reflect a compartmentalisation of culture as mentioned in
the previous chapter. This approach sought to categorise and divide
the various cultural artefacts according to specific cultural claims. For
instance, the Damascus museum was intended to house artefacts from
the Islamic period while the Aleppo museum was expected to focus on
pre-Islamic history. Yet French plans did not go unchallenged, even
among the ‘favoured’ minorities such as the Maronites. Led by Maronite
Jacques Tabet, Lebanese public figures organised fundraising for a
national museum in Beirut of their own volition and met financial
requirements by lobbying Syro-Lebanese communities.
Tourist activity was similarly complicated by local people’s efforts
to independently organise their country’s cultural development.
While mandate authorities sought to promote tourism in an overbearing
manner reminiscent of colonial tourism in the French Maghreb,
local government tourism committees and the press did not easily
acquiesce to French methods. Finally, colonial exhibitions showcased
mandate territory artefacts. French mandatory authorities found that
such exhibitions provided them with an equanimous medium to make
cultural claims to a civilising mission. Despite this rhetoric, planning
for exhibitions featured an interpretation of development, or mise en
valeur (literally meaning ‘making valuable’), that prioritised French

commercial interests over international businesses and tutelage of local
industry. Yet any success they may have had was aimed at convincing
metropolitan, rather than Levantine, public opinion, and even the
former was hard-won, as later chapters will show.
Museums and Mise en Valeur

Museologists have recently increasingly focused on the societal and
political contexts in which museums developed, and their cultural
consequences.1 As was discussed in the previous chapter, the discovery
and storage of antiquities gave dominant colonial actors a claim
to ownership of the cultural artefacts they were uncovering. The
importance of racial difference through (dis)possession of cultural
artefacts has equally been detected in the British Raj and Palestine
mandate.2 As Zainab Bahrani has demonstrated in the case of British-
mandated Iraq, nineteenth-century orientalist rhetoric that claimed to
‘conjure’ a civilised past for now ‘decadent’ peoples was a common trope
reiterated by twentieth-century policy-makers.3
In both French colonial and metropolitan contexts, race and religion
must be considered as lenses of distinction.4 French mandatory
authorities reproduced such cultural claims, which conveniently were
enmeshed with the concept of mise en valeur. This term had been forged
by French colonial intellectuals and administrators as a means to
reinvent the romantic-orientalist nineteenth-century mission civilisatrice
rhetoric in a more ‘modern’, technocratic, garb.5 Mise en valeur thus
provided a framework of measurable and practical progress undertaken
in scientific language while satisfying increasing calls for economic
penetration from capitalist circles seeking new markets.6
The mise en valeur concept was greatly popularised by ex-Minister of
Colonies and imperial investment advocate Albert Sarraut in his 1923
book of the same title. Sarraut criticised hitherto disjointed approaches
to colonial policy – a result, he claimed, of metropolitan lack of
interest.7 His focus, though, was primarily on French Africa. Sarraut
only mentioned Syria once in his review, when he lamented the
annexation of the rich Cilicia province by the Turkish Republic in 1921.
Yet other elements of French public opinion did not dismiss the territory
and expressed a belief that Syria could be mise en valeur. Catholic
CONTROLLING CULTURAL HERITAGE 67
newspaper La Croix explained in 1921 that: ‘days for motoring shows

have just occurred in Aleppo. They were organised by the High
Commission [. . .] in order to give a strong encouragement to the
development [mise en valeur] of the country and initiate its [local]
property owners to employ new methods’.8 The management of cultural
institutions such as museums was organised within this context.
Organisation of Museums and Institution of

Protection in the Early Mandate
It is clear that the French did seek the foundation of new museums in
Syria and Lebanon. Museums, some of which originated as little more
than houses for storing antiquities, were created at Beirut, Damascus,
Aleppo, Lattakia and elsewhere. From the beginning of the organisation
of French Lebanon in 1919, antiquities director Chamonard undertook a
study of museums which included analysis of contemporary practices in
France and Greece.9 As per Chamonard’s findings, authorities sought the
setting up of regional museums. Chamonard claimed this approach
would foster Syria’s cultural independence.10 In July 1922, High
Commissioner Gouraud inaugurated a small museum in Beirut to house
antiquities from Tyre and Sidon.11 By 1924 four museums were being
built in Jabal Druze at As-Suwayda, Qanawat, Al-Kafr and Salkhad.12
A Lattakia museum was established by Alawite State Governor
Schoeffler in the late 1920s.13 A museum was also eventually established
in Aleppo in 1932 within the grounds of the Al-Naoura Palace.14
The antiquities service also organised the storing of significant
objects for the planned museums. The museum at As-Suwayda had more
than 130 objects set aside for it by early 1924.15 The initial organisation
of Jabal Druze antiquities under the supervision of Captain Carbillet
assured that many objects were stored in various small villages in the
Jabal Druze, ahead of the formation of the As-Suwayda museum.16 The
authorities undertook preservation work at the Aleppo Citadel and there
was an attempt at organising a Society of Friends of the Citadel. One
intelligence summary noted that more than 500 artefacts were
provisionally stored in the Lycée des Garc ons, ahead of the creation of
the Aleppo Museum, which would take years beyond the period under
study.17 The findings of a dig at Salhiya, north-east of Deir Ez-Zor in
˙
1924, including potteries and coins, were all sent for safekeeping in the
provisional Aleppo museum.18 Objects from the 1925 Paul Perdrizet

and Bedřich Hrozný excavations were also deposited in the makeshift
Aleppo museum until they could be ‘presented to an appropriate
locale’.19
The previously discussed Institut Franc ais d’Archaeologie et d’Art
Musulman was founded in Damascus in October 1922. Thanks to a
500,000-franc High Commission grant, the institute was housed
in the remarkable eighteenth-century ‘ablaq-style ‘Azm Palace. 20
The institute housed Islamic antiquities and participated in preservation
efforts in Aleppo and Damascus. Annexed to the museum was an École
des Arts Décoratifs, to be examined in a later chapter. In 1924, the
Damascus museum was gifted a sixteenth-century Persian manuscript by
the French consul in Jaffa.21 In the same year the institute, which
oversaw the Damascus museum, gave a report on its work.22
The institute also undertook the conservation of Muslim artefacts,
including the transcribing of an inscription by Al-Malik Al-Kamil (also
known as Meledin, the nephew of famed Kurdish Muslim leader Salah
Al-Din al-Ayyubi), copied from a local stele.23 Among the institute’s
members were such figures as René Dussaud, the influential
archaeologist and founder of the Syria archaeological review.24 In
October 1922, this archaeological review received a subsidy of 5000
francs from the High Commissioner.25 Those involved in the running
and activity of the institute were usually French or European, leaving
little scope for local Syro-Lebanese intellectual development.26
The first volume of Syria set the tone for this Francocentric and
orientalist method of cultural heritage management. It published an
article by Dussaud on a Greek bronze statue in the Lebanese magnate
Charles Sursock’s collection; an article by Gabriel Contenau outlining
his excavation at Sidon in 1914; an article by French specialist on Islam,
Gaston Migeon, on a mosque lamp; and another article of Dussaud’s
examining the legacy of French painter Georges Montfort in Syria. The
volume began with an editorial which noted that Syria had, ‘of all the
lands of the Orient’, been that with the closest ties to France.
It explained that Syria’s agenda was to ‘develop the taste for art and
antiquities in Syria [. . .] [and] improve knowledge of the Syrian arts
from every era’.27
French orientalists thus became mandate cultural managers who were
organising the country’s histories in an order familiar to their needs and
knowledge. Their assignation of antiquities according to compartmen-

talised regions could be considered as attempts at ‘conjuring’ Assyria,
Roman Syria, even the Ummayads. Aside from these particular
interventions, however, the central government’s Service des Antiquités
offered only minimal subventions for local museums to accumulate
artefacts. Local museums in Beirut, Damascus, Aleppo, Lattakia,
Souweida and Antioch (in the Sanjak of Alexandretta) had to depend on
their local governments’ budgets – ultimately drawn from taxation and
other irregular income.28
Compartmentalisation of Culture
The mandate regime’s cultural managers compartmentalised the
museums according to their expectations of the subjugated local
peoples’ interests. The initial organiser of the antiquities service,
Chamonard, believed that two major museums at Beirut and Damascus
would meet local needs. The museum at Damascus would have an
Islamic and Arabic emphasis, while Beirut would focus on antiquity.29
As plans expanded, a museum at Aleppo was expected to store
pre-Hellenic antiquities as opposed to the post-Hellenic material in
Damascus. In Cilicia, the Adana museum had already gathered a number
of artefacts thanks to the efforts of the Governor Colonel Normand; this
effort would be short-lived given the surrender of the territory to the
Turkish Republic in 1921.30
In keeping with compartmentalisation, the Institut Franc ais founded
in Damascus in October 1922 focused on post-Hellenic and Islamic
history. The institute evidently safeguarded antiquities yet the tone of
official discussions suggests it was more a site of private passions than
public promotion.31 It apparently ‘recruited students who were educated
by way of courses and archaeological visits to the diverse Damascene
monuments and on the ground at excavations such as Bab al-Sharqi’.32
The institute believed this would allow ‘students to study the beautiful
specimens of their predecessor’s artistic production’.33
Renaud Avez notes that contemporary characterisations of the
institute by journalists and high commissioners alike sought to describe
it as an independent body fulfilling a range of functions such as being a
‘school of Syrian art’, ‘a centre for Muslim studies’ or an ‘Arab antiquities
museum’. Avez correctly challenges these characterisations for omitting
the direct ties between the institute and the mandate authorities,
including gaining information on excavations directly from intelligence
services officers.34 However, the institute did recruit local Muslim
Damascene elites into its schools, such as Jamil al-Kawakibi, son
of jurist Massoud al-Kawakibi. It also recruited Al-Bahsa school art
˙
Professor ‘Abd al-Wahhab Abu al-Saud as an instructor and local
35
Damascenes for secretarial work.
The schema of regional museums also encouraged imbalances in the
distribution of collections. Several reports from the southern Hawrān
˙
region noted the movement of objects to Damascus despite the existence
36
of local museum projects. One report admitted that, of all the Syrian
states, it was ‘the Hawrān which had provided the greatest contribution
˙
to the museum [of the French Institute in Damascus]’.37 There were
occasions when antiquities were sent to the Jabal Druze museum.38 Yet
even by 1925, an overview of mandatory antiquities activity noted that
the Damascus museum was receiving material from Al-Shaykh Saad
near Dar‘aa, Al-Mushrefa near Homs and Tell Nebi Mend as well as
Palmyra.39
Another report betrayed the overtly patronising approach to Muslim
visitors of the Damascus Institute who were said to ‘manifest a great
surprise’ when they saw Hawrān coins that displayed figures deemed un-
˙
Islamic. Such coins showed the prophet Muhammad with crosses around
him, or some Byzantine rulers with halos, traits that were typical of the
feverish early spread of Islam. The report wryly added that the ‘orthodox’
passions of the Muslim visitors were better satisfied by the presence of
rather unrealistic foliages of Salah Al-Din. In short, singular-minded
Muslim visitors did not have the capacity to appreciate the scientific
treasure that the pre-Islamic coins represented.40
Compartmentalisation was not limited to the mandate territory.
Though French administrators and archaeologists had a free hand to
roam the Syrian land, Syro-Lebanese peoples had the most limited of
access to European collections. An account by Louvre curator Gaston
Migeon in 1920 hailed French archaeological activity in disingenuous
terms. He claimed that putting a mosque on display at his museum
would: ‘reveal to the great Syrian public the monuments of ancient Asia
that have long been housed in our old European museums’.41 In reality,
his museum was busily acquiring Syrian antiquities. In 1929, the
Aleppo museum acquired a replica of an Assyrian statue found in north
Syria; the real object was on display at the Louvre.42 The method of
cultural heritage management forged in the initial mandate ensured that
a Syrian museum visitor could gain compartmentalised snippets of their
past without appreciating the vista that their ‘civiliser’ had provided for
metropolitan audiences.
Indeed, it is worth noting that the process of organising museums in
the metropole meant that a variety of disparate objects were presented
for visitors. This meant that the museums of London, Berlin and Paris,
though paeans to the acquisitions of their respective empires, were
demonstrating objects outside of the contexts in which they were found.
An example of this is the division of Egyptian from Syrian artefacts,
despite the cross-fertilisation evident in archaeological sites. Metropo-
litan audiences aside, Syrian museum visitors could not be aware of the
pottery remains discussed by archaeologists affirming links between
ancient Syrian communities and Persia, Mesopotamia and even as far
afield as Afghanistan.43 In contrast, such knowledge permeated the
French learned print media. For instance, a piece in Le Temps in 1918
outlined discoveries made by French archaeologist Franc ois Thureau-
Danging at Al-Amarna, on the Nile, which it reported had confirmed
diplomatic correspondence between Egyptian Pharaohs and govern-
ments in Ancient Palestine and Syria.44
Tensions and Initiative in Local Preservation Efforts

Despite the rhetoric of mise en valeur and appropriation of cultural heritage,
local preservation efforts by Islamic, local government and entrepreneurial
means maintained consistent challenges to French claims of culture and
paternalist oversight. Preservation of cultural heritage was evidently not a
French invention. Ancient buildings, such as the bimaristan (a traditional
rest house on the highways linking the Silk Road) of Nur al-Din Zangi,
were preserved under the waqf system. This Islamic legal mechanism,
mortmain perpetuities with absolute or relative inalienability, acted as a
collective trust for Islamic social preservation.45 Specific Lebanese
institutions such as the Maqāsid Benevolent Society in Beirut, and others
to be explored herein, were providing educational and welfare support
during the early mandate.46 As one administrators’ report admitted, the
French attempts at conserving such monuments did not consult the pre-
existing waqf framework.47
This lack of recognition for certain Islamic claims to culture and

competency over cultural heritage led to contestation of French
methods. This was evident in the case of the refusal by the waqf holders
of the Souq Sahat al-Miskiyah market, near the Great Ummayad Mosque
in Damascus, to grant permission for what the French authorities
described as a ‘reconstruction’ of ‘parasite’ buildings (annexes) adjoining
the mosque.48 In the same Souq al-Miskiyah case, attempts by the
authorities to maintain a Byzantine arcade by erecting a wall alongside it
were resisted by inhabitants in the area.49 In Tripoli, a litany of
archeological treasures caused tensions between the new French
administration and the pre-existing order for conservation.50 Such
refusals of actions undertaken by French authorities in the name of a mise
en valeur prerogative were not limited to avenues enabled by the Islamic
legal framework.
Local government provided another channel for potential consolida-
tion or contestation of French cultural heritage methods. However, there
was a degree of control, allowing bureaucrats to retain decision making
privileges. According to antiquities regulations, each mandate state
government had to maintain a register of inventories and classify objects.
They also had to conserve these objects and build museums if these did
not damage potential archaeological sites, liaising with the largest towns
of each state.51 This structure meant that, whereas the director of
antiquities at the Beirut High Commission had an overview of foreign
and French archaeological missions in each locale, local notables who did
become absorbed into local government roles had circumscribed
knowledge and powers. They were secretaries or, in cases such as that of
Charles Corm with respect to the Lebanese National Museum, curators.
In the 1930s, the Aleppo museum’s director was the Viscount Pioix de
Rotrou, assisted by two local men, Subhi Saouaf, the antiquities
inspector, and Cesar Kébbé, the secretary.52
Despite such limits, it is clear that certain Syro-Lebanese local
government figures were active in founding museums and ensuring the
preservation of cultural artefacts. Influential Arab nationalist thinker
and Ottoman-era bureaucrat Muhammad Kurd ‘Ali was described by
French intelligence as ‘intelligent, not brave, meticulous, [and someone
who] loves archaeology’.53 Kurd ‘Ali was intransigently active in
encouraging parallel cultural institutions such as the Arab Academy in
Damascus.54 Despite his best efforts, the Arab Academy found itself on
the losing side of a competition for antiquities with the better-resourced

French Institute in the ‘Azm Palace; the latter had the ability to draw on
High Commission, local government and waqf funds and sent its
representatives to various excavations to directly extract some of
the finds.55
Entrepreneurial efforts also demonstrate the capacity of Syro-
Lebanese elites to undertake the work of preserving their past. Emir Said
Al-Jazairi, a descendant of exiled Algerian revolutionary Emir
Abdelkader Al-Jazairi, established a museum in Damascus dedicated
to his famed forebear.56 A retrospective report written in 1925 noted
that the Damascus museum thereafter developed thanks to the zeal of its
curator Emir Jafar ‘Abd al-Qadir, another of the Jazairis who had been
educated at the École du Louvre’s archaeology school.57 By the late
1920s, the museum had become a national Syrian museum.
A Lebanese national library was set up in Beirut in July 1921 by the
Syriac-Catholic Viscount Philip De Tarrazi. Tarrazi flirted with all kinds
of intellectual movements, negotiating a Levantine cultural space
without simply submitting to French cultural claims. De Tarrazi’s
history of Lebanon provoked the ire of Maronite historians because it was
perceived to have downplayed the Maronite role in the earliest Lebanese
history.58 Yet by other accounts, De Tarrazi was close to famous
Maronite Phoenicianists Charles Corm and Michel Chiha, who sought to
tie Maronite identity to the exploits of that ancient merchant
civilisation.59
The degree to which Maronite and other Catholic Lebanese
communities sought to distance themselves from their fellow Syro-
Lebanese in the aftermath of Ottoman collapse is unclear.60 Amata
Martin-Fernandez’s careful study of Lebanese cultural and political
discourses during the mandate has found that: ‘Phoenician images did
not take root into the [Maronite] society until late in the mandate period
[. . .] It had been an ideology almost exclusive to the educated elites with
French background [. . .] developed around urban centers [. . .] and had
little influence in the mountainous areas’.61 Certainly De Tarrazi did not
confine himself to Lebanese affairs, as shown in his support for
Muhammad Kurd Ali’s Arab Academy in Damascus.62 Such co-
operation evidences a certain level of horizontal inter-communal
dialogue that did not fit with French attempts at instituting the vertical
and compartmented paternalism identified by Elizabeth Thompson.63
Initiated in 1923, the Lebanese National Museum was the highest-

profile entrepreneurial effort at preserving the past.64 The Lebanese
museum was eventually opened in mid-1926.65 The effort was led by
Maronite author Jacques Tabet, who organised a Committee for the
National Museum.66 Presided over by Greek Orthodox magnate and
antiquities collector Charles Sursock, the Société Syrienne d’Archéologie
also played a part in the establishment of the national museum.67
Sursock had begun the effort for a Lebanese museum in 1921, gathering
objects and grants, and his private collection eventually coalesced into an
eponymous private museum that opened in the 1960s.68 The effort is of
interest because of its wide outreach and the fact that French
authorities complied by helping to raise funds. This could be considered
an example of a local organisation ‘re-appropriating’ claims of culture
and competency for cultural heritage that has been discussed in
other contexts such as the committee for an Arab museum in
Khedivial Cairo.69
Contributions to the national museum’s fundraising effort arrived
from the immigrant Syro-Lebanese, mahjar, communities in the
Americas.70 Syro-Lebanese, and particularly Maronite, identities had
been retained in Latin America, for instance in Brazil.71 The Lebanese
Syrian Society of Bahia (Salvador) state was founded on 27 July 1921
with evident ties to Lebanese cultural heritage. Its logo, for instance, was
the classic Lebanese cedar tree aligned with the ruins of Baalbek.
An entire section of the society’s founding document was dedicated to
Lebanese cultural heritage.72 The movement quickly became the subject
of internal discussions within the French government. French official
minds were already sympathetic toward Maronite cultural claims, unlike
the suspicion that automatically fell on Sunni initiatives such as those of
Muhammad Kurd ‘Ali.73 Officials recognised that their support of the
project would gain public approbation for mandatory methods.
A 1925 circular sent to all diplomatic attachés by the Minister of
Foreign Affairs described the ‘appreciation that the public has for the
task [of building a museum] which has great scientific and national
implications’.74 The circular made its way through most French
consulates in the Americas, from Bahia to New York. The circular note
replicated the call of the Comité du Musée National seeking to give
Beirut a ‘museum worthy of its archaeological treasures’.75 In Bahia the
president of the Lebano-Syrian society, Khalil Alexander Maalouf, sent
his thanks to the French consul and encouraged further information to

be sent about the museum venture.76 From Bahia the news of this
fundraising effort spread out to other Brazilian states such as
Pernambuco to the north.77 The French consular agent in Pernambuco,
for instance, sent R$ 150,000 (422.85 francs) to the consul in Bahia.
French support was not limited to information sharing; it also facilitated
money transfers.78 The consul sent High Commissioner Henri De
Jouvenel 1000 francs in addition to Pernambuco’s 422 francs to be
handed over to Jacques Tabet.79
Tourism at the Outset of the Mandate

Another arena of cultural heritage management that became a focus of
French efforts concerned the promotion of tourism. Following a long
history of travels to and from the Middle East, ‘modern’ tourism
emerged in the region as an activity following private adventurers’ and
travellers’ eighteenth- and nineteenth-century encounters with colonial
and foreign territories.80 What distinguished the traveller from the
tourist was that for the former, the ends (destinations, experiences)
justified the means (travel through individual effort), whereas for the
latter the means (accessible travel) justified the ends.
In the words of Ellen Furlough:
The tourist industry underscored [. . .] differences in order to fuel

desires for colonial travel with its promises of viewing ‘timeless’
peoples and landscapes [. . .] these differences were predicated as
well upon positioning elite French tourists within ideological
hierarchies of race [. . .]. These notions [. . .] could thereby serve to
reflect back upon a metropolitan-centered notion of ‘Frenchness’
[. . .] tourism to the colonies thus contained [. . .] the potential to
reinforce [. . .] French national identity as imperial and to foster
expectations, experiences and practices of touristic consumption
[. . .] that [. . .] wilfully erases [. . .] the touristically irrelevant.81
Aside from the personal journeys made by adventurers and tourists, the
institution of tourism as an organised activity carried inherent political
and economic importance. It supported colonial activity by reinforcing
the dyadic discourse that entrenched orientalist visions of imperially
subjugated peoples and affirmed cultural claims of a civilising mission.

In French Algeria, tourism had been intertwined with both the
ethnographic effort and the colonial administration.82 Tourism in the
European colonies was equally intertwined with semi-professional
research and exploitation of antiquities. The earliest tourist guides were,
in effect, travellers’ accounts. In 1920, the Trustees of the
British Museum published a book entitled How to Observe in Archaeology
which brought together many of the stars of British archaeology,
such as F.G. Kenyon, D.G. Hogarth and Flinders Petrie, in order to
‘provide information for the guidance of travellers in the Near and
Middle East who are interested in antiquities without being trained
archaeologists’.83 The aim was to encourage tourists to recognise the
significance of any objects they came across, a kind of archaeological
subcontracting.84
In 1919 the Chicago Oriental Institute’s James Henry Breasted
bemoaned the ‘presence of increasing crowds of tourists [. . .] [which]
have long since brought forth an evil generation of native antiquity
dealers whose shops are largely replenished by illicit digging’.85 Tourism
was thus already in existence in the Syrian historical experience at the
outset of the mandate. One mandate-era surveillance report relates a
story told by a Bedouin sheikh named Ghasswan, who recalled that in
Ottoman times a French aristocratic lady traveller who had visited a
relative of his held at Homs’ prison, Ghasswan claimed that her petition
had secured his relative’s release.86 Ottoman Syria had seen plenty of
European travellers, from famous travellers like Johann Burckhardt and
Gertrude Bell to lesser-known figures.87
Nevertheless, mandate authorities introduced a co-ordinated
economic impetus to tourism promotion. Authorities saw in tourism a
means to prove that the country was being developed (mise en valeur)
according to the League of Nations requirements for a tutelage. An early
sign of this was that tourist affairs were initially handled by the Office
Commerciale Franc aise in Beirut, which put out a monthly Bulletin
Economique full of financial and industrial statistics.88 The Commercial
Office opened up galleries for samples of French products in Beirut,
Aleppo and Adana.89 There were initial difficulties. In January 1921, the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned the High Commission that there
were only 500 hotel rooms available in Beirut, ahead of the beginning of
the showcase Beirut Fair to be examined below, a demonstration of the
limits to promoting tourism in a country with an as-yet-informal hotel

industry.90
Yet even in these early years, tourism could generate income. Adverts
for hotels, such as the Kaouan Villa in Ras Al-‘Ain, began appearing in
‘highbrow’ publications such as La Syrie.91 In June 1922 an information
office for visitors arriving in Beirut was created.92 In 1924, a report
noted that 318 out of 395 (presumably official) cars circulating in Beirut
were set aside for tourists.93 In 1924 the High Commissioner organised
an economic office for Syria in Lyon to parallel existing efforts in
Madagascar and Morocco.94 Eventually a small but dedicated tourism
office was created in April 1925, though it continued to operate
alongside the Office Commerciale.95 Unfortunately, the new tourism
office was created just months ahead of the outbreak of the Great Syrian
Revolt which saw tourism in the country drastically reduced as a result
of instability.
The efforts had some success in gaining appreciation for inaugural
mandatory methods, at least in the metropolitan French press. The
newspaper La Croix advertised tours undertaken by the French civil
shipping company, the Méssageries Maritimes, that would reach Syria.96
Colonial newspapers such as Algiers’ Le Mercure Africain informed
readers of cruises to the Orient that included Syria on their itinerary.97
As part of preparations for the 1921 Foire de Beyrouth a tourist guide was
written by Myriam Harry (French journalist and writer Maria Rosette
Shapira).98 Le Matin praised the administration’s tourism activity. Its
item sought to counter ‘unjust’ critiques of the state of Syrian
agriculture and industry. It noted that it was the country’s ‘charming’
practices and locales that ‘draw the tourists’ attention’.99
Other metropolitan commentators suggested that the burgeoning
tourist industry owed a debt to French archaeological efforts. An early
review in a Paris-based arts journal emphasised the Napoleonic heritage
in Egypt ending with the hope that ‘curious and educated voyagers will
come [. . .] and that Syria will become what, thanks to French efforts,
Egypt was before her, a country of archaeology, art and tourism seen by
all’.100 It is clear that tourism was supported by the central mandate
authorities and even the Armée du Levant. The army had, in one
instance, provided its marching band to greet foreign visitors at the
busiest Lebanese train stations. The army cinema also contributed by
showing movies for the visitors.101
On the question of tourism, local government figures reached an

otherwise rare consensus with mandate authorities. A letter from the
Jabal Druze’s assembly of notables praised the museum in As-Suwayda
discussed earlier as a site that would allow ‘tourists to realise the care
with which we protect the relics of the past’.102 The Lebanese president
of the Commission for Tourism and Resorts (‘Villégiature’) wrote to the
governor of Lebanon outlining a variety of bureaucratic barriers and poor
standards afflicting visitors to Lebanon. He wanted to reduce the
exploitation of voyagers by scheming local opportunists, which could be
done by installing a tourist information point at the dock in Beirut.
The governor reportedly promised to enact such reforms by 1925.
In spite of these challenges, a report dating from September 1924
celebrated a ‘particularly brilliant’ saison d’estivage: a term referring to the
summering of local tourists from the Lebanese coast, Syria and Egypt to
the cool mountains. Such success was ultimately assured by the country’s
natural characteristics. A report on Zahlah written in early 1921
˙
outlined one ‘charming corner which deserves to grab the attention of
tourists [. . .] it is a much-frequented rendezvous for Zahlawis and a
˙
number of visitors [éstiveurs]; the nights are particularly fresh and the
landscape is truly beautiful in the moonlight’.103
Another report celebrated Lebanon’s spas ‘where inhabitants [. . .]
from the hot plains of Egypt, Iraq and the Palestinian coast will come to
revive their health’. The report also noted that an Egyptian surgeon, Dr
Ali Ibrahim, had arrived with 70 Egyptian doctors to study various
centres of éstivage and to measure their therapeutic properties in the hope
of sending sick Egyptians to the Lebanese mountains.104 A report from
summer 1924 talked of ‘over 10,000 foreign pastoral workers [who]
have come to taste the slopes of Lebanon; the delicate climate and all
sorts of charms available to tourists: beautiful sites, a road network in
perfect condition’. The report added that a Cairene newspaper, Al-
Bashı̄r, had published an account of ‘a voyage to Lebanon’ in which it
celebrated the country’s natural beauty.105
The Lebanese print media equally promoted tourism. French-owned
La Syrie ran a piece encouraging the organisation of a ‘Touring Club’,
modelled after the French Touring Club set up in 1890, which would be
to ‘the profit of our country [. . .] the French authorities and big
corporations in Paris will surely facilitate this development’.106
A Touring Club de Syrie was eventually organised and involved itself
in arranging the arrival and lodging of visitors to the 1921 Beirut Fair.
The press provided a platform to encourage improvements to tourists’
experiences. Sada al-Ahwal suggested that the Beirut Museum of
˙
Antiquities be built next to the tourism office.107 Lisan al-Hal wrote of
the windfall in profits created by Egyptian tourism and urged
the government to undertake all necessary steps to increase their
numbers.108 Lisan al-Hal followed up with a call for a train line linking
Beirut and Haifa as well as improvements to hotels in Beirut to
encourage visitors. On the other hand, when the government announced
a project to build a hotel in Beirut, Al-‘Arz rebuked the efforts as a
misuse of public money that overlooked more pressing requirements
such as mountain roadworks.109
Al-Ahrar praised the setting up of a local office, the Société de
˙
Villégiature du Mont-Liban, intended to encourage summer pastoral
workers. It had attracted 800 such workers to Lebanon in 1922 and
2,600 in 1923 through an advertising campaign in Egypt. Alongside
this was the Comité de Tourisme et d’Éstivage which was intended to
further encourage recreational visits to Lebanon, though it came under
fire from Al-Ahrar for its sluggish action in contrast to the Société de
˙
Villégiature which had brought thousands of guest workers who were
spending ‘enormous sums’ in the country.110 Despite these achieve-
ments, satirical newspaper Al-Dabbour mocked a government policy
which granted 5,000 francs through the Comité du Tourisme et
d’Éstivage to the Société de Villégiature while giving 3,000 francs to the
Societé des Courses de Chevaux. ‘In the eyes of our Government’, it
wrote, ‘horses are preferable to Lebanese people’!111
International tourists became increasingly common visitors to
Lebanon. In February 1924 Al-Barq reported that a US billionaire,
possibly Henry Ford (transliterated into French by Beirut press service
dragomans as ‘Hand Zort’) whose Dearborn factory employed 555
Syrians in 1916, had visited ruins at Jbeil and told its reporter he had
found it difficult to access the exposition of antiquities since the wooden
staircase leading up to it was not solid enough.112 In April 1924, a US
tourist declared to Al-’Arz that he had been happy with his trip to
Lebanon, noting that it was perfectly peaceful. He added that he would
be keen to return with a number of his friends, so long as efforts were
made to improve the condition of the roads.113 A US tourist,
interviewed by the newspaper Al-Balagh a few months later, explained
his satisfaction with conditions in Syria.114 French reports noted that

120 US tourists travelled from Qunaitra to Tiberias on 7 August 1925.
Another 50 arrived at Baalbek two days later.115
By January 1928, the US consul in Damascus wrote to Washington
informing the State Department of ‘the experience of Dr. Charles
W. Young, an American [. . .] professor [. . .] Together with two British
subjects, in crossing the Syrian Desert.’ It was an experience that
prompted the consul to suggest taking steps to improve the regulation
of the desert itinerary.116 The ‘unfortunate’ professor had nearly died on
the crossing as a result of a ‘drunk and refractory’ driver.117 The professor
and his British passengers, one a lady and the other an ‘Oriental’, had
been stuck in the desert after the driver lost the road and were only found
by chance by a search party.
Another interesting case of foreign tourism further underlines the
inherent allure of the country’s heritage and landscapes. The small, 40-
odd, expatriate ‘White’ Russian community in Damascus organised
themselves in 1923 into a Société Litéraire Russe de Damas, based in the
Bab Touma district.118 Its president, Professor Alexis Bogolioubsky,
published an account of bicycle tourism in Syria and Lebanon in 1924 in
Figure 2.1 Temple of Baalbek from the air c.1925. Available online: http
://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb403670765.
the society bulletin. In it, he noted that tourism by bicycle remained rare
in the country, despite the freedom it offered. It was a great opportunity
for young people to learn more about their country during the long
summer holidays. President Alexis took a schoolboy from the Collège
des Lazaristes along with him to go for a tour of Syria and Lebanon.119
This personal account, alongside the US professor’s unfortunate desert
experience, demonstrates the genuine enthusiasm for tourist discovery of
Syria among expatriates and international travellers.
Such enthusiasm was not limited to foreigners. Kirsten Scheid has
demonstrated how Muslim scouting groups led various tours around the
country. One scout leader, Muhi Al-Din Al-Nsuli took 28 of his scouts
to a place he described as having ‘the most beautiful scenery in all
Syria’.120 From these trips there developed an active scout tourism in
conjugation with French authorities’ promotion of tourism leading to
what Scheid has described as ‘making landscapes Lebanese’.121 As Scheid
writes, the initiative in promoting tourism emanated largely from local
Lebanese. It took until the 1930s for a Paris-based group, the Comité
de Propagande Libano-Syrienne, to promote tourism in France itself.
Nevertheless, the aforementioned Société de Villégiature’s efforts
represent an immediate organisation of cultural institutions that could
contest French inaction in tourism development. The combination of an
ever-vocal press, and local government organisation of tourism led by
Lebanese associations fundamentally undermined any French attempts
to arrogate to themselves tourist promotion efforts as an exceptional mise
en valeur of the country by a civilised patron.
Exhibitions in the Early Mandate

A final area of cultural activity that was intrinsically tied to museum and
tourist promotion was that of colonial exhibitions and expositions.
Exhibitions had begun with the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition and the
French had followed up on this with an exhibition in 1855 in Paris.122
British imperial exhibitions continued throughout the interwar period,
with such exhibitions as that of an ‘African village’ at the 1924 British
Empire exhibition.123 French twentieth-century exhibitions were a
means to vaunt the mise en valeur, and thereby to undergird the ‘civilising
mission’.124 Ellen Furlough describes this as ‘Francocentric framing’;
relating a range of cultures from around the Empire that were tied
together by their ease of access to metropolitan citizens at exhibitions.

Just as visitors to the Louvre and other museums were able to
‘appropriate’ the cultures on display before them, so too did colonial
exhibitions like that of Vincennes in 1931 provide ‘simulated travel’.125
A series of exhibitions of Syro-Lebanese cultural heritage began even
before the mandate was officially declared in 1922. In January 1919, the
Marseille Chamber of Commerce hosted a congress on Syria with talks
by archaeological and cultural experts, including one by Count Henri de
Gérin-Ricard. The Count produced two letters from Charles I of Naples,
founder of the Capetian House of Anjou, that had been sent from
Marseille to confirm the city’s privileges in Acre commerce.126 The
special ties between Marseille and the Holy Land were clearly not simple
rhetoric. Indeed, the Arabic name for Marseille, marsilya, echoes the
Greek-derived town name of massalı́a but curiously also contains the
dual Arabic words for port (marsa) and the seventh-century name for
Jerusalem (Iliyā’), drawn from the Roman Aelia.
In 1921, an international congress of art history was held in Paris.
Presentations on Syria were given by Maurice Pezard, a member of the
Louvre, and Gaston Migeon, the Louvre’s curator of medieval art.
Alongside them was archaeologist and director of the Damascus institute
for Islamic art Eustache De Lorey, who presented the discovery of
Damascene artefacts.127 In the same year, Syria and Lebanon were
represented at the Bordeaux fair. Ships from the French Navy were used
to provide transport and participants were given a 20 per cent reduction
on travel fees to participate.128 On 18 March 1922, General Gouraud
and Paul Léon, the director of France’s Ministry for the Beaux-Arts,
inaugurated an exposition of French research in Syria at the Louvre.
Some of the great names of mandate archaeology, such as Pierre Montet
and Eustache De Lorey, were present.129
In the same year, a pavilion dedicated to the Levant was present in the
Marseille colonial exhibition.130 A proclivity for promoting French
business interests is evident in High Commission notes preparing for
Marseille’s exhibition. This echoed the mise en valeur approach to
flaunting the mandate’s cultural management methods at the 1921
Beirut Fair.131 The High Commissioner’s delegate in Paris, Pierre
Terrier, was charged with preparing Syro-Lebanese participation. Some
25,000 francs were set aside to ensure a successful representation of
French methods in Syria to the Marseille exhibition audience.132
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also asked the mandate economic service
to undertake a propaganda campaign among commercial and industrial
circles in Syria ‘to spread certain technical publications in French and
facilitate the development of our colonial exports’.133
Exposition of the mandate continued in the early 1920s. The
organisers of a 1922 Louvre exhibition compared Syria’s large population
in antiquity to the 3 million Syrians of the early 1920s to promote a
theme of civilisational decline: an argument reminiscent of claims of a
resurrected ‘granary of Rome’ in French colonial North Africa.134 In
1923 the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris held an exhibition of the
Damascus Institut Franc ais’s work intended to ‘help with the renaissance
of the Syrian arts’.135 Famed archaeologist Réné Dussaud praised the
exhibition in the Bulletin des Musées de France as an effort ‘destined [. . .]
to testify to the gratitude deserved by our archaeologists [. . .] who are
the true agents of this enrichment’.136 In 1924, future civilian High
Commissioner Henri De Jouvenel, then the Minister for Instruction
Publique in France, attended a Paris exhibition of artefacts found at
Byblos.137
Syro-Lebanese participation in these exhibitions was limited though
not non-existent. A conference held at the American University in
Beirut in 1924 was attended almost exclusively by local scholars, to the
extent that one newspaper bemoaned the use of French-language
invitation letters to the conference as being a waste of resources.138
However, another conference held in Beirut in 1926 was attended by
Lebanese high society.139 In the same year, Lebanese newspaper Al-Ahrar
˙
praised plans to include Lebanese products at an exhibition in Lyon,
though it also asked authorities if the labelling on the products being
showcased would reflect ‘the inhabitants of the country [. . .] according
to their regions’.140
In 1924, the authorities prepared for the admittance of Libano-Syrian
material to the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs Modernes. The
administration of this exhibition was delegated by the High
Commissioner to the head of the Institut Franc ais in Damascus, leaving
the Syro-Lebanese with no role in their country’s cultural representation.
Far from being tutored as future decision makers and managers of their
cultural heritage and portrayal, Syrian craftsmen were not even trusted
to produce the furniture required for the exhibition because they were
‘incapable of, despite their abilities and craftsmanship, re-imagining
their art anew’. These craftsmen were thus given models with precise
instructions for how to construct the furniture: French models to portray
Syrian furniture to a European exhibition.141
The Beirut Fair and Mise en Valeur

The Beirut Fair of 1921 demonstrates the clear link between French
claims of protection over cultural heritage and the economic interests
tied to mise en valeur rhetoric. In May 1920, Gouraud wrote to Paris to
explain that he had ‘decided [. . .] [upon] the organisation, in Beirut [. . .]
of a fair [. . .] in the mould of those that had such success at Fez and
Rabat’.142 Plans for the Fair went off to a bad start, however, after the
telegram sent to Paris by general-secretary Robert de Caix had given the
impression that the figure Beirut was requesting for its budget was in
francs, when in fact it was in the lower-valued Syrian piasters!143
The organising committee for the Beirut Fair of 1921 was based in
Paris and presided over by former Minister and technocracy advocate
Etienne Clémentel.144 By the time the Fair had begun in April 1921,
Gouraud had secured prestigious French elites to add to the committee
as it was arriving in Beirut. Famed composer Gabriel Fauré and Senator
Fernand David were well received in Beirut.145 Senator David also
visited Damascus. French authorities described the welcome he was
given by the city’s authorities, notables and population as ‘a great
manifestation of celebration’ in a press release. The authorities also
claimed that Damascus Governor Haqqi Bey Al-‘Azm146 and the
Lebanese president of the Beirut Fair’s Syrian section had ‘expressed [. . .]
gratitude [. . .] and joy to see the opening up of a period of economic
prosperity under France’s enlightened mandate’.147
A 1923 internal intelligence report openly discussed the real
commercial interests behind mise en valeur rhetoric at the Beirut Fair. The
report explained the Fair was ‘an economic manifestation’; it had a dual
benefit of informing ‘French public opinion of the encouraging
foreseeable results’ for French mandatory methods while allowing the
‘French participants to extend [. . .] commercial action in the Levant.’148
In a press release, Gouraud extolled the fair as an opportunity for ‘the
economic development [mise en valeur] of Syria through the creation of
solid commercial links’.149 Another press release celebrated the Fair as a
gathering of ‘more than 1200 French companies, an important number
of indigenous companies in the face of an extremely weak foreign

participation, [that] has produced an excellent impression on the Syrian
populations and encouraged the creation of solid business links between
French and indigenous merchants’.150
Gouraud noted that a pump-selling firm had secured several million
francs of business. He added that the local peoples were satisfied with
‘French products utterly unknown in the Orient’, owing to ‘centuries-
old traditions attached to commerce’, a reference that drew the ties
between a ‘Phoenicianist’ cultural heritage narrative and economic
benefits. Among the Fair’s advisory board was advisor to the Office
Nationale du Commerce Extérieure, Alexis Charmeil, who described
his institution’s mission in terms of protecting French business.
Alongside Charmeil was Stéphane Adolphe Dervillé, a renowned
industrial lobbyist and executive with the Chemins de Fers de Paris á
Lyon et á la Méditerranée.151 Among the Fair’s sponsors were capitalist
companies such as the Banca Di Roma as well as French North African
institutions such as the Crédit Foncier d’Algérie et de Tunisie.152
French commerce was fully involved in the execution of the Fair itself.
For instance, the Maison Adrien offered to supply furniture for the fair
at reduced rates.153
Pierre Lyautey, the son of the famed orientalist Resident-General in
Rabat and himself a member of the mandate administration working
on cultural affairs, reported from the Fair. He wrote that people ‘from
all over Asia Minor [arrived] [. . .] to admire this unique event in the
annals of Syria: Aleppo merchants, rich Damascenes, Bedouins of the
great desert, Kurds from the Upper-Euphrates, Circassians, Lebanese
Maronites, ‘Alawi Turcomans’. 154 Lyautey celebrated General
Gouraud’s efforts at ‘encouraging our [French] artistic expansion’ in
the Orient with the help of a collaborator who had organised similar
exhibitions in Morocco; presumably a reference to himself.155 Lyautey
further noted that the exhibition was encouraging French interior
decoration to replace the influence of Viennese and Berliner styles in
Syria, painting this as a civilising effect: ‘Gouraud [. . .] wanted above
all else [. . .] to contribute to the intellectual development of the
populations who had asked for the French mandate [. . .] a great task of
the future has just begun which will put great French taste and art in
the limelight’.156
Lyautey added that:
[Gouraud] thought that the exhibited products should represent

all parts of our national industry [. . .] Syrians and Lebanese will be
in debt [to Gouraud] for having brought a little bit of the
atmosphere of their beloved Paris. Tomorrow they will ask French
architects to construct [. . .] villas.157
Despite these Francocentric and orientalist accounts, Syro-Lebanese

stakeholders were certainly involved in the Fair. Algerian colonial
newspaper Le Mercure Africain reported the Beirut Fair as having
occasioned an ‘intense activity [. . .] [which had] provoked the curiosity
and interest of the Syrian populations’.158 The Société de Bienfaisance
Musulmane, a waqf-based Islamic charity, provided its terrace,
overlooking the port of Beirut, to the Fair where a French restaurant
and a pavilion for agriculture would be set up.159
A French company, Giraud and Co., acquired all three of the fair’s
pavilion-building contracts. However, it should be noted that the
French company offered lower costs than the Lebanese competitors:
Aftimus & Hacho and Abdelnour.160 Of the 400 stands that were
eventually made available a few months before the Fair’s opening, only
80 were to be rented out by French or Syro-Lebanese businesses.
De Caix’s note admitted that ‘certain circles of indigenous businessmen’
had initially been ‘indifferent or hostile to the fair’, though he claimed
they were now working ‘with zeal and interest toward its success’.161
Another 20 were reserved for foreign businesses while Paris, through the
Comité Franc ais des Expositions, ensured the remaining 280 stands
would be for metropolitan businesses.162 A Francocentric approach to
the Beirut Fair was further evidenced in French officials’ approach to
foreign business interests.
Already in 1919, an article in the Journal Générale de l’Algérie et la
Tunisie et du Maroc resentfully reported an Italian proposal to organise a
floating exhibition of Italian goods on a boat docked at Beirut. The
editors lamented this guileful Italian tactic, explaining that ‘yet again a
French idea that foreigners have come up with before us’.163 As the
Beirut Fair was being organised in early 1921, requests for free
participation sent to Gouraud by the British and Dutch Consuls
prompted him to seek approval from Paris that the Fair was to be of a
‘purely Franco-Syrian character’.164 In reply, the Quai d’Orsay informed
Gouraud that the precedent set by the San Remo accords, in which
Britain had acquiesced to a US government demand for free economic

participation in the mandates, meant that it was not possible to ‘get rid
of [. . .] foreign firms’ in the Beirut Fair.165 Italian commercial interests
in the Levant, already well established by the beginning of the mandate,
provided another challenge to French attempts to protect their
commerce during the Fair.
Robert De Caix, who had encouraged a French mandate as a Union
Economique lobbyist and L’Asie Francaise editor, intentionally ‘delayed
replies’ to Italian car-maker Fiat’s desire to have a presence at the Fair.166
Underlining the difficulties posed to a protectorate approach in a League
of Nations mandate situation, De Caix wrote that he felt stuck between
the Fair’s purported international outreach and a need to ‘discourage the
work of [foreign] commercial propaganda which our budget would be
paying for’.167 The difficulty of blocking foreign commerce in the post-
World War internationalist era (when France faced austerity at home)
was further demonstrated in an interesting predicament involving a
Syrian merchant who was acting as a commercial representative for the
Imperial and Royal Austrian Commercial Museum.
He had approached the High Commission to participate in the 1921
Fair. De Caix passed up the case to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
noting that the Austrians were still technically banned from commercial
activity under the conditions of the 1919 Treaty of Saint Germain-
En-Laye and the Armistice with the Ottoman Empire. De Caix
nevertheless noted the poor impression on Austrian public opinion that a
continuation of the ban would entail.168 A month later, in March 1921,
the Quai d’Orsay’s Europe and Asia directorates studied the issue,
leading to a diplomatic dilemma. The European branch recommended
maintaining the Austrian ban since any relaxation of the rules on their
commerce would entail consequent relaxation of a parallel German ban,
yet the Asian branch disagreed.169 The mandate form was creating
dilemas and disputes in relation to French protectorate-style methods at
managing cultural institutions seeking commercial gains.
Conclusion
Even in those spheres of cultural activity where French claims of
culture were most mature and credible as a result of a centuries-long
engagement with the Levant, namely the institutional organisation of
antiquities, museums, tourism and exhibitions, there remained a

continual level of contestation of mandatory methods that failed to
provide tutelage and local development. No section of the League’s
mandate charter had made direct provisions for the preservation of
cultural heritage. French administrators, often academic specialists with
a personal stake in antiquities preservation, clearly made efforts at
housing artefacts in makeshift museums in the early years. Often critical
press commentary nevertheless reminded administrators of the difficulty
in establishing their claims to a particular competence for cultural
heritage management.
Similarly, the slow efforts at promoting tourism in the naturally
appealing Lebanese countryside were soon contested in the press and by
local government bureaucrats. Colonial-style exhibitions like the Beirut
Fair were intended to be showcase events for the promotion of
metropolitan French capital goods to be used in what was termed the
mise en valeur of the Levant, a term masking intentions for acquiring new
markets for French technological products. However, international
stakeholders, upholding the ‘open door’ policy that the US had insisted
upon as a raison d’être of the League of Nations, challenged visions of
a protectorate, meaning only the metropolitan expositions of French
claims of culture and governmental competency were able to encounter
minimal opposition.
CHAPTER 3
CLASSROOMS, CURRICULA
AND CONTENT
Debates over the meaning and aim of curriculum content for schools in
the mandate states revealed fundamentally contradictory visions of Syro-
Lebanese education and development. French administrators also tended
toward preferential treatment for preferred compact minorities. Yet each
of these French designs, discussed internally as a means to secure their
socio-political grip on the mandate territories but publicly proclaimed
as the extension of a civilising mission, were contested. Arab nationalists
coalesced around their opposition to French influence and their own
preference for the promotion of Arabic. Demands were also made for
meaningful higher and technical education that would enable Syro-
Lebanese autonomy.
French Instruction: ‘The Most Certain and

Efficient Way to Assure Our Influence’
Faced with a complex post-Ottoman society, mandate administrators
reflexively turned to French-language instruction as a means of
spreading the mission civilisatrice.1 Despite lofty rhetoric, the principal
tangible benefit of teaching in French was to foster Francophone
exchange and thus, it was hoped, to nurture Francophile opinion. At a
practical level, this method of education would gradually form a small
core of Francophone elites who would become future mandate
administrators. Such interventions in the curricula were not limited to
the Syro-Lebanese mandate and its widespread use in French colonial

contexts suggests it was seen as a method of soft control via the channels
of orientalist influence, cultural bias and elitism. The late Gail Paradise
Kelly’s research showed the manner in which censorship of certain
elements of the curriculum were practised in French Indochina.2 Spencer
Segalla has noted how the ethnographer Georges Hardy was appointed
director of Moroccan public education by General Hubert Lyautey
because of his experience with educational policies in his previous post
in managing West African clients. The curriculum he introduced in
Morocco in 1920 ‘did include instruction in the Arabic language and
in Islamic culture [. . .] but French instruction was to take up the
majority of the school day’.3
This was in keeping with broader French encouragement of French-
language education, for instance in colonial and mandate sub-Saharan
Africa.4 This colonial approach itself reflected a French tradition in state-
sponsored pedagogy that was fundamentally rooted in ‘socialization –
the transmission of the values of the social élite to both the younger
generations of that élite and to outsiders [. . .] securing the willing
collaboration of subordinate social groups. This would limit the risk of
social unrest and the need for repressive activity.’5 It is important to note
the work done by historians of education who have warned against
reading too much into the contents of curricula without socio-political
contexts.6
As Stephen Ball points out, although historians should acknowledge
the importance of the colonial experience in shaping the development of
an elitist educational infrastructure, it is incumbent on them to
acknowledge the role of local agents in actively shaping educational
content.7 Nevertheless, as Betty Anderson points out in her examination
of neighbouring Jordan, ‘textbooks provide a window into [. . .] the new
governments’ desire [. . .] and the need [. . .] to define a particular kind of
national identity.’8 French authorities sought to use French to forge
Francophile clients. This effort encountered immediate contestation and
the outbreak of the Great Syrian Revolt, which included demands for
a respect of educational autonomy, marked a fundamental rejection of
early mandatory methods.
In the case of the mandate, contestation lay at the heart of fights
over the curriculum: the attempt to impose French instruction and
the parallel attempts to counter this by preserving Arabic learning.
CLASSROOMS, CURRICULA AND CONTENT 91
This struggle over Arabic has been noted by Nemer Mansour Frayha in
his examination of the Service d’Instruction Publique’s Bulletin
d’Enseignment and it is borne out by a more in-depth examination of
early mandate educational content.9 One report by the High
Commissioner’s delegate in Damascus outlined the singular importance
of education as a means to co-opt local elites by ‘civilising’ them. Rather
than increasing school numbers the report suggested it would be best to
‘intimately imbue a restricted number of young elites with our superior
culture’.10 Such limited numbers would have a direct impact on social
stratification since it would make sure that liberal and bureaucratic roles
would be limited to a Francophone elite.
The Damascus education delegate added that:
Interest in acquiring a French diploma is becoming increasingly

apparent. It would be an opportune time to increase its value by
making its acquisition harder [. . .] Our interest does not seem to
lie in increasing the number [. . .] It would be more worthwhile
to concentrate on deeply inculcating our superior culture among a
certain number of young elites, and to not set so high a standard
[. . .] for the more inferior level of the mass of Syrian students.11
Such actions would allow the authorities to ‘avoid overloading the

already popular liberal arts and bureaucratic career opportunities [. . .]
[the teaching of French] remains the best medium for future
propaganda’.12 Echoing Nadia Sbaiti’s later analysis, the High
Commissioner’s delegate described the spread of French as a measure
of the success of mandatory propaganda.
One overview of the proposed Federation of Syrian States explained
that it would be through the department for Instruction Publique that
French influence could be spread in Syria. The presence of French
professionals, technical experts and intellectuals would impregnate
educated Syrians in such a way as to allow the persistence of French
influence ‘even when we have left the country’.13 Education advisor Paul
Combes’ quarterly update for summer 1921 gives further insight into
French goals and the kind of educational system that was being sought
by central mandatory authorities in Beirut. Combes explained that
learning French was to be a priority above all others because it was the
‘most certain and efficient way to assure our influence’.14
Paul Combes noted that the Ottoman authorities had closed down
French schools under the guidance of the Germans during the World
War. He was thus surprised that a school run by German nuns had been
allowed to subsist in Aleppo by the French authorities. Combes argued
that importance of controlling the language of instruction was further
highlighted by the growth of US and Italian institutions. So critical was
the need to infuse the next generation of Syrians with French that
Combes suggested that language instruction should take primacy over
all other subjects. Combes wrote that: ‘Syrians’ [. . .] pedagogical
preoccupations of a secondary importance [i.e., mathematics, history]
should not make us lose sight of the principal, almost solitary, goal
[of French education]’.15 A November 1922 report celebrated the
introduction of French-language instruction in primary schools in
Aleppo and even in surrounding villages.16
Among the targets for Instruction Publique in the Alawite State
were the construction of more schools; the selection of teachers who
knew French since ‘the culture of these is always more refined’;
ensuring that the teaching of history and geography was done in
French from the seventh year of schooling and to ‘make sure that the
students of that year group [onward] can only speak in French during
recreation’.17 The Lattakia educational authorities noted it had six
French-born teachers among its ranks in 1923.18 Such efforts seem to
have borne fruit. A semester report for the Alawite State noted that
French instruction had begun to be present in official schools:
‘everywhere we see a considerable effort to make known and spread
our language and to give it, in all schools whether public or private, a
special status’.19
The primacy of French was equally demonstrated at a meeting of the
senior council for the Instruction Publique in the Alawite State where it
was raised as the one subject that was seen as non-negotiable because it
had ‘become indispensable in the country’.20 Another Alawite State
decision expressed the need to hire teachers well versed in French since
their ‘culture would be more refined’.21 French content in education
became a staple part of teaching even among private US and Greek-
Orthodox schools which had some degree of autonomy over their
curricula. The Alawite State government went so far as to dispatch
its own public French-language teachers to supply private schools.22
French was encouraged as the language of instruction to such an extent
that one director of a Beirut (public) school made it the primary teaching
language at his school even though he did not speak a word of it
himself.23 The Tripolitanian newspaper Al-Ra’y al-‘Am separately
criticised a public secondary school in its city which followed a policy of
all subjects being taught in French. It asked how student progress
in French was to be monitored if the director himself could not use
French.24
The correlation between state funding and the promotion of the
Francophonie is evident. In Hama, Instruction Publique decision makers
encouraged the funding and refurbishing of the Greek-Orthodox school,
singled out because its language of instruction was French.25 Another
report emphasised the role of schools such as the Alliance Israélite and
the Greek-Orthodox and Armenian-Catholic school as the ‘most active
site[s] of [French] propaganda in Aleppo’.26 In another case, attempts by
the Frères Lazaristes to gain a stipend from the French government were
looked on favourably because the Lazaristes ‘contribute the most to the
spread of French culture’.27 State funds could be used as a stick to induce
school directors to introduce French learning or face cuts in their budget,
as was the case with schools in the Sanjak of Alexandretta in 1921.28
Figure 3.1 Tripoli from the air c.1925. Available online: http://gallica.
bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8443060c.
French learning was sometimes seen as a means to encourage education

and political ties with the administration. A letter from the Druze
Assembly celebrated the fact that over 2,000 children were using the
language in the region.29 An Instruction Publique report explained that
schools in the Hawrān were lacking the resources, if not the will, for
˙
education and encouraged local administrators to do more to provide
at least one French teacher per village classroom.30 Garo Khabaian,
the director of the Gregorian Armenian school in Alexandretta, wrote to
Instruction Publique advisor Paul Combes in favour of French instruction:
As to the French language I admit that [. . .] we are [. . .] zealous of

its propagation [. . .] not because the situation in the country has
convinced us of any need [for its spread] but rather because years
and centuries has meant we have benefitted from the favour and aid
of the French Government [. . .] French is one of the major agents
of civilisation and progress [. . .] because of its [Lebanon’s]
catastrophes and miseries there is a need to re-attach [it] to the
French nation.31
Nevertheless, the early years of the mandate equally saw several

provinces encountering problems with the spread of French.32 It is
noteworthy that even this singularly consistent policy aim of early
mandate rule was fitfully implemented. A 1922 report pointed to serious
gaps in the teaching of French even among teachers themselves in the
Lattakia area.33 The report explained that: ‘French lessons for
bureaucrats and adults in the Lattakia area [. . .] have been removed
[. . .] and are replaced with a one-off course’. The course was made
obligatory for teachers yet only ten teachers turned up. The authorities
had promised accreditation upon successful completion yet the French
report had to conclude that: ‘the targeted bureaucrats do not regularly
attempt the course’.34 French instruction for local government
functionaries did slowly spread when the Alawite State introduced
two further French courses in 1924 in less frequented towns.35
Financial constraints were the major hindrance to fulfilling
Francophone aims. In October 1921, Greater Lebanon Governor Albert
Trabaud bemoaned the difficulty of assuring the ‘political interests’
attached to spreading French instruction when his budget was
shrinking. The budget for the state had been halved from 100 million
francs in 1920 to 54 million in 1921 and Paris was demanding further

cuts. Lebanon Governor Trabaud nevertheless praised the fact that some
schools such as the École Secondaire des Garc ons and the École
Secondaire des Jeunes Filles had made progress in increasing student
numbers while hiring five French teachers at a cost of 120,000 francs
per annum. Bringing French teachers was costly, meaning that decisions
had to be made to make savings elsewhere.36
Soon after the High Commission promulgated secondary legislation
Order [Décret] 1007 which sought to reorganise education in Lebanon,
Governor Trabaud wrote in support of maintaining French teachers
in Lebanese private schools, their salary costs to be borne by the High
Commission. He justified this on the grounds that ‘it concerns, above
all, a political question. It is primarily through the school that we will be
able to exert our growing influence over the Muslim elements.’37
Trabaud had to ask the High Commissioner for special funds for French
teachers in Lebanese private schools. In a particularly revealing
rationalisation for his support of maintaining French teachers at these
two private institutions, Lebanon Governor Albert Trabaud explained
that the vast majority of those attending were Muslim children.
He added that:
For reasons related to the campaign of religious fanaticism

currently undertaken by the leaders of this religion, the parents of
Muslim children prefer to send them to institutions with Muslim
teaching, otherwise known as official [public] schools, where the
Quran is taught. If our [two] schools did not exist, this [Muslim]
population would exclusively attend Muslim establishments and
would be destined to go to the foreign universities.38
Alongside the familiar themes of Orientalist disdain for Muslim

‘fanaticism’ and fears of foreign institutions such as the American
University of Beirut, the wording used by Trabaud is revealing of the
extent to which he separated the otherwise ‘official’ schools from his
government. The private missionary and local Christian schools were
‘our schools’, while the official, Ottoman-era schools were theirs.
Trabaud noted that one possibility of assuring Francophone education
included the closing of provincial public schools but decided against this
since it would have raised tensions with the mostly Muslim students’
families. Despite these problems, Trabaud recommended that the French

teachers remain in their posts since they were the only ones who could
successfully teach and shape the locally recruited French teachers of the
future.39 Such troubles were not confined to Lebanon. Education advisor
Paul Combes’ hopes for regular French lessons were hampered by
budgetary constraints in Alexandretta as early as 1920.40 The massive
cut in the High Commission’s budget early in the mandate combined
with the resurgence of Turkish and Arab nationalism and a growth of
private US missions.
Classroom Control
The promotion of French learning was not the sole means of social
engineering peddled as a civilising effort. With the advent of the French
came inspectors and unified curricula.41 In Syria, the authorities
promptly introduced school inspections, beginning in 1920 in
Aleppo.42 As one 1921 report put it: ‘school visits constitute the best
impetus for teachers and students’.43 The orientalist intellectual filters
influencing colonial policy meant that a compartmentalisation of
educational content formed a persistent method of providing curricula
in various regions, reflecting previously discussed methods of antiquities
conservation.
In 1923, the primary schools’ inspector for the south Lebanese district
of Tyre, Adib Khalifeh, outlined the situation in schools within the
qadāʾ. The report for the Tyre School for Boys outlined lacking sanitary
˙
conditions and proposed the replacement of one Christian teacher, Majid
Al-Khoury, because he was ‘negligent’ and thus holding the students
back. Inspector Khalifeh recommended that he be replaced with
someone capable of teaching French such as the Shia Muhammad Ajami
who taught at one of the local private schools.44 Khalifeh encouraged the
outright firing of the old Quran teacher, Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Baroud.
The Taı̈r Debbé boys’ school was criticised for solely providing Quranic
teaching and having the children sit on the floor. At the Tyre girls’ school
Khalifeh wrote that ‘disorder reigns everywhere’; with the Maronite
teacher Massadeh Moghaizel not being ‘up to the task’.45
The summaries continue along these broad distinctions that elevate
French learning over Arabic. At the boys’ school in Kaukaba, the teacher
Joseph (Yusuf) Basbouss’ lack of Arabic knowledge was noted without
comment while his good French was praised. The boys’ school at
Hadātu, which only taught Arabic and the Quran, was judged to need to
make decent improvements or face closure.46 In another case, in the
Jabal Druze, a 1923 report of schools in various villages noted that, of
the hundreds of inspected students, the majority knew at least 40 words
in French.47 A week earlier, the administrator of the Jabal Druze,
Captain Carbillet, whose dirigisme would spark the 1925 Great Revolt,
visited schools and celebrated the fact that many pupils knew 40 words
of French.48
Classroom inspections also represented an opportunity for a political
intervention in the cultural institutions, particularly the more
intransigent public schools. A 1924 report pointed out that public
‘official’ schools were consistently rated worse than their private
counterparts. However, this division also happened to follow religious
lines: most public schools catered to the Sunni Muslim community.
Irregular staff, an overly expansive curriculum and poorly applied French
teaching were among the faults discerned by inspectors.49 Similar
findings are present in a report from Aleppo from the previous year.50
Other cases hint at a policy of pressure to get the ‘right’ teachers teaching
the ‘proper’ way. One Sanjak of Alexandretta report outlines how in
urban schools teachers ‘recruited with care, have exercised their
profession with conscience and devotion’ whereas schools in the villages
were facing shortages of teachers caused by sackings of teachers due to
‘professional ineptitude’.51
In the same Sanjak a further report complained that members of the
teaching corps had very poor Turkish, and thus limited outreach to
the students, but also mentions they had ‘unsure sentiments’ –
presumably a euphemism for dissent against French classroom
practices.52 In the Alawite State, primary school teachers in official
schools who were already hired were forced to take a test for formal
accreditation by the French.53 Administrators were frustrated when
inspections did not produce the desired effects. In Al-Bab, east of
Aleppo, one school inspection still found dirty classrooms, ‘chatty’
teachers who knew ‘no French’ and low student attendance, some
80 students out of 600 as late as 1924. In response, administrators
judged that a French teacher would have to be sent out to the school
and the threat of sacking some of the six teachers was raised as a
response to low student turnout.54
One 1924 surveillance report mentions that a teacher’s departure

from the girls’ school in Antioch was followed with a consequent rise in
the hours of French instruction.55 Another report noted the ease with
which Aleppine teachers at girls’ schools, who had been failed by the
inspectors, were continuing to establish new kindergartens, much to
French chagrin.56 The emphasis on French as a civilising medium was
tacit, as natural as breathing air. Educating the educators was a subtler
filter that could allow Francophile conceptions to enter classrooms.
As Antoine Prost notes, a major facet of French Republican education
was the presumption that ‘the evolution of the educational system
assumes [. . .] the evolution of the teaching corps’.57 The outline for
this frame of reference lay in such tests as the Certificat d’Études
Pédagogiques, used in 1924 to certify primary teachers in Aleppo.58
In the Alawite State, in 1924, of the 22 teachers undertaking the
exams for their Brevét de Capacité de l’Instruction Primaire 19 qualified,
two were required to undertake another year’s training and one was
dismissed.59 Teacher training also included instances of sending teachers
to metropolitan France, which happened for instance with a
mathematics teacher from Antioch in 1924.60 Such cases also occurred
in the Alawite State.61 The same report outlined that one of the tests to
check a school’s capacity included noting the establishment of a library
with ‘subscription to the French pedagogical journals’.62 One report
from Greater Lebanon explained that the teachers in training had a ‘very
mediocre grasp of French’.63
Even in the midst of this dirigisme, local Syrians and Lebanese
managed to convert French interest in promoting Francophile
sentiments into local pedagogical progress. In the State of Damascus,
the ever-entrepreneurial director of Instruction Publique, Muhammad
Kurd ‘Ali, organised a set of teacher training conferences to take place
over the summer. Notably, these autonomously organised conferences
included several hours of French instruction every day.64 Kurd ‘Ali’s
stance was not well received in some circles. In 1922, the French consul
in Alexandria attached a copy of the newspaper Al-Ummah which
published an article entitled ‘Kadadir Ghabarit’. The article’s title was
referring to Algerian notable and later the rector of the Mosque of Paris,
Si Kaddour Benghabrit, portrayed by Al-Ummah as a traitor to Moroccan
and Algerian independence for having sold Morocco to the French
in 1911, presumably as he was an interpreter for the French Legation in
Tangiers at the time.65 Among the ‘traitors’ it outlined was Kurd ‘Ali,
who was alleged to have:
Declared to the editor of [Le] ‘Matin’ [newspaper] that he came to

Paris to get in contact with the [French] leadership and
intellectual elite; [he added that] he is doing all he can to return to
his country accompanied by a group of professors, and French
educators, who will spread in young Syrian hearts a love for
France.66
Other local leaders aside from Kurd ‘Ali demonstrated a similar

tendency for adaptability, their compliance leading to similar press
criticism. In 1924, Al-Ra’y al-‘Am bemoaned the fact that the Lebanese
Assembly had sat for 30 sessions to agree to the first national
curriculum – a curriculum focused on teaching civics and crafting
obedient citizens.67 Al-Ra’y al-‘Am also criticised the director of public
instruction for Lebanon when he invited several school head teachers to
dictate to them the curriculum he expected them to teach. It reserved
even harsher criticism for the school heads themselves who were
‘incompetent in all things teaching, whereas the least of their teachers is
better educated than them’. It was unrealistic, it added, to expect the
school directors to understand the curriculum within just one day’s
meeting when it had taken the assembly so long to scrutinise it.68
The early mandate years clearly did lay the groundwork for a ‘civic
order’ that sought to affirm patriarchal authority led by French tutors
supervising ‘colonial citizens’. Gender roles in the pre-colonial Middle
East were generally fluidly defined given the flexibility enabled by
Islamic legal frameworks.69 According to Afsaneh Najmabadi’s study
of Qajar Iran, many of the important constrictions on women’s
activities were ironically the result of reactions of traditional society to
colonial control of civic space.70 In the educational sphere the
mandate authorities worked within these filters to encourage gendered
spaces in civic life. Gender roles seem to have found a degree of
alignment between traditional, colonial and nationalist educational
aims and methods.
The curricula for girls present in Lebanese school reports emphasise
home economics studies.71 The early mandate also witnessed attempts at
encouraging masculinist school activities. In 1921 physical exercise was
incorporated into the curriculum and taught by military officers in

schools in Aleppo State.72 One report noted that ‘the diffusion of sports
in Syrian schools would require little money’ yet it would reap great
benefits both in terms of balancing lifestyles and also by ‘regenerating
the race’.73 Such social divisions emphasised pre-existing gender roles,
encouraging domesticity for women and masculine physical education,
that were absorbed by nationalists in the later mandate years.74 It is
interesting to note that even the nationalist school run by Mary Kassab
in Beirut, the Madrassa Al-Ahliyya, prescribed gendered instruction for
˙
local girls.75 These core gender distinctions were implemented despite
French administrative and public rhetoric of a mission civilisatrice seeking
to overhaul an Islamic culture that was perceived to have relegated girls’
education to ‘a secondary, if not superfluous’ importance.76
Alongside forming and enforcing gender roles, the curricula also
encouraged social difference. Of critical importance to the development
of Syria was a rural –urban distinction. In the Alawite State, judged
provincial and rural, education focused on practical agricultural
experience. In 1923, the superior council for Instruction Publique
undertook changes to the primary curriculum previously promoted in
1921. The council expressed concern that the previous programme was
too full and it increased the number of hours of French instruction.77
Since the region was understood to be essentially agricultural, basic
agronomy was introduced at primary level.78 Literature was removed
from the primary curriculum, to be studied solely at secondary level.
Study of Phoenician history and geography was removed from the first-
year class, with the focus shifting to religious history. In the third year
they learnt hygiene in the household. In the fourth year they learnt first
aid and personal hygiene. Study of the Quran and religion was
undertaken in public schools that were attended by a Sunni majority
while other schools studied French and history.
Other aspects of French educational provision in the Alawite State
focused on agricultural learning. At the Bouka experimental station, a
school was attached. An orphanage housing 20 orphans was also built.79
Similarly, in the State of Aleppo, agricultural lessons were planned for
the rural students.80 It should be noted that the task facing mandatory
authorities was significant. Jacques Weulersse suggests that the greatest
efforts of the mandate authorities in rural areas could not overcome the
hostility of great landlords who suspiciously eyed the intrusion of
the state and the ‘jealousy’ of the hodja (Ottoman Turkish for teacher)
and Imams holding on to their jobs as well as the difficulties of enticing
school teachers to rural locations.81
The imposition of hierarchical state control also sought to mould
citizens conforming to a ‘modern’ use of time. The use and misuse of
time, the great attention placed on stamping out perfunctory variation
in each school and qadā,ʾ had at its root the state’s modern obsession with
˙
uniformity and regulation.82 It should be noted that the emphasis on
homogeneity and regulation was not something introduced by the
French. The Young Turk Constitution had explicitly stated that
‘all schools will operate under the surveillance of the state. In order to
obtain for Ottoman citizens an education of a homogenous and uniform
character, the official’s schools will be open, their instruction will be free,
and all nationalities will be admitted’.83 French educational adminis-
trators nevertheless continued their efforts to inculcate stricter discipline
and standardisation.84 In Deir Ez-Zor Sanjak, internal reports expressed
the Instruction Publique’s distaste for late school openings and evident
staff disorganisation. Reports noted that the Sanjak’s director of
Instruction Publique, for example, had not returned to his post in time
for the beginning of the new school year.85
It is particularly telling that educational authorities seem to have
given at least as much attention to school opening times in various
districts as to the curricula being taught.86 Reports focused on tardy
school openings, such as those that affected the Lycée of Deir Ez-Zor in
the 1924–5 school year, caused by the teachers’ failure to turn up on
time. The same problem affected the village of Sabkha’s school and a
school in Raqq.87 In May 1924 Al-Ahrar reported how the director of
˙
the École des Frères had refused Muslim students the right to Ramadan
leave while the school closed for 12 days during Easter.88 In another case
Muslim parents in south Lebanon encouraged their children to boycott
the government schools during Ramadan since the High Commission
had not agreed to set ‘Eid as a holiday.89
Alongside these methods of classroom control, there existed the
option afforded by surveillance. The Service de Renseignement
extensively documented educational activity. A 1928 surveillance report
card, for instance, consistently outlined education levels as a key piece of
information for officers to take into account.90 Surveillance report cards
were even written for female teachers in remote villages. The military
intelligence network scrutinised anyone of standing; even those deemed

‘Francophiles’ worthy of educational grants. One such Francophile was
Lebanese Professor Joseph Chalbouni, who had earned himself an
intelligence report card by 1919 in spite of his clear service to French
education. Chalbouni held several important educational posts, having
been professor at several Beirut schools: the École des Frères, the
Osmaniyeh Muslim College and the Greek-Orthodox school.91 Leon
Sabbagh, a student at the St Joseph University Faculty of Law in Beirut,
was similarly documented after he applied for a grant. Sabbagh was
ultimately granted 2,400 francs to complete his studies.92
One student, Elié Boueri, was the subject of an intelligence
investigation following his demand for further grants to complete his
studies. The advisor for Instruction Publique told intelligence chief
Michel Canonge that, although his father had been politically useful, the
student was a poor performer and ‘the role that he would be called
upon to play after he finished school’ would be uninteresting to the
authorities.93 His father, Bishara Boueri, was judged by the governor of
Greater Lebanon to have ‘rendered incontestable services to France
during the First World War’.94 Another report from the High
Commission’s advisor for the south Lebanon district noted deep French
surveillance of those deemed Francophile. He highlighted the case of
Abbas Chidiac, the chief of Baabda prison since August 1921.
Intelligence reports on Abbas said he was: ‘of a good reputation [. . .] he
has never shown Francophobe attitudes’. However, his cousin, Georges
Hanna Chidiac, was an émigré in Rio de Janeiro who was judged as
hostile to the mandate. The Counsel noted that Abbas had only written
once to his cousin, a letter which had extolled France’s activities, and
broken off contact and had not even sent a letter when George’s father,
his own brother, had died in Brazil. Yet, in a sign of the depth of
distrust, he recommended that the intelligence services continued a
‘special surveillance’ of his ‘actions and words’.95
Even in the French metropolis, where Syrian-Lebanese students were
supposed to be gaining insights into modern civilisation, surveillance
was carefully conducted.96 One of the reasons given in reports for
sending 18 bursary students to Grenoble was because the authorities
could depend on Raoul Blanchard, one of the faculty, to keep an eye on
them.97 Said Bahra, a teacher at the Sultaniyeh Secondary School
˙
in Beirut, was monitored when travelling to Paris for training.
French intelligence noted him venting negative views of Paris and

French culture with Bahra being recorded to have said that the French
˙
peasant was in an indescribable state of misery and that Paris was
tuberculosis-infested.98
The use of intelligence services for oversight of cultural activity can
be documented to have been resented in public discussions, despite a
degree of confusion over the accuracy of allegations. In February 1924
Al-Barq reported that the Damascus newspapers had falsely accused the
intelligence services in Quneitra of having stopped a professor from
teaching the Quran and giving Arabic lessons. Al-Barq added that the
true story was that an officer had simply made the professor move his
class to another room because of the unsanitary conditions in the old
one.99 In 1924 the newspaper Al-Haqiqat drew attention to the case of
an imprisoned Lebanese professor by the name of Galayini. It called for
his freedom in the name of the Muslim community because he had
dedicated himself to teaching. It alleged that Galayini had been arrested
because he had travelled back home from Paris without authorisation.100
French attempts to disseminate Francophone learning and at policing
what took place in classrooms were quickly overwhelmed by the
country’s complex populations, and budgetary and political pressures
facing initial mandatory methods. That such deep-reaching surveillance
was deemed necessary, though it reflected a capacity for modern state
activity, ultimately betrayed difficulty in convincing local populations of
the French civilising rhetoric. The existence of disputes and difficulties
implies a great deal of further, undocumented confrontation, suspicion
and fervour in cultural institutions that incrementally supplemented
more overt political opposition to the mandate leading up to 1925.
The Fight for Arabic

The early colonial surveillance apparatus, although wide-ranging
and deeply embedded, could not exercise complete control given the
existence of mature cultural institutions in the Levantine landscape.
A key fight emerged over the instruction of Arabic.101 Arabic
instruction, as a means of transmitting Islamic learning, was inevitably a
particularly embedded signifier of cultural independence. Nadya Sbaiti’s
account of the Islamic maqāsid charitable schools and Mary Kassab’s
˙
Ahliyya School in Beirut demonstrate this.102 The charity also provided
˙
grants for a small number of students to study, making of it a symbolic

alternative to French finances.103
The key role of Arabic as a consolidating symbol of Syrian autonomy
was noted by US intelligence officer William Yale even before the
mandate began:
Among Syrians there exists a strong prejudice against the French

[. . .] The activities [. . .] of the Jesuits and other Roman Catholic
[. . .] Organizations [. . .] have naturally tended to strengthen the
Moslems [sic] [. . .] fear and distrust of France [. . .] the Jesuits [. . .]
it is claimed, exerted their power against every liberal movement
[. . .] under the hand of France, the Jesuits will receive powerful
support from the French [. . .] whose interest it will be to keep the
people in ignorance [. . .] Over and above everything else,
the Syrians fear that the French will try to gradually impose upon
the inhabitants [. . .] the French language, customs and habits.
These anti-French Syrians have an exaggerated consciousness of
their nationality [. . .] not only are they convinced that France will
not [. . .] create [. . .] a national spirit, a love of Syria as their
country [. . .] but they believe that [. . .] the French will do
everything [. . .] to cultivate a love for France [. . .] every effort will
be made to substitute the French for the Arabic language.104
Outside of Greater Lebanon, Arabic and Islamic schools represented

important nodes for protesting educational methods. Sites of Arabic
instruction included the kuttāb (Islamic primary schools). Here,
sheikhs were allowed by the French to teach the Quran but were forced
to teach several other subjects including arithmetic as well as basic
hygiene.105 Like Kassab’s school in Beirut, the Protestant National
College in Homs saw significant skirmishes that centred on the
imposition of French instruction which led to the resignation of the
director, Hanna Khabaz. French reports suggested Khabaz was
stirring up trouble to cover up the fact that he was accused of financial
mismanagement by the college council.106 However, other reports
noted that Khabaz’s sons and other professors encouraged student
boycotts of French studies in reaction to his suspension and when he
finally left, he took much of the faculty with him.107 The district’s
mutasarrıf (administrator) eventually intervened in encouraging the
college’s council to appoint a new director and passing the matter on to

the judicial authorities.108
In nearby Hama, an intelligence report described the headmistress of
the Qalamiya (Pen) school as virulently hostile to Ismailis and French
culture. The headmistress was subsequently forced out.109 The same
report described two sets of schools in Homs: the private, Francophile
schools and the public Arabophone ones. There was a clear line dividing
such schools as the Arabic-focused Tahjiz School from the Greek-
Orthodox, Protestant, National and Maronite schools.110 Pressure over
the teaching of Arabic was evident even in schools that were less
susceptible to nationalist tendencies. Lebanon Governor Albert Trabaud
noted that even the Francophone official École Secondaire des Jeunes
Filles in Beirut had encountered enrolment issues as a result of the lack
of quranic teaching which had led Muslim parents, encouraged by
‘a campaign of religious fanaticism’, to withdraw their children.111
Al-Ra’y al-‘Am reported the case of one teacher, Muhammad Kamel
Chouaib Al-‘Amili, who had given a class in Arab rhetoric at Sidon’s
Greek Catholic school. According to it, he was poorly treated by the
school, leading to his resignation and the withdrawal of several Muslim
pupils by their parents in protest.112
The impact of the fourth estate on the challenge to Francophone
mandatory methods is demonstrated in one case regarding an article that
appeared in the Beiruti newspaper Al-Nahda (The Rebirth) in December
˙
1923. Mandate intelligence services noted a deal of agitation related to
the article’s discussion of the impact French schools were having on local
education. Intelligence officers alleged that Al-Nahda’s article had
˙
incited several Muslim notables, such as Mohammad Chabbane, to
remove their children from Christian schools. Several sheikhs in south
Lebanon held an emergency council session convened by Sidon’s Sunni
Mufti Sheikh Abdul Tayer. The council sent a protest to the High
Commission regarding what it saw as anti-Muslim propaganda by the
École des Frères in Sidon. Such was the anger in the community that
Mufti Tayer had to lie to a Sunni gathering, saying he had obtained
assurances from the authorities that books criticising Islam in Christian
schools would be burnt.113
The fourth estate also railed against eroding Arabic use. In July 1924
Al-Ahrar expressed its surprise when the invitation letters for a school’s
˙
prize ceremony were sent out in French rather than Arabic. In its article
Al-Ahrar even expressed fears that the Arabic language would be lost
˙
since all government business, from the budget to authorisations given
by the press service, was being done in French. It called on the
administration to make Arabic the official language.114 This criticism
serves as a reminder that many outside of the literate classes were unable
to use Arabic, making increasing its use one of the primordial tasks
facing nationalists. Throughout the early 1920s, Damascus newspapers
Alif Bā’ (The ABC’s) and Muhammad Kurd ‘Ali’s Al-Muqtabas criticised
Rida Sa‘id, the director of the Arab Medical School in Damascus for
being overly flexible toward the French administration and for failing to
speak Arabic.115 In December 1923, the Aleppo paper, Al-Barı̄d al-Suri
(The Syrian Post) alleged that Kurdish and Turkish representatives in the
Syrian Federation’s assembly had declared their desire to learn to speak in
Arabic if there were a greater effort to teach Arabic through public
education.116
Another nationalist theme represented in newspaper coverage is the
role of Arabic as a means to prevent the erosion of local identity. Already
in 1920, Al-Sha‘ab explained the feeling of distaste for foreign
missionary schools that sought to ‘teach their students the love of a
foreign nation, and its language and customs’.117 Al-Ahrar raised the
˙
issue in July 1924, petitioning the authorities to encourage greater
governmental controls that would ‘give education a national
character’.118 In October 1924, Al-Ahrar responded to an article
˙
praising the civilising role of missionary schools that had appeared in the
Jesuit-run Al-Bashir, a fellow Beirut newspaper. Al-Ahrar countered
˙
that these schools were solely present in Syria to promote their own
languages, and the influence of their respective countries. It decried the
loss of national patriotism and the inherent help given to these goals by
students attending them. The great Arab thinkers, it argued, had not
gone through foreign schooling. Al-Ahrar also noted that great Arab
˙
writers had emerged from the AUB because it offered classes in Arabic
while those who had learnt in European schools did not even know their
own language.119
A month later, in November 1924, Al-Ahrar published a tell-all
˙
article by a teacher working in a Jesuit private school.120 The teacher
wrote that the curriculum forced him to teach only French history
though he had managed to sneak in elements of Syrian history. The
teacher concluded by saying that the foreign schools were only interested
in promoting their languages and values, despite costly boarding fees.

An accompanying article in the same edition of Al-Ahrar argued that
˙
the foreign schools had harmed national values by dividing people and
discouraging Arabic, leading the pupils to ‘look upon their country with
irony and without learning to love it’.121 Lisan al-Hal also raised the
issue of Arabic teaching in December 1924, noting that young people
knew many languages except their own.122
The pressure from school, faculty and press protests made any
attempt at replacing Arabic as the primary language unthinkable.
Even in seemingly Francophile Lebanon for instance, exam programmes
for the 1924–5 school year were printed in French and Arabic.123 The
failure of Said ‘Aql’s neo-Phoenician language underlined the persistence
of Arabic even among the most Francophile of communities.124
In 1924, in Lattakia to the north, bureaucrats were offered Arabic
lessons, evidencing local government interest in promoting Arabic
competency.125 Nemer Frayha’s broader history of Lebanese education
notes that, following the organisation of the Lebanese Republic in 1926,
Decree 4430, passed in 1929, made French and Arabic education
formal equals.126
Higher and Technical Education

Alongside a fight to preserve Arabic, there was constant Syro-Lebanese
interest in promoting local development through higher education, in
keeping with the spirit of the League of Nations’ mandate charter.
French authorities sought to selectively meet this demand in order to set
the groundwork for a corps of Francophile administrative clients. This
situation discouraged the creation of a public secondary education
system, meaning that higher learning was limited to those who entered
foreign schools.127 Indeed, even when local peoples attended foreign
secondary and tertiary education, French expectations of loyalty were
rarely justified. Attempts at forging a loyal class proved unfruitful. This
combined with frequent reproach of lacking technical education to lead
to a loss of faith even among the most preferred local populations.
The jewel of French higher education in the region was Beirut’s
Université Saint Joseph founded by Jesuits in 1875. The university
taught both tertiary and secondary levels. Among the tertiary subjects
were: theology, philosophy, medicine, engineering, pharmacy and law.
The Jesuit secondary schools provided ‘classic’ and ‘special’ pathways.

Classical teaching focused on ancient languages which were ‘so proper to
the formation of the spirit and necessary for the serious knowledge of
the French language’. Special teaching focused on the study of French
and modern languages of use to the country as well as history, geography,
literature, mathematics and philosophy.128
The Université Saint Joseph gave a variety of grants to students.
Among the 1921 grantees were: Khalil Daoud Nabkhi, Edmond Schama
Fuad Beitani, Jean Techneizian, Munir Zein Eddine, Munir Farah, four
Chéhab brothers (Louis, Maurice, Cesar, Emile), and Fuad and Farid
Dahdah. Not all the grants were the same; the Dahdah brothers gained
200 francs while others were granted 1,000 francs.129 Munir Zein
Eddine’s father was Said Zein Eddin, the attorney general in Beirut.
Two of his other children were granted money to study at the Saint
Joseph preparatory school.130 However, the university’s scope and
capacity was limited, not least because of its emphasis on a humanities
education. This left the High Commission no choice but to encourage a
small number of grants for the children of elite notables to undertake
training in higher and specialised education in France itself.
Specialised educational grants could provide for the training of a
devoted administrative corps who could fill a gap incurred by budgetary
reductions.
Those who were Francophones or Francophiles were the primary
beneficiaries of French support, yet the orientalist aloofness of French
administrators and bureaucratic mix-ups led to disorganised policy
implementation. At the outset of the mandate, several Syrians and
Lebanese were given political bursaries to travel to France to undertake
tertiary studies. Students were not the sole recipients. In 1924, a
Maronite professor at the University of Bordeaux, Tanios ‘Michel’
Feghali, who had written a famed handbook on Levantine Arabic, was
granted 1,000 francs to train mandatory military and civil
bureaucrats.131 As with the domestic political grants examined in the
next chapter, these external grants targeted young Francophile elites.
The support lent by mandate authorities clearly moulded grateful
intellectual elites, as was the case with Khaled Chatila, who thanked the
authorities in a preface to his book after gaining a PhD in France.132
Other selected students included Algerian-Syrian Jafar ‘Abd al-Qadir,
who undertook studies in Semitic art and archaeology at the École du
Louvre and the École des Hautes Études in the Collège de France
before going on to become a museum curator as described in a
previous chapter.133
Another such student was Franc ois Moussali, who was studying at the
École d’Electricité et de Mécanique Industrielle in Paris.134 Two further
students, the Algerian-Syrian Emir Ali Abdelkader and notable family
member Rashid Tabbarah, were considered to be worthy of gaining
grants to complete their higher studies in France.135 Financial grants
and the chance to become educated elites did not automatically translate
into clientelist trust. French intelligence carefully monitored the
students’ progress. In 1922, the High Commissioner’s delegate in Paris
notified Gouraud that Moussali had failed to report to his office and had
been ranked a ‘mediocre’ student by the director of the École
d’Electricité.136 Rashid Tabbarah’s experiences also reveal frictions
and distrust on the part of French authorities. Tabbarah was the son of
the mutasarrif of the Sanjak of Alexandretta.
Displaying political perspicacity, Tabbarah wrote to Gouraud in
January 1924 requesting more funds to finish his studies while
mentioning ‘the trust of your government in my father’.137 The level to
which that trust was repaid was evidenced in the aftermath of his father’s
death a few months later. In June 1924, Tabbarah was informed of
the death by the High Commissioner’s delegate in Paris, and he
immediately decided to return to Lebanon for the burial.138 Though
the High Commissioner’s delegate in Paris was initially supportive,
granting Tabbarah money for his trip, he was forced to change his view
after being informed by the High Commission that Tabbarah had
travelled on the Méssageries Maritimes on an unwarranted reduced fare
reserved for French bureaucrats.139 High Commissioner Weygand
insisted that his office should not pick up the bill for Tabbarah. This was
despite his Paris delegate’s defence of the student, explaining that
the mistake had been Méssageries Maritimes’ and that Tabbarah’s
circumstances were exceptional.140
Another among the boursiers politique in the metropole was Antoine
Salha. An intelligence note explained that Salha, who was undertaking
˙ ˙
training in agronomics at the École Nationale de Montpellier, was from
Tyre and the son of a French consulate dragoman and whose family were
well-known Francophiles.141 The brilliant young Salha had passed all his
˙
exams with top grades. This performance convinced the intelligence
officer writing his report that he merited further money to finish his
studies.142 In support of his protégé, the officer suggested that money
could be secured from ‘the [Department of] Instruction Publique, the
Greater Lebanon [government] and, failing these, Commandant
Canonge who was in charge of the intelligence service [in
Damascus]’.143 Salha repaid this faith in his studies by giving a speech
˙
at his university while the French president was visiting Montpellier.
This speech earned him a congratulatory, and very telling, letter from
Lebanon Governor Trabaud who thanked him for a speech which
showed:
The tactfulness of your sentiments and demonstrated what I have

so loved among your people, among my dear Great Lebanese;
the aroma of a refined soul, excepting a few Levantine-Beiruti
metèques144 who find themselves spread everywhere in every
country, the Lebanese are, as you have proven, brave people
who understand and recognise the affections of France. Good
luck with your studies, my dear Salha [. . .] and come back to us
˙
soon! The country has a need for her children and her good
workers.145
Despite these ‘kind’ words and the intelligence officer’s backing, Salha
˙
and another bourses politiques grantee, named only as Magharbane, were
unable to gain further study grants from Trabaud a year later. Trabaud
refused to consider High Commission secretary Robert De Caix’s request
to add them as exceptional additions which would have taken the
number of Lebanon government scholarship students studying
agriculture from four to six: very small numbers.146
A key element of the local state apparatus that the French were keen
to build in order to reduce policing costs was the gendarmerie. Here, as in
so many other areas of cultural activity, the French renovated Ottoman
precedence rather than innovating. Military schooling was already
established under the Ottomans and continued under the Faisalian Arab
state.147 The Lebanese gendarmerie were trained at the École de la
Gendarmerie in Beiteddine. Among the classes were lessons in military
theory as well as actual drills. French was also taught.148 In spite of these
efforts, the northern Lebanon gendarmerie company recorded an 80 per
cent illiteracy rate among its 232 members.149
An outline of the running of the gendarmerie in Damascus in 1924

reiterated the core policy of Francophone indoctrination when it
explained that:
It is through Instruction Publique that we can have a durable

influence on Syria. If French is taught, if we focus on giving
Syrians a French mentality, if we mould them by making them
study French books [. . .] they will remain French clients and our
influence will persist, even when we will have left the country.150
A year later, a report on graduates of the Lebanese gendarmerie school

offered a more guarded assessment of French attempts to forge a loyal
and efficient local police corps. It noted that there were ‘among
the young officers, elements that would allow the development of the
gendarmerie under excellent conditions’.151
As with other spheres of cultural activity, the local press weighed in.
Greek Catholic Alex Khoury’s Le Réveil published a front-page story in
February 1923 asking why no officer’s training school existed in Beirut
as compared to Damascus.152 Aleppine newspaper Al-Tarikhi al-Suriye
published a letter to Syrian Federation president Subhi Barakat
al-Khalidi in 1923 asking for a gendarmerie and police school in either
Hama or Homs, to forge a local police force.153 The same edition of
Al-Tarikhi al-Suriye alleged discrimination in gendarmerie employment.
It alleged that undeserving foreign officers were being appointed ahead
of many local officers whose certificates were ‘proof of their courage and
ability’. It named one officer who was not Syrian nor Lebanese, but from
Konya, as having been promoted ahead of Ibrahim, a commander from
the Jabal Sem‘ān near Aleppo. The newspaper alleged that another
Captain, Bashir Luqa, was passed over despite his certificates.154
By the end of the period under study, a report produced in the midst
of the Great Revolt outlined the lack of progress achieved in higher and
technical education. It laid the blame squarely on the Syrians and
Lebanese. A section of the report entitled ‘Les Difficultés’ pinpointed the
‘défaut d’ésprit téchnique [lack of technical spirit].’ This was because:
The very real intelligence of the populations has never gravitated

toward technicality [la technicité]. The vir bonus dicendi paritus has
been, until now, the ideal of education in these regions [. . .]155
The effort made since the [World] War to orient them towards
these modern subjects arouse little interest [. . .] the students at the
Écoles d’Arts et Métiers are of low standards [. . .] the École des
Ingénieurs takes on students with difficulty [. . .] one could be
forgiven for believing that the machine era has not yet manifested
itself here. This undoubtedly temporary inaptitude does no harm
to the acute sense for commerce. But the art of negotiation is not
the art of creation. The regions are filled with middlemen [. . .]
certainly education could gradually improve this lack of technical
skill. But it will take time. In the meantime, the mandatory power
must take on the role of technical counsel.156
Education and the Desire for Development

The conjunction between education and development was clear to
French and Syro-Lebanese alike. The introduction of new techniques and
agricultures could be beneficial in dealing with Syria’s frequent food
shortages while simultaneously putting into practice the rhetoric of a
civilising mission.157 French attempts at spreading technical education
could also provide outlets for French commerce. Yet French methods of
managing technical education for development faced increasing
criticism as local peoples expressed desires for material development.
Training in cultural heritage management represented one means of
tying local elites to French cultural claims.
Soon after its conception, the Institute for Islamic Art and
Archaeology in the ‘Azem Palace housed an archaeological school that
recruited ‘young men from the best Damascene families; formed
according to French practices [. . .] [who would become] [. . .] a precious
proof of the worthiness of our intellectual culture and they will
propagate it’.158 Within the same complex was a school for Arab
decorative arts which got local craftsmen to teach apprentices glassworks
and carpentry. This was intended to kick-start an industry that had lost
its lustre of old.159
In a retrospective of the French archaeological effort after the outburst
of the 1925 Revolt, Eustache De Lorey explained that the Institute
housed a School of Decorative Arts which sought ‘by way of rational
teaching, to return to the Damascene decorators and industrialists a
sense of the traditional ancient art, perverted by European taste’.
De Lorey added that the Institute as a whole remained ‘a centre for the
projection and propaganda of French culture, whose influence in the
Orient is today threatened by the activities of various nations’.
The Institute would ‘diffuse among the foreign elite [from the region] a
sense for our language, our literature and our arts’. Alongside this
influence among ‘foreign’ (i.e., non Syro-Lebanese) visitors were the
effect on local Damascene visitors whose numbers were increasing.160 In
October 1925, the complex was attacked. It was subsequently shelled by
French forces.161 The picture of wrecked structures surely underscored
the fundamental setback of the Great Revolt for early mandatory
governance.
A proposal to renovate the school of sericulture in Antioch was built
on a pre-existing Ottoman school that had fallen into disrepair.162
Under the Ottomans there were two Syrian agricultural schools, in the
north at Muslimiyah (near Aleppo) and in the centre of the country in
Al-Salamiyah (near Hama). Al-Salamiyah had enough renown to attract
students from across Syria and even Palestine.163 Both schools were
relaunched by the French, though the Salamiyah agricultural school only
lasted until 1933.164 One institution that represented a fresh project was
the Bouka Practical Agricultural School near Lattakia.165 The school was
founded in 1923 as a centre for agricultural experimentation intended to
encourage plant and forestry trials for local and French commercial
profit.166 A technical school set up by the French École des Arts et des
Métiers167 aided budding agricultural development by helping to repair
two harvesters and upgrading a Tournand-Latil tractor.168 Among the
first classes taught there were those concerning sericulture and the
growth of mulberry trees for the mulberry silkworm. Other classes
taught students about the iron industry. The liberal newspaper L’Homme
Libre expressed its hopes that this school would lead the way in
encouraging the professional education of local Syro-Lebanese.169
In spite of public proclamations to the contrary, internal
governmental discussions did not seek to hide the lack of enthusiasm
for developing the intellectual sites that would improve Syro-Lebanese
technology and business, to the detriment of French predominance. One
such discussion, between the advisor for Lebanese public works and
High Commission general-secretary Robert De Caix, pointed to the
importance of limiting technical education. Agricultural advisor Odinot
explained that the aim of educating Lebanese and Syrians in mechanical
and technological methods was ultimately about promoting French

business, especially in mechanised industry, in competition with the
USA and other industrialised societies.170 In another internal discussion,
the advisors for both Instruction Publique and for Travaux Publique at
the High Commission were in agreement that the degree of technical
education at the École des Arts et des Métiers would be too low to
encourage the development of internal industry that could challenge
French imports.171
French lack of interest in technical development was publicly
criticised. The Lebanese press was vocal on the subject even before the
outbreak of controversy on the 1926 national curriculum proposed by
the government of the post-Revolt Lebanese Republic.172 In 1924, for
instance, students at the École des Arts et des Métiers complained to the
Lebanese Assembly’s president about the school’s lack of machinery,
disorganisation and failure to implement its curriculum.173 A concerted
public sphere protest against the methods of governing the École took
shape in late 1924. Al-Ra’y al-‘Am complained that Lebanon’s director
for Instruction Publique had not followed up their complaints and
instead sought to discipline the students.174 Al-Ummah reported that
poor management had led to a number of students dropping out.175
Al-Ra’y al-‘Am called on the administration to provide more grants for
needy children to attend. It added that there should be a minimum age
of entry since some year groups represented a wide range of ages.176 Sada
˙
Al-Ahwal joined the chorus, asking why the school should charge S£300
a year more than the European schools’ fees, when it was not achieving
results.177
Tensions at the school boiled over the following year. In February
1925, the students undertook a strike as a result of dissatisfaction with
the mechanics teacher, a Mr Karmerman.178 Perhaps as a result of this
early contestation, by the early 1930s, the École des Arts et des Métiers
had become the site of a burgeoning local artistry that engaged
with questions of Syro-Lebanese identity and class awareness.179 French
obstinacy toward the technical development of their mandated
populations was also confronted with another thread of cultural activity:
international intervention. The Anglo-American humanitarian presence
that stretched back to the Ottoman years grew in the early years of the
mandate. The Taalabaya Agricultural School, financed by the American
Near East Relief foundation, also did not last.180
So too was there an Anglo-American presence in medical education

and training. Two US researchers working for the Rockefeller Fund
undertook a survey of medical education in Syria and Lebanon at the end
of the period under study which underlined the growth of the Anglo-
American role in this sphere. The AUB’s medical school was housed in
three buildings teaching physiological chemistry, anatomy, histology,
physiology, pathology and bacteriology. A hospital was attached to
the school.181
Near the AUB hospital was the Asfouriyeh Hospital for the Insane.
The Rockefeller report noted that the Asfouriyeh Hospital ‘exercises a
tremendous educational influence [. . .] where antiquated and brutal
methods of dealing with [the] mentally afflicted are still very
common’.182 This also had an annexed school where an Englishman,
Dr Watson Smith, taught neurology and psychiatry.183 The report also
remarked that the French had maintained the AUB and Asfouriyeh
Hospital’s Ottoman-era privileges including the exemption of property
from werko taxation and that the mandatory authorities had shown
‘extraordinary courtesy’.184
However, the French were also able to cause difficulties by insisting
that students at foreign schools complete training equivalent to their
five-year programme before being allowed to sit for a government
medical licence exam. Discussions in the AUB’s Senate noted that this
rigorous requirement went well beyond the approvals required by the
Regents of the State University of New York for the granting of medical
diplomas and lamented that ‘the French authorities know little of
the rules of New York State’. Similarly, the Asfouriyeh Hospital was
reported to be in talks with the authorities and the University of
Strasburg to send its doctors to France or other industrialised countries
for training in order ‘to meet French government requirements’.185
Conclusion
The curriculum for mandate schools was an arena for the determination
of the socio-political understanding and conduct of future generations.
The transmission of certain forms of knowledge, such as an emphasis
on French and classical history could, it was hoped by French
administrators, encourage lasting loyalty to France. The spreading of the
French language was seen as the key medium for the encouragement of
a docile colonial citizenry. Among Arabists, the emphasis was instead

placed on encouraging the protection of Arabic as the cement of national
identity. Other elites demonstrated dissent while simultaneously
laying the groundwork for autonomy in cultural affairs through local
government and press activity. Syro-Lebanese and French mandate
stakeholders alike thus recognised the importance of educational
content as an arena for shaping the future of their newly constituted
post-Ottoman state(s). Mandate administrators flouted the spirit of
their charter by resorting to a colonial methods playbook, with
education being primarily understood as a mechanism of control.
CHAPTER 4
THE POLITICS OF PEDAGOGY
The political importance of education was recognised by the various

parties involved in forging and contesting early mandatory methods.
Education was an arena in which fundamental characteristics of the
French-ruled Syrian and Lebanese states were being determined. From
the High Commission’s point of view, the department dealing with
education was not named Instruction Publique haphazardly. In everyday
life, a set of common languages and cultures, instilled in youth, formed
ties that bound a community across regions and, in this particular case,
continents. Educational networks were therefore seen as conduits for
French planners’ protectorate visions of the mandate which would be
enacted through Francophone methods of instruction. However,
alternative views of the mandate as a means to further the education
and development of local people were also articulated through the
educational insititutions.
Political Capital, Funding and Clientelism

A distinct initial method of exercising political control through
education was anchored in a cultural clientelism that secured access to
education for the sons of politically important notables. This policy was
parallel to the granting of international bursaries discussed in the
previous chapter, and a continuation of the Ottoman experience.
A system of bursaries directly granted by the High Commissioner thus
overlapped with educational stipends paid through the department for
Instruction Publique. Domestic educational funding was centralised in
January 1920 with a specific local budget being merged with wider
allocations made directly at the discretion of the High Commission.1
Though the authorities attempted to portray this as organisational
progress, it was a simple shift in fiscal power away from Ottoman
localism to centralised French methods. Some communal decision
makers, such as the heads of the Alliance Israélite Universelle and Greek
Catholic schools, expressed their doubts over the new policy and whether
the total money granted would be reduced as a result of the streamlining
of originally separate grants.2 Despite certain misgivings, the High
Commission pursued this method vigorously in the first year of the
mandate, when funds were being made available by Paris. Beginning in
November 1920, the Orthodox Patriarch of Syria received a bursary of
110,000 francs (E£2,000) in addition to the money sent for the
maintenance of Orthodox schools, the aim of the financial support
offered being to combat Greek, Russian and British influence within
Orthodox Christian circles.3
Particularly large payments were also made to nomadic groups as a
result of the significant challenges they represented for policing the
mandate’s rural interior. Nuri Shaalan, a Bedouin chief of the Rwallah
tribe with a strong presence in the Damascus countryside, was paid 1.2
million francs as part of an agreement with the High Commissioner’s
Damascus delegate, Georges Catroux.4 It is noteworthy that Article 11
of the contract between Shaalan and General Catroux required Shaalan to
‘establish, with the support of advisory officers, schools for Bedouin
children’.5 Reports from 1924 point out that the Lycée des Garc ons
opened a separate section dedicated to the sons of Bedouin chiefs.6 The
introduction of a unified French nomadic police, the Contrôle Bédouin,
on 1 January 1925 would grant individual intelligence officers the
organisational capacity to offer school places for the sons of Bedouin
leaders.7 Clientelism thus encouraged a continuous (re)balancing of
relations with little long-term planning.
A further characteristic of clientelism was that it discouraged
universally applied standards of governance in favour of particular
arrangements rooted in interpersonal relationships. A case in point was
the French attempt to cater to the Jabal Druze. In 1920, the influential
Druze leader Salim Pasha Al-Atrash asked the authorities to send his
relatives to Beirut schools at France’s expense.8 Initially, authorities
refused the request citing the Al-Atrash sons’ poor command of French.
THE POLITICS OF PEDAGOGY 119
However, the political importance of the Al-Atrash prompted a rapid

reversal. Four members of the Al-Atrash clan were among the recipients
of educational grants in 1921–2.9 In 1922, Fuad and Farid Al-Atrash
both received money to attend the Collège Franc ais du Sacré Coeur
(Collège des Frères) in Beirut despite a decline in the general availability
of bursaries for education, thus demonstrating the political significance
of Al-Atrash’s quiescence.10
In 1923, High Commissioner Weygand informed authorities in
Damascus that the Jabal Druze would offer only three bursaries and these
would be granted after examinations.11 Yet all three bursaries went to
Al-Atrash family members.12 The fact that the Atrash family would play
a decisive role in leading the Great Syrian Revolt is testament to the
limits of this style of clientelist governance. Moreover, the instability of
Druze-French clientelist relations may have actually encouraged Druze
dissatisfaction. Lenka Bokova suggests that French Revolutionary
thought, particularly notions of social welfare, had actually impregnated
the Druze rebels and this is supported by several of Sultan Al-Atrash’s
petitions.13 Regardless of their motivations, it is critical to note that
such groups as the Rwallah and Al-Atrash were exceptional as a result of
the particularly acute challenge they represented to mandatory
sovereignty. The ability to placate this group through patronage was
clearly limited.
An early mechanism of mandate clientelism, the aforementioned
political bursaries (bourses politiques), was designed to tie favoured young
elites to the mandatory power. Information cards on the parents of those
who had received bursaries speak volumes of the French approach to
‘political bursaries’. Among the recipients was a Maronite, Clovis
Khazen, whose father, Sheikh Philippe Khazen, had been hanged by the
Ottomans as a suspected French spy.14 Others with reports were Selim
and Eugenie Hayek, the children of reverend Yusuf Hayek, who had also
been executed. His statement of love for France on the gallows had
earned him praise in subsequent French records as proof ‘of very
Francophile opinions’. The three children of Said ‘Aql, a Maronite
journalist who had edited Al-Ittihad Al-‘Uthmani (Ottoman Union)
newspaper and been executed for suspected Arab nationalist activity,
were recipients of grants. Albert and Jeannette Balit were both children
of French Dragoman Alexandre Balit, who had died in Ottoman
internment.15 Yet running a Maronite school did not necessarily mean
loyalty to French policies. Yusuf Farah’s school in Fraydiss did not teach
any French to his 38 students. His mandate intelligence service report
card describes him as ‘stubborn’ and ‘ignorant’ if ‘brave’. His ignorance
of French, the report’s author wrote, meant he was ‘incapable of
educating’ his students.16
Politically determined educational grants were dissolved in May 1921
as a result of tighter budgetary constraints imposed by the French
government. Yet they were replaced with superficially merit-based
grants that were intended by mandatory authorities to foster clientelist
relations. The reorganisation of these new bourses d’éxamens which were to
be awarded after an evaluation of applications was undertaken in early
1922 by High Commission supremo Robert De Caix. From May 1922,
all the demands for grants would now be directed to the Directorate for
Instruction Publique. However, the Service de Renseignement would
have membership of the juries judging applications in order to
‘nominate candidates’ of ‘political interest’. In essence these examin-
ations remained fundamentally political while seeming impartial.
In October 1923, the chief of the Levant intelligence service Michel
Canonge explained the reasoning for ending the bourses politiques. These
grants had been a major drain on the High Commissioner’s discretionary
Fonds Spéciaux budget and had encouraged an unending stream of
requests for funds. He added that despite their liquidation there need to
be continued efforts at maintaining political ties through educational
funding. Canonge further admitted that ‘the political aspect will
play a big part in the examination of selections’ for educational
department grants. He also accepted the need for exceptional political
grants to continue. This meant that, in certain cases, money from the
Fonds Spéciaux would need to be contributed, though he insisted that
this be done ‘behind the fac ade of the [Department for] Instruction
Publique’.17
Though Canonge was seeking to maintain the possibility of
clientelist political control through a veil of competitively organised
educational grants, the reality of Paris’ budget cuts still fundamentally
weakened these initial French mandatory methods. Indeed, budgetary
austerity was the original cause of the reorganisation of political
funds. In the words of Lebanon’s governor Albert Michel Trabaud, the
cuts had ‘forced profound modifications to the development of existing
schools and the creation of new schools’.18 A wider administrative
reorganisation undertaken in 1923 meant that the general budget

for Instruction Publique itself, including any special funds directly
granted by the High Commissioner, would be amalgamated into the
overall ‘ordinary’ budget allocated by Paris to the High Commission in
Beirut.
Any exceptional grants would now need to be approved not only by
the High Commissioner but also by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Like Canonge, High Commissioner Gouraud sought to spin this as an
inevitable administrative change that would allow for a regularity of
expenditure after a successful reorganisation of schooling as the
immediate post-World War situation had required.19 Yet despite these
claims, the limits imposed by budgetary cuts on initial clientelist
methods of managing education as a political tool soon manifested
themselves. Several local elites were unable to renew the grants that they
had originally been promised. Among them was one of local notable
Negib Hatem’s sons, who had been promised a grant in January 1921.20
When a widow named Heineine Rizqallah asked for an educational
grant for her son, she was refused on account of the reorganisation.21
Authorities maintained this position even after an intervention by Druze
notable Emir Fuad Arslan on her behalf.22
The confusion over bursaries that is evident in the archives could
not have encouraged faith in French methods of governance in the early
mandate years. Local people found it difficult to understand the
changes to grants. In 1924, a Lebanese student named Nader
Souleyman Al-Kfouri wrote to High Commissioner Weygand asking
for an educational grant. He was aware of the reorganisation of the
bursaries process but claimed that since Weygand was ‘all powerful’ he
could surely ‘take any decision on the matter’. Confusion evidently
reigned within the Beirut bureaucracy itself. Al-Kfouri noted that his
numerous preceding bursary requests to General Gouraud had been
lost in the bureaucracy.23 A more significant administrative blunder
meant that stipendiary students sent to France had been forgotten by
the High Commission when the reorganisation of bursaries occurred in
1922. This blunder led to several Syrian students being stuck in France
without funding.24 The realisation of this mistake meant that the
liquidation of bourses politiques for those studying in France was delayed
to January 1923, with a one-off final payment for each student, ranging
from 6,000 to 9,600 francs.25
Organisation and Local Government Intervention

Despite early procedures seeking to centralise educational funding as a
political tool, the Ottoman legacy of local government mechanisms
represented an avenue for challenging mandatory methods. By having a
say through local government structures, internal elites could
subversively challenge policies and offer an alternative without explicitly
rejecting French rule. The authorities’ reclutance to devolve authority to
local government contravened clear League of Nations stipulations
encouraging broader popular involvement in local government decision
making.26 Soon after the French takeover of Syria, Muhammad Kurd
‘Ali made use of his experience in educational affairs and his position as
Director of the Instruction Publique for the State of Damascus to
propose organisational reforms, including re-evaluating the powers
afforded to his own ministry. He suggested that instead of going solely
through the state-wide ministers, some local policy decisions should be
devolved to the local walis (administrators) of each governorate with the
consensus of school directors.27
In the context of major financial retrenchment, the High Commission
perforce relied heavily on tax revenue from individual local states.
In Damascus, Muhammad Kurd ‘Ali was important in securing funds for
bursary students and even accompanied them on their way to France in
April 1922.28 The budget available to Kurd ‘Ali provided about 1,000
francs a month, making for a total of 7,600 francs.29 Other prominent
figures were less charismatic. The Francophile Governor of Damascus
Haqqi Bey Al ‘Azm was reported by newspaper Suriya Al-Jadidat (The
New Syria) to have visited the St Joseph University in 1924. ‘Azm
reportedly showed an interest in all parts of the University’s functioning,
from the cooking upward.30 Noting his penchant for micro-manage-
ment, the newspaper issued a biting call on the governor to make use of
his newly evidenced management skills to support the newly created
Damascus University.31
A controversy involving local government concerned the particular
privileges of the Sanjak of Mount Lebanon, an Ottoman-era district
incorporated into the French-created State of Greater Lebanon. The
Sanjak had traditionally been excluded from any Ottoman regulation of
private schools, foreign or domestic, since the 1860 French
intervention.32 High Commission Order 1007 of 1921 did not clear
up Lebanon’s status since it transposed the 1915 wartime Ottoman law,

which had imposed new regulations on private school openings while
leaving the Sanjak’s situation unclear. Education director for Greater
Lebanon, Charles Halaby, outlined an interpretation that would apply
the 1915 Ottoman regulation, which had closed the legal loophole for
Mount Lebanon, to all Lebanese schools. This elicited an immediate
rebuttal from his superior, Lebanon Governor Albert Trabaud, as well as
High Commission general-secretary Robert De Caix, with French
authorities keen to retain foreign and minority schools’ freedoms over
cultural institutions outside of the Maronite-dominated Sanjak.33
Trabaud and De Caix argued that, since Arrêté 1007 of 1921 had
transposed Ottoman law as it stood in 1915, it would logically follow
that the long-term privileges of the Sanjak of Mount Lebanon would
remain unchanged. De Caix sought to justify the poorly crafted 1921
law. He argued that Order 1007 was ‘a simple clarification’ which was
done in light of the requirements set out in Article 43 of the Convention
of The Hague which required an occupying power to respect local laws,
stating that: ‘The authority of the legitimate power having in fact passed
into the hands of the occupant, the latter shall take all the measures
in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and
safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in
the country [i.e., the status quo ante bellum]’.34
In order to thereafter avoid the possibility of the Arrêté being read as
a confirmation of Ottoman moves to disrupt foreign and local private
schools, De Caix explained that: ‘a school opened prior to the
enforcement of the law of 22 Shawal 1333 [1915 Ottoman law] does not
seem to have to come under the regulations outlined by this law;
nothing in the text in our possession would allow us to believe that the
[Ottoman] legislation was intended to have a retroactive effect’.35
He added that ‘the privileges possessed by Europeans as a result of
regulatory firmans, or as a result of the [1901] Mitylene Accord do not
appear to me to have been abolished’.36 De Caix was selectively
interpreting the 1915 law in order to allow it to be used by the French to
strictly regulate the opening of private schools in the post-1915 period
while also allowing in place the various existing privileges and approvals
given prior to 1915. This ultimately suggests that the decision to base
the 1921 French law on the 1915 Ottoman one was done in order to
allow the French to reduce the potential for new local Syro-Lebanese or
foreign missionary schools while maintaining a French-dominated status

quo ante bellum.37
In the same month, December 1921, the governor of Greater Lebanon
recommended to the High Commissioner that the Mission Laique be
granted approval to create a school in Beirut on the grounds of the
Mytilene Accord between France and the Ottomans.38 Another local
bureaucrat, the administrative advisor for the Sanjak of Mount Lebanon,
agreed with the French authorities given that it was his region’s
privileges that were being reviewed. Despite this range of voices seeking
to maintain the Sanjak’s privileges, Charles Halaby reiterated his belief
that the Sanjak should not benefit from a continued exemption. Halaby
argued that since these privileges were rooted in diplomatic agreements
that had been dissolved by the Ottomans in 1915, they could no longer
be legally valid. As Halaby read it, the 1915 and 1921 regulations had to
be applied throughout Syria and Lebanon, with no preferential
treatment for the Sanjak.39 This local government official’s insistence on
applying blanket regulations throughout the mandate territories
ultimately reached the High Commission.
In June 1924, High Commissioner General Weygand announced
new secondary legislation, Order 2679, which expressly stated that
‘no private establishment will be able to open without adhering to the
conditions set out in the present order’.40 Statutory Order 2679 also
revised the transposed Ottoman regulations represented in Order 1007
by introducing a new clause that required the directors of a proposed
new private school to deposit a ‘certificate of good reputation [bonne vie ]
and morals delivered by the local authorities if it concerns a Lebanese or
Syrian, [and] by the relevant Consul, if it concerns a person of foreign
nationality’.41 This represented a significant extenson of official powers
to regulate the opening of new schools. The Ottoman Regulation of
1915 had instead required only foreigners to provide a certificate of good
character from their consuls; Syrians seeking to establish schools were
only required to provide a birth certificate. Inevitably, getting a good
reference from a consul as a member of a compatriotic foreign missionary
organisation was much easier than getting such approval from suspicious
French authorities.
This was demonstrated in 1924 when two schools in the qadāʾ of
˙
Metn were shut down by authorities. One was a boys’ school at Btekhnay
run by Sheikh Fayez Abi Hassan and the other a girls’ school at Bzebdine
run by Emily Farah.42 Another Mount Lebanon school that shut down in
the wake of the new regulations was Farah Khoury’s school at Brummana
which was judged by the High Commissioner’s delegate to the governor
of Lebanon to be ‘of little importance’ despite the fact that it had existed
since the beginning of the twentieth century.43 Yet another school that
was shut down using Order 2679 powers was that run by Risha Aoun in
Bqaq Ed-Dine in the qadāʾ of Keserwan. However, the action had
˙
elicited a protest and petitions from local inhabitants to the mutassarıf of
the Mount Lebanon Sanjak. This pressure led to a French inquiry which
confirmed, thanks to the Maronite Bishop Monsignor Mourad’s
testimony, that the school had been set up half-a-century prior to
French occupation.
Faced with this disapproval, Albert Trabaud’s replacement as
governor of Lebanon, General Vandenberg, recommended that the
school be reopened. He used the previously discussed legal loophole
for the Sanjak of Mount Lebanon to justify a reversal of French
regulations.44 Three years after initial incongruities regarding a
loophole for the Mount Lebanon Sanjak had emerged, dissent now
erupted over attempts to implement blanket regulations. Governor
Vanderberg was contradicted by his own advisor and director for
Instruction Publique. The advisor admitted the Mount Lebanon’s
mutassarıf’s information leading to the closure of Risha Aoun’s school
had been ‘very superficial’. Both local government bureaucrats
nevertheless noted that a defence of the school on the basis of the
Mount Lebanon Ottoman-era privileges had been superseded by
Orders 1007 (1921) and 2679 (1924) which had applied a blanket
regulation over all territories of the mandate.45
These debates all demonstrated the significant confusion over – and
contestation of – mandatory methods during the early years within a
renovated Ottoman local government apparatus. In particular, the
difficulty of relying on a principle of clientelist protection for favoured
‘compact’ minorities such as the Maronites in the framework of mandate
methods that required local government approval was becoming
evident. This confusion was unsurprisingly picked up on by the public
sphere. Newspaper Al-Ummah pushed for a more clearly defined division
of labour between the local Lebanese government and the High
Commission. It was surprised that the High Commission was giving
authorisations for schools to open when this should be up to the Director
of Instruction Publique. It also reproached the directorate for using

French instead of Arabic in its day-to-day work.46
Women’s Education
The efflorescence of educational activity geared toward political change
provided an important avenue for women’s educational participation.
International women’s activisim had increased markedly in the post-
World War I years, with the International Alliance of Women co-
ordinating meetings between European and Egyptian activists in the
1920s.47 Domestically, a women’s movement in Lebanon appeared over
the course of the late nineteenth century, encouraged particularly by the
foundation of girls’ schools by the maqāsid (improvement) and Zahrat al-
˙
Ihsān (flowers of charity) local associations.48
Denounced as firebrands, women such as Nour Hamade, the Druze
director of the Society for Veiled Women, and Julia Tu‘ma Dimashqiyya,
owner of the newspaper Al-Mar’at al-Jadida (‘The New Woman’), emerged
as influential lobbyists in Damascene parliamentary politics, if a 1927
French report is to be believed.49 Dimashqiyya certainly enjoyed
connections with other prominent educational leaders. She is documented
as having supported Mary Kassab, who had founded the nationalist
(wataniyya) Al-Ahliyya girls’ school in the hope of fashioning elite
˙
Lebanese girls into the ‘best brides’. Dimashqiyya also hosted a tea party in
which future Lebanese Minister of Education Jubran Tuaini praised
Kassab’s school for fighting the influence of foreign (ajnabiyya) schools.50
The proximity of education, press and international circles was
documented by French intelligence. In 1921, Hajia Bellama, owner of
the Al-Fajr (The Dawn) newspaper, for example, was an alumnus of
Antoura College. A circle formed around her included other prominent
women including her sister Asmaa, Marie Yasni and some men such as
Georges Bau. Though the paper did not circulate widely, its readership
included Damascenes living in Beirut and some internationally
based Syro-Lebanese in America.51 In 1927, a report noted various
Syro-Lebanese women’s roles. It claimed Syrian women had gained
from the experience of their Egyptian counterparts and made use of
international clubs such as the Young Women’s Christian Association.
Among the women it named as being Anglo-Saxon propagandists was
Hala Maalouf, owner of the École Supérieure Nationale.52
Another suspected woman activist was Salma Sayeg, a Greek-

Orthodox teacher at the Mission Laique who aided Gabriel Tueini in
publishing Beiruti paper Al-Ahrar.53 Yet another was Lydia Achcar, a
˙
teacher at Mary Kassab’s nationalist school, whose brother Georges was
employed at the American printing press and belonged to a masonic
lodge.54 The report outlined ten women, including some of the above, as
‘suspect’ teachers in official schools.55 Selma Nasser, director of the
‘Ain Al-Mraisseh School in East Beirut, received particular attention
from the French intelligence services. Described as dishonest and
intriguing, her surveillance report card referred to her alleged anti-
French activities, which included renting out rooms to French soldiers in
the hope of extracting intelligence on French troop movements in the
Jabal Druze during the Great Syrian Revolt.56
Networks of Dissenting Education

Not every informal network was antithetical to French interests. This
was the case with the development of the pre-existing freemasonry
network founded in the late Ottoman period.57 Some freemason guilds
aligned to the mandate authorities’ interests. These organisations pulled
bureaucrats together into a tight network – the clearest example being
that of the guild at Qassioun. Yet the use of such networks for organising
underground dissent against the mandate was also a possibility.58 Thus
the indefatigable Dr ‘Abd Al-Rahman Shahbandar allied himself with
Damascene elites to create an entirely new lodge named Nur Dimashq
(Light of Damascus).
Among the notables inducted into this organisation were Algerian
Syrians Taher and Khairi Al-Jazairi, Greek Orthodox dentist Wadih
˙
Banna and the key figure of Fares al-Khoury, who would go on to become
Prime Minister and United Nations diplomat of an independent Syria.
The Jazairis were following in the footsteps of their Algerian forerunner,
the exiled revolutionary Sheikh ‘Abd Al-Qadir, who had briefly
joined the masons in his own era.59 Local Arabist elites, held together
by the centripetal figure of Dr Shahbandar, thus made use of educational
networks, whether through mature cultural institutions such as Islamic
schools or nascent informal mason’s lodges, to promote dissent as well as
to begin defining the constellation of historic, linguistic and cultural
visions that would bind a future Syria.
One school that emerged as a centrepiece of the fight for an Arabic-

based national identity was the Ottoman Imperial Medical School in
Damascus, a mature institution which had become the Arab Medical
School under Faisal. As Robert Ian Blecher has noted, this site of local
Damascene’s claims of culture and progress was immediately viewed
suspiciously by High Commissioner Gouraud. French authorities used
the inspections regime discussed in the previous chapter to attempt to
neuter the school.60 In response, the school sought to situate itself as a
science-oriented, and therefore neutral, enterprise. In 1922, its director
Rida Sa‘id told the High Commissioner’s representative in Damascus
that the faculty aspired ‘only to science and stands aside from all political
currents’.61 According to Blecher, the school muted Arab nationalist
activities in the 1920s, drawing the ire of more vociferous nationalists in
the Damascene press.
Muhammad Kurd ‘Ali’s Arab Academy in Damascus represented a
more vocal node in the informal educational network, one that sought
to both maintain and improve knowledge of Arabic while avoiding
French mandatory controls on formal education. In summer 1921, the
Academy held teacher training conferences that brought together local
Damascene sheikhs as Islamic teachers.62 In 1923, the Arab Academy’s
makeshift museum, mentioned in a previous chapter, was discussed in
the press because a locally crafted golden decoration, intended for King
Faisal before his expulsion in 1920, had been stolen.63 The Academy
could thus play a role as a physical space within Damascus that
facilitated the exchange and accumulation of Arabist ideas without
French influence.
Thus the Egyptian scholar Ahmad Zaki Pasha and famed poet Ahmad
Shawqi gave talks at the Academy in August 1925 alongside significant
Syrian figures such as Khalil Mardam Bey.64 In another instance
Palestinian literary grandee ‘Adil Zuwaiter, who had represented his
native Nablus in the General Syrian Congress in Faisalian Damascus and
later went to study at the University of Paris, was elected a member of
Kurd ‘Ali’s Arab Academy during the French period.65 Such networks
had evident political implications which were recognised in local French
surveillance reports. In late 1924, a report pointed out the growth of an
intellectual movement under the influence of ‘young’ Arabs with the
Arab Academy pinpointed as their centre of gravity.66 One report in
June 1925 explained how a seemingly innocuous literary circle at the
Muslim secondary school in Beirut witnessed the recitation of ‘violent’

poetry, including a verse which attacked the mandate.67
Intellectuals such as Dr Shahbandar became central dissenting socio-
political Damascene elites. In fact, Shahbandar was not the sole leader of
these notable dissenters, although he was described by some of his
partisans as the Syrian Sa‘ad Zaghlūl.68 There was a constellation of key
figures, coalescing around Shahbandar or Fares Al-Khoury, who were
united in their opposition to the French mandate. Continuing protest
throughout the formative mandate years met increasing French
repression. By 1925, Shahbandar was recruiting disaffected students
into his Hizb Al-Sha‘ab (People’s Party) to demonstrate in Damascus –
often to be met with ever more violent police responses.69 Shahbandar
himself visited an arrested student in the city.70
Unity in anti-imperialist efforts did not necessarily translate into
ideological uniformity. Even in these early stages of nation formation
there were distinct opinions of the role of leaders and their constituents,
far from any agreement on a defined Syrian nation. Some nationalists
were talking of ‘preparing the masses’, as one member at a meeting of the
People’s Party in August 1925 put it.71 In the same meeting however,
People’s Party member Said Haidar pointed out the importance of
education among the mass population as a means ‘to form public
opinion’ in what he seems to have envisioned as a hierarchically managed
process. He expressed doubts about whether an impact on public opinion
could be made on the Syrian people to the extent it had in industrialised
societies such as France and England.72
The nascent scouting network represented another site of informal
education which worked parallel to the formal educational edifice.
Scouting activities were interrupted by World War I and were
resurrected at the outset of the 1920s.73 Although Jennifer Dueck’s
study provided a comprehensive account of scouting in the later mandate
period, it should be noted that scouting activity was already an
important political space from the earliest years.74 Though it was a
Western import, scouting did not automatically submit itself to the
needs of French claims of culture.75 Jennifer Dueck has noted the
existence of Muslim scouting groups in Ottoman and mandate Beirut
and Damascus. This included the scouts based in Muslim schools
supported by the maqāsid Islamic charity being inspired by Islamic
˙
reformist thinkers such as Muhammad ‘Abduh.76
˙
In 1925 scouts in Homs hosted a party at which reportedly

‘Francophobic’ sentiments were expressed. A further reception at the Dar
Al-‘Ulm (House Of Knowledge) school in Beirut witnessed anti-French
speeches delivered by middle-class professionals such as Saleh Koumbaz,
a doctor from Hama. The director of the Dar Al-‘Ulm stated that
scouting would forge a national army that could ‘reverse the impetuous
flow that ceaselessly unloads itself from Europe to the Orient’. In the
same year, at a students’ meeting at the National Club in Beirut, a boy
scouts’ leader, Muhi Al-Din Al-Nsuli, discussed the organisation of
Syrian unity.77 He added that the current educational system encouraged
the youths to adopt foreign customs.78
Contrary to orientalist depictions of a culturally stagnant Lebanese-
Syrian society, these early mandate years witnessed significant popular
participation and the reception of new ideas by various strata of local
society through different networks and affiliations. This included
evident association of Syrians and Lebanese regardless of creed and
cultural affiliation. The list of visitors to school-aged protesters lying in
hospital provides an interesting picture of the diversity of the
sympathisers of pupils’ dissent. Among them are listed Badr al-Din
Safadi, an organiser of the 1921 Beirut Tramway boycotts, Abdulmajid
Tabbakh, treasurer of the People’s Party, Hassan Helwani, a Jewish
restaurateur who had been exiled, and Sheikh Yahia Zeneika, an advisor
to prominent Sunni Sheikh Badr al-Din al-Husseini.79 Figures such
as Rafik Al-Fattal, a member of Tripoli’s Société de Bienfaisance
Musulmane and previously director of Beirut’s Sultaniyah School, were
monitored for creating networks. French intelligence noted Al-Fattal
had been in contact with a professor of law at Damascus University,
Osman Sultan, to coax him into participating in the 1925 elections
announced by High Commissioner Sarrail.80
Students of the Maktab Al-‘Anbar school took an active role in
politics during the mandate. Alongside older students at the Damascus
Faculty of Law and the Dar Mu’allimat school, they took part in
the 1921 ‘Eid al-Adha strikes as well as those occuring during Lord
˙
Balfour’s visit to Damascus in 1925.81 By the time preceding the
outbreak of the 1925 Great Syrian Revolt, the Service des
Renseignements reported an efflorescence of political tracts among
students. One picked up in February 1925 expressed the unity of the
‘ulema, notables, merchants and youth of Damascus’ in protest at the
Spanish repression of the Rif uprising in North Morocco.82 In April

1925 Tewfik Ajam Oğlou, a law student at the Universal School in
Damascus, slapped the Damascus deputy Habib Kahalé in the middle of
a political meeting. After being arrested Oğlou shouted out that Kahalé
had been ‘cheating the nation’.83
In May 1925, the Hama-based literary Club des Belles Lettres
featured repeatedly in French intelligence reports, which described it as
being poorly attended, although those who did show up included
artisans and small merchants.84 At the students’ National Club meeting
in August 1925, the Syrian Union party’s president, Ahmad Kassab,
gave a pan-Syrianist speech.85 The Syrian Union ‘tended toward
fighting, by every method available, France’s influence in Syria’.86
The outbreak of the Great Syrian Revolt did not put an end to the
network of informal educational activity spreading anti-imperial
literature. French authorities intercepted Communist pamphlets being
sent from various railway stations in France, such as that of Avignon, to
the addresses of directors and teachers in Syrian schools. After being
questioned by the French authorities, these professionals denied having
any links to the senders.87
In another case, ‘seditious’ tracts were posted on street walls in Homs.
This led to a police inquiry, with suspicions immediately falling on the
sons of Taqi Al-Atassi.88 Both sons were brought to the police station
and made to write out a version of the tract. One of them, Murad
Al-Attasi, was found to have very similar handwriting. Murad, who was
a 25-year-old law student at the Faculty of Law of Damascus, denied
participating in the political action. Murad claimed he had an alibi, as a
result of having spent the evening in the company of his uncle. Taki’s
other 18-year-old son, ‘Abd al-Haj Al-Attasi, who was studying at
the agricultural school at Al-Salamiyah that was intended to promote
mise en valeur of the country through Francophile elites, initially
refuted any participation in pro-Revolt propaganda, though he later
made an admission.
Another interrogated student was 15-year-old Riad Al-Attasi, at the
time studying at the Homs Preparatory school. His fellow student at
the Homs school, ‘Abd-al-Muhaymin, was also interviewed, despite
being only 12 years old. Other students interviewed were 17-year-old
Nadhim Al-Moussali, 14-year-old Burhan Al-Atassi and ‘Abd al-Razzaq
Khankan, another 17-year-old. Ultimately, an intelligence report found
nearly every one of these students guilty of having conspired to spread

revolutionary communist tracts. Those aged 18 and over, including
‘Abd al-Haj Al-Attasi, were prosecuted while the others were freed on
account of their young age ‘and the lack of proof of their guilt’. This was
a demonstration of the collective punishment of suspected subversives, a
practice that had been established early on in the mandate, although it
was apparently now deemed necessary to prosecute not just major Arab
nationalists such as ‘Abd Al-Rahman Shahbandar, but even teenage
school students.
Instrumentalising International Networks

The very presence of external sources of education and educational
organising was fundamental to the contestation of early mandatory
methods. The mature educational networks established by Europeans
and Americans over the nineteenth century offered an alternative to the
limited avenue of French clientelist methods. This was supplemented by
the presence of the League of Nations which provided a further political,
if not legal, platform for the expression of anti-imperialist sentiments
through the networks of mahjar (émigré) Syro-Lebanese networks.
Societies based in Europe, such as the Society of Arab Students in Berlin,
were evidently politicised cultural associations. The society sent letters
to the League of Nations demanding an envoy who would take Syrian
demands into account as well as denouncing the inhumane butchery
occurring in the country.89 The society distributed pamphlets
concerning French crimes to university professors, high schools, student
associations and other young people.90
Among the Syrian students studying in Berlin were the two sons of
Sheikh Ridha Rifai Al-Halabi. Al-Halabi was described by French
˙ ˙
intelligence as being ‘Francophobic’ and one of the organisers of the
Syrian Union political opposition party to the French mandate.91 By
January 1926, at the end of the period under review, the special police
commissioner in Annemasse recorded that the universities in Geneva
and Lausanne had become fertile ground for nationalist ‘propaganda’ and
were being visited by prominent figures within the anti-imperial
opposition such as Shakib Arslan.92 The same report noted a divide
between ‘oriental’ students in French universities from Francophile
families as opposed to students in Switzerland. It added that
‘the majority of oriental students in Geneva and Lausanne, are destined

to become [. . .] the rank and file of parties in opposition to French
influence’.93
In Latin America, politics and pedagogy made for less overt
bedfellows. For example, the Syro-Lebanese Association in Bahia, Brazil,
had a library providing its members a space for learning.94 The
proximity of certain mahjar educational institutions with the mandatory
power was evident in some cases. In 1921, the French consul at Bahia
advised against the building of a mahjar school in his city that would
follow the example of one founded by Charles Khoury at Pernambuco
because this might encourage competition with an existing French-
language school run by Catholic sisters.95
In 1922, the Rector of the University of Paris sent a cable addressed
to the President of Argentina via the Argentine ambassador in Paris.
In it he asked for help to be given to the Syrian Orthodox notables
touring Argentina headed by Father Michel Khalūf.96 The propagation
of Francophonie among the South American mahjar was attractive to all
parties, including Khalūf. Thus, prior to visiting Buenos Aires, Khalūf
wrote to the Paris University Rector explaining that:
My participation in French circles [. . .] and my conviction that our

Syrian schools [. . .] be called to the service of France [. . .] all this
has encouraged me to address you [. . .] so you may provide your
support in my mission [. . .] I am sure that a school flying the
Tricolore along the rivers of Phoenicia will do more here [in
Lebanon] than the Crusades could have.97
The North American mahjar was decidedly less Francophile. A Syrian

Educational Society was founded in New York in 1916, with the logo
showing the Baalbek ruins with the sun above them. Its tag was ‘the
hope of our nation lies in its youth, and the future of the youth is
in education’. According to a pamphlet put out by the Boston chapter in
1928, it was founded by young men, ‘mostly the graduates of colleges
in Syria and in this country’. Its aim was:
To help young Syrian men and women who aspire to higher

education [. . .] but who have not the means [. . .] to urge upon
Syrians the need of higher education [. . .] third: to help solve the
social problem in this country by increasing the number of

educated Syrians who will take an interest in the institutions of the
United States [. . .] as well as spreading the wholesome American
ideals among the Syrians, both here and in Syria.98
The preponderance of US influence on certain Lebano-Syrian

intellectuals is made evident when Phillip Hitti’s case is considered.
The outstanding Arab historian of his generation alongside Georges
Antonius, Hitti was instrumental in organising Syrian émigré youth
into a tangible cultural force. Indeed, Hitti wrote the first scholarly
study of Syrians in America – beginning it with an emphasis on the
need to distinguish Syrians from Arabs and Turks.99 Hitti did not hide
his hostility to the mandate regime and its intellectual purveyors. This
was made evident in a review he penned of the influential Belgian
orientalist Father Henri Lammens’ history of Syria. Setting Lammens’
history in the context of a range of other histories including those
written in Arabic, such as that of Fares Al-Shidyak, Hitti pointed to the
bias of Lammens’ work. This was readily evident in Lammens’ preface
which had praised the High Commissioner Gouraud and explicitly
Figure 4.1 American University of Beirut (AUB), College Hall c.1920.

Available online: https://www.loc.gov/item/mpc2004002168/PP/.
stated that the work was intended to provide material for a mandate
administrators’ training college.100
Within the Levant itself, US citizens were establishing educational
sites that naturally provided alternative visions of the Levant’s future
than those offered by Francophile missionary and local Catholic
schools. The American University of Beirut (AUB) was of central
importance in shaping nineteenth-century Syro-Lebanese elite opinion
unimpressed with French methods. This certainly continued in the
mandate era. In 1920, an AUB student made a vitriolic speech in front
of General Gouraud, for which he was expelled though later
readmitted. This student, aforementioned scout leader Muhi Al-Din
Al-Nsuli, was later reported by a French informant to be participating
in the Club for the Syrian Union, a political group seeking Syrian
unity.101
A 1924 intelligence report described the existence of Al-Rabita
Al-‘Assad Al-‘Arabiyya (Association of the Arab Lion) among the AUB
student body whose aims were to ‘propagate and defend the Arab
language’ and ‘diffuse the patriotic spirit and oriental solidarity among
all students’.102 Though such a society may have been overtly literary,
it certainly engaged in political activity. When AUB Professor Boulos
Kholi became honorary president of the aforementioned Association of
the Arab Lion, he received a congratulatory letter from Shahbandar, who
expressed his confidence in the ‘great influence [of the Association], not
only among its students but [. . .] [over] numerous Arabs as far as the
[Persian] Gulf’. Shahbandar also wrote that: ‘If the AUB’s influence
continues to grow and expand, all of its alumni will not miss the
opportunity to rise up and liberate themselves in ten years’ time with the
aid of the U.S.’103 Local newspaper Al-Lisan al-Hal praised the AUB as a
‘brilliant home’ which had ‘inundated the countries of the Orient with
its light’.104
Within the AUB’s walls, one group of students was fighting to keep
Sultan Abdulmecid II as Caliph while the Arab Committee in the same
institution sought to promote Sharif Hussein to the post.105 French
intelligence was in direct contact with Anis Al-Khuri Al-Makdisi, a
professor of Arabic literature at the AUB who had been educated at the
Tripoli Boys’ School and was reputedly a friend of ‘Abdulaziz Ibn
Saud.106 Intelligence case officers monitored Al-Makdisi and determined
that his activities in Iraq in the cause of pan-Arabism made him
‘a political agent whose propaganda seeks only to impede’ French power

in Syria.107
In 1925, French intelligence reported that that nearly $150,000 had
been raised by AUB alumni stretching from Istanbul, through Cairo to
Brazil and America.108 AUB alumni, propped up by a liberal education
that opened up a world of opportunities, often formed the upper crust of
local society. The guest list of an alumni meeting in Aleppo reads like a
Who’s Who of key local figures from doctors to dragomans.109 Even at
this early stage, US educational institutions were creating connected
constituents parallel to Francophone elites, as Jennifer Dueck notes was
the case in the later mandate.110 The AUB, if French intelligence reports
are to be believed, sent student ‘propagandists’ to America to rejoin
Shahbandar and Charles Richard Crane.111 The same report quoted
AUB Rector Bayard Dodge praising efforts to unite Lebanese and
Syrian émigrés in the Americas and encouraging the same be done
with Iraqis.112
‘The American University in Beirut pursues with perseverance its
task of fusing the Arab world’, as one intelligence report put it.113 ‘Abd
Al-Rahman Shahbandar agreed, stating that the university’s influence
even extended to the Arabian Peninsula.114 The AUB would send
members of its staff such as Lahoud Shehade to inner Syrian cities such as
Hama tasked with outreach and a search for alumni donations.115 In
these early years, another AUB professor, Anis Al-Maqdissi, was sent to
Baghdad to examine the possible creation of an AUB affiliate.116 By
1927, the AUB had nearly 130 Iraqi students within its campus,
including the sons of Noury Pasha Said and Yasin al-Hashimi.117 In that
same year, as the Great Syrian Revolt was subsiding, a French report
described the American University of Beirut as the pre-eminent site for
intrigues against French rule.118
Conclusion
Educational institutions were inherently political domains that
expressed the various aims of each local and international stakeholder.
Mandatory authorities wished to instrumentalise education towards
their vision of a protectorate-style mandate. This would be done through
a management of the various communities by refurbishing Ottoman
clientelism, though politically determined educational bursaries
brought students to Beirut and Paris instead of Istanbul. Yet local

government structures and the principle of mandatory tutelage afforded
a degree of manoeuverability to local elites. This combined with
expectations of national, local and women’s education, leading to
consistent and widespread challenges to mandatory methods. Challenges
even came from favoured communities such as the Maronites who,
though they always sought to maximise their interests, did not always
align with French governance. A historical characteristic of the Syro-
Lebanese situation was the exchange of ideas and politics on an
international scale. The existence of mature mahjar and international
educational institutions further allowed the outlining of alternative
visions of education, and thereby of political organisation.
CHAPTER 5
SURVEILLANCE, SUBSIDIES AND

CENSORSHIP:THE DOMESTIC
ARABIC PRESS
The domestic and international press represents a further cultural

institution in which French rhetoric concerning the meaning of their
mandate conflicted with public criticism of cruder methods of control.
One such method was the censoring of newspapers that did not align
to French interests. Yet in these early years, seemingly Francophile
newspapers were also rigorously supervised. Allegiances to the mandate
project shifted over time even among those newspapers expected to be
‘Francophile’, a tendency apparent in the application of press censorship
laws. Alongside continuous contestation from Syro-Lebanese newspapers
opposed, at the very least, to the method of the mandate, a broader trend
over the first five years of France’s rule was the loss of confidence in
French goodwill among seemingly natural clients, such as the Christian-
owned press.
A variety of social demands channelled through the domestic Arab
press put pressure on the mandate authorities and on the manifold ways
in which those same authorities attempted to comprehend, contain and
control the cultural institutions they encountered. In particular, and as
with previous chapters, this cross-sectional analysis of mandatory
methods of cultural control exposes the colonial mentalities at the heart
of the administration. In the case of the press, it is fascinating to note
the choice of words that continuously reappears in reports. Newspaper
owners could be ‘Francophobic’ or ‘Francophile’, categories that were
SURVEILLANCE, SUBSIDIES AND CENSORSHIP 139
assigned in the first instance on the basis of language use and cultural
background.
If an article criticised the idea of a mandate, or the French use of
violence, the orientalist colonial logic flipped reality on its head. It was
the article that was ‘violent’ and not the colonial violence it decried.
Journalists decrying French methods in less ‘violent’ ways, for instance
asking why French bureaucrats seemed to be favoured over locals, were
being ‘xenophobic’ toward an administrative class that had just landed in
their country. Ultimately, the study of the press at this broad cross-
sectional level provides insight into the attempts of the early mandatory
administration to control cultural expression and shape public
discussion of French interests, a mission that can be judged to have
largely failed as the outbreak of the Great Syrian Revolt erupted in 1925.
Open Source Intelligence: The Service de la Presse

In its early overview of the Syrian and Lebanese press the Service de la
Presse, an open source intelligence office housed in the High
Commission, outlined the key role of Beirut as a centre of Arab
media, explaning that:
Of the Syrian and Lebanese press, it is that of Beirut which is

incontestably the most important, as much because of the number
of periodicals which are published [. . .] as because of the influence
she bears on the interior of the country and abroad, especially in
the important Syrian colonies of the Americas [. . .] one could even
say that there is, here, a constant state of near fever-like love of
journalism [. . .] the Lebanese want to be journalists in the same
way they approach being bureaucrats and merchants. More than
fifty demands for publishing [. . .] were made to the High
Commission since 1919.1
A note in one report explained the process of open source intelligence

gathering by these press services. It noted that: ‘The information given
below is destined to orient the research of intelligence officers. They
must be interpreted with care while awaiting confirmation [of the
facts]’.2 Mandate administrators thus made great efforts to acquire inside
knowledge of local peoples’ intentions and positions, despite the
possibility of misinterpretations or cognitive biases. For instance,

attempts at the political organisation of the mandate were judged to be
dependent on co-opting local elites and the ‘opinion shapers’.
A surveillance report from 1923 made clear the importance of using
newspapers to target Syro-Lebanese public opinion and betrayed
orientalist views that perceived static Islamic societies.
There is a need to know what the current public opinion [. . .] is.

First of all, the expression ‘public opinion’ [. . .] must be
understood in Syria, or at least in Damascus, in a particular sense.
It signifies precisely the opinion of the section of society that is
interested in politics [. . .] it refers to educated individuals or those
[. . .] among the ‘notables’, though this attribute need not always
mean that they are learned. This section of society, a tiny
proportion of the total [. . .] is what [. . .] constitutes ‘public
opinion’. The rest of society, the huge majority [. . .] must be
termed the masses [la foule] [. . .] that is to say the herd without
knowledge nor aspirations other than of their material egoism
[. . .] from a political point of view this mass[’s] [. . .] degree of
mobilisation [échauffement] [. . .] will only be the result of pressure
or encouragement exercised upon it by the section forming ‘public
opinion’.3
Intelligence report cards on leading political figures, who formed this

public opinion class, often noted the newspapers that they read.4
Another indication of the authorities’ interest in the public opinion class
was the fact that they used them for their own information gathering.
For instance, an unnamed Aleppine journalist sent a letter to the chief of
the Levant Army’s military intelligence (Deuxième Bureau) which began
with ‘given my work as a journalist, I am honoured to communicate this
intelligence which has recently reached me’. The source was given a
mark of 7 out of 10 for feeding the intelligence service with information
on the political opinions in various towns in Aleppo State.5
The ‘public opinion’-forming classes recognised France’s clientelist
reliance on them, allowing them to pressure the authorities with their
various, often overlapping, demands. Philip S. Khoury draws on a
conversation with Farid Zayn Al-Din, a nationalist leader and member
of the Majlis Al-Shiyūk (Sheykhs’ Council), explaining that newspapers
were read communally in the dı̄wāns, local councils, where notable urban
families met and which, he claims, ‘contributed far more than
newspapers’ because they acted as ‘great storehouses’ of ‘fresher and more
confidential information’.6 Yet an examination of newspaper activity
monitoring reveals that mandate administrators and public opinion
shapers each recognised the fourth estate as a fundamental tool for
contesting and shaping the meaning of the mandate.
A Cantankerous and Informed Press

An active Lebanese press, and concurrent Ottoman censorship, emerged
in the late nineteenth century. The region’s private press had first
emerged in Beirut, under the aegis of US Consulate dragoman Butrus
Al-Bustani, his son, Salim and other key figures.7 Minorities were active
in creating and promoting the Ottoman fourth estate. In fact, the first
Arabic language press in the Empire had been set up by Metropolitan
Bishop Athanasios Dabbas in Aleppo in 1706.8 US Presbyterians
William Goodell and Isaac Bird set up an Arabic press in Beirut in
1823.9 Julia Cohen gives the example of the Jewish Ladino newspaper El
Tiempo in Istanbul at the turn of the nineteenth century and its
participation in the 1892 Chicago World Fair.10 Ladino newspapers were
also published in Jerusalem, for instance El Liberal.11 It was Beirut,
though, that became the centre of the Ottoman press, although the
prominence of the city’s newspapers led to increasing censorship.
This, in turn, encouraged the southward late nineteenth-century
emigration of journalists to the Egyptian metropolises of Alexandria and
Cairo.12 Ottoman censorship was applied with increasing vigour from
1878 onwards, as the Hamidian regime sought to tighten its controls
over the nascent nationalism, which was finding its voice in the press.13
Though the 1908 Turkish nationalist coup reinstated a constitution,
freedom of the press did not last.14 The outbreak of the World War
witnessed strict censorship. Such was the rigidity of the censorship that
one scholar suggests that its irrationality actually encouraged
speculation in the Arabic press, thus harming Istanbul’s propaganda,
and ultimately World War I, efforts.15
In the years after the Ottoman collapse and prior to the beginning of
the mandate, the press achieved renewed prominence as Syria ‘proper’
saw an efflorescence of mass politics which was bound together by press
Figure 5.1 Beirut from the air c.1925. Available online: http://catalogue.
bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb403670765.
and pamphlet activity. However, with France occupying the Lebanese

coast, the press became increasingly divided between pro- and anti-
French factions. For instance, one journalist from east Lebanon who
claimed to represent the ‘hommes de lettres’ in the region protested against
the Damascus Syrian Congress’ 8 March 1920 decree, declaring Syrian
independence.16 In Damascus, the Faisalian government was reputedly
paying subsidies to various notables and newspapers within French-
occupied Lebanon in 1919. Al-Balagh and Al-Haqiqat received E£60
a month while the Journal de Beyrouth and Al-Iqbal received a smaller
subsidy.17 In a sign of the leverage that such subsidies could provide for
Faisal’s government, Al-Balagh and Al-Haqiqat were reported by French
intelligence to have engaged in a ‘violent polemic’ against the Ottoman
Caliphate, which stopped after the Faisalian delegation in Beirut
intervened.18
The nature of military rule during this post-Ottoman interregnum
meant that French authorities were able to exercise a degree of control
over press activity. In the British- and French-held Mediterranean
coastline military censorship was generally imposed from the outset.19
Similarly, when General Mariano Goybet victoriously entered Damascus
in July 1920, he convened a meeting of the city’s journalists to provide
them with an officially sanctioned account of events leading up to the
Battle of Maysalūn on 14 July and outlined the communiqué he

expected them to publish. The journalists were also warned that military
censorship would apply. They were informed that any ‘violent attack
against France or all false publication representing an act of anti-French
propaganda, would lead to the suspension of the newspaper’.20
High Commissioner Henri Gouraud confidently told his subordinate
Goybet that the removal of Hashemite Faisalian subventions to the city’s
newspapers would be enough to put most newspapers in the red, thus
crushing the efflorescence of mass political exchanges. Gouraud expressed
his hopes of maintaining a few that represented elite constituencies in the
city, undoubtedly as a means of gaining local intermediaries for public
opinion shaping, as was outlined by the Service de la Presse in its 1921
mission statement. High Commissioner Gouraud recommended that
Muhammad Kurd ‘Ali be approached to resurrect his newspaper,
Al-Muqtabas, though the Arab nationalist figure would be expected to
adopt a more Francophile tone. He further suggested that a similar
agreement could be reached with the editors of Fatat ‘Al-Arab
(Arab Youth) and Suriya Al-Jadidat (The New Syria). Gouraud also
encouraged Goybet to avoid giving financial aid to new newspapers.21
Gouraud’s orders that he did not ‘expect to suppress all opposition’
and that ‘the censorship will be very liberal’ did not transpire. In this
respect, as with its resurrection of Ottoman-era antiquities laws, the
mandatory power’s methods did not greatly differ from the late-
Ottoman state’s administration.22 Repression was harsh. Lists of
punishments meted out in the post-Maysalūn period noted that several
journalists and writers were imprisoned. One among them, Lebanese
pressman Ma‘rouf Arna’out, was sentenced to one year in prison for
printing ‘false news’ in his paper Fatat Al ‘Arab (Arab Youth), though he
did not serve the full sentence.23 Another, Mounir Al-Aita, suffered the
same fate. Nadim Zabian received four years’ hard labour on the island
prison of Arwad for ‘affaire des tracts’ (pamphleteering).24 In June 1921,
High Commissioner Gouraud wrote to Paris saying that he had been
‘forced to arrest the owner of [Sada] Al-Ahwal’ in Beirut because that
˙ ˙
publication had announced that 200,000 Turks were at the gates of
Aleppo, which had allegedly caused a public panic. The incident became
another of several diplomatic wrangles when it emerged the paper’s
editor had been a dragoman of the Portuguese consulate, thus securing
him capitulatory protections.25
From the formal outset of the mandate, the Service de la Presse

compiled lists of the newspapers then being published. In 1921 it listed
15 French-language newspapers: one under French ownership with the
others being run by Lebanese men. Fourteen newspapers in Arabic
appeared every year; with five being edited by Muslims and nine by
Christians. Eleven literary, scientific and religious reviews were
appearing. In the rest of Lebanon, ten newspapers and five reviews
were published in Arabic. The report noted that many Christian papers
shut down during World War I.
The Service de la Presse report betrayed a paternalistic view of the
newspapers. It painted the Lebanese newspapers as being:
Still in shock, coming out of the [Ottoman] shadow [. . .] they

[the Lebanese] did not always know how to make use of the
instrument [the media] that was being given to them [. . .] often,
the editors are lacking culture or even basic information. They lack
general information, lacking reporters and correspondents.
They are too easily satisfied with the information given them by
the Bureau of the Press [. . .] they lack [. . .] initiative and the same
ideas are recycled [. . .] by several newspapers.26
Far from encouraging a fertile Syro-Lebanese public sphere, the press

service sought a consolidation of fewer, larger, and ‘better resourced’
(i.e., more easily influenced) newspapers. The report noted that major
titles such as Le Réveil (The Awakening), Al-Balagh, Lisan Al-Hal and
Al-Barq had managed to put smaller titles out of business. The French
praised the development of these bigger newspapers, which, it was
noted, were beginning to send out correspondents and thus improve
their information gathering. This doubtless was seen as an opportunity
to intervene more directly in influencing newspapers’ coverage. The
High Commission even supported such papers with funds in the hope
that this would ‘get rid of the mediocre press which disturbs it.’27
As was the case with the rhetoric of the antiquities service, the press
service sought to utilise the reality of Ottoman decline to justify the
consolidation of French control of newspapers.
Other signs of difficulties in press management are evident. It is
interesting that the influential Al-Ahrar was largely ignored in the press
˙
bureau’s summaries. This was in flat contradiction to covert intelligence
gathered on the newspaper, drawn from local sources, which emphasised

the newspaper’s importance. A French spy reported a series of speeches
heard in the Damascus Road Mason’s lodge in Beirut. He reported that
Al-Ahrar editor Said Sabbagh had encouraged others to increase
˙
private subsidies to his paper. According to French intelligence, Sabbagh
claimed that the newspaper had taken on the role of ‘killing’ pro-French
Lebanese newspapers and that Al-Ahrar alone counted for one-third of
˙
all Lebanese newspapers sold. His claim was supported by Isber Shuqair,
previously the Chancellor (chief secretary) at the British Consulate, who
claimed that Al-Ahrar received 700 Syrian pounds (S£) in donations
˙
as a result of it being ‘the leader of the opposition’ in contrast to the
S£200 that France gave to its most favoured Lebanese newspaper.28
This oversight underlines the biases and selectivity of the Lebanon press
bureau’s assessments.
The Service de la Presse in Syria ‘proper’ was a smaller operation based
in Damascus. It was funded by the High Commission until 1925, at
which point its costs were transferred to the State of Syria’s local
budgetary expenditure. It was apparently staffed by an unfortunately
solitary secretary, who also moonlighted as translator.29 Given the small
scale of the operation, it is unsurprising that several Damascus
newspapers known to have circulated prior to the mandate went
unmentioned in the Damascus press bureau’s official review, which took
place in 1924.30 The Damascus press bureau also monitored newspapers
in Homs while a press bureau in Aleppo covered that region and the
Alawite State.
The flurry of positions taken by newspapers demonstrated that French
assumptions that these classes simply hierarchically formed the opinions
of the masses and represented clear-cut linguistic and religious
communal interests were inaccurate. Many of the key battles during the
formative years, with ongoing military and judicial repression in the
background, took place in cultural institutions. Though press silence
was easily bought in the short term, as was noted by British and French
reports, the journalistic community proved more cantankerous when
dealing with issues of broad social and political interest. Far from being
simple mouthpieces for the highest bidders, the press demonstrated
variable and complex stances.
One such case concerned the plight of political prisoners. After
the crushing defeat of the Arab nationalist attempt to sustain an
independent Syrian state in 1920, many leaders of the Arabist movement

became prisoners. Held in prisons throughout the territories, various
sections of Syrian and Lebanese civil society expressed their sympathies.
In this instance, the domestic press continued its tradition of vociferous
positions against what were deemed to be unjust acts. In 1923 Al-Tabaki
al-Suri (The Cry of Syria) called for the quickest possible decision on
the numerous prisoners.31 Al-Barı̄d al-Suri (The Syrian Post), based in
Aleppo, also put pressure on Syrian Federation president Subhi
Barakat al-Khalidi to keep his promise of granting an amnesty to
political prisoners.32 The protest was reported by intelligence, which
demonstrated its own capacity for oversight by intercepting the
protestors’ letter when it still had only 20 supporting signatures.33
The continued imprisonment of a number of Syrians who had
participated in anti-colonial activity elicited other popular and non-
partisan protests. One letter gathered the signatures of nearly 3,000
people reportedly at the initiative of Antioch Mufti Safwat Bey Barakat.
It was signed by Christians and Jews as well as Muslims. The petition
was spread by a network including Sadalat Jabri, Fakhr Al-Jabri and
Ibrahim Hanano in Aleppo and Sadalat Al-Antaki in Beirut. Also
among the the signatories were the Grand Rabbi of Aleppo, Jewish
merchant Rahmé Nahmad Hadès and Noury Pasha Mellah, a
Jewish doctor.
Syrian Unity in the Press

The press also played a key role in examining the debates over a proposed
union of the Alawite, Aleppo and Damascus states. This was in response
to the deep discontent over the continuing separation of these states
within an umbrella Syrian Federation. This debate, however, did not
show the clear-cut dissatisfaction with mandate policy that crossed
ethnic, geographical and political lines. There were nuanced discussions
about the country’s political development. Some newspapers took a pro-
mandate government line, arguing in favour of maintaining these
administrative divisions.34
As early as 1921 the Damascene and Aleppine press struck a more
militant tone with the Aleppo papers Al-Taqqadum (The Progress),
Al-Ummah (The Nation) and Sahiqa (In-Depth) undertaking what the
French reported to be a ‘violent’ campaign against Damascene
newspapers Alif Bāʼ, Dammar (Honour) and Abunawass (Father of

_
the Change).35 At the end of 1921, an administrative report coolly stated
that ‘censorship has put an end to the polemic which had occurred [. . .]
between the unionist press of Damascus and that of Aleppo with its
separatist aspirations’.36 It was a complete misjudgement of the scale of
dissatisfaction with the initial mandatory organisation. In December
1923, the Aleppine newspaper Al-Taqqadum published an editorial
arguing that the Alawites had rejected overtures from Damascene
nationalists to reunite their countries in opposition to the French-created
Federation of Syrian States.
The paper highlighted regional disputes and Aleppine fears of
Damascene dominance.37 Al-Taqqadum was joined in its campaign
against a union of the Aleppo and Damascus states by another Aleppo
newspaper, Al-Barı̄d al-Suri, which wrote of the heavy cost paid for the
Federation by Aleppines. It also railed against the deputies from Aleppo
who had failed to defend their hometown interests, let alone the
peripheral interests of the annexed Sanjaks of Alexandretta and Deir
ez-Zor. The editorial explained that they did not: ‘want a minister, nor a
king nor great titles nor people who will colonise us and take
our money’.38
Another Aleppo newspaper Al-Tarikhi al-Suri received and published
a letter from young students in Al-Ala near Hama. They explained that
the impact of the union would be to reduce their bursaries, which were
being diverted by Damascenes to finance education in the capital. The
letter went on to rather melodramatically suggest that this would leave
Aleppine students without food. The students explained that there could
be unity in ‘their ideas and their laws but not in their finances since each
[state] will look after their own in the aim of perfecting their education
[. . .] or for unimportant projects such as the opening of a Syrian
University paid for by the Federation’.39 They concluded by alleging
that the Damascene press wielded undue influence on mandate
administrators’ opinions.
Set against these oppositional voices there were also pro-union
viewpoints that were not confined to the Damascus press. Aleppo
newspaper Al-Tabaki al-Suri printed an editorial endorsing a federated
country similar to the USA and advocating a Lebanese referendum on
rejoining Syria. It rejected Alexandretta’s separation and encouraged the
creation of one organisation for the three states (Alawite, Damascus and
Aleppo) as well as a unification of their public education. Another

Aleppo journal, Suriya Al-Shamaliyya (Northern Syria), also argued for
unity as an ‘ideal for all interested in the future of the Fatherland’ and
praised Rabih Al-Kobanih’s speech in favour of unity in the Aleppo State
representatives’ council.
Aleppo newspaper Al-Barid al-Suri claimed that although the
Damascus representatives’ council had been the earliest to call for unity,
this call had not been echoed by Aleppo representatives like Fakhr Al-
Jabri. Al-Jabri’s speech to the Aleppo Assembly instead asked for true
unity and not a federation organised by General Gouraud for French
purposes.40 Another Aleppo newspaper, Al-Nahda, also proclaimed that
˙
‘the song of unity is well liked by Aleppines and is their sacred anthem.’
It railed against ‘certain [local] people [. . .] [who] had petitioned
members of the mandatory government to parcel up Syria [. . .] in order
to gain a profit’.41
Some of these newspapers, however, developed nuanced critiques of
unionist positions. They were not wholly opposed to a political union of
Syria but wanted it to proceed cautiously. They were not simple stooges
for a French policy of division either, and criticised broader socio-
economic aspects of governance. Under the pen name of ‘Fadel’, a writer
for Al-Barı̄d al-Suri outlined a number of political demands. Paying lip
service to the High Commissioner’s Delegate to the Aleppo State,
General Gaston Billote, ‘Fadel’ nevertheless listed a number of
shortcomings. He pressed for a more extensive French agricultural
policy, one that would at the very least secure a return to Ottoman
standards, and he went on to propose a school for cheese and butter
manufacturing and a school at Salamiyah for agricultural development
techniques, reflecting the developmental demands previously
discussed.42
In an editorial, Al-Barı̄d al-Suri exhorted the Damascene press to gain
a subtler understanding of local developments in the Syrian Federation.
The editorial alleged that the Damascene press had attacked Aleppo’s
religious chiefs and Kurdish representatives, labelling them traitors for
their failure to oppose the creation of ‘jurisdictions étrangères’: Ottoman-
legacy legal loopholes that were created to maintain Ottoman-era
capitulations for foreign citizens. Al-Barı̄d al-Suri argued that
‘fanaticism does not exist in Aleppo and all her inhabitants respect the
community leaders’. It noted that even the city’s Bar Council had
refrained from protesting against these legal exemptions for foreigners,

noting that two magistrates serving at the Appellate Court (Court de
Cassation) were themselves foreigners. Al-Barı̄d al-Suri was thus
intimating that the Damascene press was making a great deal of noise on
the wrong issue. The newspaper wryly noted that: ‘it would be in the
interest of the Damascene newspapers to insist [on the matter] with the
Director of Justice [of the Syrian Federation]’. This pointed to the fact
that the Arabist Damascene newspapers were busier complaining about
the seeming quiescence of their Aleppine confederates on the question of
Syrian unity than in pursuing direct protests with the government.43
Al-Barı̄d al-Suri specifically picked out the pan-Arab Beiruti
newspaper Alif Bāʼ for its story that picked up on the demands of one
Kurdish representative in Aleppo to speak in Turkish in the
representative’s council. The paper dismissed Alif Bā’s request that
Arabic be spoken, noting that forcing the many Kurds and Turks in the
north of Aleppo state to speak Arabic would alienate them and perhaps
lead them to militate for an autonomous region like Alexandretta.44 It is
important to note that this north–south Syrian newspaper divide was
not constant. Newspapers also fed off one another, especially in cases
where criticism of the French administration was not focused on political
organisation but on the material impact of its fiscal and development
programmes. Aleppo’s Suriya al-Shamaliya published an article by an
anonymous writer who signed off his article ‘an angry man’. It was a
story based on news from the Damascene papers regarding the corrupt
allocation of lucrative administrative posts within the Federation by
General Gouraud.45
The article wrote that the authorities had ‘cast lots for my garments
[ils ont tires au sort mon habit]’: a biblical reference to venality and greed.
The writer sardonically noted that the Compagnie Franc aise de Havas
wire service had news of the re-election of Subhi Barakat al-Khalidi
before it had even happened noting that ‘it seems that this company [. . .]
had a clairvoyant that could see the future’. With further derision, the
paper asked:
Does the [Syrian] nation have the right to complain about taxes
and to moan about the customs taxes, all the while seeing their
money being spent for the great meals and the most noble goal of
removing rivalries and rancour [. . .] especially when this is done
thanks to tax money and in the process of sumptuous dinners

which bring together good wine with better words.46
In an open letter to the Governor of Aleppo, Haqqi Al-‘Azm, Al-Tarikhi

al-Suri did not shy away from making demands of the French. It wrote
that:
The struggle for life is a law of the formation of the world [. . .] if

we consider the acts of men alongside those of nature, things do
not remain as they are; they improve and the children of the nation
can thus follow the path to perfection [. . .] We have alerted you,
Excellence, [to] [. . .] the disorder there reigns in some
administrations under your control [. . .] we hope this will be
fixed thanks to your zeal and energy [. . .] if what we had attributed
to these administrations was not true they should have referred our
‘lies’ to the courts to refute them. If it was true, the bureaucrats
should have resigned [. . .] the nation does not and will never
accept to pay these bureaucrats [. . .] from the money gathered
from the sweat off the faces of her children.47
The press also served as a link between the various actors and the
political framework being established. In December 1923, Al-Tarikhi
al-Suri of Aleppo published an editorial criticising the first Federal
Council, established in 1922, which it claimed was unelected and failed
to provide popular representation. The newspaper conceded that the
Federation’s Council had been elected by different communities of
the nation without distinction of religion. In this spirit, it called on
President Subhi Barakat al-Khalidi to ‘be worthy of the nation’s trust’
and alluded to the past glories of Khalid Ibn al-Walid, the renowned
seventh-century Islamic conqueror of Syria.
Al-Tarikhi al-Suri even laid out a vision for Syria, insisting that
Syrian unity was the most important thing for the country and arguing
that the federated USA offered a potential model. It called on Barakat to
follow George Washington’s example.48 The newspaper continued this
campaign in other editorials addressed to President Barakat, insisting
that Lebanon and Alexandretta should be brought back within the cadre
of a Syrian state under a federal constitution.49 In a similar sign of
holding government to account, Damascus-based Al-Ra’y al-‘Am
reported the opening of the second session of the Damascus State’s

representative assembly in 1924, held at the Club Franco-Syrien. The
newspaper warned the representatives ‘not to follow their old tactics and
to know that the nation is well informed on all of their actions’.50
These were not empty warnings. The British consul in Aleppo, W.A.
Smart, translated and transmitted a protest against the draft 1926
electoral law by Damascene notables that had been published in various
newspapers.51 The effectiveness of the oppositional press was recognised
at the end of the period under study. A reflective French report from
January 1926 complained about the press in interventions in
constitutional debates as mandate administrators sought to temper
increasing impatience with their governance methods while suppressing
the Great Syrian Revolt. The report noted that: ‘the right given to
Lebanese and Syrians to deliberate their own constitution, to choose their
own government, did not stop certain newspapers and certain Syrian
politicians to write or declare: “nothing has changed”’.52
Censorship and Press Laws

In the face of this cantankerous and well-informed press, an increasing
dependence on censorship characterised early French interactions
with local newspapers. Censorship was not exclusive to the period
under study. It had been common under the Ottomans.53 It had also
been frequently exercised during the British and French military
occupation. In the first years of the mandate there was a military
administrator and an ad hoc censorship of the press whenever articles
were deemed to be against the administration. The formative initial
five years of mandate governance were decisive with regards to both the
methods of censorship that French authorities sought and the
opposition they encountered to their application, though censorship
certainly continued after the 1925 Revolt, as Shams Al-Dı̄n Al-Rifa’ı̄’s
history of the press outlines.54
In preparation for the formal declaration of a League of Nations
mandate, and the need for a civic administration, the French passed
legislation that suspended military censorship on 27 September 1923.
Alongside the pressure from international requirements, a great deal of
pressure had been applied locally, pressure that continued even after the
suspension of military censorship as indicated by the fact that civil
regulation of the press continued. In 1924, Arrêté (Statutory Order)

2464 was passed regulating the press in Greater Lebanon.55 Article 3
required all printing presses to deposit three copies of each prospective
publication. Article 4 afforded the governor of Lebanon the authority to
ban the sale or circulation of books, brochures or foreign printed works.
Article 6 limited editorial rights to those who were citizens of the Syrian
mandate or League of Nations states and who had never been sentenced
to more than six months of prison.
This latter requirement thus ruled out a great many dissidents
who had been prosecuted at the beginning of mandatory rule. The
owner of the periodical had to deposit S£500 at the Bank of Syria.56
Article 11 confirmed official powers to suspend and fine any
journal and even gave authorities the option of imposing a prison
sentence. Articles 24 and 25 made it a crime for any article to incite
criminal or delinquent acts. Article 26 made it criminal to publish an
article that disdained or insulted religions. Articles 29 and 30 ensured
censorship by enacting conditions for libel and defamation claims
defamation.57
In April 1925, Governor of Lebanon Leon Cayla signed another order,
Arrêté 3080, which was superimposed on the law governing the press in
Lebanon. The first article established a further level of defamation
powers by setting out that:
The Governor [. . .] can suspend any journal or written periodical

which has published one or more articles, information or drawings
that aim to attack the public authorities by means of liberal
interpretation [usage licencieux] of the right to criticism and, in a
general manner, to endanger [. . .] peace and public order.58
In June 1924, a month after the Lebanese and Alawite press law was
promulgated, the Governor of Damascus Haqqi Al-‘Azm signed an
identical law into effect.59 The State of Aleppo passed the equivalent law
in August 1924.60
The civil criminalisation of fourth estate activity did not go
unchallenged, as will be seen below. When the outbreak of the Great
Syrian Revolt in autumn 1925 saw the reimposition of military
censorship, pressure on the mandate administration encountered at
the League of Nations, the result of consistent lobbying of mahjar
Syro-Lebanese, ensured its brevity. High Commission Order 1816,

signed into law on 16 February 1928, put an end to the military
censorship that had been applied by previous Orders 137 and 146 of
1926. Article 2 of Order 1816 nevertheless allowed the retention of a
degree of regulation of press and magazine publishing.61
Yet even such attempts at restriction via intimidation could be
circumvented by making overly exaggerated claims. For instance, the
Damascus newspaper Fatat Al-‘Arab (Arab Youth) published false claims
that an amnesty had been granted to the political prisoners on the island
of Arwad. In an internal note discussing this article, the Damascus
Police’s Counsel suggested that there had been an attempt to ‘create a
public agitation and force the government’s hand’ in awarding an
amnesty to such political prisoners as ‘Abd Al-Rahman Shahbandar.62
Little can be discerned about the extent to which extra-legal threats to
publishers forced them to change their tune. For instance, in 1923, Emir
Assad Ayoubi, the editor of Sada Al-Sha‘ab (Echo of the People), sought to
˙
restart his newspaper, which had been shelved for three months. A French
report noted how he now sought to portray itself as ‘motivated by the
most loyal of sentiments toward the government and mandatory power’.63
In October 1924, reports surfaced that the owner of Alif Bāʼ had been
beaten up as he was returning to his house. Al-Ra’y al-‘Am’s correspondent
called on the authorities to severely punish the culprit. He added that the
mandatory power could not accept that history should repeat itself and
that a Hamidian-style despotism could return.64
Opposition to the Press Laws

These regressive press laws, which clearly flouted the progressive spirit of
the mandate, occasioned an outpouring of anger in Syro-Lebanese
columns. A correspondent for the Al-’Arz (Cedars), who was a lawyer,
expressed surprise at the Lebanese press regulation passed in spring
1924. The lawyer added that if such a law were passed then anarchy
would reign.65 Sada al-Ahwal protested the press law on the same
˙ ˙
grounds, noting that this was attacking press freedoms. Sada al-Ahwal
˙ ˙
recognised that the press law could act as ‘a weapon in the hands of those
opposed to the mandate [. . .] these Syrian and Lebanese newspapers
make eulogies of the mandatory power for fear of losing their financial
inducements’.66
Al-Ahrar expressed fears that journalists would lose their freedom if

˙
the press law were to go ahead. An editorial expressed how they were
‘stunned that the High Commission approved a law that, in a number of
its articles, does not comply with the spirit of the laws. We have never
heard of a retroactive law [. . .] among other things, the press law
contains articles that do not distinguish between criticism that seeks
reform and criticism that uses journalism to defame people’.67 Al-Bayān
(The Dispatch) criticised the government by noting that it had put all its
emphasis on punishment and had neglected putting forward a moral
code of conduct for journalists.68
Sada al-Ahwal declared in an editorial that journalism was a trade
˙ ˙
like any other, yet common law did not have a retroactive element.
It could not understand why the press law punished newsmen for
previously legal activities. Al-Watan noted that the suspension of
newspapers was carried out randomly during the Ottoman period, with
journalists beseeching the authorities at that time to apply the Ottoman
press law, rather than freely suspending their papers. Yet, ironically, the
newspapers now found themselves hoping to return to the anarchic
Ottoman situation since the French press law was just too draconian.69
Al-Ahrar commented that the press law had imposed criminal
˙
penalties on newspapers failing to comply. It believed that this would be
used to punish those newspapers that were most critical of the
government. It added that they were: ‘Not [. . .] among those who
demand complete liberty of expression [. . .] [but] sincere criticism is the
foundation of all reform’.70 Al-Ra’y al-‘Am wrote an editorial noting
the surprise of the Lebanese press at the law since France itself had a
reputation for press freedoms. The press in Lebanon and Syria was now
being confronted by ‘an unparalleled catastrophe’ which witnessed
worse conditions than those found in France’s formal colonial territories
in Tunisia and Algeria, where the newspapers were not required to
pay a deposit.71
Al-Muqtabas, owned by Muhammad Kurd ‘Ali and edited by his
brother Ahmed, was suspended for a month in early 1924 for printing:
‘Insults against an allied power [Italy] regarding Tripolitania’. In the
same period the Christian-owned but largely Muslim-read Suriya
al-Shamaliyya, based in Aleppo, had been suspended for a month for
printing anti-mandate commentaries.72 On 15 March 1924, two
newspaper closures were reported in French press bureau summaries.
Newspaper Al-Haqiqat was penalised, prompting protest from Al-Ra’y

al-‘Am. Al-Ra’y al-‘Am also reported that Al-Maʻrad and Al-Bayān had
˙
been shut down as a result of their republishing a cartoon depicting the
funeral of the Syrian pound with three caricatures of mandate political
leaders: a satire on the severe devaluation problems plaguing the Syrian
currency. Al-Ahwal defended Al-Maʻrad, suggesting that insulting the
˙ ˙
political leaders was not the cartoon’s intent.73
In April 1924, Al-Muqtabas was again suspended, this time for
printing an article deemed injurious to Haqqi Al-‘Azm. Al-Ra’y al-‘Am
commented on the suspension: ‘Among the Damascene newspapers,
we notice that Al-Muqtabas is distinguished [. . .] by its criticism of
bureaucrats who seek to destroy what was built by the wise among the
people’.74 Later that month, Al-Ra’y al-‘Am reported that Al-Mufid (The
Purpose) had been suspended for a fortnight. Al-Ra’y al-‘Am believed that
the suspension was in retaliation for a meeting of journalists organised to
protest the newly published press law. Commenting on the episode,
Al-Ahrar noted the lack of reason given for the suspension and asked:
˙
‘Is it not time that we are governed by standard laws like other peoples.
Must journalists always be under the threat of suspension without
judgement?’75
Another controversy concerned the requirement for a large S£500
deposit to establish a newspaper. Georges Awad, the director of
Al-Hurriya, requested that the deposit should be equally imposed on
those newspapers that were subsidised by the government.76 The Jewish
newspaper L’Univers Israélite expressed its hope that the authorities
would not be overly strict regarding the deposit.77 Al-Hadyat
(The Guidance) commented on the press law by noting that journalists
were protesting against the Lebanese government. It noted that
discussions regarding the press law were ongoing between the Lebanese
government’s Interior Minister and Maronite Sheikh Yusuf Al-Khazen.
The newspaper wrote that the rationale behind the deposit was flawed,
given that a rich person of poor morals could establish a paper, and a poor
person of good intent could not.78 Al-Watan reminded its readers that
the Ottomans had never implemented such a deposit and urged the
mandate authorities to exercise similar leniency.79
Reporting the Chamber of Deputies’ discussion of the new press law,
Al-Ahrar wrote that those who could have witnessed the debate could
˙
easily have laughed, ‘but only because it is better to laugh than to cry’.
Al-Ahrar explained that the alternative deposit proposed by a deputy

˙
named Mindhar over the course of the debates, which would have seen
the financial element replaced with the sworn testimony of a guarantor,
would be an improvement.80 Al-Balagh expressed its shock at the
Lebanese deputies’ decision to confirm the S£500 deposit, adding that
the deputies should have resigned in protest.81 When news reached
Al-Ra’y al-‘Am that the Aleppo Assembly had annulled the clause
pertaining to the financial deposit, the newspaper praised the Syrians of
the interior for their ‘national quality of patriotism and energy’.82
Al-Watan rhetorically asked if there were a single deputy who would
speak in a similar fashion inside the Assembly.83
Writing in Al-’Arz, Lebanese deputy Hammour wrote that the
French authorities had made an initial mistake in allowing anyone to set
up a newspaper at the beginning of the mandate. Realising their error,
the French reaction to this was a disproportionate pre-emptive fine in the
form of the deposit.84 Al-Maʻrad also noted the discrepancies between
˙
the Aleppo and Damascus assemblies in scrutinising the 1924 press law.
Al-Maʻrad added that the Damascus delegates had approved 33 articles
˙
in a single sitting, without proper readings. Al-Maʻrad’s criticisms of
˙
the Damascus Assembly was echoed by Sada Al-Ahwal, Al-’Arz, Lisan
˙ ˙
Al-Hal and Al-Ra’y al-‘Am.
The Damascus Assembly nevertheless halved the deposit. Sada
˙
Al-Ahwal further noted that the Aleppo deputies had even cancelled the
˙ 85
deposit. The discrepancies between the Lebanon, Damascus and
Aleppo states’ representatives were noted to have made a farce of France’s
aims. Ababil declared that ‘it is risible that the deposit [. . .] should be
fixed at S£250 by the assembly of Damascus, at S£500 in the case of
the Beirut assembly and cancelled in the case of the Aleppo assembly’.86
Al-Ahwal called on the government to suspend the requirement for a
˙
deposit at least for those newspapers that been set up before the 1908
Young Turk constitutional reforms.87
Criticism was not reserved for the French authorities; it also targeted
local notables who failed to represent popular wishes. Le Monaghèche
noted that deposit requirements for newspapers were unanimously
approved by the Lebanese Assembly while deposits on land acquisitions
proposed in another law, which it suggested could impact the deputies’
land holdings, were rejected by a majority. Al-Balagh noted that
deputies were keen to raise the deposit from S£250 to S£500 while
fighting the introduction of a deposit for gambling houses. The paper

judged that the deputies were telling people that journalists were more
detrimental to society than gamblers.88
The satirical Al-Dabbour accused the deputies of sitting comfortably
in their chamber to pick up their pay. It sarcastically encouraged them to
represent the national interest by agreeing with the French governor on
everything.89 Al-Ra’y al-‘Am also made light of the situation. It wrote
sarcastically that there was no need for a new press law in spring 1924
since one could already be discerned. This ‘alternative’ law had but four
articles: ‘1) the majority of subscribers do not pay; 2) the readers do not
appreciate the effort needed for a newspaper; 3) the large number of
newspapers are the cause of newspapers dying; 4) the courts are free to do
what they wish with the press.’90
Francophile newspapers offered mixed judgements of the law as plans
for the legislation were published in draft before being passed in April
1924. In February, the Jesuit newspaper Al-Bashir noted that the
law had failed to account for moral practices. It also called on
the government to deploy the worst elements of the new law, such as the
prison term, with restraint.91 Later in May, Al-Bashir published a
denunciation of Al-Dabbour, writing of ‘certain humoristic newspapers
which publish articles that inevitably corrupt the public, and make
certain descriptions that even the most perverse of people would never
dare make’. Al-Bashir called on the Service de la Presse to clean up such
immoral activity.92 Later still, the newspaper again changed its tone,
arguing that the law was attacking press freedoms and that the loud
complaints against it were reasonable.93 The generally Francophile
Al-Barq wrote that the new law on the press was intended to muzzle
legitimate criticism by bundling this with defamation.94
Al-Lisan Al-Hal noted that newspapers seemed overly keen to jump
to criticism of any government action, yet the newspaper also admitted
that there was a harsh press regime.95 Al-Watan expressed its lack of
expectations that the deputies would defend press freedom, noting that
the press itself had been the most fervent critic of these same deputies in
the assemblies. Al-Watan added that it was confident that the French,
Egyptian and US press would continue the work of critique that the
domestic press was currently undertaking. It pointed out that even
under the harsh censorship of foreign news during the rule of Sultan
Abdulhamid II, foreign outlets were still being read.96 Al-Watan’s
prediction of the importance of regional and international newspapers

was correct, as will be shown in a subsequent chapter.
However, Al-Balagh took a pessimistic view of the press protests,
writing that: ‘the new law on the press, has drawn the condemnation of
journalists; but we will no longer hear the protests which will have no
impact. Tomorrow the journalists will pay the financial deposit’.97 The
satirical Al-Dabbour published a prayer to God asking for journalists’
deliverance from the press law.98 When Barı̄d Al-Sharq (The Oriental
Post) was suspended in December 1924, Al-Ra’y al-‘Am echoed
Al-Dabbour, asking in its report for God’s protection from the press law,
though this time it seems to have been speaking in all seriousness.99
Despite this pessimism, some degree of corps solidarity emerged from
this press law fight. French intelligence reported in February 1923 that
several newspaper editors, including those of La Syrie, Le Réveil, L’Echo
d’Orient, Al-Ahwal, Al-Ahrar, Al-Bayān, Lisan Al-Hal, Al- Maʻrad and
˙ ˙ ˙
even the Jesuit Al-Bashir, attended a gathering in the house of a
Mademoiselle Saouda.100 In spring 1924, Ababil held interviews with a
senior High Commission mandarin in which the newspaper conveyed
the press corps’ grievances.101 Al-Ahwal noted that journalists ironically
˙
arranged a meeting with High Commissioner Weygand at Damascus’
Hôtel Gouraud to organise a press syndicate in summer 1924.102
In October 1924, Damascus newspaper Alif Bāʼ was spared legal
proceedings when the local prosecutor dropped the case against it.
According to Al-Ahrar, this was due to the pressure put on the
˙
High Commissioner and Syrian Federation President Subhi Barakat by
journalists who had used this cause to form a Damascus press
syndicate.103 The impact of these protests on French methods is unclear
though the newfound appetite for journalist fraternity was evident.
In April 1924, Al-Balagh joined the call for unionisation.104 In May
1924, Sada Al-Ahwal reported rumours that the High Commission
˙ ˙
was inclined to consider halving the deposit for newspapers to S£250
following the press uproar.105 In Lebanon, in February 1925, Al-Watan
joined Al-Ahwal in calling for the creation of a journalists’ union similar
˙
to that in Damascus.106
However, the press laws could also encourage internecine fighting, to
the benefit of the mandate authorities. In December 1924, the owner
of the Al-Watan newspaper sued Arzat Lubnan (Lebanon’s Cedars) for
defamation.107 The Jesuit Al-Bashir denounced the poor fact checking in
the press which led to much false information being printed and flung
around between newspapers.108 In December 1924, Al-Barq published
an editorial blaming journalists for failing to check their facts, and
preferring to criticise the authorities from behind their desks when they
could have worked more collaboratively with the government.109
The issue of censorship was used by the organised anti-imperial
opposition to score political points in an area of broad consensus. The
close links between the fourth estate and traditional political figures
like Shahbandar was evidenced in the protests against the press law.
Several Syrian notables, including the Francophile Amir Taher Al-Jazairi,
Khalil Matouq and Fawzi Al-Baqri, met with the High Commissioner’s
delegate to Damascus in 1923 to demand liberty of the press and freedom
of association.110 Those local elites less approving of the mandate were
vociferous in their opposition.
In Sidon, a French-run agent informed intelligence of a meeting held
at the Greek Catholic Bishop’s house attended by local notables of all
religions.111 Among them was Dr Sharif Osseiran, a member of the
Sidon Democratic Committee, whose speech denounced the lack of press
freedoms.112 A relative of Dr Osseiran’s, Rashid Osseiran was one of two
journalists at the meeting, alongside Bahaeddine Zein, representing the
Brazilian Syro-Lebanese newspaper Al-Tassahul (Tolerance).113 They were
flagged by the administrative advisor for the Sanjak of South Lebanon
as having been behind a propaganda campaign against local notables
in Sidon.114
Abroad, the Syrian Union party wrote to the Secretary General of the
League of Nations. Their letter references an article in Alif Bāʼ that
purported to quote General Gouraud stating during a banquet in
Damascus that the mandate could only be established violently, likely a
fabrication. Their letter also cited the newspaper Homs, which quoted
Gouraud as having been upset at a boycott of an event held in his
honour; it further alleged that the High Commissioner had told those
unhappy with the mandate regime to leave the country. The Syrian
Union party noted that all these articles had been published despite
military censorship, demonstrating the constant opposition to the
regime.115
It is unlikely that Gouraud spoke so frankly in public. Yet the episode
demonstrates how even the use of censorship was held by those falling
under its purview as a proof of the tenuous French hold on Syria and
Lebanon. It is interesting to note that Syrian and Lebanese papers even

received support from French citizens and newspapers. Jacques Sedoul, a
prominent French defence lawyer, travelled to Beirut to defend three
notables and three owners of newspapers accused of having encouraged
the 1925 Great Revolt.116
The battle to control the domestic press intensified over the course
of the outbreak of the Great Syrian Revolt. Yet it was a losing battle.
French claims to culture and civilisation justifying the meaning of
their mandate were being undermined by mature institutions, such
as the press, which could shape domestic and international awareness
of the reality of crude French methods of control. In Geneva, the
exiled and vociferous leaders of the Syro-Lebanese anti-imperial
opposition, Shakib Arslan, Ihsan Al-Jabiri and Riyad Al-Solh, wrote
˙
to the General Council of the League of Nations in September 1927
protesting conditions in Syria. They specifically highlighted the
suppression of freedom of expression and the containment of the
domestic newspapers.117
The trio began their letter by highlighting a declaration that they had
previously sent to the League of Nations offering an olive branch to the
French and reaffirmed ‘that we never had any other goal but that of
ensuring the liberty and independence of Syria’.118 They noted that:
‘This declaration having produced [. . .] a favourable response among
French official circles and had been treated with sympathy among the
Parisian press, we would have hoped for a change in the French policy
toward our country [. . .] Yet after persistent overtures [. . .] our
efforts [. . .] were paralysed’.119 As a result of this impasse,
the authors explained, they were renewing their campaign directed
at the League.
In this spirit, they outlined the continuing censorship of the domestic
press:
We are forced [. . .] to declare, with regret, that the regime of force

continues in full swing [. . .] suspensions of newspapers (ten
newspapers were suspended in one month in Lebanon) deserve to
be given serious attention. A quick glance at the Damascus
newspapers, forced to fill their columns with adverts [. . .] in order
to replace the reports blacked out by the censors’ pens, gives a
good sense of the current situation in Syria.120
Conclusion
French attempts to exercise control over the press in Syria and Lebanon
were consistently contested by a range of newspapers in these formative
mandate years. Authorities sought to comprehend and classify these
newspapers as the shapers of public opinion. Yet these orientalist
assumptions about the roots of social power lying in a class of public
opinion shapers who could be controlled through a protectorate-style
clientelist model fell flat when the efflorescence of public commentary,
already present in the post-Ottoman interregnum, retained its full verve.
Far from delivering mandatory oversight in a progressive spirit, the
authorities were forced to depend on regressive methods of control
including a censorship regime that was widely denounced and derided as
being even worse than that of Ottoman times. Such opposition during
the early mandate did not, however, lead to an end of censorship in later
periods of greater local autonomy. Indeed, National Bloc leader Nassib
Al-Baqri, for instance, passed Decree n8 34/L in the 1930s that shut
down several Damascene newspapers.121 The first five years’ contestation
did not rid the country of censorship, yet it had begun to change who
held the censor’s pen.
CHAPTER 6
SUBSERVIENCE AND
SANCTION? THE
FRANCOPHONE PRESS
The politicisation of cultural institutions, like the education system and

Arabophone domestic press outlined in previous chapters, was not
confined to the delimited territory under French rule. The press, in
particular, had a markedly transnational character. In the first mandate
years, the Francophone press represented a capacious medium that
allowed both the invocation of French claims of culture and
denunciations of mandatory methods. French protectorate intentions
were undermined by the sheer variety of international networks of press
activity, which were able to circumvent the domestic censorship outlined
above. These diverse press outlets provided a platform for political
protest and a means to pressure authorities for particular policy changes.
The transnational press, whether Francophone, émigré or international
and regional, demonstrated the vitality of cultural means to mitigate
domestic censorship and legal restrictions.
The Francophone press sporadically buttressed and disavowed
French claims of culture. Some French-language newspapers were
written and read in elite circles in Beirut, Paris, Geneva and in other
French colonies. Others were printed in Europe, for example, in Paris
and Lausanne. A generation of Turkish and Arab Ottoman intellectuals
had established themselves in metropolitan France, foreshadowing
the émigré and exiled Syro-Lebanese communities that were present in
Europe in the early mandate period.1 The French metropolitan and
SUBSERVIENCE AND SANCTION? 163
colonial press represented avenues for voicing either support or concern

about the intentions and methods of the Syro-Lebanese mandate. This
final category of Francophone newspapers and magazines spanned the
ideological spectrum. The outbreak of the Great Syrian Revolt
encouraged further challenges to France’s mandatory methods from
even the most devoted of Francosphère voices.
The Levantine Francophone Press

The Beiruti French-language press, although never as cantankerous as its
Arabic domestic and leftist metropolitan counterparts, demonstrated a
degree of independence in its judgement of mandatory methods.
A report compiled in 1921 by the Service de la Presse profiled two key
French-language newspapers in Beirut: Le Réveil and La Syrie.2 Le Réveil
was founded by a well-connected Greek Catholic Beiruti, Iskander
‘Alexandre’ Khoury. The Khoury family was also considered among the
notability of Aleppo.3 Khoury was aided in his publishing ventures by
Alfred and Georges Naccache, Alphonse Zeinieh, Rizqallah Arcache and
Georges Akkaoui.4 Le Réveil’s printing run amounted to 1,000 copies,
not an inconsiderable number given Beirut’s estimated population of
94,000 in 1921.5
Le Réveil had begun publishing in 1908. It had maintained close links
with the French consul in Beirut prior to the War, receiving a subsidy
and was planting stories for the consul. Khoury was deported by the
Ottoman authorities at the outset of World War I. The newspaper was
reborn on 1 July 1919 with renewed ties to the French. However, the press
service’s report suggested that Khoury was ‘more Lebanese than
Francophile and more Christian than Lebanese’. The press service believed
this had led him to shift his position and criticise certain mandate policies,
‘particularly when he felt that the administration was choosing the wrong
local Lebanese politicians or an abandonment of Christians in favour of
Muslims’. For the Service de la Presse this represented a ‘double attitude’
which was ‘loving France while poorly serving her’. The report
nevertheless noted the possibility of co-opting Khoury, ‘in spite of his
ponderousness’, by undertaking discreet financial support that would
allow him to maintain the appearance of independence.6
The second French daily, La Syrie, was edited by a Frenchman: Georges
Vayssié. Vayssié had previously been editor of the Journal du Caire.7
He was assisted in La Syrie’s editorship by Paul Laire, a professor at the

Collège Laique of Beirut.8 La Syrie’s tagline was ‘Franc aise pour les
Syriens, Syriens pour les Franc ais’, a statement which echoed nineteenth-
century geographer Onésime Reclus’ expansionist vision of the
Francophonie.9 The newspaper, which also put out 1,000 copies, was
thought to be read by almost all the newly settled administrative French
class and by almost no local Lebanese. It is interesting that copies of
La Syrie are documented to have made it to metropolitan France, in stark
contrast to attempts at cutting links between local Syro-Lebanese news
sources and the metropolitan newspapers to be outlined below.10
The newspaper was praised by the Service de la Presse for being well
informed, and in close contact with the administration which, along
with the ‘professional qualities of Mr. Vayssié’, ‘his long experience of
journalism’, made him one of their trusted purveyor of news.11 In fact,
he had also been newswire service Havas’ representative in Egypt prior to
the beginning of the mandate. After he left Cairo and his Egyptian
newspaper folded, his role was taken over by his assistant, a certain
Francophile propagandist named Shukri Ghanem who had been a key
pro-mandate publicist, writing pamphlets calling for France to take over
Greater Syria during World War I.12
Vayssié’s unfailing Francophilia is demonstrated by the fact that he
even had to defend himself from a Quai d’Orsay complaint after
an article in La Syrie was interpreted as being unnecessarily critical of
Vatican Nuncio Monsignor Frediano Giannini.13 The press service
equally noted that ‘certain [of Vayssié’s] clumsy remarks about Syrians
provoked a press fight between him and Le Réveil’.14 In a more surreal
episode, the squabble between Le Réveil and La Syrie went so far as the
proposition of a duel between the two editors, though this did not
materialise.15 The affair nevertheless:
Made him [Vayssié] lose the sympathy of a certain number of his

indigenous readers [. . .] It is regretful that the animosity directed
toward him among Syrian and Lebanese circles has sometimes been
reflected on the High Commission, for whom, as is well known,
it acts as a quasi-official organ’.16
Other Francophone newspapers with a smaller audience appeared outside

of Beirut. In the Alawite State, the bilingual (Arabic-French) El Alevy
described itself as the ‘political, literary, commercial and agricultural

independent organ of the interests of the autonomous Alawite State’.
It was edited by Burhanuddin Mosri Zadé. In November 1923, El Alevy
reported that General Weygand had visited Lattakia where he received a
warm reception. It praised his focus on education with the construction
of a school and lycée tending to a thousand children.17 In another article,
El Alevy suggested that:
The Alawite population should be happier if France seeks to take

this state under her protection [. . .] countries such as Algeria,
Tunisia, Morocco [. . .] have made immense progress [. . .] for the
Alawites [. . .] to stay in this ignorance, this primitive state, is to
die [. . .] Yet neither God nor nature authorises them to waste their
existence.18
Another Francophone paper claiming to represent minorities was the

Revue Assyro-Chaldéen, founded in January 1920 to represent that ancient
community in northern Iraq. It printed around 500 copies, and its
distribution was banned by British authorities in Iraq as a result of its
large Assyrian population, whose participation in fighting the Ottomans
occasioned calls that they be rewarded with greater autonomy.19 La Revue
Phoenicienne was a small magazine which gained historical significance in
later years as a model example of the Phoenicianist attitudes taken
by certain Lebanese intellectuals to distinguish themselves from their
Muslim-dominated neighbourhood.20 One article, written by Jesuit
University-educated Maronite scholar and future Lebanese Prime
Minister Auguste Adib Pasha, sought to tie Phoenician roots to modern
Lebanese identity. He wrote that: ‘the history of the Lebanese in
antiquity is thus the history of these Phoenician people’.21
Levantine Francophone newspapers also demonstrated a capacity to
circumvent French favour and control. The activities of Beiruti
newspaper L’Orient (today’s L’Orient-Le Jour) is suggestive of French
struggles to control cultural institutions. L’Orient was based in Beirut
and also published a sister newspaper entitled L’Echo d’Orient. Both
papers were nominally closely tied to France and were printed by the
Capuchin Order’s printing press.22 L’Orient’s editor was the Capuchin
father Rémy, who had been a wartime French intelligence agent. He was
assisted by two Maronites: Georges Naccache and Georges Khabaz.
A limited controversy sparked by L’Orient editorials denouncing

mandatory censorship, which could be termed the L’Orient Affair,
morphed over the course of 1925 into a broader Sarrail Affair that
divided metropolitan French secular and Catholic opinion and threw
France’s mandatory methods into doubt.
The origins of the L’Orient Affair lay in the controversies over the
censorship of domestic Lebanese newspapers outlined in the previous
chapter. In January 1924, the Arabic Al-’Arz (The Cedars) reported what
it termed a campaign of intimidation aimed at the L’Orient newspaper.
According to Al-’Arz this was in response to L’Orient’s editors reprinting
an article from the metropolitan ultra-rightist newspaper L’Action
Francaise that had criticised mandatory methods. L’Orient had further
commented on the article by stating that the authorities ‘owe us some
clarifications’. Al-’Arz dryly commented that the authorities had given
their reply by shutting down L’Orient for two months. Al-’Arz noted
that, once it was allowed to resume publishing, L’Orient had shifted to a
more compliant stance that included attacks on Al-’Arz itself.23
In November 1924, L’Orient was suspended for eight days for
publishing another L’Action Francaise article deemed ‘hostile to the
government’ and criticising Cartel des Gauches secularist French
Premier Eduard Herriot. High Commissioner Weygand specifically
reproached L’Orient for ‘transporting into the mandated countries the
discussions of domestic French politics’, particularly the criticisms of
French policy ‘which the indigènes here could take inspiration from to
weaken the authority of France and her representatives’.24 L’Orient again
found itself in trouble with Weygand’s successor, the secularist and
Republican General Maurice Sarrail, in January 1925. An article was
once more lifted from L’Action Francaise in which the suggestion was
made that Britain was seeking to take over the Al-Jazira province in
East Syria. The article criticised France for allowing itself to be
outmanoeuvered by Britain in the exploitation of oil reserves then
thought to lie underneath Al-Jazira.25
Georges Khabaz, L’Orient’s editor, telegrammed a protest to Paris over
Sarrail’s two-month suspension, which he judged to be ‘contrary [to]
public liberties’.26 A Catholic member of the French journalists’
syndicate and right-wing conspiracist, Gustave Gautherot, published a
letter on the front page of L’Orient’s sister paper in Paris, L’Echo d’Orient,
entitled ‘the oriental policy defines Mr. Edouard Herriot’.27 Defending
L’Orient, Gautherot pointed out that Herriot had himself spoken out in
the Chamber of Deputies following accusations that Sarrail was
motivated by personal bias against the mandates’ Christian minorities.28
Gautherot quoted Herriot as having told the French Parliament that:
‘We will not allow the High Commissioner to act under an authority
other than that of all France [. . .] I will tell General Sarrail [. . .] that he
must remember [. . .] that he is the representative [. . .] not of a political
point of view, but of France’.29
Gautherot pointed out that, whereas the more conciliatory High
Commissioner Weygand had only shut the paper for eight days the
previous November, the harsher Sarrail had shut down the presses for
two months in 1925. He argued that Sarrail had targeted L’Orient
because of its religious backers, while allowing anti-French papers to
appear. Gautherot concluded that: ‘Sarrail has the right to certain
personal opinions but [. . .] it is illegitimate and fearfully dangerous to
make such opinions the basis of our policy in Syria’.30 In January 1925,
Gautherot organised the sending of a protest letter to the Minister of
Foreign Affairs by the French journalists’ union.31 The following
month, Gautherot used his influence to organise a further protest by the
Paris press syndicate.32
News of this apparent shift in French administrative methods away
from favoured compact minorities was also reaching the domestic Arabic
press. Beirut’s Al-Kashkūl’s account of the suspension of L’Orient
confirmed that the paper had run foul of the secularist general Sarrail;
though, in this case, Al-Kashkūl actually approved of the new policy.
Even the Maronite-leaning Al-’Arz wrote that the new high
commissioner was seeking to reform the initial mandate policies
which it claimed had led the country into the hands of the Jesuits and
Capuchins.33 Stung by the increasingly vocal commentary in France,
Cartel des Gauches Prime Minister Edouard Herriot asked Sarrail for
more details about the L’Orient Affair.
Herriot received a vague telegram response from the general, who
instead sought to convince him that this dispute was the result of
lobbying by a clique he designated the ‘ultra-clerical party’. He accused
these latter of leading a campaign against the Governor of Greater
Lebanon, Léon Cayla. For Sarrail, this campaign had ‘confused’ liberty of
the press with a ‘freedom [. . .] [that] allows the invention of false
news’.34 At the end of April 1925 the Foreign Minister reprimanded
Sarrail for having delegated the authority to suspend newspapers to the

local heads of each mandatory state in a new law. Herriot, went on to
note that:
It would have been better not to take such an important decision as

that of delegating the powers of suspension [. . .] without having
obtained [. . .] the assent of my department [. . .] there is reason to
fear [. . .] that in a country so riven by political passions, the heads
of the [local] states, especially those who are indigènes [. . .] exercise
[. . .] the right to suspend with a bias toward their interests.35
The Foreign Minister added that, ‘such criticisms could not be

formulated if these suspensions had been announced by the High
Commissioner’. This was because Sarrail represented an office ‘placed
above the quarrels be they confessional or political, enjoying a greater
authority since he appears as the representative of the mandatory
power’.36 Perhaps acknowledging the mounting evidence that, in fact,
it was Sarrail’s personal convictions that had encouraged ‘political
passions’, Herriot reaffirmed his belief that the state’s role was to glide
above the ‘political passions’ of local elites, regardless of their communal
affiliations.37
The unapologetic General Sarrail defended himself in a further cable.
He informed Herriot that the High Commission had in fact retained all
rights to suspend newspapers and that the delegation of censorship
powers to the local states was accompanied by: ‘A surveillance exercised
[. . .] which allows for the education of the Syrian or Lebanese nation,
as suggested by the spirit of the mandate [. . .] leaving the High
Commissioner in this [public] sphere even more distanced’.38 Sarrail
further defended his actions by suggesting that various elements were
aligning themselves against him.39 Sarrail concluded by explaining that
the opposition was the result of:
Certain feudal Maronites [. . .] who, to quote the formula that a

certain [Maronite] patriarch [Elias Hoyek] recently used in an
interview, “are losing the scandalous supremacy that they have
enjoyed until the present, let alone the benefits of material profits”,
and [. . .] all those who [. . .] believe that the France of today should
return to that of [the Catholic Bourbon] Restoration.40
Despite these reassurances, on 5 May 1925 Lebanon Governor Cayla

suspended L’Orient yet again using delegated powers. This was in
response to an article in the paper accusing the mandate government of
attacking religious freedoms.41 Cayla had first used the delegated powers
to suspend the Arabophone satirical newspaper Al-Dabbour on 27 April,
though this elicited little controversy in contrast to the censoring of
Francophone Catholic newspapers. It is noteworthy that Cayla had
received some support for his suspensions. In May 1925 George Samné’s
Comité Central Syrien, which put out the Francophile-Levantine
Correspondence d’Orient magazine in Paris, sent senior Quai d’Orsay
mandarin, Philippe Berthelot, a letter in support of Sarrail and Cayla.42
Sarrail’s general approach was supported in a telegram sent to the
Foreign Ministry by several Lebanese newspaper editors in early
May 1925. The editors wrote that they ‘clearly approved the attitude of
the High Commission [. . .] the recent measures relating to the press
regime correspond to the need for public order’.43 A diplomatic note
commented that the newspapers of importance among the signatories
were the Arabophone nationalist Al-Watan, Al-Barq, Al-Ra’y al-‘Am and
Al-Hurriyah, but also included Georges Vayssié’s Francophile La Syrie,
an alliance that could not have been imagined a few years earlier.44
Despite this limited support, by mid-May, Sarrail was once again
asked by Herriot to justify the suspension of L’Orient following further
protest, this time arising from moderate republican assembly deputy and
cabinet member, Louis Marin. Finally, L’Echo d’Orient, published
alongside L’Orient as a sister paper, earned itself a suspension of its own
on its first day of publication: 10 June 1925.45 Sarrail defended this by
insisting that L’Orient had published an article suggesting that ‘certain
French bureaucrats were attacking religion [. . .] and such attacks put the
mandate at risk’.46 In a subsequent telegram, Sarrail claimed that French
journalist Gustave Gautherot was only involving himself in the affair
because he was hoping to buy the newspaper.47
The editor of L’Orient, Georges Khabaz, had had enough. He wrote a
public notice informing his readers that he was temporarily shutting
down both L’Orient and L’Echo d’Orient as a result of the ‘tenacious
hatred’ demonstrated by the Sarrail government towards the two
newspapers. Khabaz alleged that the government had even leant on the
Capuchin printing presses that put out his newspapers. ‘Strange times!’
he wrote:
when the authorities have no more pressing affairs than to impose

a silence on the most notorious supporters of the French mandate
[. . .] but the fierceness that is manifested towards us [. . .] is it not
the proper condemnation of the regime?48
The embarrassment occasioned by these censorship problems led the

Foreign Minister to ask Sarrail to treat the press regulations as if they
had a ‘provisional character’, waiting until the Lebanese representative
chamber reconvened before promoting any new press law.49 The easily
riled and rarely diplomatic Sarrail replied by abruptly pointing out that
the press regulations laws were already provisional. According to him,
they had been introduced to deal with ‘exceptional situations [. . .] that
risked endangering the very authority of the mandatory power’. Sarrail
claimed he had used his own High Commission censorship powers only
during two ‘exceptional situations’: the first had led to the suspension of
a Beirut newspaper because it had intimated an anti-religious agenda
among French bureaucrats, while the second affected newspaper,
published in Damascus, had printed Muslim prayers for those killed in
the Moroccan Rif war.50
Sarrail’s intransigence in the face of mounting criticism would soon
lead to his removal as the L’Orient Affair combined with the
aforementioned Carbillet affair into a broader ‘Sarrail Affair’.51 The
Sarrail Affair, as its name implies, referred, in part, to the setbacks
inflicted on the Cartel des Gauches-appointed and secular-republican
High Commissioner’s attempts to overhaul the clientelist mandatory
methods that had been implemented under the romantic-orientalist
Gouraud and general-secretary Robert De Caix. This specific irruption of
grievances with a change in mandatory methods was a demonstration of
the multiple sources of contestation to French authority that a clientelist
approach encouraged; even the most Francophile of communities and
intellectuals could use cultural institutions to protest French policies
that they believed were changing the initial mandatory political culture.
Syro-Lebanese Press Activity in Europe

Alongside the Francophone Levantine press, various Syrians and post-
Ottoman subjects were working as journalists and editors in Europe.
In Paris, the Turco-Syrian Committee had been founded in 1895.
It published a newspaper called Kushif al-Niqab (Lifting the Veil) which

was closed by the French authorities as a result of pressure from Sultan
Abdulhamid II.52 The Hamidian exodus’ legacy of internationalism thus
˙
provided foundations for anti-mandate activism. A Paris-based Bureau
d’Information Islamique, founded in February 1920 and edited by
Rishad Nihad Bey, was suspected to be supported by the Turkish
government.53 French intelligence noted that Rishad Bey’s newspaper
was headquartered in his own flat, which suggested a meagreness of
resources. The editor was nevertheless reported to have received Indian,
Armenian and Iranian journalists as well as French parliamentarians
including the socialist critic of the mandate Marcel Sembat and Catholic
Marc Sangnier.54
Rishad Nihad Bey was also said to be close to French orientalist
novelist Pierre Loti. Marc Sangnier’s La Démocratie publishing house was
where this newspaper was printed. French reports noted that the Bureau
and its affiliated newsletter, L’Echo de l’Islam, demonstrated greater interest
in British policy in 1920s India and Egypt and the Kemalist struggle for
independence in Turkey while remaining relatively mute with respect to
French possessions. In 1923, a Turk named Tarek Bey was scrutinised by
French intelligence, who claimed that his editorship of Les Echos de l’Orient
was sustained by Turkish money.55
Of greater concern for French authorities were the Syro-Lebanese
associations and journalists active in Paris and Geneva. In 1922, a special
police commissioner in Paris monitored a group calling themselves the
Association of Syrian Youth, who had published a tract entitled: ‘What
all Frenchmen should know about Syria’.56 This Association was
presided over by Ibrahim Naggiar, a journalist who had received French
money to found Al-Mustaqbal (The Future). Other members of the
Association were students, such as Omar Fakhouri and Hilmi Barudy.
Despite its superficially Francophile background, the Association of
Syrian Youth’s pamphlet called on the French Parliament and public
opinion to heed to their demands regarding the failed military rule of
the country.57 The Association claimed that ‘Syria is an “independent
state”’ and that the division of Syria into separate states had been toxic.
The pamphlet also claimed that taxes had become more arbitrary than
during the Ottoman period, that the press had less freedom, that more
subsidies were paid to newspapers and that freedom of speech and
association had been curtailed.58
Later in the summer of 1922, French intelligence reported that the

Association had links with the Syrian Union political party. This party
was presided over by Michel Lutfallah, a wealthy Greek-Orthodox
moneylender based in Egypt, and demanded the removal of Anglo-
French troops from the Levant, the end to mandates, recognition of
Syria, Lebanon and Palestine and the right to reorganise these states in an
Arab Federation.59 The Association of Syrian Youth’s members were also
noted to be close to the Union Intercoloniale (UI), a group organised by
the French Communists (PCF), with some Syrian members taking part
in an UI periodicals reading circle.60 However, it is worth noting that
public opinion in what was termed the ‘Syrian colony’ in Paris was not
uniformly against the mandate in the early years. Even after the Great
Revolt, in 1927, La Croix reported a Syriac Catholic holiday celebration
led by Patriarch Ephrem II Rahmani and attended by the Minister of
Foreign Affairs.61
Yet France’s clientelist ties to favoured ‘compact’ minorities such as
the Maronites did not inevitably translate into support for mandatory
methods. Elias T. Hoyek, a relative of the Maronite Patriarch, was the
editor of the Revue du Proche-Orient, published in Paris. At the outset of
the Great Syrian Revolt, the magazine published an article critical of
French management.62 A few months earlier, in June 1925, Hoyek was
in contact with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, seeking financial support
for his review. In a note to the Ministry, he described his review as being
published twice a week in both French and Arabic. According to Hoyek,
its aims were to defend Lebanese, Syrian and mahjar interests without
political favour and to keep Syro-Lebanese readers abreast of
developments in France. Hoyek nevertheless noted that his paper was
‘scrutinising the execution of the conditions of the mandate as they were
established by the League of Nations and [would] denounce all
infractions’.63
French officials admitted that Hoyek had likely chosen to open the
paper in Paris in order to avoid the ‘severe regime to which the press is
subjected in Lebanon. Published in France, Mr. Hoyek’s newspaper
cannot be censored indefinitely’.64 In a further note, Hoyek expressed his
disappointment that ‘over the past six years, Syria and Lebanon have
been the subject of several debates in the French Parliament, and not
once [. . .] has there been a debate on the prosperity of these two
countries’. Debates instead focused on French strategy and spending.
Hoyek also criticised what he saw as General Sarrail’s partial and abrupt
governance meaning that ‘the French were considered by us to be
demi-gods but, after their contact with our population, they descended
from the pedestal’.65
Events in 1925 encouraged greater condemnation of French methods.
Following the outbreak of the 1925 Revolt, a Syrian Association
pamphlet was published denouncing the French occupying power and
making crafty use of France’s own traditions and history to argue against
‘lies, iniquity, imperialism and force’. It praised the traditional French
influence in the Levant for having encouraged democracy and liberalism.
Yet the Association claimed that the mandatory power had initiated an
economic crisis and represented a mortal menace to the social integrity of
Syria. Criticising the creation of autonomous states dividing historical
Syria (Bilad Al-Sham), the pamphlet argued that all Syrians wished for a
united and independent Syria. As evidence, the Association alleged that
80 per cent of the domestic Syrian press was owned by Christian elites, yet
even they encouraged Syrian unity.66
Another group formed in Paris in 1924 was the ‘Association of Syrian
Arab Students’ presided over by a PhD student, Abdallah El-Yafi, who
would become a venerated Lebanese prime minister. He was aided by
Damascus notable Haidar Mardam Bey who would be a short-term
governor of Hassetché governorate and was a relative of the eminent
Jamil Mardam Bey.67 Over the course of 1925– 6 the Association led an
intense public opinion campaign in the metropolitan press and among
parliamentarians such as republican, and one-time Minister for the
Navy, Desiré Ferry. Among the pieces this association circulated were
leaflets claiming that Syria was witnessing bloodier protests than at any
time during Ottoman rule. Another letter declared that Syrians were
neither intransigent nor Francophobic and asked France for military
instructors and capital investment for the development of their
territories, reflecting a desire for specialised education and mise en valeur
development discussed in previous chapters.68
In Marseille, the special police commissioner also kept tabs on Syrian
activity. He ran a Syrian agent named Antoine Farès, a close friend of
renowned Francophile writer Shukri Ghanem. Yet even this Francophile
agent reported massacres during the 1925 Great Revolt. Drawing on eye
witness accounts, Farès produced pamphlets claiming that Senegalese
troops had raped, pillaged and shot citizens of Hama.69 Switzerland, the
host nation of the League of Nations, gained a particular importance for

Francosphère anti-mandate lobbying. In 1921 the special police (special
branch) commissioner in Annemasse ran spies across the border and
discoved a network in Geneva supporting the Syrian Union political
party.70 He reported that the Union was documenting French human
rights violations.71
The Union was led by such nationalist luminaries as Sheikh Rashid
Rida‘, Shakib Arslan, future Syrian President Riad Al-Solh and the
˙
editor of the Beirut-based Alif Bāʼ, Toufiq Al-Yazigi.72 The Union’s
president was ‘Prince’ Michel Lutfallah. Michel and his brother, Habib,
had been assessed as minor political actors during World War
I. Lutfallah had been described by controversial administrator Sir John
Maxwell in a letter to Lord Kitchener as ‘a weak vain type’ who could not
be trusted because he could not keep information to himself.73 A later
report, in 1918, written by the British ambassador in Madrid, where
Habib Lutfallah was residing, described him as ‘too foolish to be
seriously dangerous’.74
Despite the uninviting assessments, Habib had become King
Hussein of Transjordan’s ambassador to Italy while Shakib Arslan’s
brother Fuad was King Hussein’s principal advisor. To French
intelligence officers, this was a sign of Kemalist, Hashemite and British
interest in penetrating Syrian nationalist networks.75 Among the other
key anti-mandate activists in Geneva were Izz Al-Din Saleh, who was
alleged to be a money launderer for Hejaz-derived Hashemite funds.
Another figure was Abdul Karim Hantès, president of the Syrian
Committee, who was born in Brazil. Finally, there was Shukri
Al-Quwatli, future Syrian president and active during the Faisalian
attempt at building an independent state.76 French police suggested
that the British were secretly funding him, reporting a deposit of
200,000 francs at Lloyds Bank in Geneva. Aside from the British, the
police report suggested subversive interventions by the Italian Foreign
Ministry and the Turkish government.77
In November 1923 a humanitarian network, the Societé de
Bienfaisance Arabe in Istanbul, was noted by French intelligence to
have received payments from a Syrian Union activist.78 A month later, a
report described Arslan as the right-hand man of Michel Lutfallah.
It outlined suspicions that a trip by Arslan to Istanbul was intended to
transform the Societé de Bienfaisance Arabe into a front organisation for
laundering Syrian Union political funds.79 The special police

commissioner in Annemasse went so far as to claim that Michel
Lutfallah was a British agent.80
In November 1923 three key members of the Separatist Committee
delegation in Europe, Emir Shakib Arslan, Irfan Al-Jabiri and Suleyman
Kanaan, were campaigning against the mandate by organising petitions
to the League from Berlin and Geneva while ‘creating a hostile attitude’
to the mandate in the Egyptian and US-based Syrian press.81 In
December 1923 these three ‘fierce enemies of the French mandate’ were
joined by the aforementioned financier Michel Lutfallah in Cairo to
organise a Syrian Congress.82 In the same month, the Syrian Union in
Geneva was planting articles in European newspapers. Reports claimed
the Union’s committee had reached out to the director of the Bern-based
news agency Respublica, Leon Choulat, and of holding discussions with
a correspondent for the Wolff German news agency, Dr Max Beer.83
Figure 6.1 Syro-Palestinian Congress meeting in Geneva from 25 August

to 21 September 1921. Among the attendees are Sheikh Rashid Rida’,
Michel Lutfallah, Ihsan Al-Jabri, Emir Shakib Arslan, as well as Egyptian,
Geneva-based journalist ‘Ali Al-Ghayati. Available online: http://eltaher.
org/docs_photos/1921-Syro-and-Lebanese-Palestinian-Congress-Meeting-
in-Geneva-image593_en.html.
An important figure in Geneva-based press activity was Egyptian

journalist ‘Ali Al-Ghayati. Al-Ghayati had reportedly been condemned
to death in Egypt but had been smuggled out by the British in 1912
and, according to the Annemasse special commissioner’s intelligence,
was paid to write pro-British propaganda during the World War.84 After
the War, Al-Ghayati was the Tribune de Genève’s oriental affairs
correspondent where, according to the French consul in Geneva, he
engaged in a ‘campaign’ against France at the League of Nations.85
The Tribune de Genève had previously led an active campaign for
Egyptian independence but was flagged by French officials in 1921 for
turning its attention to Syrian affairs.86 The Tribune de Genève had
published an article, written by Al-Ghayati, entitled ‘Syria and the
League of Nations’ which stated that there was a forgotten Syrian
question whose ‘weak echo, attenuated by its distance and censorship,
managed to reach us from time to time’.87 Echoing complaints made
during the L’Orient Affair, and foreshadowing the Andrews and
Kanya-Forstner thesis regarding the role of the Parti Colonial, the
Tribune de Genève pointed to expansionist and religious milieus as the
drivers of protectorate mandatory methods.88
The Tribune de Genève quoted an anonymous article by a serving
military officer in Syria which had previously appeared in the
metropolitan daily L’Information. The officer lamented how ‘here we
are all dismayed by what the French newspapers say which has nothing
to do with the reality [on the ground]’.89 Al-Ghayati’s article explained
that there was a Syrian question as much as an Arab or Egyptian one
despite French attempts to bury it. He noted that:
The events unfolding over the past two years [. . .] of which only a
weak echo attenuated by distance and censorship reaches us [. . .]
rekindle this question. Among the expansionist or French clerical
circles there is an attempt to put aside public opinion by
representing the Syrian as satisfied with the new regime [. . .] Yet
[. . .] we know [. . .] that the great majority of Syrians are hostile to
France’s actual policy.90
Al-Ghayati now had the full attention of the French diplomatic-

surveillance apparatus. In July 1921, the authorities raised the issue of
the Tribune de Genève’s ‘tendentious’ reporting with its editor Edgar
Junod. Despite Junod’s promise to correct his newspaper’s approach,

the consul insisted that Le Tribune directly republish an article
published in the French newspaper of record, Le Temps.91 By 1922, the
French consul in Geneva had made up his mind on Al-Ghayati’s stance
and described him simply as an ‘Arab militant’.92 In the same year
Al-Ghayati, who lived in Anemmasse, left the Tribune de Genève and
launched his own newspaper, La Tribune d’Orient. La Tribune appeared
twice monthly with a motto proclaiming it to be ‘in defence of the
rights of a renascent Orient’.
Its tagline quoted President Woodrow Wilson’s ‘14 Points’ speech to
Congress: ‘a principle evidently underlies the programme I have
outlined: it is that which assures justice to all peoples’. It was published
in both French and Arabic. The French suspected Al-Ghayati’s
newspaper of being funded by a fellow Egyptian, Ali Bey Kamel, who
was the president of the Wafd (Delegation) Party.93 The Annemasse
special commissioner voiced his beliefs that Al-Ghayati and other
activists in Geneva were being encouraged by a panoply of sponsors
ranging from the pan-Islamic movement to the German Society for the
Orient and Faisalian sympathisers.94
Although both believed that Al-Ghayati represented a node in a
network of Arab nationalist activity, a dispute emerged between the
French consul in Geneva and the Annemasse commissioner. In April
1922, the commissioner in Annemasse judged Arab nationalist
organisations in Switzerland to have the potential to create ‘inextricable
difficulties’ for French rule in Syria.95 The Annemasse commissioner
alleged that a Syrian Committee in Geneva had even taken the step of
publishing a letter calling for the formation of Revolutionary
Committee. He claimed that this organisation had called for a purge
of French bureaucrats and even encouraged the assassination of Lebanese
Governor Albert Michel Trabaud.96
Yet in December 1922, the consul warned against overestimating
Ghayati’s reach since his ‘personality is rather discreet [éffacé]’.97 A few
years later the French consul in Geneva maintained his stance
that Al-Ghayati did not pose a true threat. He noted that the Tribune
d’Orient had under 100 subscribers.98 He further suggested that
Al-Ghayati’s importance had been exaggerated by certain French
intelligence agents, most likely being run by the Annemasse police
commissioner, who were more interested in gaining importance in
French intelligence-gathering circles than giving a truthful account of

the Arab nationalist threat.
The consul pointed out that one such agent, Arthur Leuma, also
going by the name of René Lambert, had been discovered to have
fraudulently printed anti-French pamphlets only to subsequently bring
them to French attention.99 Al-Ghayati’s newspaper nevertheless
provided an outlet for continuing challenges to French mandatory
methods. In February 1923, Al-Ghayati’s Tribune published an open
letter from nationalist leader Shakib Arslan to General Gouraud. In it,
Arslan took the general to task for suggesting that part of France’s
mission was the protection of the Christian communities from Muslim
attacks. Arslan pointed out that during World War I, Syrian and
Lebanese Muslims had done no harm to the Christians, and had even
welcomed refugees.100
In September 1925, Al-Ghayati wrote an editorial warning France
that the 1925 rebellion represented a rejection of their mandatory
methods, explaining that:
Syrians are demanding the suppression of the mandate and the

recognition of independence [. . .] the British policy in Iraq should
have long ago served to open the eyes of the French and to set an
example [. . .] [instead they have instituted] a policy of
colonisation, similar to that in Algeria or Morocco.101
In the 5 November 1925 edition of La Tribune, Al-Ghayati reported on

British activity in Palestine and Iraq, on the creation of a mosque in
Geneva (a city he praised as ‘the Protestant Rome [. . .] The Mecca of the
West’) and on decisions taken at the League of Nations’ Permanent
Commission on Mandates with respect to Syria. The Great Revolt had
led to pressure on France to account for developments in Syria.102
In response to the outbreak of the Great Revolt, he also reprinted a
petition by the Association Syrienne Arabe de Paris which was:
Disturbed by the harrowing news coming from Syria [. . .] the

military authorities [. . .] bombarded certain neighbourhoods of
Damascus [. . .] Hama [. . .] in the name of humanity [they called]
for French public opinion to protest with it against these bloody
events [. . .] this unimaginable terrorism.103
In the same edition of La Tribune, Al-Ghayati published a petition by

Prince Michel Lutfallah, based in Egypt, decrying the bombardment of
Damascus and the Druze towns. Al-Ghayati also published a petition sent
by a Druze delegation to Tommy Martin, the interim governor of the
Jabal Druze who had replaced the unpopular Captain Carbillet.104 Among
the Druze claims was that Carbillet had used local civil servants, including
school teachers, as his spies and fomenters of discord in the Druze villages.
Platforms like Al-Ghayati’s newspaper thus provided a pillar for
consistent protest against French mandatory methods.
The Republican and Right-Wing Metropolitan Press

The metropolitan press was more dependable in the eyes of French
administrators. Some left-wing newspapers, such as the Communist
L’Humanité, dissented from the very idea of French tutelage. Yet the
broad consensus accepted France’s right and obligation to administer
Syria and Lebanon, though mandatory methods were occasionally
queried. As a whole, the metropolitan French newspapers absorbed,
upheld and reiterated French claims of culture and civilisation in the
Levant, thus benefiting local administrators and central planners in
Paris. The republican and right-wing metropolitan press included such
learned revues as the pre-eminent Revue des Deux Mondes, somewhat
analogous to America’s Atlantic Monthly, and great dailies such as
La Croix and Le Matin. They tended toward a consensus which accepted
the premise of colonial activity while sometimes disagreeing with the
cruder methods made evident by bloody rebellion.
The Revue des Deux Mondes proved to be a platform for the ‘gathering,
innovation and crystallisation’ of discussion framing French mandatory
methods for elite metropolitan opinion.105 The magazine was more
broadly an influential meeting place for those advocating a ‘liberal’
imperialism which used the rhetoric of a civilising mission renovated in
a mise en valeur garb. Indeed, Lenka Bokova has noted the tight-knit
agreement on the mandate in principle across European and US corridors
of power, one that could control and contain both the rivalries of
international powers and the nascent demands of revolutionary
nationalists and internationalists.106
As noted in Chapter 3 on cultural heritage, this approach provided for a
convenient double discourse. First, the outdated nineteenth-century
mission civilisatrice could be upgraded to the humanitarian and

developmental elements of twentieth-century state-building. Second,
the mission of forming ‘la plus grande France’ [‘the most extensive France’]
reorganised initial visions of empire by tying elites through the
Francophonie. Such views as those of the famous novelist and travel writer
Maurice Barrès, who noted the importance of Francophone education for
tying local elites to France, were discussed in the Revue.107
In 1915, French Consul René Ristelhueber wrote of the Maronites in
the Revue des Deux Mondes as:
Traditional clients [. . .] [their] attachment [. . .] to our country is

very widely known [. . .] but if [. . .] [no doubt exists] [. . .] that
Syria is a kind of ‘France Outre-Mer’ [. . .] [and if the Maronites]
[. . .] are very popular with us due to their devotion to our cause
[. . .] very few [among us] know who they exactly are.108
In 1916, an article in Le Monde Illustré set the tone for liberal press
coverage in the pre-mandate period when it wrote of ‘this Syria, that we
would like to return to France, which is, like an Alsace of Asia, like a
piece of France held prisoner’.109
By the early 1920s, the magazine’s focus had shifted to cultural
affairs. Yet it retained proximity to colonial elites, as shown by the ties
between its editor, René Doumic, and Generals Lyautey in Morocco and
Gouraud in Syria. Anonymous articles from serving officers of the Armée
du Levant were published in the magazine in 1921. Two senior
administrators of the mandate, Commander Michel Canonge and Robert
De Caix, published articles praising Gouraud’s methods, the French
mission in Syria and the mechanisms of delegated government that had
been set up in the vein of Lyautey’s Morocco.110 De Caix justified the
French approach to the mandate as ‘a modest framework within which a
people without any tradition of self-government of its own can begin its
political education’.111
De Caix added that:
The mandate is a much more delicate enterprise than the

protectorate [. . .] after the War, France had limited means [. . .]
what was accomplished in such conditions cannot be compared to
any of our other overseas ventures [. . .] if we could have, without
any losses, sincerely made use of new ideas [of governance] and
organised an only temporary mandate for the Orient, we should
have done so. Among [. . .] the critics [are those] who think [. . .]
that the method was wrong [. . .] there are still people who believe
we could have used Emir Faisal for the organisation [. . .] [yet]
[. . .] it was the Emir [. . .] who made all collaboration impossible
[. . .] he represented his father [Sharif Hussein of Mecca]; the one
who had signed [a pact] with a British agent.112
De Caix finished his note by justifying France’s intervention and

mandatory methods:
This policy was without a doubt founded on a belief that there was
no appetite among French public opinion for a Syrian enterprise
[. . .] after having swept away the Emir’s Government, General
Gouraud did not think for a moment to install a direct
administration upon its ruins [. . .] in January [1921] [. . .] the
High Commissioner [. . .] studied [. . .] the popular perceptions,
the organisation of states [. . .] the representative institutions [. . .]
the organisation of a Syrian confederation [. . .] [but] [. . .] the
masses remain completely alien from the idea of a public sphere
[la vie publique]. The few groups of notables, who remain the sole
constituents of the ‘political landscape’ [. . .] were almost all in
favour of the organisation of states undertaken by Gouraud.113
The newspaper of record, Le Temps, consistently spun news from Syria to

favour the interpretations of De Caix and fellow mandate administrators.
For instance, the Ankara Accord, which could be considered an
emasculation of French power in the region by the nascent Kemalist
forces, was covered by Le Temps as a French achievement securing the
northern border. The paper wrote that ‘the population of Aleppo is
celebrating the conclusion of the Ankara Accord, which leaves
the bandits without support’.114 Yet even before the beginning of the
mandate, Syrian voices in liberal-centrist French newspapers countered
the francocentric claims of civilisation and expansion.
One article, written in the Mercure de France in 1916 by Y. Bitar, was
entitled ‘the true French Syria’. Bitar noted the flurry of mid-World
War I commentary in favour of the establishment of a protectorate in
Syria on the basis of a privileged French cultural presence in the region.

Though he largely agreed with encouragement of a French protectorate,
Bitar nevertheless sought to note the important Syrian absorption of
French culture and philosophy. His article thus gave agency to local
Syrians and Lebanese in choosing to use French learning to advance their
own interests. In an early example of shifting approaches from
Francophonie to Francosphère, Bitar explained that: ‘Syrians [. . .] are the
inheritors of this wonderful Arab civilisation [. . .] in every cultivated
Syrian a Frenchman could recognise his [. . .] own culture’. Bitar used the
interactions between French poets and writers and their Syrian
counterparts as proof of these ties which had the effect of placing
Syrians as equals to the French.115
A month later, the Mercure de France also published a dissenting piece
by a Lebanese-French editor at Le Temps, Khairi T. Khairallah.116
Khairallah criticised Bitar for having exaggerated the extent of French
influence among Syrian Christians. He also noted that Bitar had
continually referred to Christians, thus passing over wholesale the large
number of non-Christian Syrians. Khairallah acknowledged the
predominant cultural influence of French authors in the region. However,
he emphasised that this coexisted with an enduring Arab-Islamic culture
and a growing Russian and British influence. Khairallah noted that even
among the estimated 40,000 students educated in French schools:
The congregational [i.e., religious missionary] influence in Syria

ends at the doors of the school. Modern developments have [. . .]
surpassed it [the missionary influence] and [even] turned against
it. The true masters are those French authors [i.e., Victor Hugo],
who have done the most on behalf of France as a conquering army,
by the simply irresistible spread of their genius.117
As the mandate unfolded, the liberal press grew increasingly critical of

mandatory methods, if not France’s right to exercise control. In the wake
of the Lesser Syrian Insurrection which foreshadowed the 1925 Great
Syrian Revolt, Georges Clemenceau’s L’Homme Libre published a critical
editorial in 1922. He expressed the general sanctioning of the mandate:
‘Syria is ours. But we have weakened our hand by giving up Cilicia
[the rich agricultural province that was returned to Turkey] [. . .] let us
be practical. We have nothing in the Orient apart from moral interests
and commercial interests [. . .] Syria is becoming an occasion for us to

waste men and spend money.’118
Responding to the Great Syrian Revolt, journalist Maurice Figerolles
wrote in L’Homme Libre that the outbreak of violence in the Jabal Druze
had clearly struck a chord with Syrians and Lebanese elsewhere in the
country. He accepted that the British press seemed keen to exaggerate
the violent developments yet added that even Le Temps had understated
the spread of the Revolt. For Figerolles, this was a sign of a deep malaise
among Syrians with the methods of the mandate. Figerolles also made an
incisive commentary that underscored the capacity for the press to turn
an initially limited uprising into a much greater challenge to the very
foundations of mandatory rule.
Noting the relatively small manpower mobilised by Bedouin and
Druze rebels, Figerolles argued that though:
It is possible that the Druze [. . .] have dealt us a blow [. . .] it is

something else to think that, as a result of these events, the Syrian
population are in a state of avowed effervescence [. . .] It is with
composure as well as military action that the situation [of control]
can be re-established.119
Two words used by Figerolles reveal paradoxical pillars of how imperial

control was conceptualised. First, the use of the word ‘effervescence’,
which reduced Syrian dissent to nothing more than a froth, suggests the
entrenchment of an orientalist lens even among the ‘liberal’ press.
Second, the use of the call for ‘composure’ on the part of both the
mandate authorities and French officials betrays an appreciation of the
power of the press to shape public opinion and government policy in
France as much as in Syria. Figerolles was voicing a broader recognition
of the role of mature cultural institutions like the press in holding
mandatory methods to account. A year after Figerolles’ questioning of
mandatory methods, in 1927, an editor of the Mercure de France,
bibliographer and orientalist Emile Laloy, was agreeing with lawyer
Alphonse Jouet’s assessment that Syria had become a lost cause.
In Laloy’s opinion, France was ‘covered with shame and ridicule and [. . .]
[would not] escape disaster’.120
In contrast to liberal reservations, the Catholic-aligned right-wing
press, coalescing around the popular daily La Croix, buttressed French
claims of culture from an ideological, rather than strategic, perspective.

After the inauguration of King Faisal in Damascus in 1918, it
had published one of several denunciations of the new Sunni Muslim
government penned by Lebanese Catholics; this one was written by
Bishop Joseph Dumani of Tripoli.121 A few years later, in 1920, Jean
Giraud of La Croix informed its readers that ‘the moment is [. . .]
decisive. We will see if our government will profit from the victory to
consolidate our influence in the countries which, since the Crusades, are
the clients [. . .] of France’.122
In one article, a letter from ‘a pilgrim’, the newspaper published an
opinion that revealed the limits of the conception of the mandate in
conservative Christian circles:
Let none be mistaken! In all the countries we have traversed [. . .]

One fact dominates all others, that is the awakening of Muslim
fanaticism [. . .] all concessions from us is held to be a proof of our
weakness. Open a mosque in Paris or give a grant to a Syrian
mosque, the sole response from a Muslim souls will be: For the
Christians to act thus, it must mean they are afraid of us!123
Another article in La Croix denounced those who were criticising the

mandate, despite such criticism falling within a spectrum focused
on tactical questions of mandatory methods. The La Croix article
argued that mandate naysayers’ views were either seeing it as imperial
overstretch or were opposed to an exorbitant adventure. La Croix
dismissed both views as unsubstantiated.124
La Croix’s preoccupation with promoting Catholic interests led to the
publication of one article belittling the USA’s religious and educational
influence. It stated that:
If the Yankees are so energetically interested in the Orient after

the War, it is not so much because of commercial enterprises [. . .]
what preoccupies them above all, is the fate of their citizens.
Most are Syrians who had immigrated to the US before the War
and returned [. . .] add to them the professors of the Anti-
Catholic Faculty of Beirut [the AUB] and certain missionaries
from diverse sects who are busy proselytising the Armenian
orphans.125
By 1926, however, even La Croix’s correspondent in Lattakia was

admitting the deep fissures in governance that the 1925 Great Revolt
had revealed. However, unlike his liberal-centrist colleagues, he
suggested solving the impasse by instituting more direct colonial-style
administration. He wrote that:
Today, calm has come back to Syria, but, after the victory [. . .] we
should have continued with a firm hand [. . .] [instead] we have
restarted [. . .] concessions [. . .] Dr. Shahbandar, the chief of the
rebels, has been amnestied twice before [. . .] [with] the revolt in
Damascus put down, once again there is a general amnesty [. . .]
[yet] the Muslim [. . .] can submit to an infidel [. . .] [only] if he
recognises in his master someone stronger than him.
Justifying his reading of the situation, the correspondent pointed out

that in the region of Lattakia there was no need to ‘impregnate this
uncultivated population, habituated to slavery since the beginning of
time, with ideas of emancipation, politics and universal suffrage [. . .]
the Alawites asked only to become a French colony’. However, even
La Croix’s correspondent admitted that some of the local government’s
methods had engendered alienation. For instance:
On Sunday 6 June [1926] a procession for the Holy Sacrament

took place [. . .] the crowds composed of a Catholic minority [. . .]
all being undertaken in the roads, in the midst of the Muslims,
and in front of the Mosques [. . .] the Muslim is by nature very
tolerant, so long as he is well governed; if poorly governed, he
becomes bloody and excessively fanatical.126
Though La Croix demonstrated an ideologically fostered fervour for

direct colonial-style methods in contrast to liberal concerns, the
spectrum of the centrist-right metropolitan press generally sanctioned
France’s right to her Syrian mandate. Despite this overall sanction of the
idea (or meaning) of the mandate, the French administration in Beirut
still sought to influence the metropolitan press. In mid-1920 the deus ex
machina in Beirut, general-secretary Robert De Caix, notified Paris of the
need to ‘inform’ the French press of developing events lest the French
papers were tempted to source their news from the British dailies.
He literally recommended ‘feeding’ the Paris-based Havas telegram

agency.127 Such a cosy relationship would be mutually beneficial. For
instance, praise of Field Marshal Allenby’s visit to Beirut in 1921 was
sent by the High Commission’s press office to Havas director Henri
Barbier-Havas as an exclusive scoop.128
Other instances suggest a close relationship between the metropolitan
press and mandate authorities. In 1920, a P. André sent a letter to
Colonel Brémond, the governor of Cilicia, in which he warned Brémond
of a campaign against him in the metropolitan press, particularly in
Le Monde. André said that this had been put to a stop by making use of
his father’s clout in the press syndicate.129 Aside from exercising
influence, French authorities can be documented to have actively cut off
news exchanges between the Levant and the metropole.130 In July 1922,
Gouraud warned the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that French radio
broadcasts informing listeners that the Ankara Protocol would lead to a
reduction in French troop numbers in Syria could only have ‘bad effects’
if they were to be spread among Syrians.131
Such attempts at control were not wholly successful. As the Great
Syrian Revolt erupted in 1925, L’Homme Libre published news of its
extension from Jabal Druze to Aleppo by citing a Daily Mail report
while craftily reminding readers that there had been no updates from
Paris itself, thereby providing a semblance of balance while inserting
veiled criticism of quasi-censorship.132 When La Croix published news
regarding the recruiting of the Bedouin Rwallah tribe for policing, it
had to source its information from The Times.133 Even a praiseworthy
account of the spring 1926 co-ordinated French offensive in response to
the Great Revolt published in La Croix cited the New York Daily News
and Reuters as sources.134
Officials at the Quai d’Orsay expressed concerns when negative news
of mandatory methods were being revealed in the metropolitan press.
Following the publication of a pro-Catholic declaration by Lebanon
Governor Albert Trabaud in L’Echo de Paris, officials telegrammed
Robert De Caix with concerns about its negative impact. They asked
mandate authorities to ensure that a ‘very liberal conception’ of the
mandate was upheld.135 De Caix’s reply defended Trabaud’s remarks,
portraying the controversy as a minor incident resulting from
Trabaud’s poor choice of words. He claimed that Trabaud’s speech had
been interpreted in a partisan way. The governor had only sought to
affirm France’s commitment to the mandate. De Caix blamed this

misinterpretation on the British-influenced Egyptian press, to be
examined in the next chapter. Yet he nevertheless assured Paris that he
would vet any future declarations made by the governor.136
Despite certain disagreements expressed in sections of the press and
political administration over mandatory methods between the imperial
centre and colonial periphery, a majority consensus sustained French
rights to a Levantine mandate. However, there were exceptions. The
right-leaning satirical magazine La Lanterne, which had not shied from
criticising the Elysée even during the authoritarian days of Louis
Napoléon, published a critical article in 1924 written by French Deputy
and Parti Colonial member Georges Barthélemy entitled ‘The Syrian
trap’.137 Barthélemy criticised a mandate administration that was ‘far
from bringing honour to our country’ and decried the ‘complicit silence
observed by most of the media’. He claimed that senior bureaucrats were
interested only in crass pleasures while the lower ranks were inventing
work to keep themselves busy.
All this was overseen by Robert De Caix, who Barthélemy
described as:
Elegant and erratic [. . .] [a] [. . .] rare bird, which the Quai d’Orsay
found in the editorial room of a strictly confidential review [a jibe
at the Comité de l’Asie Francaise’s magazine L’Asie Francaise which
De Caix had edited] [. . .] [he] played the big lord.138
As for the High Commissioner Gouraud, he was mostly absent:
Loyal to the method that brought him a most brilliant career [in
the military] he sees nothing, hears nothing [. . .] leaving
administration to the noble viscount [De Caix] and politics to the
Jesuit Father [Lucien] Cattin [. . .] [to the extent that Syrians say]
General Cattin and the father Gouraud [representing a jibe both at
mandatory authority and Gouraud’s infamous religiosity].139
Barthélemy encouraged the French parliament to cut the funding for

Syria by adopting a maxim of ‘neither a coin, nor a man’ and to undertake
a serious enquiry into the running of the mandate. He added that:
We have abandoned to the Turks the richest and most promising

part of the territory [Cilicia] [. . .] all that needs to be said is that
with the 5 billion [francs] thrown to the wind of whichever folly
pursued by the High Commission in Beirut, the [Albert] Sarraut
programme of development [mise en valeur] could have been
completely achieved and we would have thus obtained [. . .] the
rejuvenation of France and economic independence [from national
debt].140
Legislator Barthélemy even alleged immoral behaviour. He wrote:

‘bureaucrats coming back from Beirut admitted to me [. . .] “it is not an
administration, it is a b –- [bordello]” [. . .] the chiefs [. . .] spend their
time sharing cars, residences, horses and [. . .] the typists’.141
In 1925 Franc ois de Tessan, a radical-socialist public figure and soon
to become a member of the chamber of deputies, wrote of the Sarrail
Affair that presaged the Great Revolt with a degree of criticism beyond
mandatory methods. He emphasised the irreconcilability between
methods used and the meaning of the mandate mission, explaining that:
The system of a military high commissioner had long begun to be

bankrupt and General Sarrail is paying for the errors of his
predecessors as well as his own mistakes. Our representatives in
Syria have harmed [. . .] the psychology of our protected [Syrians
and Lebanese]. They deployed an autocracy, aloofness [un faste], a
disdain of certain indigenous aspirations [. . .] they over played
[. . .] the use of force and secret funds.142
The Leftist Press

The leftist newspapers provided the most consistent opposition to the
very idea of a mandate in metropole opinion. A radical refusal of
the mandate was outlined by the French Communist Party (PCF). Led by
L’Humanité, French Communists also supported a nascent Syro-Lebanese
Communist movement in the last years of the period under study. After
being founded in 1924 and promptly being designated as illegal, the
Syro-Lebanese Communist Party had become increasingly vocal during
the Great Revolt.143 In 1928, the Syro-Lebanese Communists adhered to
the Third Communist International (Comintern), which had launched a
campaign against French imperialism in Syria as early as 1924.144

French communists provided a platform for opposing France’s very right
to a mandate.
Communist deputy Jacques Doriot’s December 1925 speech against
the mandate in the chamber of deputies was printed by the Nantes
Communist Party a year later in 1926 through L’Humanité ’s printing
press.145 Doriot’s speech laid out the argument for an independent Syria.
Doriot essentially outlined what he saw as Jesuit (Gouraud and
Weygand) and freemason (Sarrail) generals at the head of the country.
For Doriot, the generals came from two sides of the same coin. Syria was
not subject to a civilising mission but was an opportunity for expansion
of capital. Doriot described the long engagement of French cultural
institutions as being a ‘religious penetration’ that later converted into
capitalist interests, noting that even before World War I commerce had
over 200 million francs invested in the country.
He alleged that General Gouraud promised business leaders at the
Marseille Chamber of Commerce that ‘the venture will pay’. Syria,
Doriot claimed, had been turned from an oppressed Ottoman province
with some degree of parliamentary representation into an outright
colony. Doriot also mocked the League of Nations which had, ‘by
hazard’, granted to France and Britain the exact same territories as they
had divided among themselves in the Sykes –Picot plans.146 L’Humanité
and its associated political and cultural networks thus provided a space
to shape French working-class opinion against what it saw as imperialist
capitalist wars.
By consistently publishing on Syrian affairs in the early mandate
years, it ensured enduring opposition to the very idea of the mandate.
Alongside this it also provided a platform for working-class solidarity
with anti-imperial activity. For instance, a meeting of Lyon’s Comité
Mixte d’Unité Syndicale, a trade union operating in that hub of the silk-
industry lobby, included discussion of repression of the revolts in Syria and
Morocco.147 It also advertised the Conference Générale des Femmes de la
Région Parisienne which included a call for women to participate in the
struggle against imperialist wars in Morocco and Syria.148 So too did it
report that a Communist congress in Glasgow had received telegrams
from the Syrian, Palestinian and Egyptian parties in solidarity.149
Aside from the impact that this had on its constituents among
French metropolitan workers, L’Humanité’s stance also provided a voice
for Syro-Lebanese dissenters. During the 1922 Lesser Syrian Insurrec-

tion, one Syrian correspondent rejected French policy, writing that:
We were more than a little indignant in Syria when we learnt that,

in order to defend his policy, General Gouraud had brought to
Paris, housed in the Hotel du Louvre, and presented as the delegates
of our country [. . .] Dr. [Jacques] Tabet and Mr. Arcache Bey.
These two people are utterly unknown here [. . .] Any journal that
were to declare in Syria what I have written to you would be
censored.150
‘L’Huma’ thus acted as a nodal point connecting Levantine dissent with

Comintern efforts. In April 1922, it published a denunciation of French
imperialism by a Lebanese Workers Party based in Alexandria. It called
for the solidarity of workers’ parties in Europe and America with their
cause, which focused on fighting ‘the creation [. . .] of the so-called
representative parliament’ in Lebanon.151 In the same month, it
reproduced a telegram from reformist Islamist Syrian thinker Rashid
Rida‘, then secretary of the Syro-Palestinian Committee in Cairo. Rida‘
denounced an ‘unsustainable’ political situation and the arrests of
nationalists as well as France’s crackdown on widespread protests.
L’Humanité was even accused by French intelligence to have facilitated
joint meetings between the Comité de l’Union Syrienne and the
Comintern front-group Comité d’Études Coloniales in Paris supervised
by Amadée Dunois, the newspaper’s editor in Paris.152
In September 1925 it published a letter from the secretary of ‘Abd al-
Rahman Shahbandar’s Hizb Al-Sha‘ab (People’s Party), naming himself
as H. Hakim, outlining the party’s requirements for constitutionalism
and Syrian unity.153 During the Great Revolt, ‘L’Huma’ published a
letter from an anonymous Syrian personality who thanked the paper for
‘ceaselessly defending the rights of oppressed people [. . .] Syrians who
know how to appreciate humanity and principles are profoundly touched
by your noble gestures’. The anonymous author added that the Great
Revolt was not a local but rather a national rebellion and criticised the
French authorities for ‘seeking to mislead public opinion’.154
L’Humanité also published a letter from Druze Revolt leader Sultan
Al-Atrash that had originally appeared in the Egyptian press. Al-Atrash
wrote: ‘For decades we fought for our liberty and independence. Enough
with words – it is with the sword that we must fight!’155 The

Communist organ also published extracts from letters written by the
ever-vocal Druze dissident Shakib Arslan. The first, addressed to Cartel
des Gauches Prime Minister Edouard Herriot, protested the description
of Syria as a French possession by protestant deputy Edouard Soulier. The
second raised Soulier’s claim to the attention of the President of the
League of Nations’ Permanent Mandates Commission.156
Aside from acting as a forum for opposition to the mandate,
an important characteristic of L’Humanité was that it contested
the metropolitan press’ distortions and omissions. When reporting
on the April 1922 Lesser Syrian Insurrection, L’Humanité used a cable
from the Havas agency sardonically noting that the wire-service had
finally decided to discuss the troubles in Syria. The newspaper read
between the lines, noting that Havas’ cable had announced that no
troubles had occurred in Damascus ‘since the 11 April, which confirms
that there had indeed been [trouble] before’.157
Another edition of ‘L’Huma’ reprinted a letter from Suleiman Kanaan,
one of the leaders in the 1922 Insurrection.158 Kanaan quoted an article
in Le Temps as having denigrated his efforts which had led to the
collection of ‘40,000 signatures which give me the right to speak in the
name of Lebanon’.
Kanaan added:
Le Temps, which is a serious newspaper, should not have defended

[. . .] the insanities of the administration [. . .] at the moment when
European public opinion, and especially the circles of leadership
and intellectuals in France have begun to perceive the outrageous
abuses.
L’Humanité introduced Kanaan’s letter by writing of its pride that

it was the ‘the only newspaper that has sullied the pharisaism
[dogmatic self-righteousness] of the French administration in Syria.
The press has, in general, sold out to exploitative capital.’159 However,
‘L’Huma’ was equally capable of publishing its own ideological
hyperbole. It denounced, for instance, ‘the venal press which has written
that Syrian wishes had called us to the mounts of Lebanon. In reality
[. . .] the avid merchants and lazy monks welcomed us [. . .]. But, at the
first contact with Muslim tribes, the knives were drawn.’160
Such combative activity did not go unanswered. The left-wing came

under attack from the right-wing press for its stance on the Syrian and
Moroccan conflicts of 1925. Right-wing paper La Croix published a
critical account of questions put to the Herriot government by seven
‘leftist’ deputies: Jacques Doriot and Ferdinand Faure, of the Parti
Communiste, Jules Uhry, Henry Fontanier who were Socialistes, Desiré
Ferry and Jules Desjardins, of the Union Républicaine et Démocratique,
and Adolphe Girod, of the Radical-Socialistes.161 In another article,
La Croix quoted various papers to denounce what it saw as the
fraternisation of the Communists with France’s enemies and the Cartel
des Gauches’ inability to govern.162
The Colonial Lobby and Newspapers

The colonial lobby and colonial press can be concisely defined as
those newspapers and pamphlets that directly emanated from colonial
interests. Christopher Andrews and Andrew Kanya-Forstner have
discussed the use of pamphlets as a means to increase the French colonial
lobby’s propaganda, which sought to convert metropolitan reticence for
colonial planning into secure commercial advantages.163 Stuart Persell’s
in-depth study of the lobby has noted that the Union Coloniale Franc aise
outlined the need to: ‘examine and present all economic or legislative
measures deemed necessary [. . .] and to disseminate them by publicity in
newspapers’.164 The colonial press was particularly defined by novelist
Paul Combes at the end of the nineteenth century as comprising of the
French-language newspapers dedicated to the colonial world, whether
printed in the metropole or colonial domains.
The colonial press and lobby’s interests largely intersected. The close
ties between colonial lobbying and colonial newspapers were evident in
the boards of colonial newspapers. For instance, in the early 1920s,
the Monde Colonial Illustré, edited by Stanislas Reitzler, was financed by
an eponymous company with a capital of 1.1 million francs. Its
president, Étienne Fougère, was also president of the Association
Nationale pour l’Expansion Economique. The vice-president, Ernest
Mercie, was the administrative delegate of the Union d’Eléctricité. Its
advisory board was replete with figures involved in colonial capital.
Among them were: a Sorbonne professor, a secretary of the Académie des
Science Coloniales, the director of the Laboratoire d’Agronomie
Coloniale, a professor of the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle, the

governor of Indochina and the director of the Ligue Maritime Coloniale.
In 1922, L’Humanité lambasted the colonial press and capitalists for
having an intimate relationship that: ‘leaves nothing to envy for the
metropolitan press. Subjugated in the same manner to the power of
money’.165
In the first years of the Syrian mandate, the lobby defended the
administration’s methods. An anonymous pamphlet put out by the
Union Economique de Syrie refuted charges that Syria was proving too
costly.166 The writer, an ex-officer in the Armée du Levant going by the
initials of J.M., rebutted criticisms that had appeared in the Revue de
Paris which he interpreted as being defeatist. J.M. argued that in Algeria
or Madagascar, France had only gradually made a profit after a loss of
troops. He pointed to the decrease in the High Commission’s civilian
budget from 185 million francs to 10 million in 1923 and contrasted
this to Britain’s budget in Mesopotamia, which he suggested had cost
over £300 million. J.M. equally dismissed the League of Nations’
importance since it had been: ‘mutilated in its cot by America, which
gave birth to it [. . .] it is the English in London, in Cairo, or in
Bombay that brings forth the fear-inducing mask of the League’.
France’s problems in Syria were thus conceptualised as a result of
Britain’s propaganda and support for the Druze and Michel Lutfallah’s
Syro-Palestinian Congress in Cairo.167
The Syrian mandate was primarily seen from an economic point of
view as both a producer of raw resources and a market for
French metropolitan and colonial goods. Algiers’ Le Mercure Africain
printed, for instance, news of a protest addressed by the Union des
Fabricant de Tapis de France and the Syndicat des Fabricants de
Tapis Point Noué de France, des Colonies et des Pays de Protectorat
against a set of tariffs on imports set by the High Commission
in Beirut.168 Even the self-proclaimed Radical-Socialiste newspaper
in Algiers published the proceedings of a conference organised by a
French-Algerian educator who had experienced Ottoman-era education
and expressed his belief in a special French mission in Syria.169
Yet even the colonial press demonstrated a capacity for publishing
criticism of mandatory methods. In 1920, French Africanist and
explorer Raymond Colrat de Montrozier wrote a biting satire of the
Syrian Mandate:
In Syria, we are behind by several centuries [. . .] here is Bayard

Gouraud [an allusion to fourteenth-century French crusader Pierre
Terrail de Bayard] [. . .] here is the frenetic dance of the
emirs sitting around the dish on which is spread the remains of
rancid butter [an allusion to bribes to ‘butter up’ the Sunni
leaders] [. . .] It is costing us, so far, two or three billion [francs]
and [. . .] several thousand small soldiers dead in a twentieth-
century crusade.170
Other commentary was less critical. In 1921, Paul Laffont, the radical-
socialiste junior minister for the Postes, Télégraphes et Téléphones gave a
speech while visiting Rabat that was published in the colonial magazine
France-Maroc. This seemingly left-leaning minister in a coalition cabinet
gave a speech in front of colonial administrators describing France as an
‘Islamic power’ which was:
Renewing the interrupted course of history: from Morocco to Syria

she protects all of oriental civilisation and watches over its
evolution. Under the shelter of her power, the ancient capitals [. . .]
such as Fez and Damascus, have regained their past splendour [. . .]
she could have imposed on these countries, in one fell swoop and
by force, all of her institutions and her laws. [But] She had the
wisdom to abstain.171
Laffont was essentially telling his audience that France’s failure to repeat
the level of violence seen in the Algerian conquest was a sign of
moderation. By 1928 one Algerian newspaper was reflecting the tone of
the aforementioned post-Great Revolt La Croix coverage; it called for a
more colonial approach in Syria in order to maintain France’s
‘credibility’. It wrote that:
If France desires simply to undertake a humanitarian, sentimental,

policy in Syria, she is succeeding in this by listening to [the League
of Nations in] Geneva [. . .] if France wants to maintain her
prestige and interests, the mandate is far from being the correct
framework. If the mandate persists, direct government
[‘administrateur-realisateur’ (literally a ‘doer’-administrator)] is
the only way compatible with the mentality of the people.172
Conclusion
The Levantine, metropolitan and colonial Francophone press in theory
represented an ideal avenue for disseminating French claims of culture
and government competency. However, it soon proved to be a contested
arena in which official efforts to harness cultural claims in pursuit of
clientelist politics met criticisms of the methods and even the meaning
of the Levant mandate. It is clear that certain local newspapers such as
Georges Vaiyssié’s La Syrie ceaselessly followed the mandatory
authorities’ line. Nevertheless, the great majority of public opinion
shapers, whether drawn from the liberal-centrist metropolitan press or
local ‘Francophile’ Lebanese newspapers, expressed serious reservations
with methods of mandatory rule. Finally, the use of French-language
newspapers for political organising, particularly in the seminal site of
Geneva as the home of the League of Nations and through the deeply
dissident French Communist press, challenged the very idea of the
mandate.
CHAPTER 7
INTERNATIONALISM:
THE EXTERNAL PRESS
The final cultural institutions to be examined are those that can be

broadly defined as composing the international press. This group
included Anglophone newspapers exerting pressure on French
authorities. Pressure was more immediately felt when newspapers in
the British-held Middle Eastern territories published critical
articles that could feasibly circulate in Syria and Lebanon. Mahjar
(émigré) Syro-Lebanese newspapers represented another group of
publications that were never successfully controlled by the High
Commission in Beirut or the French diplomatic corps in the Americas.
The final group to be examined is the more proximate regional
press, among which the Egyptian and Turkish newspapers were the
most influential. This external coverage was motivated by a variety
of interests often unaligned with Syrian independent development.
Yet the net effect of media reporting of French mandatory
methods that were characterised as both repressive and regressive was
to contribute to the undermining of French expectations of a Levantine
protectorate.
Suspicion of the British Press

Mandate administrators encountered critical British coverage of their
methods early on. It should be noted that French newspapers had been
equally fierce critics of British post-World War I activity in the Middle
INTERNATIONALISM 197
East. Le Matin, for instance, reproduced denunciations of the Balfour

Letter by Syrian and Palestinian activists at the 1919 Marseille Congress
on Syria.1 A few weeks later, Le Temps, a quasi-official mouthpiece of
government at the time, carried another article calling for a unified
and integral Syria including Palestine.2 Despite this competitive
reciprocity, French officials lambasted British press coverage of their own
mandate as unfair and Francophobic.
The French press adopted a more ambiguous approach to British news
sources. Some newspapers denounced British stories while nevertheless
using them as sources. Le Matin carried telegrams from Baghdad via
London to report on events in the Great Syrian Revolt.3 On another
occasion, it carried an article by Lady Drummond Hay, a correspondent
for the Sunday Express in Damascus, to publish news that the Syrian
revolutionaries had drawn up a constitution seeking to make Damascus as
the capital of an Arab federated state.4 For its part, despite French fears,
the British press took a balanced view of France’s mandatory methods.
Even a liberal-left magazine such as The Nation and the Athenaeum
published two columns in 1920 and 1925 giving an overview of the
mandate which did not quarrel with the French right to mandatory
tutelage, focusing instead on their methods. The Nation and the
Athenaeum published an excerpt of a statement by the National Defence
Committee in the Beqaa as sent to the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram.
Despite French denunciations of British coverage as being simple
propaganda, the magazine’s article did not in fact shirk from also
laying blame on Britain for the region’s issues.5
Just over five years later, The Nation and the Athenaeum published
another overview of the mandate, which outlined the pressure being
placed on the French by the League’s Permanent Mandates Commission
following the renewed outbreak of widespread violence in 1925. Yet the
article outlined a view that remained wedded to the idea of European
administrators ‘seeing further’ and ‘standing taller’ than the local peoples
being governed. However, the article also retained a critical tone
towards French policy, drawing on the Mandates Commission report.
This underlying faith in the aims of the French, if not their tactics,
was summarised thus: ‘When all criticisms are made, however, the
Commissioners feel that France, at heavy cost in money and lives, has
saved the inhabitants of the mandated territories from falling once more
under a foreign [i.e. Turkish or Arab] yoke.’6
Newspapers in the British Middle East

The Iraqi press was carefully monitored by the French consul in Baghdad.
In December 1925, Al-Istiqlāl (Independence) reproduced a programme
from the Syro-Palestinian Committee that had been originally published
in the Egyptian press.7 The programme called for Syrian unity, a national
government with preparations for elections to an assembly, then ending of
the mandate to be replaced with a bilateral accord, the withdrawal of
troops and Syrian membership in the League of Nations.8 Another paper,
the Basra-based Times of Mesopotamia, published a report from its Jerusalem
correspondent who scornfully reported that ‘the Syrian [French]
authorities can hardly be criticised for having, by strict censorship and
suppression of news of strategic character, withheld the true nature of
the situation’. Ironically, this heavy-handed approach had backfired on the
French since ‘wild rumours have gained circulation and [. . .] the
excitement and suspicion of the population increased’.9
Evidently, the distinction between French and British mandates still
remained significantly blurred in these initial years as local organisers
and the popular imagination rebuffed the conceived spaces of a newly
partitioned Bilad Al-Sham. In 1923, a Damascus newspaper reproduced
a telegram sent to the League of Nations by the Palestinian Congress
headed by Najib Shuqair. The telegram noted the boycotts launched in
Damascus, Homs and Hama in protest against the publication of the
Syrian mandate charter. The protests were also upset with French
methods arranging elections to a Representative Council for the
Federation of Syrian States.10 This was a Palestinian protest to an
international body regarding Syria and reprinted in a Syrian newspaper.
Regional journalists also featured in a 1923 French intelligence
report examining ‘Anglo-Arab Propaganda in Syria’. Among the
members of the nationalist Syrian Union Party, operating out of Egypt,
French intelligence noted one Ibrahim Al-Hajjar, the ex-owner of the
Jerusalem-based Lissan Al-‘Arab. Another was Toufik El-Yazigi who was
noted to have been militantly anti-Fench during his days as editor of the
Damascus newspaper Diwan during the Faisalian interregnum. El-
Yazigi was noted by the French to be producing ‘venomous’ articles in
the Cairo-based Al-Moqattam and that he had ‘retained loyal friends in
˙˙
media circles, particularly Toufik Jaha, Adib Safadi and Subhi Okdé; all
three journalists in Damascus’.11
Another figure flagged by French sevices was Amine Effendi Said, a

writer from Lattakia who had reputedly been close to Çemal Pasha in the
pre-World War period and was noted for having written pro-Turkish
articles in the Palestinian and Egyptian newspapers Al-Moqattam,
˙˙
Al-Akhbar and Wadi Al-Nil. Selim Sarkis, a Christian Lebanese journalist,
was identified as another player in the Syrian Unity movement operating
out of Egypt.12 French intelligence admitted that Sarkis was ‘gifted with a
real polemicist’s talent and has written a series of articles of a particular
violence against the French administration in Syria, in which he personally
denounced, in bad language, sometimes with swearwords [termes orduriers]
[. . .] General Gouraud’.13
Journalists from further-flung British territories became involved in
debates over methods in the Syro-Lebanese mandate. Alif Bāʼ of
Damascus published a series of articles by an Indian journalist Abdul
Kaim Malik regarding geopolitics. Alif Bāʼ approved Malik’s suggestion
that the progress of Bolshevism in the Muslim world was not the result
of support from Comintern czar Grigory Zinoviev, but rather the result
of a desire to put an end to the perceived arrogance of European rule.14
In November 1925, the Indian editor of Al-Islāh, an Arabic newspaper
˙ ˙
in Paris, wrote to French Foreign Minister Briand complaining of his
treatment by the French police in Paris. His fascinating, if somewhat
melodramatic, letter underpins the resilient challenge facing anti-
imperialists.15
Barakatullah Mandarie told his readers:
We owe an explanation to a large number of people in the East and

the West, who were good enough to welcome our Arabic paper
[. . .] by sending subscriptions [. . .] for its sudden stoppage after
its first issue only [. . .] was printed in Paris [. . .] we had placed a
copy of ‘El Islah’ on the table of an Indian friend [. . .] two or three
days after it, a British spy who frequented the house of our friend,
took away the copy [. . .] Hardly a week elapsed before a French
policeman called at our residence and said that we were publishing
a paper in favour of the Rifis [Abd El Krim’s revolt] [. . .]
On Friday [. . .] a French policeman called again at our residence
[. . .] and took us to the prefecture [. . .] There they treated us like a
convict [. . .] asked us to leave France [. . .] they had [. . .] been
collecting material against us for [. . .] three months and depicting
us as a dangerous man, [in truth] there are [only] two references to

France in our paper [. . .] the British spies and agents in Paris, it
seems, taking advantage of the disturbed state of the French mind
[. . .] have seared the French Foreign Office to death.
French concerns over British influence on the Syrian domestic situation

led to numerous attempts at encouraging British censorship in their
mandates. In 1925, in response to the aforementioned L’Orient and
Sarrail affairs, Foreign Minister Aristide Briand ordered his consuls to
investigate press regulation in neighbouring mandates.16 Following the
investigation, French officials in fact had to recognise the greater degree
of freedom of the press in the British possessions. The French consul in
Jerusalem noted that, though the Ottoman legislation was largely
unchanged, newspapers nevertheless had ‘all freedom to discuss politics
and attack the government. The [British] administration demonstrates
complete indifference’.17
Ironically, the consul found that the only time a newspaper had been
suspended was for insults to foreign powers, the last case having been
in July 1922, ‘at the request of Syria’.18 Such was the disparity in
censorship between Syria and Palestine that when 12 Lebanese editors
wanted to send protest telegrams to the French Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, they had to travel down to Haifa to do so. The editors were
protesting against Sarrail’s proposed legislative changes, which would
have delegated powers of suspension and censorship: the aforementioned
Sarrail Affair.19
French reports from neighbouring Iraq also suggested that French
protests had again been the major cause of censorship in this territory.
Telegramming from Baghdad in response to a Briand’s request, Consul
Jacques-Roger Maigret notified his foreign minister that the Ottoman
law of 29 July 1920 was still applied with slight modifications.
The Ottoman law provided the possibility of imprisonment and
fines for publications for such ‘crimes’ as putting the interior or
exterior security of the state in danger. At the time of the report,
Maigret wrote that the British had used this measure only once, against
Al-Istiqlāl, which had been given a fine and then suspended
indefinitely because of an article ‘harmful to the interests of the
country and of a nature as to hurt relations between Iraq and her ally
[French-held Syria]’.20
It should be noted that France’s perpetual adversary, ‘perfidious

Albion’, also encouraged censorship in Syria and Lebanon. In November
1921, the French received complaints from the Foreign Office as a result
of Al-Muqtabas publishing extracts from the King–Crane Commission
as well as claiming that the British were ‘tearing out the nails, breaking
the teeth and cutting the noses of the Irish’.21 Surprisingly, given the
suspicion that French officials usually cast upon Muhammad Kurd
‘Ali, Robert De Caix leapt to Al-Muqtabas’ defence. He informed the
Quai d’Orsay that Al-Muqtabas’ article had lifted its story wholesale
from a French newspaper, Les Annales. He also wryly noted that many
Egyptian and Palestinian newspapers were publishing anti-French
articles.22 The article in Les Annales had been written by French radical
deputy Georges-André Fribourg, who happened to be a member of the
high council on the colonies.23 Despite De Caix’s glee, the matter
actually put the Quai d’Orsay in a bind; denouncing Al-Muqtabas would
be tantamount to denouncing one of their own, doing nothing would
cause further friction with Britain. Al-Muqtabas’ crafty editor,
Muhammad Kurd ‘Ali, had managed to weave his way into imperial
intrigue to undermine both British and French rule.
In November 1924, the British authorities in Palestine had
approached General Weygand to protest against the overly anti-British
tone taken by the Capuchin-funded newspaper L’Orient which
had criticised Protestant missionary activity in Jerusalem.24 In January
1926, Gaston Maugras, the French consul in Jerusalem, notified
the High Commission that an article written by Albert Londres in Le
Petit Parisien had been reproduced in Georges Vayssié’s La Syrie.
The article had suggested the British officer and adventurer Peake Pasha,
Commander of the Arab Legion, had been supporting the Druze
uprising in 1925. W. Hough, the British consul in Aleppo, had
protested to the French consul who noted it was ‘unfortunately very
difficult to convince the English that a notorious French journalist
[Vayssie] landing in Syria [had] got his information on the political
situation [from] outside of French official circles’.25
The British consul added that local Aleppo newspaper Al-Taqqadum
had translated an article by Albert Londres into Arabic.26 For his part,
the British consul in Damascus, Walter Smart, had filed translations of
regional newspapers deemed to be damaging to Britain. These included
an article in Alif Bāʼ that outlined British intrigue in Yemen.27 After a
few other articles critical of British policy were published in Alif Bāʼ,
Smart went a step further. He directed his dragoman to pay a visit to tell
the newspaper’s editor, Yusuf Al-Issa, that he would be compelled to
‘suggest [. . .] the desirability of prohibiting the circulation of his
newspaper’ in British-mandated Iraq and Palestine. Smart reported that
‘Yusuf Al-Issa was most apologetic and begged’ his dragoman to assure
him that the paper would change its stance.
Smart also gained intelligence that the French had independently
visited Al-Issa with a warning on these articles which his informant had
told him was a result of French fears ‘that such articles against the
British were likely to stir up the people against foreigners [generally]’.28
A few months later, Smart reported that the French appeared to have
withdrawn the subsidy for Yusuf Al-Issa. Al-Issa complained to Consul
Smart that his paper had ironically depended on this subsidy because he
had lost much of his Muslim readership as a result of his pro-French bias
following the beginning of the mandate.29 These anecdotes of British
and French censorship of the Syrian press serve as a reminder of
fundamental limits to possibilities for Syrians and Lebanese to make
creative use of imperial rivalries for their individual and communal
interests.
Russian Influence
Throughout the early mandate period, Soviet Russian newspapers
were publishing denunciations of France’s role in Syria and Lebanon.
A journalist by the name of Astakhov wrote of the Franco-British
competition in the Near East, noting British support for a ‘Young
Lebanon’ committee in Alexandria that was sending petitions to the
League of Nations protesting the French-sponsored Lebanese elections.30
Astakhov also published a purported threat made by High
Commissioner Gouraud to Lebanese deputies during the opening
ceremony of the assembly: ‘May the assembly occupy itself with its own
affairs [. . .] so that [Lebanon Governor Albert] [. . .] Trabaud is not
compelled to occupy your seats’.31
A meeting of the spokesmen for developing world Communist
parties in Moscow included a speech by a Turkish representative, Orhan,
who called for ‘absolute independence of the colonies, evacuation of
Turkey, Egypt and Syria [. . .] [and] liberty of the press’.32 While the
Great Revolt was under way, French intelligence obtained ‘from an Arab
source, sure and informed’ information which indicated that the
Comintern had decided that Berlin resident and Hizb Al-Sha‘ab
(People’s Party) member Shukri Al-Quwatli should organise a campaign
of ‘attacks’ against ‘certain Syrian and Lebanese publicists and notables,
who have not defended the “national cause” and served as informants for
the High Commission or the French authorities’. Local organisation of
the plot was entrusted to a secretive Syrian, Izzedine Bey, who was also
reportedly in Comintern employ. Izzedine’s task was to infiltrate the
Comités de Concours à la Revolution Syrienne established in various
towns. Henry De Jouvenel, the High Commissioner, was reportedly on
the list of those to be assassinated.33
If this report seems fanciful, it appears less so when set alongside
other, similar material uncovered at the time. For instance, in January
1925, British authorities at Jerusalem’s central postal station
intercepted a letter addressed to a PO Box in Beirut. They found
translated instructions sent by the Comintern to the Palestinian and
Syrian Communist parties. The letter encouraged local Communists to
appreciate regional differences within the mandated territories.
In Lebanon, the struggle should focus on the feudalism of the notables
and great landlords. In the Jabal Druze, however, the deeply entrenched
feudalism should be passed over in order to encourage nationalist
sentiments. Some tradecraft was also included. For instance, it was
encouraged that secure and dependable cells of activists should first be
constituted ahead of recruiting more followers.34
Not all Russian-sponsored activity was Communist-inspired.
The bulletin of the aforementioned Sociéte Litéraire Russe de Damas
provided a so-called ‘White’, anti-Communist, Russian influence in the
heart of Damascus. Its committee noted the praise that the society had
received in the Francophone Beiruti newspapers.35 Even for this tiny
group of people, estimated at around 40 White Russians in Damascus in
December 1923, a fortnightly bulletin emerged which became a full
publication. The bulletin focused on news about other White Russian
exiles, for instance it informed its readers of the creation of an exiled
students’ association in Paris. It also published extracts of a letter from
Russia critical of the Bolsheviks.
Finally, it also published a review of books dealing with Syria’s past,
presumably to encourage the Russian refugees to embrace their new
country.36 Another article published extracts from Russian travel

accounts to Ottoman Syria.37 Despite its apparent hostility to the
Bolsheviks, the association sometimes reproduced long extracts from
Soviet newspapers that ironically likely escaped from French censors.
For instance, in mid-December 1923, it published extracts from
Proletarskaya Pravda (Proletarian Truth). The extract discussed the
‘silence’ of the ‘French bourgeois press’ on the ‘occupation’ of Syria by
French troops. At the end of a long quote of the detailed critique of the
French administration appearing in Pravda, the Association simply
incredulously added ‘and thus is how history is written!’38
The US-Based Press

French officials recognised the importance of US public opinion, much
as they had during the brief wartime attempts to win over the Zionist
movement in an attempt to circumvent Britain.39 Early in the mandate,
in 1921, the Foreign Minister had written to General Gouraud to notify
him that two prominent US newspapermen, George Porter of the
Chicago Daily News and Charles Merz of the New York World, were on
their way to Beirut. The Minister told Gouraud that he did not need to
outline the critical importance that these two journalists be wooed given
the new-found interest for the Near East amid the US reading public.40
The New York Times picked up a telegram claiming that a Sinn Fein-
like organisation, naming itself ‘The Black Hand’, had shot and injured
the Damascus chief of police. High Commissioner Gouraud denied the
report. The news had emanated from a wire service in Haifa in the midst
of the 1922 Lesser Syrian Insurrection. Internally, Gouraud noted
concerns outlined by Jean Jules Jusserand, the French ambassador in
Washington, that there was a growing impression in the US that ‘a state
of unease is prevailing in Syria’.41
French attempts to contain the spread of information was an uphill
struggle as technological changes meant media mobility. In December
1925, the world’s then largest radio antenna, at the Nauen broadcasting
station in East Germany, was noted by High Commissioner Henri de
Jouvenel to have broadcasted ‘false news’ on the events of the Great
Revolt. The huge Nauen antenna had a range of 5,000 km, meaning
that the news of Damascus’ bombardment had rapidly reached
newspapers in Spain.42 In response, the French diplomatic establishment
went into full denial.43 The French ambassador in Spain did what he
could to bolster Jouvenel’s denial of the Nauen station’s broadcast and
enjoyed some success in doing so, noting that most of Madrid’s
newspapers had carried the refutation.44 The High Commissioner’s
denial of a French bombardment of Damascus even reached Saigon.45
The denials had less success in Germany, where only Berlin’s Deutsche
Tageszeitung carried them.46 Fortunately for the French, though two US
newswire services, the United Press and Associated Press, carried the
Nauen broadcast, no US newspapers reproduced them.47 Controlling an
internationalised public sphere was beyond any power’s means yet the
French were determined to do all they could to limit the spread of
negative news. The French consul in Jerusalem notified Paris that the
Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) had cabled similarly dire news of the
Syrian situation.48 Unlike the Nauen broadcasts, the Washington Post
carried the JTA story.49 By 1927 an article in the colonial Algerian
newspaper L’Effort Algerien took heart at the fact that French radio
stations were being erected at Saigon, Antananarivo, Bamako and
Figure 7.1 Results of French bombardment of Damascus in 1925.

Available online: http://eltaher.org/docs_photos/1925-Result-of-French-
bombardments-01-image934_en.html.
Brazzaville, in a move likely intended to combat the influence of large

Anglophone wireless broadcasters.50
The persistence of Orientalist biases among the East Coast
intellectual elite, who tended to see Syrian Christians as victims of a
Muslim irruption in 1925, did generate some degree of sympathy for the
French. The French ambassador in Washington notified Foreign
Minister Briand of news about the Great Syrian Revolt in the Washington
Post and other US newspapers. He noted that the tone of the
newspapers had become more measured with regard to the conflict.51
The Post’s article, entitled ‘Christians Routed, Southern Lebanon at
Druzes’ Mercy’, focused its criticism on what it saw as a poor French
policy which had allowed ‘tribal hordes’ of Druzes to ‘sweep on’.52 The
French also monitored the Canadian press, with clippings of small
newspapers such as Vancouver’s Daily Province being sent by their consul.
One article was judged by the consul in British Colombia to be among
the ‘more equitable’ of the Canadian coverage.53 Such ‘moderation’ was
demonstrated by the Daily Province’s discussion of the: ‘remarkable’
transformation that the mandate had initiated in ridding Syria of
the ‘Mohammedan’ oppression of Christians. According to the
Vancouver paper, the 1925 uprising was simply an attempt by Muslims
to regain their traditional domination.54
However, a number of East Coast and other US newspapers published
rank criticism of French mandatory policies and repression of the Great
Revolt. One French diplomat kept a clipping of a critical article
appearing in the New York Herald Tribune as ‘anti-French propaganda’.
The article, carrying the title of ‘France’s Syrian Rule Berated as
“Tyrannical”’, quoted a discussion at the Foreign Policy Association’s
meeting at the New York Astor. Among the speakers, politics Professor
Edward Meade Earle of Columbia University warned that ‘unless the
system of mandates is to be admitted by the League to be merely a new
name for an old imperialism, a thoroughgoing investigation must be
made’.55 A New York Times article entitled ‘French Parade of Rebel Dead
Held Cause of Damascus Riot’ was clipped and labelled ‘English
propaganda’ by the French. The French consul’s clipping also underlined
part of a sentence in this article that explained that: ‘no information is
available in the French capital and, just as ever since the start of the
difficulties with the Druzes, reports of the events [. . .] have come from
British sources [underlined by French diplomats]’.56
In November 1925, the Literary Digest of New York published a story

on ‘the Damascus Massacre’. It wrote of:
The screaming and bursting shells that spattered the streets of

Damascus with the blood of innocent men, women and children
[which] sent a thrill of horror through the civilized world [. . .] at
least 2,000 were buried in the debris [. . .] In the United States,
editorial writers discuss this event under such uncompromising
headlines as ‘murder in Damascus’ [. . .] the St. Louis Post Dispatch
[. . .] notes further that ‘while the right hand of France was signing
[. . .] [the] Locarno [Pact] [. . .] and intervening [. . .] in the Greece-
Bulgaria squabble, its left hand was committing ruthless
butchery’.
In its own analysis, the Digest noted that ‘final responsibility for what
happens in Syria rests not with General Sarrail, or even with France, but
with the League of Nations [. . .]. Already [. . .] the Permanent Mandates
Commission [. . .] had called upon the French [. . .] for full particulars’.
The list of newspapers cited by the Digest for its Syrian story gives a sense
of the spread of an anti-mandatory message in the USA. Among them
were the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Pittsburgh Chronicle Telegraph, the
Boston Globe, the New York Evening Post, Philadelphia’s Evening Bulletin
and the Detroit Free Press.57
The case of Jessie Lloyd O’Connor, a young journalist from a
prominent newspaper family who was the London Daily Herald’s
Geneva correspondent, reveals the importance attached to the US press
by French authorities.58 In 1926, she interviewed Robert De Caix,
who had by then become France’s representative to the Permanent
Mandates Commission. It is worth quoting at length to get a sense
both of the approach taken by Robert De Caix, as well as one
contemporary critical journalist’s understanding of the tensions of the
mandate.
According to Lloyd O’Connor:
De Caix [. . .] branded as absurd the persistent rumours that the

mandate would be transferred to another power [. . .] ‘Americans’,
said M. de Caix, whose mother was an American, ‘are naturally
inclined to judge conditions in other parts of the world by the
same excellent standards of democracy that they have set up in

their own country. Unfortunately, those standards are sometimes
inapplicable to less advanced peoples’. [. . .] In regard to the
proclamations made by France and England during the War,
promising the Syrians self-determination, he replied, ‘it is true
that such proclamations were made but the League of Nations
thought it would be dangerous at this stage to leave the Syrians to
govern themselves unaided’.59
At this stage, Jessie Lloyd O’Connor added her own note denying De
Caix’s version of events. She wrote that he was: ‘very wide of the mark.
The conference of ambassadors [Paris Peace Conference] entrusted Syria
to the French, leaving the latter to draw up its own mandate with
the sole condition that it must be confirmed by the League’. De Caix
continued during the interview:
How could we reject that responsibility, when France has been for
decades the protector of the Christians in Syria? You have heard
Syrian agitators say that when we went in 1920 we overthrew their
government. The truth is, there was no Syrian government worth
speaking of [. . .] Americans are inclined to blame us for the recent
unfortunate disturbances in the country [. . .] [yet] those people
made our task almost impossible. Instead of eagerness to cooperate
in setting up the machinery of good government, we found
suspicion on every hand, sporadic murders, and ridicule of
everything French.60
O’Connor asked De Caix a question specific to the press: ‘Is it true, as the
Syrians allege [. . .] that you have a rigorous censorship of the press,
and have abolished freedom of public meeting?’ De Caix denied the
accusation:
Indeed not! In the region where the war is going on, naturally
some liberties are suspended; there is necessarily a regime
of martial law. But outside of the Druze district and the part of
Southern Syria still under martial law, there is complete freedom
of assembly and no press censorship. It is true that occasionally we
suspend a paper for what it has already printed, but we have no
opportunity to stop objectionable articles until after publication.

You see how unreliable the Syrian propagandists are.61
From the mouth of the architect of the early French mandate, De Caix’s
replies demonstrate the challenge posed to mandatory methods by local
and international contestation in the cultural institutions, particularly
the press.
The Mahjar American Press

It is worth noting that the Syrian Revolt had repercussions on public
opinion throughout the Americas. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in
Paris put out a bulletin selecting and translating articles appearing
in the South American press. Among them was an article appearing in
El Dı́a of Montevideo which made mild criticisms of French policy
which had left the local populations ‘unhappy and rebellious’.62 A more
pressing consideration for French authorities was the huge mahjar
community of Syro-Lebanese in America.
The word mahjar denotes the émigré populations from the Arab-
speaking world. A great deal of literature has justifiably focused on this
fascinating North American sub-culture.63 So too have studies emerged
on mahjar Latin Americans.64 The mahjar also extended to European,
African and even Asian countries.65 Paris had an important Syrian-
Lebanese colony, as did Switzerland and Germany. From Ottoman times
Syrians and Lebanese had been based in Cairo and Alexandria and their
influence on the modern development of Syria and especially Lebanon
cannot be underestimated.66 The Syrian community in Manchester was
also an old mercantile community.67 French reports even noted Syrian
communities in Tokyo and Australia. An area that received many among
them was Latin America. Immigration, which had begun in the late
nineteenth century, continued apace throughout the 1920s.
Even prior to the mandate, this diverse community united by their
migration from a shared homeland had maintained their interest in
Levantine developments. Their relationship with the French Ministry
of Foreign Affairs was well established, particularly over the course of
World War I when the shaping of public opinion in the Americas
became an important element of political warfare.68 Yet, as the mandate
took shape, the French found that these previously dependable shapers of
public opinion began to tire of their rule. This émigré community had
built a sizeable public sphere with intrinsic ties to the Levantine
homeland. Internal discussions consistently recognised the importance
of the mahjar cultural networks, particularly after France gained a
mandate over their homeland.
Edmond Tabet, the Maronite president of the Syria-Lebanon League
in the USA, was described as the most important of US-based Syrian
leader who was in favour of a French mandate. A bureaucrat explained
how Tabet’s successful organising in the USA could be repeated in Syria
to the benefit of France.69 The French were keen to co-opt this mahjar in
the Americas. French links to the Ottoman mahjar had roots in the
special privileges (capitulations) given to Levantines through Ottoman
concessions to France. The updated post-Ottoman protection arrange-
ments were established through bilateral treaties with the governments
of each country in the western hemisphere. One such agreement was
established through an agreement between French Consul Claudel and
the Brazilian government in 1916.70
Protection afforded to Syro-Lebanese in Brazil was of a purely ‘informal’
character according to French diplomatic records.71 Yet the alleged scope of
this informal protection was liberally interpreted. As part of this attempt at
co-opting the mahjar, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs undertook a
concerted effort at registering the Syro-Lebanese immigrants. This would
‘attach [the Levantines] to the motherland’.72 As an enticement to French
protected status, the ambassador in Rio suggested that these mahjaris be
reminded that becoming protected subjects would release them from
Brazilian military service. The ambassador promoted the benefits of dual
nationality, a status used by some Syrians to profit from both the Brazilian
nationality and status as French protected subjects. Citing one example, he
noted one eminent mahjari, ‘a notable that the French government has just
decorated [. . .]. Who [is] Syrian or Lebanese, in Paris, [but is] a justice de
paix [clerk of the peace] in an area of São Paulo’.73
As the mandate began, the Al-Barq newspaper in Beirut
congratulated the French for providing such consular support to
Lebanese in Brazil.74 At the World War’s end, the Foreign Ministry had
allocated 50,000 francs of subsidies to Syrian newspapers abroad.75
However, the mahjari North and South American press had limited
circulation. For instance, Mexico City’s La Syria Unida reportedly only
put out 500 copies and had changed from weekly to monthly
distribution.76 Attempts at subsidising newspapers did not always have

their anticipated effect. In 1918, the French consul in Brazil considered
attempts at enjoining that country’s Syro-Lebanese press to have been a
‘fiasco’, both quantitatively and qualitatively.77
Co-opting mahjar news editors remained a no-less-difficult task given
the craftiness of these entrepreneurial émigrés. In March 1923, Salim
‘Aql, the editor of the A Polı́tica newspaper in São Paulo, wrote to
Francophile agent Shukri Ghanem in Paris. ‘Aql was upset that he had
been sending 800 copies of his newspaper to Beirut over a period of four
years, as requested by General Gouraud, without receiving the £200 a
year that he claimed he was owed. ‘I have worked for eight years,’ he
wrote, ‘I am burdened by debts because of my newspaper, 1000 copies of
which have been freely distributed to spread the Franco-Syrian cause’.78
High Commissioner Gouraud aloofly and promptly rejected ‘Aql’s
claims, suggesting that the Syrian’s debts had led him to surreptitiously
stuff 400 copies of his newspaper alongside a letter sent to Beirut in
1922.79
French distrust of the mahjar press was thus present in tandem with
attempts at establishing clientelist protection. A compartmentalisation
parallel to that seen with Francophone Levantine papers in the previous
chapter occurred through the French diplomatic apparatus in Latin
America.80 In 1919, the French Interior Minister banned a number of
Syrian newspapers from entry to France and Algeria.81 The Brazilian-
based Al-Raed was banned from entry to Syria and Lebanon in April
1922 as a result of articles deemed to be against the mandate.82
Despite these efforts at separating the émigrés from developments in
their homeland, the mahjar press proved to be a resilient network that
could absorb and circulate information from and to the Levant.83
In 1917, an Arab press agency existed that linked various parts of the
Arab world with the mahjar. It claimed to be used by major Arab
newspapers such as Al-Hoda (The Guidance) in New York and Al-Qibla
(The Direction) in Mecca, Abu Al-Hal (The Sphinx) and Al-Afkār (Ideas) in
São Paulo and As-Salām (Peace) in Buenos Aires.84 In 1921, two
prominent Haitian Syrians contacted the French consul on the island
expressing fears that France would encourage Lebanon’s assimilation into
Syria as reported by Syrian newspapers in the USA.85
The French consul in Geneva noted that much of the Swiss press had
reproduced news items hawked by the Syro-Palestinian Committee that
had previously appeared in the US press. One example was an article in

the Chicago Tribune which had intimated that Vittorio Scialoja, Italy’s
representative to the League of Nations, had met anti-mandate activist
Ihsān Al-Jabri. In the event, the consul denied the story, noting that the
˙
General Secretariat of the League and its senior representatives had
been endlessly approached by ‘Muslim personalities, such as Shakib
Arslan’ and Ihsān Al-Jabri, yet it had ‘always energetically refused
˙
to see them’.86
Further evidence of the interchanges is demonstrated by the fact that
in 1920 a Mecca-based newspaper, Al-Qibla, reproduced an article from
the US-based Al-Bayān, enjoining Americans to aid Syrians in their
struggle for independence. It argued that the US free press should
support the Syrian struggle for the application of ‘global justice’,
including human rights. Al-Bayān’s article took pride in the fact that the
Syrian press was:
The indicator of a civilised peoples and the reflection of [the

people’s] work [,] it is very advanced among us and newspapers are
numerous [. . .] Syrians abroad have many newspapers and reviews
of a higher calibre than those of other foreign colonies [abroad].87
Al-Bayān added that Syrians’ linguistic, commercial and cultural

abilities justified their right to political independence.88 As mandatory
rule got underway, French control over the mahjar press appeared
increasingly tenuous. In July 1921, Beirut High Commission official
Pierre Carlier sent a notice to the Ministry asking for information on
hostile articles in the Argentine press.89 Also in the summer of 1921,
Gouraud’s secretary Robert De Caix wrote to Foreign Minister Aristide
Briand outlining coverage appearing in a Syrian-Brazilian newspaper.90
Al-Tassahul had published an article criticising France which had
brought ‘debauchery, corruption and dirt’ to Syria and encouraged the
spread of venereal diseases.91 Al-Tassahul was described by the French as
having taken an ‘inadmissible and insulting stance’ and the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs was urged by the High Commission in Lebanon to bring
this to the attention of the Brazilian government.92
A notice from the French consul in Bahia (today’s São Salvador)
notified the Quai d’Orsay that alongside Al-Tassahul, two further mahjar
newspapers (Al-Afkār and Al-Jarida, The Gazette) were taking an anti-
French stance. He reported that Al-Tassahul was still being subsidised by

German agents and all three of these newspapers were retaining relations
with Bahia’s 200-strong mandate-sceptic Sociedade Libanesa-Syria.93 In
August 1921, the French ambassador in Rio de Janeiro, A.R. Conty,
asked Paris for an 800-franc subsidy for another Syrian newspaper, Al-
‘Adil (The Testament), owned by a Francophile.94
In July 1922, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ press service relayed a
similar request from the French ambassador to Chile who was asking for
funds to support the creation of an Arab newspaper aiming to ‘challenge
the campaign against the French mandate in Syria among Syrian circles
in Chile’.95 The High Commission’s press service commended such
propaganda and suggested it could be extended to other parts of the
hemisphere like Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. In September 1922
French ambassador Conty in Rio warned Paris that a newspaper named
Al-’Asmā, edited by Monmos Sababidy, had been reborn. This newspaper
had been watch-listed by High Commissioner Gouraud as an ‘enemy’ of
France until it had previously folded in December 1921.96
Despite these attempts at control, other newspapers continued to
provide avenues for challenges to mandatory methods. In March 1922,
the Palestinian newspaper, Lisan Al-‘Arab, was influential among what
one report termed the ‘gallophobe’ Syrian press in the Americas. The
report noted that New York’s Al-Marat Al-Gharb (Times of the West)
reproduced a sarcastic article originating in Jerusalem’s Lisan Al-‘Arab
entitled ‘The honourable criminals’. The article alleged that a flight
sergeant had pistol-whipped a village Sheikh and been cleared of charges
at the court-martial, thus seeming to prove, as the newspaper put it, that
the life of a Syrian was worth less than a Frenchman’s.97 Another
newspaper that picked up Lisan Al-‘Arab articles was Buenos Aires’
Al-Sha‘ab. This included one article which criticised French policy
toward freedom of speech explaining that: ‘[France’s] bureaucrats [. . .]
suspend newspapers for the slightest article and General Gouraud
encircles himself with criminals and deports the liberals’.98
In December 1922, the Buenos Aires-based Le Positiviste, edited by
Joseph Fehmi, published a more intellectually rooted critique of France’s
policy. Fehmi wrote that France:
Hinders progress [. . .] In Asia and in Africa, she has devoted

herself to a policy of disorganised colonial conquest [. . .] Not only
does she not return Algeria to the Arabs as a positivist policy

requires [. . .] but she persecutes Tunisia, she sets aflame and harms
Morocco [. . .] the good and generous eldest daughter of the
Revolution of 1789 [. . .] tortures patriots in Syria and Lebanon
[. . .] she abuses her power against the weak.99
Fehmi, likely a Jewish Syrian given his name, was originally based in
Madrid. His newspaper was influenced by Auguste Comte’s work and
encouraged a ‘positivist politics’ which ‘sets aside all abstracting, verbal
solutions, futile explanations [. . .] to turn toward the concept, to
facts, to action’, as its tagline explained to readers. Interestingly, the
newspaper renounced its copyright with the words ‘pas de propriete
littéraire: ceci est a tous [no literary rights reserved: this is for everyone]’,
thus making it an early example of what has subsequently been termed
‘copyleft’. The newspaper’s byline claimed that it was sent to 3,000
‘well chosen people across the world’. Such a person was a ‘Jewish lady,
attached to a financial institution’ in Salonica who was caught with a
copy of the newspaper. Reporting on this, the French consul in Salonica
dismissed the originality of this publication’s ideas as evidence of Syro-
Lebanese ‘who seem to have appropriated our language in order to better
speak ill of the country which has ensured the liberation of their own’.100
In 1924 another edition of Le Positiviste made its way to the desk of
the French ambassador to Belgium, who gave credence to Fehmi’s claim
that he had 3,000 subscribers as evidence of ‘certain resources among its
editors’ and noted that this ‘violent and crudely anti-French’ paper had
been forbidden from entering France in March 1923.101 In an earlier
edition of Le Positiviste from 1923 Fehmi had duplicated a report by the
French consul in Cairo describing French attempts at promoting
commercial propaganda to increase alcohol consumption in the country.
The Consul’s report brazenly explained that ‘advertising [cognac] in the
Arab newspapers [. . .] would be of interest [since] the European
newspapers have such a small circulation and are read only by people
whose opinions are already made and thus difficult to influence [italics added
by Fehmi]’.102
To this, Fehmi added his commentary:
If French officials deploy such zeal in the spread of alcoholism in

Egypt, where the Parisian leeches are not rulers, we can imagine
the ravages of colonial monstrosity in Algeria-Tunisia, Morocco,

Indo-China, in Lebanon, in Syria.103
Fehmi told his readers that he held ‘a thousand other similar documents
that I carefully keep in my files to send to the League of Nations’.
Another of these cases of French ‘monstrosity’ that Fehmi was
documenting in this edition was the suicide of a 26-year-old Maronite,
Jean Maalouf, on 13 September 1922, in Paris’ Jardin des Tuileries.104
Fehmi carefully reproduced a report of his death published by
Le Matin which suggested that the young man, who had served the
French in the Foreign Legion, had lost his mental capacities. Fehmi
disagreed, believing this to be disinformation. Instead, he wrote:
Mr Jean Maalouf left a long letter in which he spat in the face of

the governors of Paris, in indignation and disgust [. . .] yet, and
here is the most cowardly side [. . .] of this affair [. . .] official
France requested the newspaper Le Matin, which is in connivance
with her, to publish [. . .] an execrable lie: she tried to make the
public believe that her victim was a lunatic.105
Fehmi claimed to have a copy of Maalouf’s suicide letter which would

disprove Le Matin.106 Fehmi’s interventions were particularly intellectual,
perhaps radically so as his newspaper’s title suggests, yet they fit into a
broader pattern of growing mahjar scepticism about the mandate and
bolder denunciation of French methods.
In May 1925, a ban on the Brazilian Syrian newspaper Al-Rā’id/Ô
Reporter, which had been imposed in 1922, was lifted. The newspaper’s
editor, Nagib Constantin Haddad, had appealed for the ban to be lifted
and new High Commissioner General Sarrail had deemed sincere the
editor’s pledge to refrain from anti-French articles. Yet Sarrail also
informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Haddad’s tone would have
to improve or a ban would be renewed.107 In June 1925, the French
ambassador in Argentina notified Paris of an article published in
the Syrian newspaper Natura which called for financial support to those
injured during the Republican Abd El-Krim’s Rif Rebellion in
northern Morocco.
A Comité Central Por Héridos Rifeños de Marruecos had launched
the appeal. The ambassador included a list of those on the committee’s
board and suggested they could be considered as ‘more or less active

adversaries of the mandate’. The appeal had raised some 2,210 Argentine
piasters.108 By September 1925, Haddad’s Brazilian newspaper had
earned a renewed ban as a result of publishing a letter from Rif-leader
Abd El-Krim.109 In the same month, High Commissioner Sarrail
also banned several Communist newspapers. Two were from the USA,
The Proletarian of New York and Yeridassart Hayassdan (Young Armenia)
published in Boston. One was from Buenos Aires, La Estrella Roja,
and one, Mardagotch (Call to Arms/Defiance), originated in Soviet
Armenia.110
On 10 December 1925, Al-Bayān of New York, edited by Salim
Baddour, published a letter from ‘Prince Shakeeb [Shakib Arslan]’ which
gave an insight into the active role of the mahjar newspapers as gateways
for donation collections supporting anti-mandate politics. Arslan
informed the readership that he had just returned from Berlin. He noted
that ‘the differences between me and the French [. . .] are ever present
[. . .] send large donations via Jerusalem, if you wish’. In its own
commentary, Al-Bayān encouraged readers to make haste in providing
large sums.111 Al-Bayān was subsequently flagged in January 1926 for
continuing to circulate within the mandated territories despite having
‘constantly published articles unfavourable to the French mandate’.112
These interchanges fuelled French fears and elicited a reflexive
response of distrusting surveillance, even active disruption. In December
1925, the French consul in New York notified Paris that a Syro-Lebanese
newspaper, The Syrian Eagle, had attacked the mandate authorities.
Yet the article itself spoke only of the ‘deplorable’ situation of refugees in
Beirut and took a sympathetic view of the Christian population who
‘appreciate and favour’ the French mandate as against the ‘fanaticism
and barbarity’ of the revolutionaries.113 The fact that French officials
flagged this article as dangerous underscores their increasing distrust
towards such cultural institutions as the Great Revolt was underway and
various communities abroad were questioning mandatory methods.
An undated French Interior Ministry report acknowledged the loss of
faith among the mahjar communities incurred by the severe repression,
explaining that:
Terror certainly ruled and it is only by sin [c’est par tort] that [. . .]
order returned to Damascus [. . .] as for the hatred which will be its
result, its extent remains unclear if we do not heed the power of the
Syrian press and its repercussion throughout the Muslim world
and the United States.114
The growing respect for and recognition of the maturity of the

Syro-Lebanese press in the Americas is evident in post-Great
Revolt diplomatic correspondence. In 1931, two French ambassadors
in Santiago and Bogota exchanged letters regarding subsidies for an
Arabic-language Christian newspaper to be founded by Negib
Constantine Haddad. Haddad had approached the Santiago ambassador
for a list of Syro-Lebanese Chileans in order to create a subscription
service, demonstrating a growing sense of quid pro quo between mahjaris
and French officials.115 Haddad’s letter to the French ambassador in
Santiago did not demonstrate any sign of the dependency evident in pre-
mandate discussions held between mahjar editors and French diplomats.
Haddad did stress his constant support for the French cause over his
25-year career as a journalist yet he also described the mandate simply as
a ‘necessary thing given the historic bonds of friendship and intellectual
affinities that exist between our two countries’, hardly words describing
an oversight by a tutor.116
The Regional Press

Syria’s position as the linchpin of the Fertile Crescent has subjected it to
endless influence from her neighbours in the Islamicate world.117 French
reports were fully aware of the great influence exercised on Syria by the
regional powers to her north and south: Egypt and Turkey. The
declining importance of traditional bastions of pan-Islamic culture, such
as the Al-Azhar University and Ottoman Caliphate, had sent shockwaves
through the Islamic World. Further political awakenings occurred to the
north and south as both countries successfully undertook nationalist
anti-imperial struggles. In 1919, the Wafd Party’s revolt forced Britain
to give nominal independence to Egypt in 1922. Mustafa Kemal
Atatürk’s march toward national independence began in 1919 and
established the Turkish Republic in 1922.
Well before these developments, a mahjar press had been established
in Egypt. In the Ottoman period, Syrians such as Salim Takla, who
founded the prominent Al-Ahram of Cairo, were pallbearers of Khedivial
˙
Egypt’s burgeoning literati.118 This proximity, which has been described as

a mutual ‘cross-glocalisation’ in the context of Syrian women’s magazines
in Ottoman Egypt, led to a number of Syro-Lebanese newspapers being
founded in the Nilotic country.119 A 1919 French review of the Muslim
World press in 1919 listed Cairo’s Al-Muqattam, edited by Syrian Farès
˙˙
Nimr as an organ for the Syrian Unity party with a circulation of 7,000.
Al-Ahram, edited by another Syrian, G. Takla, put out 3,000 copies. Other
˙
Cairene newspapers edited by Syrians included Al-Akhbar (The News),
edited by Yusuf Al-Khazen with a circulation of 500, Al-Minbar
(The Tribune), edited by G. Tannous and circulating 700 copies, and
Al-Kashkul (Scrapbook), edited by a Christian Syrian. Even the official
newspaper of the British residency in Egypt, Al-Muktataf (Elite), was
edited by a Christian Syrian named Makarius. Al-Mahrussa (The Amalgam),
with its 700 copies, was edited by Syrian Elias Ziyadeh. In Alexandria,
Al-Bashir was the main Syrian newspaper, edited by R. Schemeil.120
French diplomats in Cairo noted that North African Muslim opinion
favoured the Egyptian press over its Syrian counterpart due to the latter’s
limited freedom of expression. Egyptian newspapers such as Al-Ahram,
Al-Muqattam and Al-Mu‘ayid (The Advocate) were read ‘from Baghdad
˙˙
to Tunis’ as a result of Egyptian cultural clout and an ‘imprudent’
liberal censorship exercised by British authorities.121 In Beirut a High
Commission report noted that the Egyptian press was ‘avidly read by the
enlightened population of Syria [. . .] and constituted almost the unique
inspiration and principal source of news for the Beirut and Syrian
newspapers’.122 The Egyptian press thus represented a particularly
mature cultural institution that could counter French claims of culture
and competency in mandate administration.
For a short period after the World War, France did seek to sway these
newspapers to their ends, though they were joined in this effort by their
customary Middle East rival, Albion. Al-Muqattam was given a subsidy
˙˙
in May 1918 and one of its editors even accepted planted articles from
123
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. However, the French consul in Cairo
reported that Al-Kawakāb was an organ ‘entirely administered and
edited by the British authorities’.124 In Cairo, Britain maintained a
‘Syrian Bureau of Information’ suspected by French authorities to be
a propaganda front.125 British authorities even paid a £1,000 stipend to
the French Havas news agency, which it withdrew in January 1920 as a
result of hostile reports in Havas.126
Despite these attempts at control, Egyptian newspapers remained

critical of the mandate. In March 1923, Al-Muqattam published an
˙˙
editorial entitled ‘The friend of France is the one who tells her the truth’.
Noting mandate administrators’ dislike for the Egyptian press, the
Syrian-edited Al-Muqattam accused these administrators of serving their
˙˙
own interests by ignoring the truths written in the Egyptian press.
It asserted that the French government was ignoring the mistakes made
by the mandate administrators which had ‘brought the country to the
precipice’.127
In the same month, Alexandria’s Wadi Al-Nil published an article
claiming that mandatory administrators were having a pernicious
impact. It described as two ‘uncrowned kings’ the éminence grise of early
mandatory administration, Robert De Caix and Lebanon Governor
Albert Trabaud. The newspaper argued that these two were exploiting
rather than solving religious quarrels at the local level and, in Lebanon in
particular, accused them of having no coherent plan with vacillating
policies such as granting Tripoli autonomy, or giving away part of its
territory.128
Al-Muqattam stressed that it was not an enemy of France but rather a
˙˙
friend of hers. Yet the mandate had muzzled the opinion of Syrians
because of ‘intrigues of administrators [éxécuteurs ] of the mandate and
the shelter [given them] by pressure and martial law’.129 It expressed the
opinion that there was a duty on the Syrian-Egyptian press to warn the
French government that the mandate’s aims of developing the country
into self-governance had been hijacked by self-serving administrators
who allegedly occupied all senior bureaucratic roles, luxury accommo-
dation and cars and were attended to by servants and sycophants.130
In December 1923, Al-Muqattam published Syro-Lebanese nation-
˙˙
alists’ articles such as that written by Lebanese Greek-Orthodox Nicolas
Chekri. Chekri attacked the Parisian journal La Réforme’s support for
Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch Archbishop Gerasimos Messarra’s
speech in Paris praising the mandate.131 Demonstrating further evidence
of the (intra- and inter-) communal relations among complex minorities
discussed in the earlier chapter on education, Chekri claimed that as long
as a Syrian were alive they would fight for independence. In the same
month, another such article attracted the attention of French intelligence
because it advertised a Syrian Congress to be held in Cairo in
February 1924.
The article claimed that: ‘The elite Syrian youth will assist and
express its ideas [. . .] What is particularly pleasing is the decision taken
by several Christian associations and political parties in Syria, Egypt and
Lebanon to participate [. . .] to see Christians sit next to their Muslim
brothers to deal with the vital questions [. . .] of her [Syria’s] future. This
unified movement was born in Beirut this year on the day of Mawlid
Al-Nabi’.132 In late 1925, Al-Moqattam of Egypt published an article
˙˙
criticising the partition of Syria as a betrayal of the principle of
mandatory tutelage. It noted that Syrians had developed their own
education, having no need for French instruction, had developed their
commercial acumen to the extent that they competed with European
businesses, and had no need for agricultural or industrial guidance from
France since these sectors had made no progress under her rule.133
In response to the hostile coverage of mandate policies by Egyptian
newspapers, French authorities sought to ban their circulation in Syria
and Lebanon. Egyptian, Palestinian and US newspapers were seized upon
entry by the postal service in 1921.134 In October 1923, the Ministry
for the Colonies placed a ban on copies of Al-Muqattam and Al-Liwā
˙˙
al-Masri (The Egyptian Banner) for having published violent attacks on
France’s work in Syria. Al-Moqattam earned another ban in January
˙˙
1924, eliciting a protest from Lebanese daily Sada al-Ahwal.135 Several
˙ ˙
other Egyptian newspapers were banned.136
French authorities in Paris translated and selected the most
‘incendiary’ reports from the Egyptian press, while Beirut banned
them for the Syro-Lebanese reading public. One such report was in the
26 August 1924 edition of Al-Moqattam which carried a letter signed
˙˙
by ‘a Beiruti’ entitled: ‘The politics of spoliation practiced by France in
Lebanon’. The author informed his ‘brothers in L’Outre-Mer [France
overseas]’ on the actions of the mandatory power in order to
guide them in their own independence movements. He noted that the
‘poor Syrians’ had trusted France during the World War only to
find their ‘patrie morcelée [divided country]’. He listed the various
impacts of French mandatory methods and finished his letter by calling
on his brothers to wake up and help the Syrian cause for
independence.137
French officials in Paris were equally aware of Turkish newspapers’
encouragement of dissent in their Levantine territory. In 1924, the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ press bureau outlined commentary that
reported clashes on the Syrian–Turkish border, occasioned by brigands

and continuing efforts to control nomadic movements.138 One of the
newspapers, Istanbul’s İkdam, reportedly reproached the lack of French
newspaper coverage of clashes on the Syro-Turkish border. Istanbul daily
Vakit criticised the situation in French-held Alexandretta (İskenderun
in Turkish). It published an article decrying the abandonment of Turkish
education in schools. A story in the London Daily Express suggesting
that France was not ready to make major sacrifices in Syria was
reproduced in the national Müstakil Gazete.139 During the outbreak of
the Great Syrian Revolt, a Spanish diplomat in Istanbul reported that
the city’s press had reported French repression in the Jebel Druze thanks
to a telegram from Adana.140
Just as the cantankerous Syro-Lebanese press contested French claims
of culture and competency in the mandate, so too did the press in the
newly forged Turkish Republic scrutinise the statements of French
officials. In August 1923, the Kemalist brothers Celal and Suphi Nuri
İleri’s eponymous newspaper İleri published a critique of the French
educational legacy in Cilicia. The French, it claimed, had only built
seven primary schools and a Lycée for a city that housed 100,000
Turks.141 In autumn 1923, the French consul in Adana reported further
Turkish newspaper commentary that criticised France’s Cilicia legacy.142
In Adana, French intelligence reported that a Syrian Committee
included Ahmed Agha Türkman (Zade), who had fled Antioch in 1921
after agitating against the French there with his brother Abd
al-Ghani.143 The Türkman family was ‘well known in Syria as a hotbed
for anti-French propaganda’.144
In 1923, the Ankara based İttihad-ı Selamet-i İslam, a Turkish-funded
pan-Islamic organisation, published a Syrian Review in Berlin, a
publication edited by Al-Quwatli personally.145 The İttihad-ı Selamet-i
İslam was singled out by French services for its propaganda in favour of
the Syrian Union party and one Syrian, Dr Munir Al-Kutsi, was
suspected of being the leader of its Berlin chapter. Kutsi had studied law
in France and Germany. French intelligence noted that he frequented the
Brasserie de la Poste in the company of Abdelkrim Hantès [Anttesse].
Munir Kutsi was suspected of having been put in touch with the
aforementioned German newsman, Dr Max Beer, in this cafe and they
suspected he had passed on information to the Wolff Telegraphic Bureau
which one contemporary source claimed was closely supervised by
German government officers.146 Others frequenting the Kutsi circle in

Geneva were Syrian and Palestinian students and the ever-present
Ali Al-Ghayati.147
Turcophone newspapers were also present within the mandate
territories themselves. A new Turkish newspaper was set up in Aleppo
after the World War. It was edited by Jalal Kabri Bey, who had been
the mutassarı̄f of Aintab (modern Gaziantep) in Ottoman times.
During the first three months of 1923, the French regularly censored
Turkish newspapers as a result of stories such as those accusing the
administration of killing Turkish subjects in Alexandretta and
Antioch.148 Syrian newspapers nevertheless found creative ways to
evade restrictions. One method used was the publication of Turkish
articles. In February 1924, Al-Barq republished an interview between
Istanbul’s Tanin and that city’s French chargé d’affaires which
questioned the ban on Turkish newspapers in Syria. The chargé
d’affaires explained that General Weygand had pulled the Turkish
papers on account of their incitement to instability.149 In the same
month Al-Watan had to defend itself when other Lebanese newspapers
accused it of aiding enemies of the mandate government by
reproducing Turkish news, underlining the prevalence of circumven-
tion of French censorship.150 During the Great Revolt, the Spanish
ambassador in Istanbul complained about French attempts at cutting
off the news and called on his fellow diplomats to pay close attention to
Turkish and other regional news to bolster the accuracy of their
reporting.151
French authorities were entangled in a never-ending balancing act.
Their efforts at stifling Syro-Lebanese dissent met with ever-greater
local, international and regional protests, including from a renascent
Turkish power to the north. Yet any sign of simply parroting
Turkish activity and claims could be interpreted by certain sections of
Syrian society as an act of betrayal to the integrity of Syria, which
had, after all, been a previously subjugated domain of a Turkish
Ottoman Empire. In 1926, an open letter ‘to patriots, representatives
of the country and journalists’ and signed by ‘a party of deputies’ in
the Syrian assembly railed against France’s accord with the Turks
that had modified the northern frontier in the midst of the havoc
of 1925. It denounced France as a proprietary, not a mandatory,
power.152
Conclusion
This characterisation of France as behaving as a proprietary, not
mandatory, power reflected the major challenges to methods of
mandatory rule that had emerged through cultural institutions within
and without the territory. Whereas French administrators may have
expected a degree of malleability from the domestic cultural institutions
as a result of their mature cultural claims in the region and capacity for
clientelist or repressive domination, they were forced to give increasing
recognition to the difficulties inherent in shaping the narrative of
mandatory rule when dealing with external, long-established but newly
invigorated cultural institutions. The difficulties encountered by the
local mandate administration in shaping a narrative of mandatory, not
proprietary, rule in the international and regional press is evidenced by
the organised and persistent mobilisation of Paris’ diplomatic apparatus.
Regardless of such attempts at control, the preceding discussion gives a
sense of the sheer diversity and ingenuity of critiques of French rule
appearing in external cultural institutions.
CHAPTER 8
GENERAL CONCLUSION
Implementing and Contesting Mandatory

Methods through Cultural Institutions
Cultural institutions organised by French mandate authorities were
expected to channel and buttress claims of cultural affinity and resultant
governmental competency in the Levant. Examining the methods of
mandate administration through the prism of cultural institutions
reveals the continual contestation of French visions of a Levantine
protectorate in the formative five years of the mandate. These were not
simply disparate, rhetorical disputes undertaken by ignored or oppressed
Syro-Lebanese groups in the Levant. Even favoured minorities expressed
their interest in a mandate adhering to the spirit of the League of
Nations charter and leading to autonomy. This occurred in institutions
such as the press, schools and museums. International communities of
Syro-Lebanese who had formed identities attached to their homeland
were subjected to overtures from the French diplomatic apparatus, yet
the violence of 1925 led to increasing calls for a reformed mandate.
International and regional cultural institutions such as the Egyptian,
Turkish and Anglophone press piled on the pressure. Francophone
schools and communal elites did look toward France for cultural and
political guidance, yet they did not simply let themselves be converted
into useful intermediaries who could form the middle management of a
Levant protectorate. Attempts at cultivating Francophile elites through
budgetary preference in the form of grants for Maronite village schools
and young elites sent to France did not easily produce their intended
GENERAL CONCLUSION 225
outcomes. Instead Francophone institutions, including newspapers,

showed an ability to challenge mandatory methods. The fact that even
the French newsman Georges Vayssié’s newspaper La Syrie expressed
disapproval of the press censorship laws spoke volumes of the growing
sense that France was acting as a proprietary, not mandatory, power as it
interpreted and implemented its mandate in the formative years.
Competing and Changing Visions of the Mandate

Examining disparate, though often overlapping, instances of contesta-
tion of French mandatory methods in cultural institutions reveals a
unifying underlying questioning as to what the mandate meant for
different stakeholders. Parallel to violent rejections of mandatory rule,
cultural institutions provided the platforms for Syro-Lebanese stake-
holders to approve or contest mandatory approaches to the governance of
antiquities, museums, schools, higher education and newspapers. Indeed,
as the conditions and aims of the mandate’s implementation over the
course of the formative five years unfolded, shifts in allegiances followed.
The clearest instance of this was the distaste that previously Francophile
communal leaders expressed toward secular High Commissioner Sarrail
upon his appointment in 1924.
Over the formative five years of the mandate, administrators,
community leaders, nationalists, students and journalists each
experienced expectant and disillusionary phases. The oscillations of
stakeholder’s situations and expectations of mandate rule are revealed in,
though not exclusive to, attempts to shape political outcomes through
cultural institutions. Ultimately, however, these diverse centrifugal
visions and claims unveiled the overlapping meanings that stakeholders
assigned to the mandate and indeed to the varying communal, Syrian,
Lebanese or Arab ‘nations’.
Ironically, this very lack of direction and indecision from Paris and
Beirut opened up new political and discursive opportunity structures for
domestic nationalists seeking to rid themselves of a mandatory power
and international powers seeking to increase their influence and, in the
case of Italy, perhaps even replace France. The outbreak of constrained
nationalist violence and devastating French repression, first in the
1919–20 uprisings and then with greater coherence in the spring 1922
Lesser Syrian Insurrection and the 1925 Great Syrian Revolt, disclosed
the fundamentally violent nature of excercising and challenging

governmental power.
Defining the mandate, giving it meaning through aims and methods,
had become the core aim of competing international, mandatory,
communal and nationalist claims to cultural affinities and governmental
competency over the formative years. Even before the Great Syrian
Revolt, a review penned at the outset of 1925 by the chief of Levant
military intelligence Lieutenant René De Feriet acknowledged that the
mandatory power could not simply act as a sovereign or paternalist
protector; it had to act as a tutor with the interest of the tutee and the
international community in mind. De Ferrier nevertheless reiterated his
personal belief that the mandate, with all its imperfections and defects,
ultimately sought to put others on the ‘path to theoretical research,
disinterest and progress’.1
He ignored the significant changes to governance imposed on the
French, noting only the organisation of the Lebanese, Syrian and Alawite
states as they stood in January 1925. Just eight months before the
outbreak of the Great Syrian Revolt, and perhaps reflecting an over-
reliance on the accuracy of his orientalist and requisitely concise
intelligence summaries, the intelligence chief pronounced himself
optimistic of the future of a mandate administered by a disinterested
France with idealist convictions.2
Post-Great Revolt internal soul-searching provides a sharper picture
of growing disillusion. One initial mid-Revolt reaction within the
intelligence service channelled opinions present in the right-wing
metropolitan and colonial press, arguing that a more direct grasp of the
country was necessary to change France’s fortunes in the Levant. This
1926 report rehearsed tired orientalist disdain when it claimed that ‘the
Syrian is an Oriental; as such, he can only understand force, and his
demands are always increasing until such a time as he is met with force
[. . .] Syria must understand that France will stay in place, because she is
not only a mandatory power, but also as a creditor nation [and a debtor to
the US], whose sacrifices, which consolidated its secular rights, give her
the right to stay’.3
The report did criticise the irreconciliable centralisation
(High Commission) and decentralisation (States of Syria) model which
had created a confused administrative and budgetary edifice. Shifting the
blame onto victims of French imperial ambitions, the report suggested
GENERAL CONCLUSION 227
that the breakdown of order resulted from the fact that Syria, like other
oriental countries such as Iran and Egypt, had ‘never had any political
education’. It admitted French disillusionment with initial claims of
cultural affinity to a Christian Levant. Noting the bias that previous
mandate administrations had exercised toward Christian-dominated
Lebanon, even at the basic level of situating Syria’s central government
in Beirut, the report stated that even ‘if Lebanon is to be treated with
sympathy [. . .] we have other goals in Syria than Lebanese ones’.4
However, as the Great Revolt was being successfully crushed in 1927,
another intelligence service commentary sought to reframe the mandate
toward a more malleable system that acknowledged nationalist and
communal demands for autonomy while retaining decision-making
power. It admitted that the Revolt signified an explosion of popular
consciousness in Syria which, it claimed, had resulted in promoting local
and international misperceptions of France’s mandate. As with the ‘pep
talk’ given by De Ferrier on the eve of the Syrian Revolt, this review also
noted the particular formula of the mandate as translating into tutelage
rather than sovereignty. Yet whereas the ‘open door’ was discussed by De
Ferrier as an inevitable element of the mandate model, in the later
review, the mandate was described as ‘the charge and duty’ of a great
power toward ‘lesser peoples’ in which ‘no third party [. . .] external
intervention’ could be admitted.
Such a recalibration of the mandate mission and mechanisms
nevertheless had their own legacy effects. Though the High Commission
seemed more open to dialogue with local communal and nationalist
leaders in a rebalancing act, this opened new fissures with sections of the
intelligence and military apparatus in the Levant believing that France’s
sacrifices had increased her stakes in region. A report from mid-1927
explained that following the arrival of the civilian High Commissioner,
Henri Ponsot, there had been an increase in Syrian nationalists’ interest
in discussions between nationalist leaders and the French imperial
government, not mentioning the Beirut colonial administration.
Worse still, Ponsot’s predecessor, the first civilian High Commis-
sioner Henry De Jouvenel, had given concessions without consulting
Paris in order to achieve peace ‘at any cost’. This had created a rift
between the civilian mandate authorities (the High Commission) and
the army over how to react to the Great Syrian Revolt. Ponsot’s
appointment signalled a new policy, imperial rather than colonial, which
treated the High Commissioner simply as an arm of Paris’ dealings with

the Syrian nationalists. Crucially, this new French Foreign Ministry
policy had inherently validated Syrian nationalists since they were now
being treated bilaterally as potential future rulers of Syria, rather than
local clients to be managed by the High Commission.5 After five years of
struggle in the cultural institutions as elsewhere, the Lebanese and
Syrian states were beginning to be recognised in an international arena of
competing imperial powers.
NOTES
Introduction Cultural Institutions and the Struggle to

Define the Mandate
1. Michel Foucault, L’Archeologie du Savoir (Paris, 1969), pp. 10– 15.
2. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings
1972– 1977 (New York, 1980), p. 83.
3. Antonio Gramsci, ‘The Modern Prince’, in Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith
(eds), Selections From the Prison Notebooks (London, 1971), p. 433.
4. Antonio Gramsci, ‘History of the Subaltern Classes: Methodological Criteria’,
in Hoare and Nowell Smith, Selections, p. 202.
5. Ibid., p. 203.
6. Bart Cammaerts, ‘Protest Logics and the Mediation Opportunity Structure’,
European Journal of Communication, 27/2 (2012), pp. 118– 19.
7. Gyan Prakash (ed.), ‘Introduction: After Colonialism’, in G. Prakash (ed.),
After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Colonial Displacements (Princeton, NJ,
1995).
8. Gayatri Spivak, ‘Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography’, in Donna
Landry and Gerald Maclean (eds), The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak (London, 1996), p. 217.
9. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York, 1993), pp. 163, 168.
10. Haim Gerber, ‘The Public Sphere and Civil Society in the Ottoman Empire’,
in Miriam Hoexter, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt and Nehemia Levtzion (eds),
The Public Sphere in Muslim Societies (Albany, NY, 2002), pp. 65 – 6.
11. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry
into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA, 1991).
12. Theodor Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture (London,
1991), pp. 107– 8.
13. Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International
Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford, 2009); Garay Paul Menicucci,
230 NOTES TO PAGES 7 –10
‘The Russian Revolution and Popular Movement in Syria in the 1920s’

(Ph.D. thesis, Georgetown University, 1993).
14. Martin Thomas, The French Empire Between the Wars: Imperialism, Politics and
Society (Manchester, 2005), pp. 5 – 6.
15. Susan Pedersen, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire
(Oxford, 2015), pp. 23 – 35.
16. For a more elaborate exposition of this, see Andrew Arsan, ‘“This Age is
the Age of Associations”: Committees, Petitions, and the Roots of
Interwar Middle Eastern Internationalism’, Journal of Global History, 7/2
(2012), pp. 166 – 88; Natasha Wheatley, ‘Mandatory Interpretation:
Legal Hermeneutics and the New International Order in Arab And Jewish
Petitions to the League Of Nations’, Past & Present, 227/1 (2015),
pp. 205 –48.
17. Chantal Verdeil, ‘Travailler à la Renaissance de l’Orient Chrétien. Les Missions
Latine en Syrie (1830 – 1945)’, Proche-Orient Chretien, 51/3 – 4 (2001),
pp. 267 –316.
18. Simon Jackson, ‘What Is Syria Worth? The Huvelin Mission, Economic
Expertise and the French Project in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1918– 1922’,
Monde(s), 4/2 (2013), pp. 83 – 104.
19. Auguste Benoı̂t, Étude sur les Capitulations Entre l’Empire Ottoman et la France et
sur la Réforme Judiciaire en Égypte (Paris, 1890).
20. Elizabeth F. Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege
and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York, NY, 2000).
21. I use this term in accordance with Simon Jackson’s elaboration. Although the
term ‘Sirio-Libaneses’ does appear in Latin American Syro-Lebanese émigré
circles, it was largely unused in Syria and Lebanon itself. The term nevertheless
neatly encapsulates what Jackson says is the ‘dialectal process of political
evolution’ and ‘acknowledges the overlap between the Syrian and Lebanese
states and [. . .] the diaspora during the late Ottoman and Mandate periods’.
See: Simon Jackson, ‘Diaspora Politics and Development Empire: The
Syro-Lebanese at the League of Nations’, Arab Studies Journal, 21/1 (2013),
p. 185, fn. 3.
22. Martin Thomas, Empires of Intelligence: Security Services and Colonial Disorder
After 1914 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 2008), pp. 293– 4.
23. Ernest Gellner and John Waterbury, Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean
Societies (London, 1977).
24. The British Library [hereafter BL], India Office Records [hereafter IOR]/L/
PS/11/150, Naval Staff Headquarters, Intelligence Division, ‘Personalities:
Syria’, 17 August 1917.
25. William Gallois, A History of Violence in the Early Algerian Colony (Basingstoke,
2013).
26. Martti Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of
International Law 1870– 1960 (Cambridge, 2011).
27. BL, IOR/L/PS/11/192, Lord Hardinge letter to Lord Curzon, 1 January 1921.
NOTES TO PAGES 10 –18 231
28. BL, IOR/L/PS/11/192, ‘Extract From Letter to Sir W. Tyrell from Mr. Chas
Mendl. Dated Dec. 22nd 1920’, January 1921.
29. Esther Möller, Orte der Zivilisierungsmission: Französische Schulen im Libanon
1909– 1943 (Göttingen, 2011), p. 210.
30. Archives Nationales de France-Perfitte-Sur-Seine [hereafter AN-P],
F/7/13411, Badrih Talih, Law Student at the University of Lyon, to MFA,
˙
No Date [hereafter n.d.].
31. Centre d’Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères-Nantes [hereafter
CADN], 1SL/V/1362, ‘Historique des États Sous Mandats Franc ais au Levant’,
31 March 1928.
32. Ibid.
33. Shohei Sato, Britain and the Formation of the Gulf States: Embers of Empire
(Manchester, 2016).
34. Henry Laurens, Orientales: Autour de l’Expédition d’Égypte (Paris, 2004); Juan
Cole, Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (Basingstoke, 2007).
35. Henry Laurens, Orientales: La IIIe République et l’Islam (Paris, 2004).
36. CADN, 1SL/V/1561. ‘L’Expedition Franc aise de 1860 au Liban’, n.d.
37. Robert Gordon Cram, ‘German Interests in the Ottoman Empire,
1878– 1885’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1999).
38. V. Necla Geyikdagi, Foreign Investment in the Ottoman Empire: International Trade
and Relations 1854– 1914 (London, 2011), pp. 41– 52.
39. CADN 1SL/V/1369, ‘La Situation en Syrie et en Cilicie d’Octobre 1918
à Séptembre 1923’, n.d.
40. Eyal Ginio, The Ottoman Culture of Defeat: The Balkan Wars and Their Aftermath
(Oxford, 2015).
41. Elie Kedourie, In the Anglo-Arab Labyrinth: The McMahon – Husayn
Correspondence and Its Interpretations 1914– 1939 (London, 2014).
42. ‘La Situation en Syrie et en Cilicie [n.d.]’, pp. 5 – 6.
43. Ibid., 7. See also: Andrew Patrick, America’s Forgotten Middle East Initiative:
The King – Crane Commission of 1919 (London, 2015); Lori Allen, ‘The Nation
As Moral Community: Language and Religion in the 1919 King – Crane
Commission’, in C. Schayegh and A. Arsan (eds), The Routledge Handbook of the
History of the Middle East Mandates (London, 2015).
44. Ibid., p. 26.
45. CADN, 1SL/V/1362, ‘Historique des États sous Mandats Franc ais au Levant’,
31 March 1928.
46. Ibid.
47. Philippe Gouraud, Le Général Henri Gouraud au Liban et en Syrie: 1919– 1923
(Paris, 1993), pp. 26 – 9, 65.
48. Cyrus Schayegh and Andrew Arsan, ‘Introduction’ in The Routledge Handbook.
49. Jean-David Mizrahi, Genèse de l’État Mandataire: Service des Renseignements et
Bandes Armées dans les Années 1920 (Paris, 2003), pp. 15 – 22, 75 – 82.
50. Thomas, Empires, p. 294; Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory,
Knowledge, History (Berkely and Los Angeles, CA, 2005), p. 197.
51. Nacklié Elias Bou Nacklié, ‘Les Troupes Speciales du Levant: Origins,
Recruitment and the History of the Syrian-Lebanese Para-Military Forces
Under the French Mandate, 1919 –1947’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Utah,
1989).
52. One relevant study is: Sarah Jean Zimmerman, ‘Living Beyond Boundaries:
West African Soldiers in French Colonial Conflicts, 1908– 1962’ (Ph.D. thesis,
University of California at Berkeley, 2011).
53. M. Thomas, ‘Bedouin Tribes and the Imperial Intelligence Services in Syria,
Iraq and Transjordan in the 1920s’, Journal Of Contemporary History, 38/4
(2003), pp. 539– 61; Katharina Lange, ‘“Bedouin” and “Shawaya”: the
Performative Constitution of Tribal Identities in Syria During the French
Mandate and Today’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient,
58/1 – 2 (2015), pp. 200– 35; Idir Ouahes, ‘Une “ceinture” d’Espace Étatique:
Le Contrôle des Bédouins au Début du Mandat Franc ais en Syrie’, L’Espace
Politique, 27 (2016). Available at https://espacepolitique.revues.org/3695
(accessed 22 January 2018).
54. Sophie Liorit, ‘Les Fouilles Archeologiques et les Missions Franc aises en
Turquie (1863– 1914)’ (Masters thesis, University of Nantes, 1995); Mathilde
Gélin, L’Archaéologie en Syrie et au Liban a l’Epoque du Mandat, 1919– 1946:
Histoire et Organisation (Paris, 2002); Renaud Avez, L’Institut Francais de Damas
au Palais Azem (1922 –1946) à Travers les Archives (Damascus, 1993).
55. Ussama Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed
Conversion of the Middle East (Ithaca, NY, 2008); Robert L. Daniel, American
Philanthropy in the Near East, 1820– 1960 (Athens, OH, 1970); Julia Hauser,
German Religious Women in Late Ottoman Beirut: Competing Missions (Leiden,
2015).
56. For instance: James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that
Shaped the Middle East (London, 2011). One exception is found in: Anne
Chaigne-Oudin, La France et les Rivalités Occidentales au Levant (Paris, 2006).
57. Joseph L. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East: Missionary Influence on
American Policy, 1810– 1927 (Minneapolis, MN, 1971); James A. Melki, ‘Syria
and the State Department 1937– 1947’, Middle Eastern Studies, 33/1 (1997),
pp. 92 – 106.
58. Massimiliano Fiore, Anglo-Italian Relations in the Middle East, 1922– 1940
(Farnham, 2010).
59. Stephen Helmsley Longrigg, Syria and Lebanon Under French Mandate (Oxford,
1958); Philip Shukry Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab
Nationalism, 1920– 1945 (Princeton, NJ, 1987).
60. James Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Mass Politics at the End of Empire (Berkeley and
Los Angeles, CA, 2006).
61. Lenka Bokova, La Confrontation Franco-Syrienne a l’Epoque du Mandat,
1925– 1927 (Paris, 1990), p. 22.
62. Michael Provence, The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism
(Austin, TX, 2005), p. 5.
63. Ibid., p. 25; Reem Bailony, ‘Transnational Rebellion: the Syrian Revolt of
1925– 1927’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of California at San Diego, 2015).
64. Itamar Rabinovitch, ‘The compact minorities and the Syrian State, 1918–1945’,
Journal of Contemporary History, 14/4 (1979), pp. 693–712, pp. 701–702.
65. Daniel Neep, ‘Colonising Violence: Space Insurgency and Subjectivity
in French Mandate Syria’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 2008),
pp. 147 –57.
66. Ibid., pp. 174– 209.
67. Muhannad Salhi, Palestine in the Evolution of Syrian Nationalism (1918 – 1920)
(Exeter, 2008).
68. Meir Zamir, The Formation Of Modern Lebanon (London, 1985); Maroun
Bouassi, ‘Le Role de la France dans l’Evolution Politique du Liban (1914 –
1946)’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Rennes, 1987); Hoda Saliby-Yehia,
‘Pouvoir Étatique et Dynamique de Développement: L’expérience de Deux
États Successeurs de l’Empire Ottoman, la Syrie (1876– 1963) et le Liban
(1876 – 1964)’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Paris, 1993); Wajih Kawtharani,
‘Le Grand-Liban et le Projet de la Conféderation Syrienne d’Apres des
Documents Franc ais’, in Y. Choueiri (ed.), State And Society in Syria and Lebanon
(Exeter, 1993); Elizabeth Thompson, ‘Rashid Rida and the 1920 Syrian-Arab
Constitution: How the French Mandate Undermined Islamic Liberalism’, in
Schayegh and Arsan (eds), The Routledge Handbook.
69. Philip S. Khoury, Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus
1860– 1920 (Cambridge, 1983).
70. For an account of family politics in Damascus and Beirut, see Linda
Schatkowski-Schilcher, Families in Politics: Damascene Factions and Estates of the
18th And 19th Centuries (Stuttgart, 1985); Mahmoud Haddad, ‘The city, the
coast, the mountain, and the hinterland: Beirut’s commercial and political
rivalries in the 19th and early 20th century’, in T. Philipp and B. Schäbler
(eds), The Syrian Land: Processes of Integration and Fragmentation: Bilad Al-Sham
from the 18th to the 20th Century (Stuttgart, 1998).
71. Keith David Watenpaugh, Being Modern In The Middle East: Revolution,
Nationalism, Colonialism and the Arab Middle Class (Princeton, NJ, 2006),
pp. 19 – 20.
72. Hanna Batatu, Syria’s Peasantry, the Descendants of its Lesser Rural Notables,
and Their Politics (Princeton, NJ, 1999); Michael Van Dusen, ‘Political
integration and regionalism in Syria’, Middle East Journal, 26/2 (1972),
pp. 123 –36.
73. James Long Whitaker, ‘The Union of Demeter With Zeus: Agriculture and
Politics in Modern Syria’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Durham, 1996).
74. Elizabeth Williams, ‘Cultivating Empires: Environment, Expertise,
and Scientific Agriculture in Late Ottoman and French Mandate Syria’
(Ph.D. thesis, Georgetown University, 2016).
75. Hubert Bonin and Frank Peter, ‘Les “Bonnes Affaires” de la Modernisation: Les
Sociétés Anonymes et l’Industrialisation en Syrie, 1908– 1946’, in Nadine
Méouchy (ed.), France, Syrie et Liban 1918– 1946. Les Ambiguités et les
Dynamiques de la Relation Mandataire (Beirut and Damascus, 2002).
76. Nourredine Bouchair, ‘The Merchant and Moneylending Class of Syria Under
the French Mandate, 1920– 1946’ (Ph.D. thesis, Georgetown University,
1986).
77. Geoffrey D. Schad, ‘Colonialists, Industrialist, and Politicians: The Political
Economy of Industrialization in Syria, 1920– 1954’ (Ph.D. thesis, University
of Pennsylvania, 2001).
78. Simon M.W. Jackson, ‘Mandatory Development: the Political Economy of the
French Mandate in Syria and Lebanon, 1915– 1939’ (Ph.D. thesis, New York
University, 2009).
79. Robert Ian Blecher, ‘The Medicalization of Sovereignty: Medicine, Public
Health, and Political Authority in Syria, 1861– 1936’ (Ph.D. thesis, Stanford
University, 2002).
80. Keith Watenpaugh, Bread From Stones: The Middle East and the Making of
Modern Humanitarianism (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 2015). See also
Thompson, Colonial Citizens, pp. 154– 70; Houssam Yehya, ‘Health and Social
Protection in Lebanon (1860– 1963)’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Nice, 2015);
Chris Gratien, ‘The sick mandate of Europe: local and global humanitarianism
in French Cilicia, 1918– 1922’, Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies
Association, 3/1 (2016).
81. Butrus Daw, Histoire Religieuse, Culturelle et Politique des Maronites (Jedaidet
El-Matn, 1985), p. 961.
82. In fact, it was the Maronites, led by Elias Hoyek and a Lebanese provisional
council formed at the end of the World War, that forged Greater Lebanon as a
separate entity that far extended the borders of Maronite-dominated
Mount Lebanon Ottoman Sanjak (district). Nadine Méouchy, ‘Les Maronites,
de la marginalité au destin historique’, Guarrigues et Sentiers (2008). Available
at https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00447150/document (accessed
19 January 2018).
83. Kamal Salibi, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon (London,
2003), pp. 167– 81; Asher Kaufman, Reviving Phoenicia: The Search for Identity
in Lebanon (London, 2014), pp. 141– 94.
84. Rabinovitch, ‘The compact minorities’; Benjamin Thomas White,
The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in
French Mandate Syria (Edinburgh, 2011).
85. Nadine Méouchy, ‘Les Formes de Conscience Politique et Communautaire au
Liban et en Syrie a l’Epoque du Mandate Franc ais (1920– 1939)’ (Ph.D. thesis,
University of Paris, 1989).
86. Provence, The Great Syrian Revolt, pp. 16– 17.
87. Jordi Tejel Gorgas, Syria’s Kurds: History, Politics and Society (London, 2009);
Ahmet Serdar Aktürk, ‘Imagining Kurdish Identity in Mandatory Syria:
Finding A Nation in Exile’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Arkansas, 2013);
Jordi Tejel, ‘Scholarship on the Kurds in Syria: a history and state of the art
assessment’, Syrian Studies Association Newsletter, 16/2 (2011).
88. Max Weiss, In the Shadow of Sectarianism: Law, Shi’ism, and the Making of Modern
Lebanon (Boston, 2010), pp. 32 – 3.
89. Tamara Chalabi, The Shi’is of Jabal ‘Amil and the New Lebanon: Community and
Nation-State, 1918– 1943 (Basingstoke, 2006), pp. 60 – 2.
90. Chalabi, The Shi’is of Jabal ‘Amil, pp. 73 – 4.
91. May Davie, ‘Les orthodoxes entre Beyrouth et Damas: une millet Chrétienne
dans deux villes Ottomanes’, in Y. Choueiri (ed.), State and Society in Syria and
Lebanon.
92. Nikola Schahgaldian, ‘The Political Integration of an Immigrant Community
into a Composite Society: The Armenians in Lebanon, 1920 – 1974’
(Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, New York University, 1979).
93. Dzovinar Kevonian, ‘Réfugiés et Diplomatie Humanitaire: Les Acteurs
Européens et la Scéne Proche-Orientale Pendant l’Entre-Deux-Guerres’
(Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, 1999); Seda Altuğ and Benjamin Thomas White,
‘Frontières et pouvoir d’état: la frontière Turco-Syrienne dans les années 1920
et 1930’, Vingtième-Siècle, 103 (2009), 91 – 104; T.H. Greenshields, ‘The
Settlement of Armenian Refugees in Syria and Lebanon, 1915– 1939’ (Ph.D.
thesis, University Of Durham, 1978), pp. 367–90; Benjamin Thomas White,
‘Refugees and the definition of Syria, 1920– 1939’, Past & Present, 235/1,
pp. 141 –78.
94. Jennifer M. Dueck, The Claims of Culture at Empire’s End: Syria and Lebanon
Under French Rule (Oxford, 2010), p. 7.
95. Thompson, Colonial Citizens, pp. 3 – 4.
96. Ibid., p. 3.
97. Ibid., pp. 1 – 2.
98. Ibid., p. 6.
99. Covertly, this Anglo-French competition grew until the World War II era.
See Meir Zamir, The Secret Anglo-French War in the Middle East: Intelligence and
Decolonization, 1940– 1948 (London, 2014).
100. Rı̄mūn Hāshim, Al-Intidāb al-Faransı̄ ʻalá Lubnān: zurūfuhu, iqrāruhu, dawlat
˙
Lubnān al-kabı̄r wa-iʻlān al-dustūr (Baabda, 2007); Yusuf Al-Hakim, Sūrı̄ya
wa-’l-intidāb al-faransı̄ (Beirut: Dār an-Nahār lin-Našr, 1983), pp. 41 – 9;
Dalal Arsuzi-Elamir, ‘The uprisings in Antakya 1918– 1926: guided by the
centre or initiated by the periphery?’, in A.-K. Rafeq, P. Sluglett and S. Weber
(eds), Syria and Bilad Al-Sham Under Ottoman Rule: Essays in Honour of Abdul-
Karim Rafeq (Leiden, 2010); Nadine Méouchy, ‘Les Temps et les Térritoires de
la Révolte du Nord (1919 – 1921)’, in J.-C. David and T. Boissière (eds), Alep et
ses Térritoires: Fabrique et Politique d’une Ville, 1868– 2011 (Beirut and
Damascus, 2014).
101. Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, p. 127.
102. Bokova, La Confrontation, pp. 63 – 7, pp. 109– 10.
103. Muhammad Jamil Beyhum, Lubnān Bayna Mushriq Wa Maghrib 1920– 1969
(Beirut, 1969), p. 23. Beyhum had sought to stand for the Lebanese
parliament in 1922 but was forced to withdraw by mandate authorities. See:
Raghid Solh, ‘The attitude of the Arab nationalists toward Greater Lebanon
during the 1930s’, in N. Shehadi and D. Haffar Mills (eds), Lebanon: A History
of Conflict and Consensus (London, 1988), p. 153.
104. Yusuf Al-Hakim, Sūrı̄ya wa-’l-intidāb al-faransı̄ (Beirut, 1983), pp. 41 – 9.
105. Shams Al-Dı̄n Al-Rifa’ı̄, Tarikh as-Sihafa As-Sūriya (Cairo, 1969), p. 9.
106. Khairiya Qassimiyah, Al-Raʻı̄l al-ʻArabı̄ al-awwal: hayāt wa-awrāq Nabı̄h wa-
˙
ʻĀdil al-ʻAzmah (London, 1991).
˙
107. CADN, 1SL/V/1561, ‘Les Franc ais en Syrie (1918 – 1924)’, n.d.
108. CADN, 1SL/V/1362, ‘L’Organisation Donnée a la Syrie et au Liban de 1920 a
1923 et la Crise Actuelle’, 6 October 1926.
109. Gerard D. Khoury, Une Tutelle Coloniale: Le Mandat Francais en Syrie et au
Liban: Ecrits Politiques de Robert De Caix (Paris, 2006).
110. There is no documentation on the Lesser Syrian Insurrection (Spring 1922) that
proves British intrigue via Transjordan. It is worth noting that, according to his
diary, the notorious man of action St John Philby did visit north Transjordan
and crossed into Syria (with French knowledge) in May–June 1922. Regarding
similar accusations of British–Hashemite conspiracy against French rule during
the 1925–6 Great Revolt, we have a more direct refutation. This comes from
the diary of pressman ‘Arif al-‘Arif, a confidant of Transjordan King Abdullah.
His diary entry for 17 September 1926 discusses the ‘revolution [. . .] knocking
on the doors’ of Transjordan and his unsuccessful attempts at gaining Abdallah
to support the Great Syrian Revolt. In another instance, ‘Arif and others were
gathered by British advisor Peake Pasha and strictly warned not to support
rebels in Syria as a result of the new agreements on the Transjordan–Syria
border. ‘I have [. . .] to admit,’ ‘Arif recalled, ‘that we, the people who were
present [. . .] did not say a thing [. . .] although some of us muttered some words
that included hypocrisy [. . .] I then decided to send messages to the people [. . .]
among the leaders of the revolt [. . .] God please protect them! Save my land
from the evil of the despotic colonialists!’ See: St Antony’s College Middle East
Centre Archives, Oxford [hereafter MEC], GB165-0016 Aref El-Aref, diary
entries for 17 and 22 September 1926.
111. Provence, The Great Syrian Revolt.
112. Caesar Farah, ‘The Young Turks and the Arab press’, in C. Imber and
K. Kiyotaki (eds), Frontiers of Ottoman Studies: State, Province, and the West.
Volume I (London, 2005), p. 237.
113. Priya Satia, Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of
Britain’s Covert Empire in the Middle East (Oxford, 2008), p. 7.
114. Thomas, Empires of Intelligence, p. 294.
115. Roberto Mazza and Idir Ouahes, ‘For God and La Patrie: Antonin Jaussen,
Dominican priest and French intelligence agent in the Middle East, 1914–
1920’, First World War Studies, 3/2 (2012), pp. 145– 64.
NOTES TO PAGES 33 – 39 237
116. Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial
Common Sense (Princeton, NJ, 2009), p. 3.
117. Ibid., p. 4.
118. To give an example, even the best collection available at the AUB offers only
limited editions of certain smaller newspapers and literary-scientific
magazines (Al-Tajadid-1927, Al-Tammadun-1926, Al-Fajr-1919). Some of
the major Beiruti newspapers that frequently appeared in French press reports
are not available for this period: Al-Ahrar (1926 only), Alif Bā (1936 onward),
˙
Al-Dabbour (1927 –38).
119. Stoler, Along the Archival Grain, p. 5.
Chapter 1 Antiquities Protection and Excavation

Under French Rule (Oxford, 2010); Jacques Thobie, ‘Archéologie et diplomatie
Franc aise au Moyen-Orient des années 1930’, in Roland Etienne (ed.), Les
Politiques de l’Archéologie du Milieu du XIXe Siècle a l’Orée du XXIe siècle (Paris,
2000), pp. 79 – 111.
2. See, inter alia, James F. Goode, Negotiating for the Past: Archaeology,
Nationalism, and Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1919 – 1941 (Austin, TX,
2007); Zainab Bahrani, ‘Conjuring Mesopotamia: imaginative geography
in a world past’, in Lynn Meskell (ed.), Archaeology Under Fire: Nationalism,
Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (London,
1998); John James Moscrop, Measuring Jerusalem: The Palestine Exploration
Fund and British Interests in the Holy Land (London, 2000).
3. Mathilde Gelin, L’Archéologie en Syrie et au Liban a l’Epoque du
Mandat (1920 – 1946): Histoire et Organisation (Paris, 2002). For a short
overview of excavations during the mandate, see Thomas W. Davis, Shifting
Sands: The Rise and Fall of Biblical Archaeology (New York, NY, 2004),
pp. 54 – 7.
4. Shawn Malley, ‘Austen Henry Layard and the periodical press: Middle Eastern
archaeology and the excavation of cultural identity in mid-nineteenth century
Britain’, Victorian Review, 22/2 (1996).
5. Juan Cole, Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (New York, NY, 2007),
p. 5.
6. Ulrich Haarmann, ‘Medieval Muslim perceptions of Pharaonic Egypt’, in
A. Loprieno (ed.), Ancient Egyptian Literature: History and Forms (Leiden,
1996).
7. Jerôme Louis, ‘La Question d’Orient sous Louis-Philippe’ (Ph.D. thesis, École
Pratique des Hautes Études Paris, 2004), pp. 132– 6.
8. Ernest Renan, Mission de Phénicie (Paris, 1864), pp. 1 – 5. Renan was following
in the footsteps of French travellers such as Léon De Laborde, Alphonse De
Lamartine and Gérard De Nerval. Other orientalists from across Europe
travelled through Syria, including some who are overlooked. See Richard
238 NOTES TO PAGES 39 – 41
Chahine, ‘Les orientalistes méconnus au Liban’, Archaeology and History in

Lebanon, 16 (2002), pp. 66 – 79.
9. Renan, Mission, p. 16.
10. Alain Schnapp, ‘Archéologie et tradition académique en Europe aux
XVIIIe et XIXe siècles’, Annales: Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, N.5 – 6,
pp. 772– 5.
11. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, NY, 1979).
12. See: Bernard Lewis, ‘The question of orientalism’, New York Review of Books,
29/11 (24 June 1982); ‘Orientalism: an exchange’, New York Review of Books,
29/13 (12 August 1982). Subsequent controversy has generated an entire
cottage industry of commentaries. Ironically, despite the eclecticism of Said’s
approach there is a remarkable consistency of attitudes to cultures outside of
the ‘West’, thus suggesting that his thesis has struck a nerve.
13. Leonard C. Woolley, ‘La Phénicie et les peoples Egéens’, Syria, 2/3 (1921),
pp. 177 –94.
14. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York, 1993), p. 15.
15. Talal Asad, Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (Reading, 1973),
pp. 16 – 18.
16. Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians: The Official
Mind of Imperialism (London, 2015); Christopher M. Andrew, ‘The French
colonialist movement during the Third Republic: the unofficial mind of
imperialism’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 26 (1976), pp. 143– 66;
Martin Thomas, ‘Mapping the French colonial mind’, in Martin Thomas (ed.),
The French Colonial Mind, Volume 1: Mental Maps of Empire and Colonial
Encounters (Lincoln, NE, 2011).
17. Stoler, Along the Archival Grain, p. 4.
18. Yale University Manuscript Collections, New Haven, CT [hereafter YUMC],
Papers of Colonel Edward M. House/Group 466/Series 4/Box 237, ‘The
Penetration of the Near and Middle East’, n.d.
19. AN-P, Fonds Millerand/470AP/60, ‘Note sur les Intérêts Moraux et Matériels
de la France en Syrie’, 1 February 1919. Millerand was reflecting an established
claim, put forward by the Parti Colonial during World War I. Millerand was
describing what Henry Laurens later termed the ‘Catholic Link’ (‘la Filière
Catholique’). See Henry Laurens, ‘Le Liban et l’Occident: récit d’un parcours’,
Vingtième Siècle: Revue d’Histoire, 32 (1991), p. 25.
20. AN-P, Fonds Millerand/470AP/60, ‘Tradition Politique de la France en
Orient’, c.1920.
21. CADN, 1SL/V/949, ‘Personelle’, 11 October 1920.
22. M.J. Chamonard, ‘A propos du service des antiquités de Syrie’, Syria, 1/2
(1920), p. 81.
23. Georges Contenau, ‘Deuxième mission archéologique à Sidon (1920)’, Syria,
4/4 (1923), p. 261. Contenau’s mission in Sidon and Pierre Montet’s
excavations at Jbeil (Byblos) were later praised as having contributed
antiquities to a temporary exhibition in the Service des Antiquités at the
Louvre in 1922. See ‘Exposition temporaire des fouilles Franc aise de Syrie au
Musée du Louvre’, Syria, 3/1 (1922), pp. 85 – 6.
24. Renaud Avez, L’Institut Francais de Damas au Palais Azem (1922 –1946)
à Travers les Archives (Damascus, 1993), pp. 24 – 5.
25. Georges Contenau, ‘L’Institut Franc ais d’Archéologie et d’art Musulmans de
Damas’, Syria, 5/3 (1924), p. 203.
26. CADN, 1SL/V/1561, ‘Notre Histoire Nationale. Les Sources de la Mentalité
Syrienne’, 25 March 1921.
27. See Beatrice St Laurent and Taşkömür Himmet, ‘The Imperial Museum of
Antiquities in Jerusalem, 1890– 1930: an alternate narrative’, Journal of
Palestine Studies, 55 (2013), 6 – 45, p. 8; Benjamin Anderson, ‘“An Alternative
Discourse”: Local Interpreters of Antiquities in the Ottoman Empire’, Journal
of Field Archaeology, 40/4 (2015), pp. 450– 60.
28. Edmond Pottier, ‘Rapport sur les travaux archéologiques du Service des
Antiquités de Syrie et sur la Fondation de l’École Franc aise de Jérusalem
(1920 – 1921); Lu dans la Séance Du 13 Octobre 1922’, Comptes Rendus
des Séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 66/5 (1922), pp. 359–
69; Ernest Will, ‘L’École biblique et la découverte archéologique’, Comptes-
Rendus des Séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 4 (1990),
pp. 857 – 64; Dominique Trimbur, Une École Franc aise à Jérusalem
(Paris, 2002).
29. AN, 62/AJ/65, University of Saint Joseph Beirut, Faculté Orientale, 1 March
1913.
30. W.F. Albright, ‘Report of the Director of the School in Jerusalem, 1920–
1921’, pp. 9 – 23, 21.
31. Jacques Thobie, ‘Archéologie et diplomatie Franc aise au Moyen-Orient des
années 1880 au débuts des années 1930’, Les Politiques de l’Archéologies: Du
Milieu du XIXe Siècle à l’Orée du XXIe (Athens, 2000), pp. 79 – 112; see also:
Ernest Will, ‘Les “Athéniens” en Syrie, au Liban et en Jordanie’, Les Politiques
de l’Archéologies, pp. 113 – 20; Jean-Michel Kasbarian, ‘Du Désir de
Rayonnement de l’Archéologie Franc aise à l’Etranger à l’Alliance Scientifique
avec les pays partenaires: l’archéologie Franc aise dans la diplomatie scientifique
d’influence’, Les Nouvelles de l’Archéologie, 128 (2012).
32. Chamonard, ‘A propos’, p. 81.
33. See: Francois Pouillon and Jean-Claude Vatin (eds), After Orientalism: Critical
Perspectives on Western Agency and Eastern Representations (Leiden, 2015), p. 97;
Henri Metzger, ‘La correspondance passive d’Osman Hamdi Bey’, Compte-
Rendus des Séance de l’Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 4 (1988),
pp. 672 –84, 673– 5.
34. Christian Le Roy, ‘L’École Franc aise d’Athènes et l’Asie Mineur’, Bulletin de
Correspondance Hellenique (1996), 120/1, pp. 373– 87, 379; Catherine Valenti,
‘L’École Franc aise d’Athènes au coeur des relations Franco-Helléniques,
1846 – 1946’, Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, 50/4 (2003),
pp. 92 – 107.
35. Usama Makdisi, ‘Ottoman Orientalism’, American Historical Review, 107/3

(2002), pp. 768– 96. See also Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains:
Ideology and Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 1876– 1909 (London,
2011); Edhem Eldem, ‘The Ottoman Empire and Orientalism: an awkward
relationship’, in F. Pouillon and J.-C. Vatin (eds), After Orientalism.
36. Chamonard, ‘A propos’, pp. 82 – 3.
37. Ibid., p. 88.
38. Ibid.
39. Wendy M.K. Shaw, Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the
Visualization of History in the late Ottoman Empire (Berkeley and Los Angeles,
CA, 2003), pp. 108– 30; Morag M. Kersel, ‘The changing legal landscape for
Middle Eastern Archaeology in the Colonial Era, 1800– 1930’ in Geoff
Emberling, Pioneers to the Past: American Archaeologists in the Middle East 1919–
1920 (Chicago, 2010), pp. 85 – 6.
40. CADN, 1SL/V/2518, Service de l’Archaeologie et des Beaux-Arts Central, ‘Les
Travaux Archéologiques dans les Pays sous Mandats pendant l’Année 1925’,
14 February 1925.
41. ‘Annex 391a - French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon’, League of Nations –
Official Journal, 1013 (1922), pp. 1013– 17.
42. ‘Convention between the United States and France respecting rights in
Syria and the Lebanon’, American Journal of International Law, 19/1 (1925),
pp. 1 – 5.
43. YU, Papers of Colonel Edward M. House/Group 466/Series III/ Box 196,
‘Middle East (“Class A”) Mandates [Lord Robert Cecil Draft]’, n.d. Cecil was a
friend of the founder of Iraq’s antiquities service, famed orientalist
archaeologist Gertrude Bell. See Priya Satia, ‘Developing Iraq: Britain, India
and the redemption of empire and technology in the First World War’, Past &
Present, 197/1 (2007), pp. 211–55.
44. Centre d’Archives Diplomatiques de la Courneuve [hereafter CADL], E-
Levant/Carton [hereafter C] 313/ Dossier [hereafter D] 98/Sous-Dossier
[hereafter S-D] 106, ‘Principes du Règlement devant etre adopté par chaque
des puissances mandataires’, 4 April 1919.
45. Howard Crosby Butler, ‘Protection for the historical monuments and objects
of art in Nearer Asia’, The Art Bulletin, 2/1 (1919), p. 48.
46. Chamonard noted that during the mandate, a select few ‘respected’ excavators
received a blank cheque to continue their digs: Chamonard, ‘A propos’, p. 89.
47. P.B. Potter, ‘Origin of the system of mandates under the League of Nations’,
The American Political Science Review, 16/4 (1922), pp. 563– 83.
48. For an account of his research, see Paul Monceaux and Léonce Brossé, ‘Chalcis
ad Belum: notes sur l’histoire et les ruines de la ville’, Syria, 6/4 (1925),
pp. 339 –50.
49. Pierre Benoit, ‘Activités archéologiques de l’école biblique et archéologique
Franc aise à Jerusalem depuis 1890’, Revue Biblique, 94/3 (1987), pp. 397– 424.
50. Pottier, ‘Rapport sur les travaux archéologique’, pp. 359–60.
51. William F. Albright, ‘Report of the Director of the school in Jerusalem,

1920– 21’, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 5 (1921), p. 21.
52. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 98/S-D 106, HC Gouraud to MFA Briand, 18 July
1921.
53. CADN, 1SL/V/2377, C. Prost, Director of the Service des Antiquités to
Robert De Caix, G-S of the H-C, 26 July 1921.
54. Gelin, L’Archéologie en Syrie, p. 26.
55. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, HC’s Delegate to the State of Damascus (hereafter DD),
Institut Franc ais d’Archéologie et d’Art Musulmans (hereafter IFAAM),
‘Rapport Trimestriel 1er Trimestre 1924.’
56. Ibid.
57. ‘Syrie: levée d’interdictions’, Le Mercure Africain (15 July 1923), 32, p. 135.
58. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, EdA, ‘Rapport Trimestriel-Janvier, Fevrier, Mars,
1924.’
59. CADN, 1SL/V/1675, ‘Rapport Trimestriel d’Ensemble - Octobre, Novembre,
Décembre 1924.’
60. Ibid.
61. Gejou’s claim is confirmed by museum records. See Eleanor Robson,
Mathematics in Ancient Iraq: A Social History (Princeton, NJ, 2008), p. 354,
fn. 15.
62. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 98/S-D 106, J. Elias Gejou to President of the
Académie des Inscriptions et des Belles-Lettres, 25 May 1922.
63. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 98/S-D 106, Minister for Instruction Publique to
MFA, 26 April 1922.
64. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, DD, IFAAM, ‘Rapport Trimestriel 1er Trimestre 1924.’
65. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, DD, IFAAM, ‘Rapport Trimestriel 2eme Trimestre
1923.’
66. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, Confin de l’Euphrate, Sandjak de Deir-Ez-Zor (hereafter
SDZ), ‘Rapport Trimestriel (3eme Trimestre 1924).’
67. Bulletin des Musées de France, 1 (1935), p. 8.
68. CADN, 1SL/V/1703. ‘Bulletin de Renseignement de Damas N.27’, 27 May
1925.
69. ‘Les Travaux Archéologiques [1925]’; Intelligence Officer Captain Picquet-
Pellorce also became an accomplished archaeologist in his own right. In 1928,
he took part in an epigraphical mission in Upper Syria. R.P. Mouterde,
‘Rapport sur une mission epigraphique en haute Syrie (1928)’, Syria, 10/2
(1929), p. 127.
70. CADN, 1SL/V/2372, n.a., ‘Note sur Homs et Hama’, n.d.
71. CADN, 1SL/V/168, EdA, ‘Rapport Trimestriel - Avril, Mai, Juin 1923.’
72. Ernest Renan, Mission en Phéenicie (Paris, 1864), p. 14.
73. M. Dunand, ‘Les Egyptiens a Beyrouth’, Syria, 9/4 (1928), p. 301.
74. Ibid.
75. H.R. Hall, ‘A Sphinx of Amenhet IV’, The British Museum Quarterly, 2/4
(1928).
76. James H. Breasted, ‘The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago’,

The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, 35/4 (1919),
pp. 196 –204, 197.
77. Referring to a trend already occurring in the Ottoman Empire, he wrote:
‘The opening of Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia and Babylonia to
modern business and to enlightened exploitation in mining, railroad building,
manufactures [. . .] means the rapid destruction of the great ruined cities and
buried records [. . .] The presence of increasing crowds of tourists in normal
times, and the period visits of museum representatives, have long since
brought forth an evil generation of native antiquity dealers whose shops are
largely replenished by illicit digging.’ See Breasted, ‘The Oriental Institute’,
p. 197.
78. P. De La Chassaigne, ‘Les colonies dotées de transports réguliers et modernes’,
L’Homme Libre, N.3312 (18 August 1925), p. 1.
79. H.C. Butler, ‘Protection for the historic monuments and objects of art in
Nearer Asia’, The Art Bulletin, 2/1 (1919), pp. 46 – 58, 48.
81. Ibid., p. 90.
82. CADN, 1SL/V/2373, Territoire Ennemi Occupe (Zone Ouest), ‘Municipalité
de Tyr’, 22 Janvier 1920.
83. DD, IFAAM, ‘Rapport Trimestriel 2ème [1923]’.
84. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, EdA, ‘Rapport pour le Troisième Trimestre 1924.’
86. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 98/S-D 106, Coville, Director of Higher Education
at the Ministry of Education to Legrand, Director of the Minister’s Cabinet,
MAE, 11 September 1919.
87. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 98/S-D 106, Minister for Instruction Publique to
MFA, 18 May 1921.
88. Peter Magee, ‘The Foundations Of Antiquities Departments’, in Daniel
T. Potts (ed.), A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, (Oxford,
2012), pp. 81 – 2.
89. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD [hereafter
NARA-CP], Records Relating to the Internal Affairs of Asia [hereafter
Records [. . .] Asia], 1910 –1929/Microform Roll 14/ 890d Syria, US Consul
in Damascus Allen to Division of Near Eastern Affairs, US Department of
State, 30 August 1922.
90. Avez, L’Institut Francais, pp. 24 – 5.
91. ‘Fiancailles’, Le Matin, N.15654 (28 January 1927).
92. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 98/S-D 106, MFA to HC Gouraud, 10 March
1922. Pézard died only a year after this excavation. He had been trained at the
school in the Louvre Museum. He was celebrated in the Service des Antiquités’
official organ, Syria, by fellow archaeologist Edmond Pottier as someone who
had ‘enriched the national collections’. E. Pottier, ‘Maurice Pézard’, Syria, 4/4
(1923), pp. 344– 5.
93. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 98/S-D 106 President of Société Ernest Renan to
MFA, 24 May 1921.
94. Sidon had already been the site of Ottoman excavations. See Jens Hanssen,
‘Ottoman Archaeology, Imperial Discourses & The Discovery of the Alexander
Sarcophagus in Saida in 1887’, National Museum News, 8 (1998), pp. 16 – 28.
95. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 98/S-D 106, HC Gouraud to MFA Briand,
19 January 1921.
96. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 98/S-D 106, De Caix, H-C G-S, to HC Gouraud,
25 January 1925.
97. CADL E-Levant/C 313/D 98/S-D 106, Peretti de La Rocca, Director of
Political and Commercial Affairs at the MAE to HC Gouraud, 14 June 1921.
98. For an account of Italian excavations as a political tool, see M. Petricioli, ‘Les
missions archéologiques comme instrument de politique etrangère’, in Roland
Etiénne (ed.), Les Politiques de l’Archéologie du Milieu du XIXe à l’Orée du XXIe
siècle. Actes du Colloque Organisé à l’Occasion du Cent-Cinquantenaire de
l’EFA, Athènes, Séptembre 1996 (Athens, 2000), pp. 25 – 32. Available at
http://cefael.efa.gr/detail.php?site_id¼1&actionID¼book&serie_id¼Chmc&
volume_number¼2&ce¼dc6f7hslvnohsqdkgmbsc09vm66tqjsv&sp¼33
99. AN-P, AJ/16/6993, Charles Virolleaud, MAE to the Rector of the University
of Paris, 31 December 1925.
100. AN-P, AJ/16/6993, unaddressed letter from the MAE, 11 February 1926.
101. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, ‘Journaux du 7 Février 1924 - RP de Beyrouth’,
7 February 1924.
102. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, Confin de l’Euphrate, SDZ, ‘Rapport Trimestriel (3ème
Trimestre 1924).’
103. ‘Les Travaux Archéologiques [1925]’.
104. DD, IFAAM, ‘Rapport Trimestriel 1er Trimestre [1924]’.
105. Raymond Lantier, ‘Éloge Funèbre de M. Frédéric Hrozny, Associé Etranger de
l’Académie’, Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et
Belles-Lettres, 1 (1953), 4 – 11.
106. Anonymous, Mouseion, Supplement Mensuel (Dec. 1939), p. 18.
107. CADN, 1SL/V/1685, ‘Journaux du 9 Avril - RP De Beyrouth.’
108. ‘On découvre en syrie les vestiges d’une civilisation vielle de près de 35 siècles’,
La Croix, N.13200 (14 April 1925).
109. ‘Les splendeurs de l’Orient’, Le Matin, 13605 (14 July 1927).
110. ‘A L’Institut – La Résurection de Palmyre’, La Croix, 13108 (3 December
1925).
111. ‘Les Travaux Archéologiques [1925]’. A fellow Dane, Aage Schmidt, worked
at the ancient site of Siloh in British mandate Palestine. W.F. Albright, ‘The
Danish excavations at Shiloh’, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental
Research, 9 (1923), pp. 10–11.
112. ‘Les Découvertes Franc aises En Syrie’, L’Afrique du Nord Illustrée, 161 (31 May
1924).
113. ‘Les Fouilles Archéologiques de Syrie’, Le Monde Illustré, N.3355 (8 April

1922), p. 239.
114. ‘Les Fouilles en Syrie’, L’Homme Libre, N.3234 (1 June 1925), p. 2.
115. ‘Les Archéologues Franc ais font peu parler d’eux’, Le Matin, N.12828 (7 April
1924).
116. A.-L. Chaigne-Oudin, ‘Archéologie en Syrie et au Liban pendant l’entre-deux-
guerres: mettre en valeur le patrimoine du Levant et participer au
rayonnement culturel de la France’, Les Cles Du Moyen-Orient, 2010. Available
at http://www.lesclesdumoyenorient.com/Archeologie-en-Syrie-et-au-Liban.
html (accessed 19 January 2018).
117. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘Journaux du 29 Juillet 1924 - RP du Grand
Liban.’
118. CADN, 1SL/616PO/1/Consulat Santiago/51, n.a., ‘Situation en Syrie et au
Liban en Juillet et Aout 1924.’
119. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, ‘Damien Ramia Raphael to President
Alexandre Millerand’, 27 February 1923.
120. CADN, 1SL/V/1675, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 23 Avril 1924.’
121. CADN, 1SL/V/1683, ‘Journaux des 28 et 29 Septembre - RP de Beyrouth’,
29 September 1924.
122. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, ‘Journaux du 1er Mars - RP de Beyrouth du 1er Mars.’
123. Ibid.
124. For more on this internationalist Syrian activist see: Armando Salvatore,
‘Dilemmi E Opzioni Dell’Internazionalismo Arabo-Islamico Dinanzi Alla
Politica Araba Di Roma Negli Anni Trenta. Il Caso Di Šakı̄b Arslān’, Oriente
Moderno, 71/1 – 6 (1991), pp. 75– 102; Friedhelm Hoffman, Die Syro-
Palästinensische Delegation am Völkerbund un Sakib Arslan in Genf 1921-136/46
(Berlin, 2007).
125. CADL, E-Levant/C 412/D 1A/S-D 209. Shakib Arslan, Hotel d’Angleterre in
Geneva, to League of Nations Permanent Commission for Mandates,
1 December 1924. Arslan had been a member of the Ottoman Parliament.
Philip S. Khoury, ‘Factionalism among Syrian nationalists’, International
Journal of Middle East Studies, 13/4, pp. 441– 69, 447 – 50.
126. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, ‘Journaux du 1er Mars - RP de Beyrouth du 1er Mars
1924.’
127. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, ‘Journaux du 3 Mars - RP de Beirut 5 Mars 1924’;
CADN, 1SL/V/1683, SR, ‘Journaux des 28 et 29 Septembre-RP de Beyrouth.’
128. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, ‘Journaux des 24 et 25 Février - RP de Beyrouth.’
129. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 16 Février 1924.’
130. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 10 et 11 Février 1924.’
131. Ibid.
132. Ibid.
133. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, ‘Journaux du 1er Mars - RP de Beyrouth du 1er Mars.’
136. Ibid.
137. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, ‘Journaux du 23 Fevrier 1924.’
138. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, ‘Journaux des 24 et 25 Février - RP de Beyrouth 24 et
25 Fevrier.’
139. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 5 Mars 1924.’
140. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 8 Mars 1924.’
141. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, ‘Journaux du 24 et 25 Février 1924.’ The actual
protective capacity of the gendarmes is unclear. Prior to the mandate, Gertrude
Bell described the Lebanese gendarmerie as ‘useless; the police is even worse’.
See University of Newcastle, University of Newcastle Special Collections,
Gertrude Bell Collection, 1919, Gertrude Bell Lowthian, ‘[Entry for]
14/10/1919’. Available at http://www.gerty.ncl.ac.uk/diary_details.php?
diary_id¼1262 (accessed 19 January 2018).
142. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, ‘Journaux des 24 et 25 Février - RP de Beyrouth 24 et
25 Février.’
143. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 1er Mars 1924.’
144. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, ‘Rapport Trimestriel d’Ensemble Administratif Janvier,
Février, Mars 1924.’
145. CADN, 1SL/V/2377, ‘Rapport Mensuel, Juin 1921.’
146. Ibid.
147. Stephen Vernoit, ‘The rise of Islamic archaeology’, Muqarnas, 14 (1997),
pp. 1 – 10, 3.
148. ‘Section de Culture’, Revue du Monde Musulman, XLVII (1921).
150. Nemer Mansour Frayha, ‘Religious Conflict and the Role of Social Studies
for Citizenship Education in the Lebanese Schools Between 1920 and 1983’
(Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University, 1985), p. 181.
151. CADN, 1SL/V/982, Carbillet, Chief of SR Bureau in Suwayda to HC’s DD,
28 October 1923.
153. CADN, 1SL/V/2436, HC Weygand to Acting Governor of Lebanon Privat-
Aubouard, 21 November 1923.
154. Georges Contenau, ‘Mission archéologique à Sidon (1914)’, Syria, 1/1 (1920),
pp. 16 – 55; Georges Contenau, ‘Deuxième mission archéologique à Sidon
(1920)’, Syria, 5/2 (1924), pp. 123– 34.
155. CADN, 1SL/V/2436, Privat-Aubouard to HC Weygand, 23 November
1923.
156. Paul Geuthner, ‘Nouvelles archéologiques’, Syria, 6/3 (1925), pp. 291 – 300.
157. ‘Dans les Musées Nationaux’, Le Matin, N.16674 (13 November 1929).
158. La Revue de l’Art Ancien et Moderne, 1934/01-1934/05, p. 64.
159. Bulletin des Musées de France, N.12 (December 1935), p. 158. Jacquot had
written a tourism guide for the Alawite State; see: Paul Jacquot, L’État des
Alaouites. Guide Touristique (Beirut, 1929).
160. Kaufman, Reviving Phoenicia, p. 124.
161. Mathew R. Whincop, ‘Pots, People, and Politics: A Reconsideration

of the Role of Ceramics in Reconstructions of the Iron Age Northern Levant’
(Ph.D. thesis, Durham University, 2008), p. 108.
Chapter 2 Controlling Cultural Heritage: Museums,

Tourism and Exhibitions
1. Peter Vergo, ‘Introduction’, in P. Vergo (ed.), The New Museology (London,
1989); James Cuno, Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle Over our
Ancient Heritage (Princeton, NJ, 2008).
2. Carrie Anne LaPorte, Displaying Empire? The Architecture and Development of
Museums in Nineteenth-Century India (Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania,
2003).
3. Bahrani, ‘Conjuring Mesopotamia’, in Meskell, Archaeology Under Fire,
pp. 159 –74.
4. Nélia Dias, ‘The visibility of difference: nineteenth-century French
anthropological collections’, in The Politics Of Display: Museums, Science,
Culture (London, 1998); D.J. Sherman, ‘“Peoples Ethnographic”: objects,
museums, and the colonial inheritance of French ethnology’, French Historical
Studies, 27/3 (2004), 669– 703; Alice L. Conklin, In the Museum of Man: Race,
Anthropology, and Empire in France, 1850 – 1950 (Ithaca, NY, 2013),
pp. 100– 44.
5. These discourses could be transferred in mutated forms to the needs of local
nationalist aspirations. See Michael S. Falser, ‘Cultural heritage as civilising
mission: methodological considerations’, in M.S. Falser (ed.), Cultural Heritage
as Civilizing Mission: From Decay to Recovery (n.l., 2015), pp. 1– 32. On the
broader mission civilisatrice in the Levant in the Ottoman era, see M. Burrows,
‘“Mission Civilisatrice”: French cultural policy in the Middle East, 1860–
1914’, The Historical Journal, 29/1 (1986), pp. 109– 35.
6. Alice C. Conklin, A Mission To Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and
West Africa (Stanford, CA, 1997), pp. 41–4, 54, 64–6; Stuart Michael Persell,
The French Colonial Lobby, 1889–1938 (Stanford, CA, 1983), pp. 97–114.
7. Albert Sarrault, La Mise en Valeur des Colonies Francaises (Paris, 1923), p. 23.
For analysis of Sarraut’s policy in the midst of the French political climate and
the capitalist lobby in France see Martin Thomas, The French Empire Between the
Wars: Imperialism, Politics and Society (Manchester, 2005), pp. 32 – 4, 62.
8. ‘La Mise en Valeur de la Syrie’, La Croix, N.11627 (16 February 1921).
10. This suggestion that the mandate antiquities service was aimed toward the
tutelage of local peoples has been repeated in a recent account of the Institut
Francais d’Archéologie et d’Art Musulmans, published by the press of the
institute’s successor, the Institut Francais du Proche-Orient. See Avez,
L’Institut Francais, p. 24. It was also the same line taken by Louvre Near East
Curator René Dussaud as he reflected on one of the mandate’s antiquities
directors. See René Dussaud, ‘L’oeuvre scientifique Syrienne de M. Charles

Virolleaud’, Syria, 33 (1956), pp. 8 –12.
11. ‘En Syrie’, La Croix, N.12070 (29 July 1922).
12. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, DD, ‘Travaux de l’Institut - Étude et Conservation des
Monuments Musulmans’, 1924.
13. René Dussaud, ‘Antiquités Orientales’, Bulletin des Musées de France, 12 (1929),
p. 267.
14. Anonymous, n.t., Mouseion (1935), p. 4.
15. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, DD, IFAAM, ‘Rapport Trimestriel 1er Trimestre 1924.’
17. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, HC’s DA, ‘Rapport Trimestriel, 4ème Trimestre 1924’,
n.d.
18. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, DA, Confins de l’Euphrate, SDZ, ‘Rapport Trimestriel
3eme Trimestre 1924.’
20. Avez, L’Institut Francais de Damas, pp. 24 – 5.
21. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, DD, ‘Traveaux de l’Institut - Étude et Conservation des
Monuments Musulmans.’
22. The institute was conceived in 1920 but faced various policy and budgetary
challenges. Joseph Chamonard, the architect of the antiquities service, was
opposed to its creation. However, under the sponsorship of General Gouraud
and the guidance of archaeologist Eustache De La Lorey the institute became a
focal point for research into, and preservation of, Islamic archaeology and
cultural heritage.
23. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, DD, ‘Rapport Trimestriel, 3ème Trimestre 1924.’
24. Ibid.
25. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, ‘Note pour la direction d’Asie’, 18
November 1922. In its inception in 1921, Syria had received money from the
Ministry of Public Instruction and the Syrian Archeological Society. Pottier,
‘Rapport sur les travaux archéologiques du service des antiquités’, p. 366.
26. For instance, the chief architect was a Mr. De Aranda. CADN, 1SL/V/1843,
DD, IFAAM, ‘Rapport Trimestriel 2ème Trimestre 1923.’
27. ‘Avertissement au lecteur’, Syria, 1/1 (1920), pp. 1 – 2.
28. Pierre Coupel, ‘Organisation du service des antiquités des états du Levant sous
mandat Franc ais’, Mouseion, 35 – 36/III– IV (1936), p. 175.
30. Ibid., pp. 94 – 5. The Adana museum had also collected a range of Greek
inscriptions. See René Mouterde, ‘Inscription Greqcues et Latines du Musée
d’Adana’, Syria, 2/4 (1921), pp. 280– 94.
31. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, DD, ‘Travaux de l’Institut – Étude et Conservation des
32. Anonymous, La Renaissance de l’Art Francais et des Industries de Luxe (1923),
p. 632.
33. Ibid., p. 631.
34. Avez, L’Institut Francais, pp. 23, 29 – 30.

35. Ibid., pp. 26 – 7.
36. DD, ‘Travaux de l’Institut [1924]’; DD, IFAAM, ‘Institut Francais
d’Archéologie [1924]’.
37. DD, IFAAM, ‘Institut Francais d’Archéologie [1924]’.
38. CADN, 1SL/V/982, ‘Bulletin de Renseignements [Djebel Druze]’, 29
November 1923.
40. DD, ‘Institut Francais d’Archéologie’.
41. Gaston Migeon, ‘Lampe de mosquée en cuivre ajoutée au Musée du Louvre’,
Syria, 1/1 (1920), p. 56.
42. René Dussaud, ‘Antiquites Orientales’, Bulletin des Musées de France, 7 (1929),
p. 139.
43. Bulletin des Musées de France, 2 (1936), p. 23. Another report suggests evidence
found at Bagram ‘prove[d] close contacts between Afghanistan and Syria’. See
Bulletin des Musée de France (1938), 117.
44. ‘Académies, Universités, Écoles’, Le Temps, N.20686 (24 February 1918).
45. For details on the legal structure of classic Islamic endowments (awqāf), see
Jonathan Benthall and Jérôme Bellion-Jourdan, ‘Waqf and Islamic finance:
two resources for charity’, in J. Benthall and J. Bellion-Jourdan (eds), The
Charitable Crescent: Politics of Aid in the Muslim World (London, 2003).
For general studies of charity in Islamic contexts, see Michael Bonner, Mine
Ener and Amy Singer, Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts (Albany,
NY, 2003); Nefissa Naguib and Inger Marie Okkenhaug, Interpreting Welfare
and Relief in the Middle East (Leiden, 2008).
46. Nadia Sbaiti, ‘“A Massacre Without Precedent”: Pedagogical constituencies
and communities of knowledge In Mandate Lebanon’, in Schayegh and Arsan
(eds), The Routledge Handbook of the History of the Middle East Mandates
(Abingdon, 2015), p. 323. See also: Donald Cioeta, ‘Islamic benevolent
societies and public education In Ottoman Syria, 1875– 1882’, Islamic
Quarterly, 26/1 (1982).
47. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, DD, ‘Travaux de l’Institut – Étude et Conservation des
48. DD, ‘Travaux de l’Institut [1924]’.
49. DD, ‘Traveaux de l’Institut [1923]’.
50. DD, ‘Traveaux de l’Institut [1924]’. Max Weiss has examined the use of the
awqāf to defend existing religiously co-ordinated interests against French
mandatory reorganisation among Shia in South Lebanon (the Jabal ‘Amil).
See Weiss, In the Shadow, pp. 126– 56.
51. Coupel, ‘Organisation du service’, p. 174.
52. Mouseion (May 1935), 5. The Viscount was also the High Commissioner’s
delegate for the Aleppo antiquities service. See Comte Du Mesnil Du Buisson,
‘Revue Archéologique Publiée par la Société Archéologique d’Alep’, Syria,
12/3 (1931), p. 295.
53. AN-P, 62/AJ/65, ‘Maintien ou Abandon Progressif du Mandat de la France en

Syrie’.
54. Ibid.
55. Avez, L’Institut Francais, pp. 25 – 8.
56. CADN, 1SL/V/1703, ‘Bulletin de Renseignement No 118’, 6 July 1924.
58. Albert Hourani, The Emergence of the Modern Middle East (Berkeley and Los
Angeles, CA, 1981), p. 158.
59. Asher Kaufman, Reviving Phoenicia (London, 2004), p. 138, fn. 53. See also
Asher Kaufman, ‘Phoenicianism: the formation of an identity in Lebanon in
1920’, Middle Eastern Studies, 37/1 (2001), pp. 173– 94; Asher Kaufman,
‘“Tell Us Our History”: Charles Corm, Mount Lebanon and Lebanese
Nationalism’, Middle Eastern Studies, 40/3 (May 2004), pp. 1 – 29. Nadia Sbaiti
outlines Corm’s intervention in the Arabic-French language instruction
debate. See: Nadia Jeanne Sbaiti, ‘Lessons in history, education, and
the formulation of national society in Beirut, Lebanon, 1920– 1960s’
(Ph.D. thesis, Georgetown University, 2008), pp. 162– 3. Other Lebanese
nationalists like Emile Eddé were more practical and less interested in ethnic
keystones. Meir Zamir, ‘Emile Eddé and the territorial integrity of Lebanon’,
Middle Eastern Studies, 14/2 (1978), pp. 232– 5.
60. D.P. Walker, ‘Clericist-Catholic author and the crystallization of historical
memory of World War I in Lebanonist-Particularist discourse, 1918– 1922’,
Islamic Studies, 48/2 (2009), pp. 219– 60; Fruma Zachs, ‘Mı̄khāı̄l Mishāqa –
the first historian of modern Syria’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies,
28/1 (2001), pp. 67 – 87.
61. See Amaya Martin-Fernandez, ‘National, linguistic, and religious identity of
Lebanese Maronite Christians through their Arabic fictional texts during the
period of the French Mandate in Lebanon’ (Ph.D. thesis, Georgetown
University, 2009), p. 69.
62. Compte-Rendus des Séances de l’Académie, 353.
63. Elizabeth F. Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege
and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York, NY, 2000), pp. 66 –9.
64. For an account of the museum’s post-mandate attempts at shaping a Lebanese
national history from the diverse threads of the Phoenician, Greek, Roman and
other periods, see Kristin V. Monroe, The Insecure City: Space, Power, and
Mobility in Beirut (New Brunswick, NJ, 2016), pp. 35 – 55. The exact date is
unclear as Asher Kaufman suggests that the idea for the museum emerged in
1922. See Kaufman, Reviving Phoenicia, p. 123.
66. Kais Firro notes this effort at forming a museum as an example of Jacques
Tabet disavowing his previously Syrianist stance and following the political
headwinds of French mandatory domination. Kais M. Firro, ‘Lebanese
nationalism versus Arabism: from Bulus Nujaym to Michel Chiha’, Middle
Eastern Studies, 40/5, (2004), pp. 9 – 13.
67. The Sursocks had rapidly grown in stature over the nineteenth century
through political marriages with Mediterranean aristocratic families. It is
noteworthy that the Sursock family had intermarried with the Lutfallahs, rich
Egypt-based Syrian Sunnis who had several family members involved in anti-
imperial activism. Philip S. Khoury, ‘Factionalism among Syrian nationalists’,
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 13/4, p. 447.
68. Pottier, ‘Rapport sur les travaux’, p. 365.
69. Jean-Gabriel Leturcq, ‘The Museum of Arab Art in Cairo (1869– 2014):
a disoriented heritage?’, in Pouillon and Vatin (eds), After Orientalism.
70. CADN, 1SL/47PO/1/Consulat Assomption/19, J. Laroche, MAE to French
Diplomatic and Consular Agents Abroad, ‘Souscription en Vue de la
Construction d’un Musée National à Beyrouth’, 6 April 1925. It is noteworthy
that a similar pan-American fundraising effort supported the continuing
operation of May Kassab’s Ahliyya school in Beirut. See Sbaiti, ‘Lessons in
˙
history’, p. 63.
71. Natália Rodrigues Mendes, ‘“Lı́bano No Corac ao”: Revivalismo Religioso
E Mobilizac ão Étnico-Nacional Na Comunidade Maronita Do Rio De Janeiro’
(Ph.D. thesis, Universidade Federal Fluminense, 2013).
72. CADN, V/79/Consulat Bahia, Sociedad Libaneza-Siria, ‘A Pedidos De Bases
Para A Organizac ao Dos Estatutos Da Sociedade ‘Libaneza-Syria’, in Diario
Official, 31 July 1921.
73. Though Sbaiti describes Kurd Ali as a nationalist ‘who worked closely’ with
the French, closer examination reveals the significant tension between the
French and this indefatigable activist, as demonstrated presently. Sbaiti,
‘Lessons in history’, p. 103.
74. CADN, 1SL/47PO/1/Consulat Assomption/19, MAE, ‘Note’, 19 May 1925.
75. CADN, 1SL/47PO/1/Consulat Assomption/19, Edmond Du Prey, MAE, to
French Diplomatic and Consular Agents Abroad, ‘Lettre Collective’, 6 April
1925.
76. CADN, V/79/Consulat Bahia, Khalil Alexander Maalouf to French Consul in
Bahia Léon Hippeau, 20 January 1925.
77. CADN, V/79/Consulat Bahia, Léon Hippeau to Robert Cerf, Manager of the
French Consular Agency in Pernambuco, 5 May 1925.
78. CADN, V/79/Consulat Bahia, Robert Cerf to Léon Hippeau, 30 May 1925.
79. CADN, V/79/Consulat Bahia, HC Henri De Jouvenel to Léon Hippeau,
15 February 1926.
80. An important parallel phenomenon is the use of the antique past in advertising
images. See Lauren E. Talalay, ‘The past as commodity: archaeological images
in modern advertising’, Public Archaeology, 3 (2004), pp. 205–16.
81. Ellen Furlough, ‘Une Lec on des Choses: tourism, empire, and the nation in
interwar France’, French Historical Studies, 25/3 (2002), p. 444. For the
adventurers and travellers of the nineteenth century, much like their
counterparts travelling from East to West, the journey of personal and
geographical discovery (the ends) justified the means.
82. George Rea Trumbull IV, ‘An Empire of Facts: Ethnography and the Politics
of Cultural Knowledge in French Algeria, 1871– 1914’ (Ph.D. thesis, Yale
University, 2005), pp. 70 – 2.
83. G.F. Hill, How to Observe in Archaeology: Suggestions for Travellers in the Near East
and Middle East (London, 1920). Already in 1910, the American publication
The Biblical World was reporting ‘a party of Englishmen, by no means
archaeologists or professing to be such [. . .] excavating off and on’ in Ottoman
Palestine. E.W.G. Masterman, ‘Recent excavations in Jerusalem’, The Biblical
World, 39/5 (1912), p. 295.
84. ‘How to Observe in Archaeology: Suggestions for Travellers in the Near East
and Middle East by G.F. Hill’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 40/2 (1920), p. 217.
85. J.H. Breasted, ‘The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago’, American
Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, 35/4 (1919), p. 197.
86. CADN, 1SL/V/2377, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 15 Octobre 1924.’
87. John Lewis Burkhardt, Travels in Syria and the Holy Land (London, 1822);
Gertrude Bell, The Desert and the Sown: Travels in Palestine and Syria (London,
1907); Mohammad Sakhnini, ‘John Carmichel’s and Abraham Parsons’
journeys from Aleppo to Basra: scientific and commercial views on the
discourse of travel’, The Arab World Geographer, 14/4 (2011), pp. 371– 86.
88. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 5A/S-D 60, Director of the H-C’s Economic
Service, ‘Rapport Mensuel pour le Mois de Mai 1921’, 10 June 1921.
Service, ‘Rapport Trimestriel pour le Trimestre Juillet-Août-Séptembre 1921’,
7 November 1921.
90. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 10/S-D 80, MFA to H-C, E-Levant/C 313/ D 10/
S-D 80.
91. La Syrie (13 September 1922).
92. ‘Sources et Débouches’, Le Mercure Africain, N.19 (15 June 1922), 52.
93. CADN, 1SL/V/1703, ‘Bulletin de Renseignement N8 119’, 7 July 1924.
94. ‘Il Faut Ratifier la Traité de Lausanne’, Le Matin, N.12878 (27 May 1924).
95. CADN, 1SL/V/1675, ‘Compte-Rendu Succinct Etabli en Execution de la Note
2200/K du 25 Janvier 1924’, 29 April 1925.
96. ‘Le Plus Beau Voyage des Vacances’, La Croix (3 July 1922).
97. ‘Sources et Débouches’, Le Mercure Africain, N.20 (15 July 1922), 72.
98. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/ D 10/S-D 80, Robert De Caix to MAE, 22 January
1921.
99. ‘Ce Que la Mission Franc aise a Vu en Syrie’, Le Matin, N.14109 (5 November
1922).
100. Jacques Denom, ‘La Syrie et le Liban: Aux Pays de Mandat Franc ais, la Syrie,
Pays d’Archéologie, d’Histoire et de Tourisme’, La Renaissance de l’Art Francais
et des Industries de Luxe (1922), 291.
101. For more on the use of cinema to spread contesting French, Fascist and
American claims of culture in the later mandate period, see Jennifer M. Dueck,
The Claims of Culture at Empire’s End: Syria and Lebanon Under French Rule
(Oxford, 2010). Cinemas were not simply used by the French to spread
cultural claims amenable to their mandatory methods. The Syrian-Lebanese
Communist Party’s first open meeting was held at the Cinéma Crystale in
Beirut. See Tareq Y. Ismael and Jacqueline S. Ismael, The Communist Movement
in Syria and Lebanon (Tampa, FL, 1998), p. 10.
102. CADN, 1SL/V/2362, ‘Voeux du Medjles en Niabi de l’État du Djebel Druze a
Son Excellence le General Weygand’, n.d.
103. CADN, 1SL/V/1560, H-C General Secretariat, ‘Monographie de la Ville de
Zahle-Moallaka (Grand Liban)’, 1921.
104. CADN, 616PO/1/Consulat Santiago/51, ‘Situation en Syrie et au Liban en
Septembre 1924’.
105. CADN, 616PO/1/Consulat Santiago/51, ‘Situation en Syrie et au Liban en
Juillet & Août 1924.’
106. CADN, 1SL/V/2373, Térritoire Enemi Occupe Zone Ouest - Compte-Rendu
des Journaux Parus le 28/04/1920.’
107. CADN, 1SL/V/1685, ‘Journal du 9 Avril - RP de Beyrouth’, 1924.
108. CADN, 1SL/V/1684, ‘RP de Beyrouth des 8 et 9 Février 1925.’
109. CADN, 1SL/V/1684, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 12 Février 1924.’
110. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, RP de Beyrouth du 23 Avril 1924.’
111. CADN, 1SL/V/1684, ‘RP de Beyrouth des 7 et 8 Décembre 1924.’
112. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, RP de Beyrouth du 1 Février 1924.’ Andrew Shryock and
Nabeel Abraham, ‘On margins and mainstreams’, in A. Shryock and N. Abraham
(eds), Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream (Detroit, MI, 2000), p. 19.
113. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, ‘RP de Beyrouth Du 16 Avril 1924.’
114. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, ‘Journaux du 14 Août 1924 - RP de Beyrouth.’
115. CADN, 1SL/V/1704, ‘Bulletin de Renseignement de Damas N8 145’,11
August 1925.
116. NARA-CP, Records [. . .] Asia 1910– 1929/Microfilm Roll 14/ 890d Syria,
E.C. Hole, American Consul in Damascus to US Department of State,
23 January 1928.
117. NARA-CP, Records [. . .] Asia 1910– 1929/Microfilm Roll 14/ 890d Syria,
Hole to State, 28 January 1928.
118. Bibliothèque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine Nanterre
(hereafter BDIC), Fonds Syrie, F Delta/947/1-6, Bulletin de la Société Litéraire
Russe de Damas, 7 (1 January 1924). Among its founding members were Vice-
President Helène Alexief, the headmistress of the Greek Orthodox School in
Damascus, Anna Malyechef, a doctor, the Society’s president Alexis
Bogolioubsky, a professor, Michel Philiptchenko, an economist and Alexandre
Biéline, an agronomist.
119. Alexis Bogolioubsky, ‘A Travers la Syrie et le Liban a Bicyclette’, Bulletin de
la Société Littéraire Russe de Damas, 7 (1 January 1924). Departing on the 28
July 1923, they set off from Damascus to Rabaa. After a long trip
through the Beqaa, the adventurous partners arrived at a hotel in Chtaura at
10pm.
120. Kirsten Scheid, ‘Painters, Picture-Makers, and Lebanon: Ambiguous

Identities in an Unsettled State’ (Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 2005),
p. 241.
121. Ibid., pp. 248– 66.
122. Dana S. Hale, Races on Display: French Representation of Colonized Peoples 1886–
1940 (Bloomington, IN, 2008), pp. 13 –20.
123. Sarah Britton, ‘“Come and See the Empire by the All Red Route!”:
anti-imperialism and exhibitions in interwar Britain’, History Workshop
Journal, 69, pp. 68 – 89.
124. Zeynep Çelik and Leila Kinney, ‘Ethnography and exhibitionism at the
Expositions Universelles’, Assemblage, N.13 (1990), pp. 34– 59; Anaelle
Bouyer, ‘Exotisme et commerce: les “Villages Noirs” dans les expositions
Franc aises (1889– 1937)’, Outres-Mers, 90/1 (2003), pp. 273– 91; Van Troi
Tran, ‘L‘ephémère dans l‘ephémère: la domestication des colonies a l‘exposition
universelle de 1889’, Ethnologies, 29/No 1/2 (2007), pp. 143 – 69.
See Furlough, ‘Une Lec on’, pp. 445– 6.
125. See: Ibid., pp. 445– 6; Gary Wilder, ‘Framing Geater France between the
wars’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 14/2 (2011), pp. 198– 225.
126. C. De La Roncière, ‘Chambre de Commerce de Marseille. Congrès Franc ais de
la Syrie (3, 4 et 5 Janvier 1919)’, Bibliothèque de l‘École des Chartes, 80/1 (1919),
pp. 286 –8.
127. Gaston Migéon, ‘Congres d‘Histoire de l’Art à Paris, 1921’, Syria, 2/4 (1921),
p. 332.
128. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 5A/S-D 60, Berthelot, MAE to H-C, 6 January
1921.
129. ‘Exposition des fouilles Franc aises de Syrie au Musée du Louvre’, Syria, 3/1
(1922), pp. 85 – 6.
130. ‘La Stèle Araméene de Zakir au Musée du Louvre’, Syria, 3/2 (1922), p. 176.
131. CADN, 1SL/V/1362, ‘Travaux Préparatoires a l‘Exposition de Marseille’,
1921. For details on this exhibition see Yaël Simpson Fletcher, ‘“Capital of the
Colonies”: real and imagined boundaries between metropole and empire in
1920s Marseille’, in F. Drive and D. Gilbert (eds), Imperial Cities: Landscape,
Display and Identity (Manchester, 1999).
Service, ‘Rapport Mensuel pour le Mois de Mai 1921’, 10 June 1921. Terrier
would later be sent to the Euphrates region to oversee intelligence analysis
there. See Jordi Tejel Gorgas, Le Mouvement Kurde de Turquie en Exil: Continuité
et Discontinuité Nationalisme Kurde sous le Mandat Francais en Syrie et au Liban
(1925 – 1946) (Bern, 2007), p. 62.
Service, ‘Rapport Mensuel pour le Mois de Juillet 1921’, 13 August 1921.
134. Diana K. Davis, Resurrecting the Granary of Rome; Environmental History and
French Colonial Expansion in North Africa, (Athens, OH, 2007); Will
D. Swearingen, ‘In pursuit of the granary of Rome: France’s wheat policy in
Morocco, 1919 –1931’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 17/3

(1985), pp. 347– 63. Le Mercure de France journalist Yvon Evenou-Norvès
outlined this argument for resurrecting Rome’s rule in North Africa and Syria
directly in an article for that periodical dating from 1921. Yvon Evenou-
Norvès, ‘Régionalisme’, Le Mercure de France, N.561 (1 November 1921),
p. 816.
135. La Renaissance De l‘Art Francais et des Industries de Luxe (1923), p. 630.
136. René Dussaud, ‘Antiquités Orientales’, Bulletin des Musées de France, 11 (1930),
p. 236.
137. ‘En France’, L’Homme Libre, N.2836 (29 April 1924), p. 2.
138. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, ‘Journaux du 12 Mars - RP De Beyrouth’, 1924.
139. Georges Contenau, ‘Le Congrès International d’Archéologie de Syrie-Palestine
Avril 1926’, Syria, 7/3 (1926), p. 258.
140. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth des 11 et 12 Mai 1924.’
141. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, DD, ‘Travaux de l’Institut.’
142. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 10A/S-D 80, HC Gouraud To MFA Millerand, May
1920.
143. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 10A/S-D 80, De Caix to MAE, 29 November
1920.
144. CADN, 1SL/V/2376, Anonymous to G-S De Caix, 14 January 1921.
145. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 10A/S-D 80, Gouraud, ‘Note de Presse’, 25 April
1921.
146. Haqqi Al-‘Azm, born 1865 (died 1955), learnt Arabic, Turkish and French in
Damascus, Istanbul and Cairo. He gained a position in the Ministry for Waqfs
in Istanbul. During World War I, Haqqi promoted anti-Ottoman French
propaganda in Damascus newspapers. During the mandate, Haqqi was
rewarded with the role of Governor of the State of Damascus and was almost
killed in an ambush on HC Gouraud’s convoy by rebel leader Ahmed
Merawed. See ‘Haqqi Al ‘Azm’, in Khayr al-Din Zirikli, Al-Aʻlām: qāmūs
tarājim li-ashhar al-rijāl wa-al-nisāʼ min al-ʻArab wa-al-mustaʻribı̄n wa-al-
mustashriqı̄n, mujallad 2 (Beirut, 2002), pp. 265– 6. Palestinian journalist and
patriot Muhammad ‘Ali Al-Tahir alleged that the ‘traitor [‫ ’]ﺳﻴﻐﺎ‬Haqqi, one of
the ‘oldest enemies of independence [‫’]ﺃﻋﺪﺍﺀ ﺃﻗﺪﻡ ﻣﻦ ﺍﺳﺘﻘﻼﻝ‬, had spied for
France during the World War. See Muhammad ‘Ali Al-Tahir, Khamsuna
‘amaan fi Al-qadhaayaa Al‘arabiyah ( Beirut, 1978), p. 308.
147. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/ D 10A/ S-D 80, Gouraud, ‘Note de Presse’, 2 May
1921.
148. CADN, 1SL/V/1369, ‘La Situation en Syrie et en Cilicie d’Octobre 1918
à Séptembre 1923.’
149. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/ D 10A/ S-D 80, HC Gouraud, ‘Note de Presse’,
4 May 1921.
150. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/ D 10A/ S-D 80, HC Gouraud, ‘Note de Presse’,
9 May 1921.
151. CADN, 1SL/V/2376, n.a. to G-S De Caix, 14 January 1921. Lawrence Badel,
Un Milieu Libéral et Européen: Le Grand Commerce Francais 1925– 1948
(Vincennes, 1999). For an overview of Lyon’s special place in Levantine
commerce, see Dominique Chevallier, ‘Lyon et la Syrie en 1919: les bases d’une
intervention’, Revue Historique, 1 (1960), pp. 275– 320; Nourredine Bouchair,
‘The Merchant and Moneylending Class of Syria Under the French Mandate,
1920– 1946’ (Ph.D. thesis, Georgetown University, 1986), pp. 129– 32.
152. Haut Commissariat de la République Francaise en Syrie et au Liban, La Syrie et
le Liban en 1921: La Foire-Exposition de Beyrouth, Conferences, Liste des Récompenses
(Paris, 1922), p. 312.
153. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/ D10 A/ S-D 80, MAE To H-C, 6 December 1920.
154. Pierre Lyautey, ‘Une Exposition de Mobilier de l’Art Franc ais à la Foire de
Beyrouth’, La Renaissance de l‘Art Francais et des Industries de Luxe (1921),
664.
155. Ibid.
156. Ibid.
157. Ibid.
158. ‘Informations’, Le Mercure Africain, N.7 (15 June 1921), p. 97.
159. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 10A/S-D 80, De Caix to Gouraud, 4 February
1921.
160. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 10A/S-D 80, De Caix to MAE, 7 January 1921.
161. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 10A/S-D 80, De Caix to MAE, 22 January 1921.
162. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D10 A/S-D 80, Gouraud to MFA, January 1921;
CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 10A/S-D 80, De Caix To MAE, 7 January
1921.
163. ‘Echos’, Le Journal Général de l’Algérie, de la Tunisie et du Maroc, N.14 (3 August
1919), 2.
164. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 10A/S-D 80, HC Gouraud to MFA Millerand, May
1920.
165. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 5A/S-D 60, Berthelot, MAE to H-C, 6 January
1921. Elizabeth Thompson has also noted that De Caix had been pressured by
Dutch, British and Italian business to allow full participation in the Beirut
Fair. See Thompson, Colonial Citizens, p. 62.
166. L’Asie Francaise was the organ of the Comité de l’Asie Franc aise, which pushed
for French expansion in East Asia and the Levant through the cultural
institutions. See Marc Lagana, Le Parti Colonial Francais: Eléments d’Histoire
(Sillery, 1990), p. 10. On De Caix’s role for the Comité see White, The
Emergence of Minorities, pp. 135– 6.
167. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 10A/S-D 80, De Caix to MAE, 4 January
1921.
168. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 10A/S-D 80, De Caix to MFA Aristide Briand,
27 February 1925.
169. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D10 A/S-D 80, ‘Note pour la Sous-Direction d‘Asie’,
22 March 1925.
Chapter 3 Classrooms, Curricula and Content

1. The following analysis can be complemented with: Munir Al-Ahmad,
‘La Politique Linguistique Franc aise en Syrie sous le Mandat Franc ais 1920–
1946’ (Ph.D. thesis, Université De Poitiers, 2013).
2. Gail Paradise Kelly, ‘Conflict in the classroom: a case study from Vietnam,
1918– 1938’, in G. Paradise Kelly, French Colonial Education: Essays on Vietnam
and West Africa (New York, 2000), pp. 155– 74.
3. Spencer D. Segalla, ‘Georges D. Hardy and educational ethnology in French
Morocco, 1920– 26’, French Colonial History, 4/1 (2003), pp. 171– 90, 180.
4. Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and
West Africa, 1895– 1930 (Stanford, CA, 1997), pp. 75 – 86; Kenneth Orosz,
Religious Conflict and the Evolution of Language Policy in German and French
Cameroon, 1885– 1939 (Pieterlern and Bern, 2008), pp. 259– 312.
5. Roger Price, A Social History of Nineteenth-Century France (London, 1987),
p. 307.
6. Stephen Ball and Ivor Goodson, ‘Introduction’, in S. Ball and I. Goodson (eds),
Defining the Curriculum: Histories and Ethnographies (Lewes, 1984).
7. Stephen J. Ball, ‘Imperialism, social control and the colonial curriculum in
Africa’, in Ball and Goodson, Defining the Curriculum.
8. Betty S. Anderson, ‘Writing the nation: textbooks of the Hashemite Kingdom
of Jordan’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 21/1 –2
(2001), pp. 5 –14, 6.
9. Nemer Mansour Frayha, ‘Religious Conflict and the Role of Social Studies
for Citizenship Education in the Lebanese Schools Between 1920 and 1983’,
(Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University, 1985), pp. 109– 21.
10. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, DD, ‘Rapport Trimestriel - 3ème Trimestre’, 1924.
11. CADN, 1SL/V/1842, EdA, ‘Rapport Trimestriel - Octobre, Novembre,
Decembre 1922.’
12. Ibid.
13. CADN, 1SL/V/1842, HC’s DSF, ‘Instruction Publique - Pogrammme de
Federation Syrienne’, n.d.
14. CADN, 1SL/V/1842, EA, ‘Rapports Trimestriel Interieur - Avril, Mai, Juin’,
1921.
15. Ibid.
16. CADN, 1SL/V/1842, EA ‘Rapport Trimestriel des Mois de Juillet, Août et
Séptembre 1921’, November 1921, 40 – 2.
17. CADN, 1SL/V/1842, EdA, ‘Rapport Trimestriel - Juillet, Août, Séptembre
1923’. For a thorough account of the ways in which geography and history
were taught in particular ways, see Sbaiti, ‘Lessons in history’, pp. 151– 231.
1923’. Frayha notes that by 1927, a concerted French effort to tighten its grip
on public and private education meant that a decree made the inclusion of the
geography of the French colonies a compulsory element of a geography
subject. See Frayha, ‘Religious Conflict’, p. 184. Sbaiti, ‘Lessons in history’,

p. 49.
Décembre’, n.d.
1923’.
1923’.
22. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, EdA, ‘Rapport Trimestriel - 1er Trimestre 1924’.
23. CADN, 1SL/V/1684, ‘Journeaux du 10 et 11 Fevrier - RP de Beyrouth du 11
Fevrier’, 1925.
24. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth des 10 et 11 Fevrier’, 1924.
Greek Orthodox schools were particularly effective at spreading French
instruction. Inspection report cards on the Tahzib al-Fatat in Lebanon, for
˙
instance, conclude that the level of Arabic teaching there was worse than
French see CADN, 1SL/600/7, Service for Instruction Publique, ‘Fiches
d’Inspection des Écoles’, 1921.
26. DD, ‘Rapport Trimestriel - 3ème Trimestre (1924)’, [MAE 1SL/V/1843
Cabinet Politique].
27. CADN, 1SL/V/2377, Commandant Catroux to HC Gouraud, 22 September
1920.
28. CADN, 1SL/V/2377, Government of the State of Aleppo, ‘Rapport pour le
Mois de Novembre 1921’.
29. CADN, 1SL/V/2362, ‘Voeux du Medjles en Niabi de l’État du Djebel Druze a
Son Excellence le General Weygand’, n.d.
30. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, DD, ‘Rapport Trimestriel - 3ème Trimestre’, 1924. Greek
Orthodox schools were particularly effective at spreading French instruction.
31. CADN, 1SL/600/6, Letter from Garo Khabaian, Director of the Gregorian
Mixed Armenian School in Alexandretta to Instruction Publique advisor Paul
Combes, 17 December 1921.
32. CADN, 1SL/V/1842, EA, ‘Rapports Trimestriel Interieur - Avril, Mai, Juin
1921’.
Décembre 1922’.
Décembre 1922’.
35. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, ‘Rapport Trimestriel - 1er Trimestre 1924’.
36. CADN, 1SL/V/2434, Governor of Greater Lebanon Albert Michel Trabaud to
High Commissioner Gouraud, 22 October 1921.
37. CADN, 1SL/V/2434, Trabaud, unmarked note, 22 October 1922.
38. CADN, 1SL/V/2434, Governor Trabaud to HC, 22 October 1921.
39. Ibid.
40. CADN EA, 1SL/V/1842, ‘Rapport Trimestriel - 4ème Trimestre 1920’.
41. CADN, 1SL/V/1842, EdA, ‘Rapport Trimestriel - Juillet, Août, Séptembre,

1922’.
42. Ibid.
43. CADN, 1SL/V/1842, EA, ‘Rapport Trimestriel des Mois de Juillet, Août et
Séptembre 1921’, November 1921.
44. CADN, 1SL/V/2434, Inspector of Lebanese Primary Schools Adib Khalifeh to
Director of Instruction Publique in Lebanon, 21 June 1923.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.
47. CADN, 1SL/V/982, DD, ‘Bulletin de Renseignement’, 12 November 1923.
48. CADN, 1SL/V/982, DD, ‘Bulletin de Renseignement’, 5 November 1923.
Décembre 1922’.
50. CADN, 1SL/V/2379, EA, ‘Instruction Publique’, February 1923.
51. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, Délégation du HC au DSA, ‘Sandjak d’Alexandrette:
Rapport Trimestriel - Avril, Mai, Juin 1924’.
52. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, Gouvernment d’Alep ‘Sandjak Autonome d’Alex-
andrette: Rapport pour le Troisième Trimestre de l’Année 1924’.
Décembre 1922’; CADN, 1SL/V/1842, EdA, ‘Rapport Trimestriel - Juillet,
Août, Séptembre 1923’.
54. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, EA, ‘Rapport Trimestriel - 4ème Trimestre’, 1924.
55. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, Gouvernement d’Alep - Sandjak Autonôme d’Alex-
andrette, ‘Rapport Trimestriel pour le 1er Trimestre de l’Année 1924’.
56. CADN, 1SL/V/2379, EA, ‘Instruction Publique’, February 1923.
57. Prost, Histoire de l’Enseignement, 10.
59. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, EdA, ‘Rapport pour le Troisième Trimestre 1924’,
6 November 1924, 1SL/V/1843.
60. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, Sandjak Autonome d’Alexandrette, ‘Rapport pour le
4ème Trimestre de l’Année 1924’.
Décembre 1922’.
63. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, EGL, ‘Rapport Trimestriel d’Ensemble (Administratif),
Janvier-Février-Mars’, 1924.
64. CADN, 1SL/V/2377, DD, ‘Bulletin du Mois de Juillet sur les Nomades de
l’État de Damas’, 7 August 1921.
65. CADN, V/Consulat Le Caire 61, French Consul in Alexandria to MF, 14
January 1922.
66. Ibid.
67. Frayha, 182– 9. Frayha outlined in particular the role Decree 2642 of October
1924 in outlining a civics class alongside the humanities subjects of history
and geography. This subject would emphasise physical, moral and intellectual
development. However, it is noteworthy that the main civics curriculum

was implemented at the end of the period under present study, in January
1926.
68. CADN, 1SL/V/1682 EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth des 3 et 4 Fevrier 1924’,
3 February 1924.
69. Elizabeth Thompson, ‘Public and private in Middle Eastern women’s history’,
Journal of Women’s History, 15/1 (2003), pp. 52 – 63, 53.
70. Afsaneh Najmabadi, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and
Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 2005).
Pre-existing gender categorisation in the Middle East should not be ignored
by those emphasising the ‘modernity’ of this phenomenon. See Deniz
Kandiyoti, ‘Bargaining with patriarchy’, Gender and Society, 2/3 (1988),
pp. 274 –90.
71. CADN, 1SL/600/7, Quilici, ‘École de Chiah’, 21 May 1921; ‘École de Hadat’,
14 November 1921; ‘École de Harrisa’, 18 November 1921; ‘École de Metain’,
2 December 1921.
72. CADN, 1SL/V/1842, Advisor to the Government, EA, ‘Rapport Trimestriel
des Mois de Juillet, Août et Séptembre 1921’, November 1921, 42.
73. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, DD, ‘Rapport Trimestriel - 2ème Trimestre 1923’.
74. Patricia J. Thompson, ‘Beyond gender: equity issues for home economics
education’, in L. Stone (ed.), The Education Feminism Reader (London, 1994);
Samuel Dolbee, ‘Mandatory Bodybuilding: Nationalism, Masculinity, Class
and Physical Activity in 1930s Syria’ (Master’s thesis, Georgetown University,
2010), p. 82.
75. Scheid, ‘Painters, Picture-Makers’, pp. 177–82. Scheid notes that gender
stereotypes influenced the kind of artistic education that Kassab’s girls
received at her school in the early 1920s. Another account of the origins and
character of the Kassab school is given in Sbaiti, ‘Lessons in history’, pp. 61 – 2;
65 – 70.
76. CADN, 1SL/V/2379, EA, ‘no title’, n.d (c.1922).
1923’.
78. Frayha notes that such approaches were equally present in the Lebanese
mandate curriculum, with primary schooling being based on ‘games, rhythmic
movments, and singing [. . .] teaching [. . .] through simulations of daily
events such as peasants growing and harvesting wheat.’ Frayha, ‘Religious
Conflict’, p. 186.
1923’.
80. CADN, 1SL/V/2379, EA, ‘no title’, n.d (c.1922).
81. Jacques Weulersse, Paysans de Syrie et du Proche-Orient (Paris, 1946), p. 198.
82. Michel Foucault, Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la Prison (Paris, 1975),
pp. 151– 8; Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (Moscow, 1986),
pp. 264 –86.
83. Rondo E. Cameron, Civilization Since Waterloo: A Book of Source Readings (Itasca,
IL, 1971), pp. 40 – 2.
84. For a broader discussion of this in late Ottoman and Mandate Beirut, see:
Vanessa Ogle, The Global Transformation of Time, 1870– 1950 (Cambridge,
MA, 2015), pp. 124– 47.
85. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, SDZ, ‘Rapport Trimestriel - 3ème Trimestre 1924’.
86. Ibid.
87. Ibid.
88. CADN, 1SL/V/1685, ‘Journaux du 8 Mai - RP du Liban’, 1924.
89. CADN, 1SL/V/1675, SR, ‘Bulletin de Renseignement N8609/D’, 1 May
1925.
90. CADN, 1SL/V/1560, SR, ‘Fiche de Renseignments - Alep’, 4 May 1928.
91. CADN, SR, ‘Joseph Chalouni’, 28 December 1919.
92. CADN, 1SL/V/921, ‘Renseignements au Sujet de Certaines Personnes du
Haut Commissariat’, 1923.
93. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, HC advisor for Instruction Publique to Chief of SR,
7 November 1922.
94. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, Governor Trabaud to Advisor for Instruction Publique,
12 October 1922.
95. CADN, 1SL/V/2432, Administrative Advisor for South Lebanon to Greater
Lebanon Governor’s Office, 6 February 1923.
96. Clifford Rosenberg, Policing Paris: The Origins of Modern Immigration Control
Between the Wars ( Ithaca NY, 2006).
98. CADN, 1SL/V/1565, SR, ‘Bulletin de Renseignement N8.101’, 15 June
1925.
99. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 5 Février 1924’.
100. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 1 Mars 1924’.
101. An account of this fight as it developed in Beirut is given in: Nadya Sbaiti,
‘“If the Devil Taught French”: strategies of language and learning in French
Mandate Beirut’, in Osama Abi-Mershed (ed.), Trajectories of Education in the
Arab World: Legacies and Challenges (London and New York, NY, 2010),
pp. 59 – 83.
102. Sbaiti, ‘Lessons in history’, pp. 52 – 61, 109– 14. In 1922, the maqāsid
˙
convinced HC Gouraud to allow their charity to continue to operate control
independent of its Islamic awaqf.
103. Sbaiti, ‘Lessons in history’, pp. 305–7. Such educational charities (awāqf) had
been financed in Ottoman times by major Ottoman traders. See Gad G. Gilbar,
‘The Muslim big merchant-entrepreneurs of the Middle East, 1860– 1914’,
Die Welt Des Islam, 43/1 (2003), pp. 1 – 36.
104. MEC, GB 165-0308/William Yale Collection/Box 2, Captain William Yale,
Cairo, to Leland Harrison, Washington, 6 May 1918.
105. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, EdA, ‘Rapport Trimestriel - 1er Trimestre 1924’;
CADN, 1SL/V/1703, SR, ‘Bulletin de Renseignement de Damas N8 27’, 27
May 1925; It was at a kuttāb that the founder of the Arab Ba’ath
movement, Zakı̄ Al-Arsūzı̄, was educated in late Ottoman Antakya and he
would continue his studies at a rüşdiye, Ottoman secondary school, before
going on to study philosophy at the Mission Laique school in Beirut and the
Sorbonne during the mandate period. See Hiroyuki Aoyama, Wafiq Khansa
and Maher Al-Charif, Spiritual Father of the Ba’th: The Ideological and
Political SIgnificance of the Zakı̄ Al-Arsūzı̄ in Arab Nationalist Movements,
Translated by Mujab Al-Imam and Malek Salman (Tokyo, 2000), pp. 2 – 3;
Keith D. Watenpaugh, ‘“Creating Phantoms”: Zaki Al-Arsuzi, the
Alexandretta Crisis, and the formation of Modern Arab Nationalism in
Syria’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 28/3 (1996), pp. 363– 89,
364– 5. So too was a key figure in the emergence of Syrian Islamic
Brotherhood formed at a kuttāb. See Itzchak Weismann, ‘Saʿid Hawwa: the
making of a radical Muslim thinker in modern Syria’, Middle Eastern
Studies, 29/4, pp. 601– 23, 604.
106. CADN, 1SL/V/1703, SR, ‘Bulletin de Renseignement - Homs N8 21’, 16
February 1925.
107. CADN, 1SL/V/1703, SR, ‘Bulletin de Renseignement - Homs N8 23’, 20
February 1925.
108. CADN, 1SL/V/1703, ‘Bulletin de Renseignement - Damas N8 50’, 4 April
1925.
110. Ibid.
111. CADN, 1SL/1/V/2434, Lebanon Governor Trabaud, to HC Gouraud,
22 October 1921.
112. CADN, 1SL/V/1683, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 16 Octobre 1924’, 16 October
1924.
113. CADN, 1SL/V/949, SR, ‘Renseignements Destinés Uniquement au Haut-
Commissaire, December 1923.
114. CADN, 1SL/V/1683, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 4 Juillet 1924’.
University, 2002), pp. 138, 208–9.
116. CADN, 1SL/V/949, SR, ‘Presse des 15 & 16 Décembre’, 1923.
117. CADN, 1SL/V/2373, Térritoire Enemie Occupé Bureau de la Presse, ‘Compte-
Rendu des Journaux de l’Interieur - Courrier du 26 –27 Mars 1920’.
118. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, SR, ‘Journaux Du 11 Juillet - RP de Beyrouth’,
1924.
119. CADN, 1SL/V/1683, EGL, SR, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 28 Octobre 1924’.
120. CADN, 1SL/V/1684, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 7 Novembre 1924’.
121. Ibid.
122. CADN, 1SL/V/1684, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 3 Décembre 1924’.
123. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, EGL, ‘Rapport Trimestriel d’Ensemble (Administratif),
Juillet-Août-Séptembre’, 21 October 1924.
124. Arkadiusz Plonka, ‘Le Nationalisme Linguistique au Liban Autour de Sa’id

‘Aql et L’idee de Langue Libanaise dans la Revue Lebnaan en Nouvel
Alphabet’, in Arabica, LIII/4 (2006), pp. 423–71. Kamal Salibi, ‘The
Lebanese identity’, Journal of Contemporary History, 6/1 (1971), pp. 83 – 4.
As Sonia El Fakhri explains, even use of French did not mean the imprinting of
French mentalities, a term carrying its own complications given the complex
and conflicted development of French use in the metropole itself. See Sonia El
Fakhri, ‘Le Liban et un siècle de littérature Francophone’, Cahiers de
l’Association Internationale des Études Francaises, 56 (2004), pp. 35– 48.
125. CADN, 1SL/V/1703, SR, ‘Bulletin de Renseignement de Damas N8 27’, 27
May 1925.
126. Frayha, ‘Religious Conflict’, pp. 184– 5. Frayha adds that it also removed the
previous element of civic studies in the curriculum.
127. Sbaiti, ‘Lessons in history’, p. 47.
128. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, Université de Saint Joseph pamphlet. It is unclear how
many of the university’s students took the ‘classic’ as opposed to the ‘special’
pathways.
129. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, Université de Saint Joseph to Director of Political
Grants, 3 April 1921.
130. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, ‘Decision N. 46’, 9 March 1920.
131. CADN, 1SL/V/921, Doyen de la Faculté des Lettres de Bordeaux to High
Commisioner Weygand, 8 December 1924. Feghali had studied Arabic at the
University of Algiers. See Alain Messaoudi, Feghali Tanios (ou Tenief) dit
Michel, in Franc ois Pouillon (ed.), Dictionnaire des Orientalistes de Langue
Francaise (Paris, 2012).
132. Khaled Chatila, Le Marriage Chez les Musulmans en Syrie (Paris, 1934), p. 9.
133. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, HC’s DP to HC Weygand, August 1922.
134. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, MFA to HC, 8 February 1923.
135. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, HC’s DP to HC, 29 November 1922. The combined
total of one group of notables’ sons’ grants came to 107,835 francs in August
1922.
136. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, HC’s DP to HC, 29 November 1922.
137. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, Rashid Tabbarah to HC General Weygand, 15 January
1924.
138. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, HC’s DP to S-G of the HC, 24 June 1924.
139. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, HC Weygand to HC’s DP, 11 July 1924.
140. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, HC’s DD to HC, 31 July 1924.
141. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, Director for the Contrôle Administratif to HC, 18
September 1920.
142. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, SR, ‘Note No 12 au Sujet de M. Antoine Salha’, 20
January 1922.
143. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, SR, ‘Note N8 12’, 20 January 1922.
144. The term ‘metèque’ is difficult to translate. It comes from the ancient Greek
métoikos, roughly translating to ‘migrant’. It thus means an ‘alien’ or
‘foreigner’. This reiterates so much of the language of French mandatory rule,

for instance the consistent categorisation as ‘xenophobic’ of the protests and
press articles against French interventions in Syria.
145. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, Lebanon Governor Trabaud to Antoine Salha, 24
˙
November 1921.
146. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, Lebanon Governor Trabaud to De Caix, 6 January 1922.
147. CADN, 1SL/V/2374, HC, ‘Compte-Rendu de l’Interrogatoire de Trois
Officiers Déserteurs Passés en Zone Ouest le 19 Mars 1920’, 27 March 1920,
1SL/V/2374. A French intelligence report based on a debriefing of three
military deserters from Faial’s camp in March 1920 denoted the organisation
of a military school under the direction of Lieutenant Chewki, the aide de
camp of Mahmoud Al-Faour.
148. CADN, 1SL/V/893, ‘Rapport du Lieutenant Colonel Chapu, Inspecteur-
Général des Gendarmerie Locales sur 1’Organisation Intérieur de la
Gendarmerie Pendant le 1er Trimestre 1924’, June 1924.
149. CADN, 1SL/V/893, ‘Rapport d’Inspection [du] Lieutenant Colonel
Bucheton’, n.d.
150. CADN, 1SL/V/2362, HC’s DSF, ‘Avant Propos: Economie Generale du
Programme’, 1924.
151. CADN, 1SL/V/1675, EGL, ‘Rapport Trimestriel d’Ensemble (Administratif)
(Octobre – Novembre – Décembre 1921)’, 15 January 1925.
152. Le Réveil, 23 February 1923.
153. CADN, 1SL/1/V/1623, SR, ‘A Messieurs le President et les Membres de la
Fédération’, 30 December 1923.
154. CADN, 1SL/1/V/1623, SR, ‘Lettre ouverte a Son Excellence le Gouverneur-
Général’, 30 December 1923.
155. This Latin dictum, drawn from Roman Republic statesman Cato the Elder and
approximately translated to ‘worthy man, expert speaker’, summarised the
classical approach to education which emphasised rhetoric and civic
knowledge.
156. CADN, 1SL/V/2518, ‘Le Mandat au Debut de 1926’.
157. See also: Simon Jackson, ‘Compassion and connections: feeding Beirut and
assembling mandate rule 1919’, in C. Schayegh and A. Arsan (eds),
The Routledge Handbook of the History of the Middle East Mandates (London, 2015).
158. Georges Contenau, ‘L’Institut Franc ais d’Archéologie et d’Art Musulmans de
Damas’, Syria, 5/3 (1924), p. 204.
159. Ibid.
160. Eustache De Lorey, ‘L’État Actuel du Palais Azem’, Syria, 6/4 (1925), p. 372.
161. Colin Tubron, Mirror to Damascus (London, 2011), p. 201.
162. CADN, 1SL/V/2377, SR, ‘Enseignement Agricole’, n.d.
163. Ibid.
164. Jacques Weulersse, Paysans de Syrie et du Proche-Orient (Paris, 1946), p. 197.
165. CADN, 1SL/V/1842, EdA, ‘Rapports sur le 3ème Trimestre - Juillet, Août,
Séptembre 1923’.
166. CADN, 1SL/V/1842, EdA, ‘Rapports sur le 2ème Trimestre - Avril, Mai, Juin
1923’.
167. The École des Arts et des Métiers was itself a major technical school in Beirut.
Its programme for 1920 outlined its aim to become ‘a Syrian National School
for higher studies’ and stated that it would ‘supply engineers experience and
specialised in public works, architecture, metallurgy’. The school taught
French, Arabic, geography, physics, chemistry, arithmetic and drawing and ran
workshops in pursuit of this aim. CADN, 1SL/1/V/2434, École Nationale
d’Arts et Métiers de Beyrouth’, 26 September 1920.
168. CADN, 1SL/V/1842, EA, ‘Rapports Trimestriel Interieur - Avril, Mai, Juin’,
1921.
169. ‘Informations Coloniales’, L’Homme Libre, N.2684 (29 November 1923), 2.
170. CADN, 1SL/600/7, Greater Lebanon Public Works Advisor Odinot,
‘L’Enseignement Professionel des Garcons et le Development Economique
de la Syrie’ (7 November 1921).
171. CADN, 1SL/600/7, Instruction Publique advisor Paul Combes, ‘Note Pour
Monsieur le Secretaire General’ (29 November 1921).
172. Sbaiti, ‘Lessons in history’, pp. 161– 2.
173. CADN, 1SL/V/1684, EGL, ‘Journaux du 5 Novembre 1924’; id., ‘RP de
Beyrouth du 17 Decembre 1924’. The lack of proper equipment was a major
issue since its founding charter had noted the importance of this equipment for
technical training. CADN, 1SL/V/2343, École Nationale des Arts et Métiers
de Beyrouth, ‘[Draft] Programme des Étude’, 26 September 1920.
174. CADN, 1SL/V/1684, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth des 23 et 24 Novembre 1924.’
175. CADN, 1SL/V/1684, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 14 Janvier 1925.’
176. CADN, 1SL/V/1683, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 2 et 3 Novembre 1924.’
177. CADN, 1SL/V/1683, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 4 November 1924.’
178. CADN, 1SL/V/1684, HC’s DGL, ‘Renseignements’, 4 February 1925.
179. Scheid, ‘Painters, Picture-Makers’, pp. 124– 41.
180. Weulersse, Paysans, p. 197.
181. Pearce and Carter, ‘Medical Education in Syria [1925]’, pp. 1 – 11.
182. Ibid., p. 83.
183. Watson Smith was appointed to lecture on psychiatry at the AUB in 1922. See
School of Oriental and African Studies Archives and Special Collections
(hereafter SOAS), Lebanon Hospital LH/09, The Lebanon Hospital (For Mental
Diseases), Asfuriyeh Beyrout, Syria, Twenty-Third Report 1921–1922 (1923), 4.
184. Pearce and Carter, ‘Medical Education’, pp. 90 – 6.
185. Ibid., pp. 1 – 11.
Chapter 4 The Politics of Pedagogy


3. CADN, 1SL/V/2200, Colonel Catroux, HC’s DD to HC Gouraud,
15 December 1922.
4. CADN, 1SL/V/2200, Catroux to Haut Commissaire de la République
Franc aise en Syrie et au Liban’, 15 December 1922.
5. CADN, 1SL/V/2200, ‘Contrat Entre le Commandant Catroux et l’Emir Noury
Chaalan’, n.d.
6. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, EA, ‘Rapport Trimestriel - 4ème Trimestre’ (1924).
7. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, EdA, DD, Contrôle Bedouin, ‘Rapport du 4ème
Trimestre’, 1924. Educational provisions were but one of several ‘carrots’ to be
provided for the ‘extension of the domination’ over Bedouins, as one French
report put it.
8. CADN, 1SL/V/2377, Head of the HC’s Political Cabinet to Catroux, DD,
26 October 1920.
9. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, SR, ‘Boursiers Politiques de la Delegation de Damas a la
Mission Laique’, n.d.
10. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, Frère Joseph, Director of the College des Frères, to SR
Chief Commandant Canonge, 30 January 1922; CADN, 1SL/V/1581, G-S De
Caix to HC’s DD, 13 January 1922.
11. CADN, 1SL/V/2362, HC Weygand to Schoeffler, HC’s DD, 26 December
1923.
12. CADN, 1SL/V/2362, ‘Note pour le Chef du Service des Renseignements’,
17 November 1923.
13. Lenka Bokova, ‘La Révolution Franc aise dans le Discours de l’Insurrection
Syrienne Contre le Mandat Franc ais (1925 –1927)’, Revue du Monde Musulman
et de la Méditerranée (1989), pp. 52 – 3. Yet the French Revolution had already
had a major impact on the growth of Arabism during the nineteenth-century
Nahda (renaissance) of Arab intellectual thought. Joseph Algazy, ‘La Vision de
la Révolution Franc aise Chez les Pionniers de la Renaissance Intellectuel
Arabe’, Annales Historiques de la Révolution Francaise, N8 282 (1990). Pierre
Renou recalls the chain of insults and disagreements that French
administrators, especially the overbearing Capitaine Carbillet, set in motion
as they sought to implement direct administration on the Jabal Druze in 1923
following the Lesser Syrian Insurrection. See Pierre Renou, ‘Le Djebel Druze
1914– 1927’ (Ph.D. thesis, Université de Nantes, 2002), pp. 99 – 184.
Michael Provence, noting Carbillet’s domineering style as a spark of rebellion,
suggests that more material concerns, such as the disruption of the Hawran
grain trade between Palestine and Damascus, lay at the heart of Druze
disatisfaction. See Provence, The Great Syrian Revolt.
14. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, ‘Bourses’, 25 October 1922.
15. Dragoman was a transliteration of the Ottoman Turjuman, meaning
interpreter.
16. CADN, 1SL/600/7, Quilici, ‘École Mixte de Fraidisse’, 11 April 1922.
17. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, Commandant Canonge, Chief of the Service

des Renseignements, ‘Avis du Chef du Service des Renseignements au Sujet
des Bourses Politiques’, October 1923.
18. CADN, 1SL/V/2434, Lebanon Governor Trabaud to HC, 22 October 1921.
19. CADN, 1SL/V/2434, HC Gouraud, 15 September 1922.
20. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, G-S De Caix to HC’s DD, 27 January 1922.
21. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, SR officer Dentz, to Heneine Rizkallah, 4 September
1924.
22. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, SR officer Dentz to Emir Fouad Arslan, 11 September
1924.
23. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, Nader Suleiman El Kfouri to HC Weygand, 20 July
1924.
24. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, HC’s DD to HC, 7 April 1922.
25. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, SR, ‘Decision N. 1718’, 31 December 1922.
26. League of Nations, ‘Annex 391 A: French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon’,
League of Nations Official Journal, 1013 (1922).
27. CADN, 1SL/V/2377, Gouraud to Catroux, Chief of the French Mission in
Damascus, August 1920.
28. CADN, 1SL/V/1581, Catroux, HC’s DD, to HC, 7 April 1922.
29. CADN, 1SL/V/2377, Damascus SR, ‘Rapport Mensuel Octobre 1921’;
CADN, 1SL/V/1581, Terrier, HC’s DP to De Caix, 7 April 1922.
30. CADN, 1SL/V/1683, SR, ‘Journaux du 2 Juillet 1924’.
31. CADN, 1SL/V/1683, SR, ‘Journaux du 2 Juillet 1924’.
32. CADN, 1SL/V/2434, Lebanese Governor’s General Counsel to Director for
Instruction Publique at the H-C, 10 November 1921.
33. CADN, 1SL/V/2434, Lebanon Governor Trabaud, to Administrative
Counsellor for the Sanjak of Mount Lebanon, December 1921.
34. CADN, 1SL/V/2434, G-S De Caix to Lebanon Governor Trabaud, 12
December 1921.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. CADN, 1SL/V/2434, Trabaud, Lebanon Governor to H-C, December
1921.
39. CADN, 1SL/V/2434, Lebanon Instruction Publique advisor [Illegible] and
Charles Halaby, Director for Instruction Publique in Greater Lebanon [note],
22 March 1922.
40. CADN, 1SL/V/2434, ‘Arrete N. 2679’, 20 June 1924. Arrêté 2679 also
encouraged the regime of surveillance and control of classroom activity and
made French-language instruction compulsory for private schools. Nemer
Frayha has suggested that this meant that French instruction was to become
compulsory in American, British and Italian missionary schools. See Frayha,
‘Religious Conflict’, pp. 181 –2. However, this can only be a part of the story
since these schools had legal exemptions based on Ottoman-era capitulations
enacted by membership in the League of Nations, or individual bilateral

agreements.
41. CADN, 1SL/V/1842, EdA, ‘Rapport Trimestriel - Juillet, Août, Séptembre,
1922’.
42. CADN, 1SL/V/2434, HC Weygand to General Vandenberg, Governor of
Greater Lebanon, 1 January 1924.
43. CADN, 1SL/V/2434, HC’s DGL to HC, n.d.
44. CADN, 1SL/V/2434, General Vandenberg, Governor of Greater Lebanon to
HC, October 1924.
45. CADN, 1SL/V/2434, Lebanon Instruction Publique advisor and Director of
Lebanon Instruction Publique to Greater Lebanon Governor, 31 October 1924.
46. CADN, 1SL/V/1683, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 22 September 1924’.
47. Marie Therese Sandell, ‘“International Sisterhood”?: International Women’s
Organisations and Co-Operation in the Interwar Period’ (Ph.D. thesis,
University of London, 2007).
48. Yolla Polity Charara, L’Image de la Femme dans la Presse Feminine au Liban
(Beirut, Publications du Centre de Recherches Institut des Sciences Sociales de
l’Universite Libanaise, 1974), p. 3.
49. CADN, 1SL/V/1565, SR, ‘Note’, September 1927. For more on this, see: Nova
Robinson, ‘Activist as expert: representation from the French Mandate for
Syria on the Committee of Experts on the legal status of women’, in
P. Bourmaud, N. Neveu and C. Verdeil (eds), Experts and Expertise in the League
of Nations Mandates: Figures, Fields, and Tools ( Paris, 2017).
51. CADN, 1SL/V/2377, H-C, ‘Notes sur les Journaux et les Revues Parraissant
Actuellement a Beyrouth et au Liban’, 22 Juin 1921.
52. CADN, 1SL/V/1565, SR, ‘Note’, September 1927.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid.
57. Dorothy Sommer, ‘Unity is Strength: Masonic Lodges in Ottoman Syria with a
Special Focus on Tripoli and El Mina (1860– 1908)’ (Unpublished Ph.D.
thesis, Leiden University, 2013).
58. For a detailed account, see: Thierry Millet, ‘La Franc-mac onnerie en Syrie
sous l’administration franc aise (1920 –1946) Attraits et rejets du modèle
franc ais’, Cahiers de la Méditerranée (XVIIIe – XXe siècle), 76 (2006), pp. 377–
402.
59. David Dean Commins, Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman
Syria (Oxford, 1990), p. 29.
University, 2002), p. 173– 7. Gouraud sought to close the school in the first
year of French control of Damascus, but was forced to back down.
61. Ibid., p. 181. For Blecher, Sa‘id, who had been educated in the Ottoman
system, was an example of an ‘Ottoman’ who had become an ‘Arab’ in a few
months.
63. CADN, 1SL/V/949, SR, ‘Presse des 18 et 19 Décembre 1923’.
64. CADN, SR, ‘Bulletin de Renseignement de Damas N8 139’, 1 August 1925,
1SL/V/1704.
65. ʻUmar Ridā Kahhālah, Muʻjam al-muʼallifı̄n: tarājim musannifı̄ al-kutub
˙ ˙˙ ˙
al-ʻArabı̄yah (Beirut: Muʼassasat al-Risālah, 1993), 23.
66. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, EdA, French Delegation to the State of Syria, Political
Bureau, ‘Rapport Trimestriel - Du 4ème Trimestre 1924’, 31 December 1924.
Educational provisions were but one of several ‘carrots’ provided for the
‘extension of the domination’ over Bedouins.
67. CADN, 1SL/V/1675, SR, ‘Renseignement’, 22 June 1925. Philip S. Khoury,
‘Syrian urban politics in transition: the quarters of Damascus during the
French Mandate’, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 1/4 (1984),
pp. 507 –40, 519– 20.
68. CADL, E-Levant/C H12/D 1A/S-D 28, HC Weygand to Commander in Chief
of AL, 1 November 1923.
69. CADN, SR, 1SL/V/1703, ‘Bulletin de Renseignement de Damas N8 56’, 4
April 1925. On 4 April one protester died in the clashes.
70. CADN, 1SL/V/1703, SR, ‘Bulletin de Renseignement N8 62, Partie I’, 23
April 1925.
August 1925.
August 1925.
74. Jennifer M. Dueck, ‘A Muslim Jamboree: scouting and youth culture in
Lebanon under the French’, French Historical Studies, 30/3, pp. 485– 516. See
also: Samuel Dolbee, ‘Mandatory Bodybuilding: Nationalism, Masculinity,
Class and Physical Activity in 1930s Syria’ (Master’s thesis, Georgetown
University, 2010), pp. 41 – 52.
75. It is nevertheless true that a Catholic Scouting network established itself after
the period under study. See Dueck, ‘A Muslim Jamboree’, p. 494. Another
interesting element of spreading Western cultural institutions was the Rotary
Club, founded in Beirut in 1931. Nayla Abi Karam, Rotary Club de Beyrouth:
1932– 2007 (Beirut, 2007).
76. Dueck, ‘A Muslim Jamboree’, pp. 490–1.
77. Al-Nsuli would go on to become a scout master in Beirut, though his
nationalist politics continued. For instance, in 1927 he oversaw a meeting of
scouts that displayed Lebanese artists. Scheid, ‘Painters, Picture-Makers’,
pp. 80 – 3.
78. CADN, 1SL/V/1675, HC’s DGL, ‘Renseignements’, 21 August 1925.

79. CADN, 1SL/V/1703, SR, ‘Bulletin de Renseignement - Damas N8 55’, 11
April 1925. For more on the Tramway boycotts in a later period see Simon M.
W. Jackson, ‘Mandatory Development: the Political Economy of the French
Mandate in Syria and Lebanon, 1915– 1939’ (Ph.D. thesis, New York
University, 2009), pp. 200– 50; Carla Eddé, Beyrouth: Naissance d’une Capitale
1918– 1924 (Paris, 2009), pp. 302– 16.
80. CADN, 1SL/V/1675, HC’s DGL, ‘Renseignements’, 16 June 1925.
81. Randi Deguilhem, ‘Idées Franc aises et Enseignement Ottoman: L‘École
Secondaire Maktab al-‘Anbar a Damas’, Revue du Monde Musulman et de la
Méditerranée, 52 – 52/1 (1989), pp. 201– 3.
82. CADN, 1SL/V/1703, SR, ‘Bulletin de Renseignement N8 21’, 16 February
1925.
83. CADN, 1SL/V/1703, SR, ‘Bulletin de Renseignement N8 58’, 16 April
1925.
84. CADN, 1SL/V/1703, SR, ‘Bulletin de Renseignement’, 26 May 1925.
85. CADN, 1SL/V/1675, HC’s DGL, ‘Renseignements’, 21 August 1925. The
Syrian Union was based in Cairo. French intelligence reported earlier in 1923
that among its adherents was Rashid Bey Adra Zadé, a Syrian from Tripoli.
Such were French suspicions of Rashid Bey that his passport for entry to France
was denied. CADL, E-Levant/C H12/D 1A/S-D 208, Central SR,
‘Renseignements A Constantinople’, 15 November 1923.
86. CADL, E-Levant/C H12/D 1A/S-D 208, Sureté-Générale, ‘Renseignements’,
4 December 1923.
87. CADN, 1SL/V/1593, DD to SR Beirut, 10 September 1925.
88. CADN, 1SL/V/1593, Drogmanat Beirut, ‘Procès Relative a l’Application
d’Affiches Séditieuses sur les Murs de Homs’, 7 September 1925.
89. CADN, 1SL/V/1704, SR, ‘Bulletin de Renseignement de Damas - N8 234’, 28
November 1925.
90. Ibid.
91. CADL, E-Levant/C H12/D 1A/S-D 208, Central SR, ‘Renseignements’,
13 December 1923.
92. AN-P, F/7/13411, Special Police Commissioner in Annemasse to Director of
the Surêté Générale, 15 January 1926. At the University of Lausanne Egyptian
and Syrian students founded a pan-Arabic league.
93. AN-P, F/7/13411, Annemasse Special Commissioner to Director Surêté
Générale, ‘Au Sujet Affaires Syriennes’, 3 July 1921.
94. CADN, V/79/Consulat Bahia, Sociedade Libaneza-Siria, ‘A Pedidos de Bases
para a Organizac ão dos Estatutos da Sociedade Libaneza-Syria’, Diário Oficial do
Estado da Bahia, 31 July 1921.
95. CADN, V/79/Consulat Bahia, French Consul in Bahia to MFA Aristide
Briand, 30 August 1921.
96. AN-P, AJ/16/6993, Paul Appell, Rector University of Paris to President of
Argentina, 27 June 1922.
97. AN-P, AJ/16/6993, Père Michel Kalouf, Director of the Orthodox Schools of
Lattakia to Paul Appell, Rector of University of Paris, 20 June 1922.
98. Harvard University Archives-Schlesinger Library, Cambridge, MA, 107.2.02/
MC574/Box 6, ‘Annual Public Meeting Boston Chapter, The Syrian
Educational Society Inc.’, c.1928.
99. Philip Khuri Hitti, The Syrians in America (NJ, 2005).
100. Philip K. Hitti, ‘A French History of Syria’, The American Journal of Semitic
Languages and Literatures, 42/3 (1926), pp. 212– 13.
101. CADN, 1SL/V/2374, H-C, ‘Rapport d’un Agent Bien Placé’, 25 February
1920. An Abdelrahman Nsouli, who had been educated at the École des
Frères Maristes in Beirut, had served as a lieutenant in the Ottoman army
and as secretary to Prince Faisal’s delegation to the French High
Commissioner in Beirut after the World War. CADN, 1SL/V/2374,
Térritoire Ennemie Occupé (Zone Ouest), ‘L’Agence Arabe à Beyrouth’,
9 December 1919.
102. CADN, 1SL/V/1565, SR, ‘Université Amercaine de Beirut’, n.d.
103. Ibid.
104. CADN, 1SL/V/1683, EGL, Service de la Presse, ‘RP de Beyrouth du
15 Octobre 1924.’
105. CADN, 1SL/V/1565, SR, ‘Rapport d’Agent: Movement pour Abdul Mejid’,
7 May 1924.
106. CADN, 1SL/V/1565, SR, ‘N8. 247/2 - à l’Université Américaine’, 4 November
1924; Maria B. Abunnasr, ‘The Making of Ras Beirut: A Landscape of Memory
for Narratives of Exceptionalism’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Massachusetts
Amherst, 2013), pp. 147– 8.
107. CADN, 1SL/V/1565, SR, ‘Le Professeur Anis Khoury Makdessi’, n.d.
108. CADN, 1SL/V/1565, SR, ‘Bulletin de Renseignment d’Alep 1ère Partie’,
18 May 1925.
109. Ibid.
Under French Rule (Oxford, 2010), p. 172.
111. It is worth noting that Shahbandar was himself educated at the AUB. CADL,
E-Levant/C H12/D 1A/S-D 28, HC Weygand to Commander in Chief of AL,
1 November 1923.
112. CADN, 1SL/V/1565, SR, ‘Présence Américaine en Iraq’, n.d.
113. Ibid.
114. CADN, 1SL/V/1565, SR, ‘Université Américaine de Beyrouth’, November
1924.
115. CADN, 1SL/V/1565, SR, ‘Propagande Américaine à Hama’, 22 May 1925.
116. SR, ‘Presence Americaine en Iraq’.
117. CADN, 1SL/V/1565, ‘Information N8. 906’, 19 November 1927.
Chapter 5 Surveillance, Subsidies and Censorship:

The Domestic Arabic Press
1. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 4/S-D 58, H-C, ‘Notes sur les Journaux et les
Revues Paraissant Actuellement à Beyrouth et au Liban’, 1 July 1921.
2. CADN, 1SL/1/V/1623, SR, ‘Rapport de Renseignements No. 10’, 12 January
1924.
3. CADN, 1SL/V/949, SR, ‘Les Elections Prochaines – l’Opinion Publique – les
Partis’, August 1923.
4. CADN, 1SL/1/V/1560, SR, ‘Fiche de Renseignements, 4 May 1928.
5. CADN, SR, 1SL/V/949, ‘A Monsieur le Chef du Service des Renseignements
de la 2ème Division’, 2 November 1923.
6. Philip S. Khoury, ‘Syrian urban politics in transition: the quarters of Damascus
during the French Mandate’, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 1/4
(1984), p. 515.
7. Ami Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (Oxford, 1995),
pp. 31 – 6. Al-Bustani, who had been secetary of the Lebanon Society created
by American missionaries, had begun his publishing career by founding Nafir
Surriya (The Trumpet of Syria) in 1860. As with so many others involved in
literary and press circles, Al-Bustani would take part in the country’s
education by founding a school for boys in 1863.
8. Bruce Masters, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of
Sectarianism (Cambridge, 2001), p. 112.
9. Charles A. Frazee, Catholics and Sultans: The Church and the Ottoman Empire
1453– 1923 (Cambridge, 1983), p. 276.
10. Julia Phillips Cohen, Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship
in the Modern Era (Oxford, 2014), pp. 60 – 5.
11. Michelle U. Campos, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early
Twentieth-Century Palestine (Redwood City, CA, 2011), p. 137.
12. Elizabeth M. Holt, ‘From Gardens of Knowledge to Ezbekiyya after Midnight:
the novel and the Arabic press from Beirut to Cairo, 1870– 1892’, Middle
Eastern Literatures, 16/3 (2013), pp. 232– 48; Donald J. Cioeta, ‘Ottoman
censorship in Lebanon and Syria, 1876– 1908’, International Journal of Middle
East Studies, 10/2 (1979), pp. 167– 88.
13. Stefano Taglia, Intellectuals and Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Young Turks on
the Challenges of Modernity (London, 2015), pp. 40 – 4. Examples of the harsh
repression included the imprisonment of an Armenian poet for his poetry.
Words such as constitution or tyranny were banned outright. See also
M.H. ‘Abd Al-Raziq, ‘Arabic literature since the beginning of the nineteenth
century’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, 2/2
(1922), pp. 249– 65, 257– 8.
14. Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism, in
the Ottoman Empire, 1908-1918 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1997),
pp. 124, 226. Caesar Farah suggests that Young Turk censorship was even
more ‘vicious’ than that of Hamidian times. See Caesar Farah, ‘The Young
Turks and the Arab press’, in C. Imber and K. Kiyotaki (eds), Frontiers of
Ottoman Studies: State, Province, and the West. Volume I (London, 2005), p. 218.
15. Erol Koroglu, Ottoman Propaganda and Turkish Identity: Literature in Turkey
During World War I (London, 2007), pp. 11 – 12.
16. CADN, 1SL/V/2371, Alexandre Riachy to Administrator of Lebanon, March
1920.
17. CADN, 1SL/V/2374, Territoire Ennemi Occupé (Zone Ouest), SR, ‘L’Agence
Arabe a Beyrouth’, 9 December 1919.
18. CADN, 1SL/V/2374, Territoire Ennemi Occupé (Zone Ouest), SR,
‘Renseignements d’un Agent Bien Placé’, 19 February 1919.
19. CADN, Censorship of the press was practised at home and abroad. World War
I saw widespread censorship of the British press. See Colin John Lovelace,
‘Control and Censorship of the Press During the First World War’ (Ph.D.
thesis, King’s College London, 1982).
20. CADN, 1SL/V/2371, ‘Projet d’Instruction pour le General Goybet’, July
1920.
21. Ibid.
22. Farah, ‘The Young Turks’, pp. 222– 9.
23. Arna’out was an Arabist of Albanian descent and had set up his paper in Beirut
in 1920. His paper became closely aligned to the anti-imperialist National
Bloc after 1928. See Sami M. Moubayed, Steel and Silk: Men and Women Who
Shaped Syria 1900– 2000 (Seattle, WA, 2006), p. 475.
24. CADN, 1SL/V/1579, SR, ‘Liste des Condamnés par le Conseil de Guerre de
Damas de Août 1920 à Décembre 1922’, 1923.
25. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 4/S-D 58, HC Weygand to MAE, 13 June 1921.
26. H-C, ‘Notes sur les Journaux [July 1921].’
27. Ibid.
28. CADN, 1SL/V/2379, ‘Autour de la Fusion des Eglises Anglicaines et Grec
Orthodoxes’, 6 October 1924.
29. CADN, 1SL/1/V/921, Tommy Martin, Chief of Damascus SR to DD,
3 November 1924.
30. ‘La Presse Musulmane’, Revue du Monde Musulman, XXXVI (1918– 19).
Among these were: Al-Mufid, edited by Yusef Haidar Al-Zakali and said
to be aligned to Hashemite interests in 1919 and sold for 400 silver piasters.
Al-Qanūn (The Law) was edited by Neguib Haidar and launched in 1924.
Another was Lissan Al-‘Arab, which had been suspended in 1919. Its editor,
Ibrahim Hilmi Al-‘Umari, was supposedly aligned to the Iraqi officers.
A French-language paper, L’Independence, was edited by a man by the name of
‘Abdel Nour. A newspaper named Hayat, edited by Farid Al-Hajj, was
reported to have folded in 1919. The official newspaper that had existed under
Faisal, Al-Āsima, was equally unavailable in the early mandate. Tewfiq
Yazidji’s pan-Syrian Kinanāh was suspended in 1919. Another paper to go
unmentioned was Salim Abdel-Rahman’s ‘Alam Al-‘Arabi. One newspaper

missed by the official French review that seems to have circulated in pre-
Mandate Homs was Tanbih. The Hama newspapers, Hadaf, Nahr Al-‘Asi,
Ikhāa, edited by Jibran Massouh, and Tawfiq, were equally unmentioned in the
official press report despite being recorded to have circulated prior to the
Mandate.
31. CADN, 1SL/V/949, SR, ‘El Tebekki es Souri - au Président de la Fédération’,
25 December 1923.
32. CADN, 1SL/V/949, SR, ‘Presse des 15 et 16 Décembre’, 1923.
33. CADN, 1SL/V/949, General Billotte, HC’s DA to Central SR Director, ‘Texte
des Protestations Contre Soubhi Bey Barakat’, 23 June 1923.
34. Bouchair makes the point that Aleppo’s merchant class was more diverse,
including Jews and Christians, than Sunni-dominated Damascus, thus making
the city less favourable to Syrian unionism. However, Bouchair’s and Khoury’s
assumption that Aleppo was consequently less influential than Damascus can
be seen as a hasty interpretation. See Nourredine Bouchair, ‘The Merchant and
Moneylending Class of Syria Under the French Mandate, 1920– 1946’ (Ph.D.
thesis, Georgetown University, 1986), p. 111; Philip Shukry Khoury, Syria
and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920– 1945
(Princeton, NJ, 1987), p. 660. It is best, rather, to follow Michael Van-Dusen’s
sketch of Syria’s agro-city’s, with regional hubs like Aleppo or Damascus
dominating spokes of agricultural and mercantile sub-regions such as
Alexandretta for Aleppo and Dar‘aa for Damascus: Michael Van Dusen,
‘Political integration and regionalism in Syria’, Middle East Journal, 26/2
(1972), pp. 123– 36.
35. CADN, 1SL/V/2372, EA, French Delegation, ‘Rapport Mensuel pour le Mois
d’Août 1921’ (1921).
36. CADN, 1SL/V/1842, EA, French Delegation, ‘Rapport Trimestriel’,
12 November 1921.
37. CADN, 1SL/V/949, ‘Extrait du El-Takkadom du 22-12-23’, 24 Decembre
1923.
38. CADN, 1SL/V/949, Fadhel, ‘Contre L’Unité [translated by SR]’, Al Barid,
16 December 1924.
39. CADN, 1SL/1/V/1623, SR, ‘Un Echo de Damas’, 10 January 1924.
40. CADN, 1SL/V/949, SR, ‘Extrait du Sourya el Chamalia du 11-12-23’,
18 December 1923.
41. CADN, 1SL/V/949, SR, ‘Extrait du Journal en Nahada du 17 Decembre’,
December 1923.
42. CADN, 1SL/1/V/1623, ‘Lettre Ouverte à Son Excellence le General Billotte’,
2 January 1924.
43. CADN, 1SL/V/949, SR, ‘Presse des 15 & 16 Decembre’, 1923.
44. Ibid.
45. CADN, 1SL/V/949, SR, ‘Extrait du Journal Sourya Echemaliye du 17
Décembre’, 1923.
46. Ibid. The author was reflecting a growing sentiment for Al-Sināʿa al-
˙
Wataniyya (the national industry) which Geoffrey Schad has noted began
˙
growing in public discourse in 1923. The concept, rooted in Ottoman-era
engagement with the economic protectionism of German thinker Friedrich
List, had grown among the Aleppo and Damascus capitalist class in the midst
of Italian autarky, Japanese and Indian economic nationalism and a general
tendency to counter an Anglophone laissez-faire world order. See Geoffrey
D. Schad, ‘Colonialists, Industrialist, and Politicians: The Political Economy
of Industrialization in Syria, 1920– 1954’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of
Pennsylvania, 2001), pp. 283– 307. For a contrasting view that suggests that
the ‘merchant and moneylending’ class of Syrians was founded in financial
preservation and partisan political interests that did not seek an alliance with a
growing middle and lower class, see Bouchair, ‘The Merchant and
Moneylending Class’, pp. 139– 45.
47. CADN, 1SL/1/V/1623, SR, Lettre Ouverte à Son Excellence le Gouverneur’,
10 January 1924.
48. CADN, 1SL/1/V/1623, SR, ‘A Méssieurs le President et les Membres de la
Fédération’, 27 December 1923.
49. CADN, 1SL/1/V/1623, SR, ‘id.’, 30 December 1923.
50. CADN, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth des 3 April 1924.’
51. TNA, FO 684/3, W.A. Smart, British Consul in Aleppo, to Foreign Office,
9 January 1926.
52. CADN, 1SL/V/2518, ‘Le Mandat au Debut de 1926’, n.d.
53. Cioeta, ‘Ottoman Censorship’.
54. Al-Rifa’ı̄, Tarikh as-Sihafa, 9.
55. CADN, 1SL/V/1561, ‘Arrêté No 2464’, 6 May 1924.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid.
58. CADN, 1SL/V/1561, ‘Arrêté No 3080’, 21 Avril 1925.
59. CADN, 1SL/V/1561, ‘Arrêté No 147’, 20 June 1924.
60. CADN, 1SL/V/1561, ‘Arrêté No 17830/733’, 12 August 1924.
61. CADN, 1SL/V/1561, ‘Arrêté No 1816’, 16 February 1928.
62. CADN, 1SL/V/949, Damascus Police Advisor to Director of the Surêté-
Général, ‘Message Telephone’, 26 December 1922.
63. CADN, 1SL/V/1665, EGL, ‘Rapport Hébdomadaire: Période du 29/12/1923
au 5/1/1924.’
64. CADN, 1SL/V/1683, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 16 Octobre 1924.’
65. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 24 Mai 1924.’
66. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de l’État du Grand Liban du 9 Mai 1924.’
67. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de l’EGL des 18 et 19 Mai 1924.’
68. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de l’EGL du 20 Fevrier 1924.’
69. Ibid.
70. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de l’EGL du 21 Mai 1924.’
71. CADN, EGL, 1SL/V/1682, ‘RP de l’EGL du 4 April 1924.’
72. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, H-C Press Bureau, ‘Étude sur l’État de
Damas’, February 1924.
73. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 15 Mars 1924.’
74. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 3 Avril.’
75. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 30 Avril 1924.’
76. CADN, 1SL/V/1675, EGL, ‘Renseignements’, 3 April 1924.
78. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de l’EGL du 4 April 1924.’
80. Ibid.
84. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de l’EGL du 11 March 1924.’
85. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de l’EGL des 13 et 14 Avril 1924.’
87. CADN, ‘RP de L’EGL du 23 April 1924’, 1SL/V/1682.
88. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 5 Avril 1924.’
89. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de l’EGL des 6 et 7 April 1924.’
91. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de l’EGL du 21 Fevrier 1924’.
92. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de l’EGL du 10 Mai 1924’.
93. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 27 Mai 1924.’
96. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de l’EGL du 1er Février 1924.’
99. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 22 Décembre 1924.’
100. CADN, 1SL/V/1675, EGL, HC’s DGL, ‘Renseignements’, 23 February 1923.
103. CADN, 1SL/V/1683, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 1 Octobre 1924.’
106. CADN, 1SL/V/1684, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 4 Fevrier 1924.’
107. CADN, 1SL/V/1684, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 20 Décembre 1924.’
108. CADN, 1SL/V/1684, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 7 Fevrier 1924.’
109. CADN, 1SL/V/1684, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 16 decembre 1924.’
110. CADN, 1SL/V/949, SR, ‘Traduction’, October 1923.
111. The use of houses as ‘salons’ for informal political meetings was long
established, with figures ranging from the Sunni Salafi Cheikh Taher al-Jazairi
to the Greek Orthodoc Lebanese writer Jurji Yanni being documented to have
practised this custom. See Khoury, ‘Syrian urban politics’; Yussef Choueiri,
‘Two histories of Syria and the demise of Syrian patriotism’, Middle Eastern
Studies, 23/4 (1987), p. 503.
112. CADN, 1SL/V/2432, Administrative Counsel for South Lebanon to Office of
the Governor of Greater Lebanon, 10 April 1922.
113. Rashid Osseiran was described by British wartime intelligence as the ‘most
active and intelligent’ of the Osseiran brothers. Among the other brothers was
Abdullah Osseiran, who was the Consul of Iran in Lebanon. BL, ‘Personalities:
Syria [1917]’.
114. CADN, 1SL/V/2432, Administrative Counsel for South Lebanon to Office of
the Governor of Greater Lebanon, 8 January 1922.
115. United Nations Office in Geneva-Archives of the League of Nations (hereafeter
UNOG-ALON), 1/18954/4284/R21, Delegate of the Syrian Union to
Secretary General of League of Nations, 12 August 1921.
116. ‘En Syrie’, La Croix, N.13208 (1 April 1926).
117. Ihsan Al-Jabiri was born into a prominent merchant family which had seen its
fortunes impacted by the creation of borders between Aleppo and Turkish
Anatolia. See Philip S. Khoury, ‘Factionalism among Syrian nationalists’,
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 13/4, pp. 445– 6.
118. CADN, 1SL/1/V/1560, Shakib Arslan, Ihsan Al-Jabiri and Riad Al-Solh to
˙ ˙
Council of the League of Nations, 1 September 1927.
119. Ibid.
120. Ibid.
121. Hilal al-Sulh, Lubnān wa-Sūrı̄yā: sharākat al-istiqlāl: min al-ʻahd al-ʻUthmānı̄
˙ ˙
ilá al-intidāb al-Faransı̄: mukhtasar wa-malāmih (Beirut, 1994).
˙ ˙
Chapter 6 Subservience and Sanction?

The Francophone Press
1. Butrus Abu-Manneh, ‘The Christians between Ottomanism and Syrian
Nationalism: the ideas of Butrus Al-Bustani’, International Journal of Middle
East Studies, 11/1 (1980), pp. 287– 304; Engin Deniz Akarli, ‘The tangled
ends of an empire: Ottoman encounters with the West and problems of
Westernization – an overview’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the
Middle East, 26/3 (2006), pp. 353– 66.
2. ‘Notes sur les Journaux [July 1921]’.
3. Intelligence Division, ‘Personalities: Syria [1917]’.
4. Alfred Naccache was born in 1886, graduated from the Sorbonne, and became
involved in publishing in French newspapers in Cairo before World War
I. He was later judged a faithful, Francophile Maronite in a 1932 intelligence
report. He would briefly become Lebanese prime minister under the Vichy
Rule of Admiral Henri Dentz. See Raghid Sulh, Lebanon and Arabism, 1936–
˙
1945 (London, 2004), p. 119; Asher Kaufman, Reviving Phoenicia (London,
2004), p. 138, fn. 45. Georges Naccache was co-founder of L’Orient with
Georges Khabbaz. He went on to become one of Lebanon’s most influential
journalists and a co-founder of the Phalange Maronite party. See ‘Georges

Naccache – Deux Négations’, Le Monde Diplomatique, September 1982, p. 10.
Available at https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/1982/09/A/36936 (accessed
15 January 2018).
5. Malcolm E. Yapp, The Near East Since the First World War: A History to 1995
(London, 1996), p. 109.
6. CADL, E-Levant/Syrie-Liban/58, ‘Notes sur les Journaux et les Revue
Paraissant Actuellement à Beyrouth et au Liban’, 1 July 1921.
7. The Journal had been founded by Gabriel Enkiri in 1898. It was but one of
many French-language newspapers in Egypt. See Jean-Jacques Luthi, La
Littérature d’Expression Francaise en Égypte (1798-1998) (Paris, 2000).
Francosphére influence in Egypt continued throughout the interwar period.
In 1922, of 90 Egyptian newspapers, four were in English, four in Italian and
12 in French. See Delphine Gérard, ‘Le Choix Culturel de la Langue en Égypte.
La Langue Franc aise en Égypte dans l’Entre-Deux-Guerres’, Egypte Monde
Arabe, N.27 – 28 (1996), pp. 253– 84.
8. ‘Notes sur les Journaux [July 1921]’.
9. Luc Pinhas, ‘Aux Origines du Discours Francophone: Onésime Reclus et
l’Expansionisme Colonial Franc ais’, Mythologies, 140/1 (2004), pp. 69 – 82.
10. One article in Le Matin reported news of an assassination attempt on General
Soulet, commander of the Cavalry in the Armée du Levant, after copies of
La Syrie arrived in Marseille. ‘La Situation en Syrie’, Le Matin, N.13338
(30 August 1925).
11. ‘Notes sur les Journaux [1 July 1921]’.
12. CADN, V/Consulat Le Caire/61, Henri Gailard, French Ambassador in Egypt
to MFA (6 July 1920).
13. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, Georges Vayssié, to HC Gouraud
(17 August 1925).
14. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 4/S-D58, ‘Notes sur les Journaux et les Revues
Paraissant Actuellement à Beyrouth et au Liban’ (1 July 1921).
15. It seems Vayssié’s belligerent example was copied a few years later when the
owner of his previous paper in Egypt, Gabriel Enkiri, was challenged to
either retract an article he had republished wholesale from another paper
or to duel. See ‘A Hue et a Dia’, L’Egypte Nouvelle, N.104 (21 June 1924),
III – IV.
16. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 4 /S-D 58, ‘Notes sur les Journaux [July 1921]’.
17. ‘Vive Weygand (L’Enseignement d’Abord)’, El Alevy, 1/4 (1 November
1923).
18. Burhanuddin Mosri Zadé, ‘Le Protectorat’, El Alevy, 1/4 (1 November
1923).
19. F.F. Rynd, ‘The Assyro-Chaldeans’, Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, 10/3
(1923), pp. 241–2; Ashur Giwargis, ‘The Assyrian Liberation Movement and
the French Intervention (1919–1922)’, Assyrian International News Agency (n.d.).
Available at www.aina.org/articles/almatfi.htm (accessed 15 January 2018).
20. Christophe Ippolito, ‘Naissance d’une nation: La Revue Phénicienne au Liban

en 1919’, in B. Tadie, C. Mansanti and H. Aji (eds), Révues Modernistes, Révue
Engagée: (1900 – 1939) (Rennes, 2011).
21. Auguste Adib Pasha, ‘Apercu Historique sur le Liban depuis les origines
jusqu’au debut de la Grande Guerre, a l’usage des jeunes Libanais qui feront la
Patrie de demain’, La Revue Pheenicienne (September 1919).
22. CADN, 1SL/V/1675, H-C, ‘Renseignements’, 22 April 1925.’
23. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 20 Janvier 1925.’
24. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, High Commmissioner Weygand to
MFA, ‘a.[u]s.[ujet] du Journal L’Orient’, 30 November 1924.
25. ‘Que Se Passe-t-il en Syrie’, L’Orient (16 January 1925).
26. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 58, Khabbaz, telegram to MAE, January
1925.
27. Gustave Gautherot, ‘La Politique de l’Orient Définie à M. Edouard Herriot,
President du Conseil’, L’Echo d’Orient (n.d.).
28. Ibid. See also: Pierre Fournié, ‘Le Mandat à l’Epreuve des Passions Franc aises:
L’Affaire Sarrail (1925)’, in N. Méouchy (ed.), France, Syrie et Liban 1918–
1946 (Damascus, 2002); Thompson, Colonial Citizens, pp. 45 – 6; D.K.
Fieldhouse, Western Imperialism in the Middle East 1914– 1958 (Oxford, 2006),
pp. 315 –17.
29. Gautherot, ‘La Politique’.
30. Ibid.
31. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, Francois Veuillot, President of the
Syndicate of French Journalists to MFA, 31 January 1925.
32. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 13 Février 1925’.
33. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 23 Janvier 1925’.
34. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, Sarrail HC to MAE, Paris (25 April
1925).
35. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, MFA Briand to HC Sarrail (30 April
1925).
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, HC Sarrail to MFA, 4 May 1925.
39. Ibid.
41. CADL, E-Levant/ C 417/ D 1/S-D 286, HC Sarrail to MFA, 14 May 1925.
42. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, Georges Samné President of Comité
Central Syrien to Philippe Berthelot, G-S MAE, 1 May 1925.
43. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, Beirut Press Editors to MAE, May
1925.
44. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, ‘Note sur les Journaux Dont les
Directeurs ont Signé le Télégramme Ci-Joint’, 9 May 1925.
45. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, ‘Extrait de la Depeche du 16 Juin de
Beyrouth n. 169’, 16 June 1925.
48. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, Gabriel Khabbaz, Director of L’Orient
(c. July 1925).
49. CADN, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, HC Sarrail to MFA Briand, 14 May
1925; CADN, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, Briand to Sarrail, 25 May 1925.
50. CADN, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, Sarrail to Aristide Briand, 27 May
1925.
51. See also: Fournié, ‘Le Mandat à l’Epreuve’, pp. 125–68.
52. Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks, p. 42.
53. AN-P, 20010216/157, Surêté Générale, ‘Bureau d’Information Islamique’,
11 February 1921.
54. Ibid.
55. AN-P, 20010216/157, Surêté Générale, ‘Note sur Tarek Bey’, 27 February
1923.
56. AN-P, F/7/13411, Special Commissioner Attached to the Military
Administration in Paris to the Director of Surêté Générale, 21 June 1922.
57. AN-P, F/7/13411, Association de la Jeunesse Syrienne, ‘Ce Que Tout Franc ais
Doit Savoir de la Syrie: Il n’y a Plus en Syrie de Fautes à Comettre’, 9 May
1922.
58. Ibid., The Association’s poster recalled French repression of popular protests
ahead of the King – Crane Commission’s visit to Beirut in 1919. For a
comprehensive outline of the King – Crane Commission’s reception, see:
Andrew Patrick, America’s Forgotten Middle East Initiative: The King –Crane
Commission of 1919 (London, 2017).
59. AN-P, F/7/13411, Surêté Générale, ‘Association de la Jeunesse Syrienne’,
26 August 1922.
60. Ibid.
61. ‘Chez les Syriens de Paris’, La Croix, N.13591 (28 June 1927).
62. ‘L’Insurrection Druze’, Revue du Proche Orient-Politique, Économique et Littéraire,
N.3 (15 September 1925).
63. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, ‘Note pour Monsieur le Directeur
Politique’, 4 June 1925.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid.
66. BDIC, Fonds Syrie, F Delta/947/1-6, Association Syrienne, Ce que tout Francais
doit savoir de la Syrie (Paris, n.d).
67. AN-P, F/7/13411, Surêté Générale to MFA, 8 February 1926. El Yafi was
writing his doctoral thesis, which would become an early defence of women’s
rights. See Abdallah El-Yafi, La Condition Privée de la Femme dans le Droit
Musulman (Paris, 2013). Haidar Mardam Bey’s thesis was finished a few years
later. See Haidar Mardam Bey, L’Organisation Judiciaire et le Principe de l’Egalité
Entre les Justiciables (Ph.D. thesis, University of Paris, 1929); Jordi Tejel
Gorgas, Le Mouvement Kurde de Turquie en Exil: Continuité et Discontinuité
Nationalisme Kurde sous le Mandat Francais en Syrie et au Liban (1925 – 1946)

(Bern, 2007), p. 99.
68. AN-P, F/7/13411, Prefect of the Paris Police to Director Surêté Générale,
5 February 1926.
69. AN-P, F/7/13411, Special Police Commissioner in Marseille, ‘Syriens’,
27 February 1926.
70. AN-P, F/7/13411, Special Police Commissioner Annemasse, ‘Affaires
Syriennes’, 12 July 1921.
71. AN-P, F/7/13411, Surêté Générale, ‘A.S. Affaires Syriennes’, 31 August
1921.
72. AN-P, F/7/13411, Special Police Commissioner in Annemasse, ‘Rapport au
Sujet du Nomme Tewfik al-Yarghi [sic. Yazighi]’, 6 June 1921.
73. TNA, FO 141/471/4, Sir J. Maxwell to Lord Kitchener, 4 November 1915.
74. TNA, FO 141/471/4, British Ambassador in Spain A.H. Hardinge to Foreign
Secretary Lord Balfour, 12 May 1918.
75. CADL, E-Levant/C H12/D 1A/S-D 208, Central SR, ‘Renseignements’,
13 December 1923.
76. James Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Mass Politics at the End of Empire (Berkeley and
Los Angeles, CA, 2006), pp. 67, 73.
77. AN-P, F/7/13411, Special Police Commissioner in Annemasse, ‘Au Sujet de la
Creation à Geneve d’un Comite Syrien’, 24 June 1921.
78. CADL, E-Levant/C H 12/D 1A/S-D 208, Central SR, ‘Renseignements
A Constantinople’, 15 November 1923.
79. CADL, E-Levant/C H 12/D 1A/S-D 208, Central SR, ‘Renseignements’,
19 December 1923.
80. AN-P, F/7/13411, Special Police Commissioner in Annemasse to Director of
Surêté Nationale, 13 July 1922. Martin Thomas notes the irony that Egyptian
nationalists such as Sa‘ad Zaghlūl were expelled by Britain while exiles of the
French-held territories were allowed to go about their business. See Martin
C. Thomas, ‘French intelligence-gathering in the Syrian Mandate, 1920– 40’,
Middle Eastern Studies, 38/1 (2002), p. 7.
81. CADN, 1SL/V/949, SR, ‘Rapport d’Informateur’, 5 November 1923.
82. CADL, E-Levant/C H12/D 1A/S-D 208, HC Weygand to MFA, 21 December
1923. In a speech at a dinner during a Congress of the Syrian Union in Geneva,
Michel Lutfallah stated that the goal of the Congress was: ‘to make the voice of
Syrians heard [. . .] we like France but we do not wish to be treated like the
Algerians or Tunisians [. . .] we ask for the evacuation of Syria by the
occupying troops, the unity of the country and the constitution of a
national constitutional government’. See AN-P, F/7/13411, Surêté Générale,
‘A.S. Affaires Syriennes’, 31 August 1921.
83. CADL, E-Levant, C H12/D 1A/S-D 208, Surêté Générale, ‘Renseignements’,
4 December 1923. See Thomas, ‘French intelligence-gathering’, p. 10.
84. AN-P, F/7/13411, Special Police Commissioner in Annemasse, ‘Au Sujet de la
Création à Genève d’un Comité Syrien’, 24 June 1921.
85. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 4 /S-D 58, De Caix to Minister of Foreign Affairs,
20 June 1921.
86. CADL, E-Levant/Syrie-Liban/C 313/D 4/S-D 56, French Consul in Geneva to
MFA, 20 June 1921.
87. Ali Al-Ghayati ‘La Syrie et la Societé des Nations’, Tribune de Genève, 17 June
1921.
88. Christopher M. Andrew and A.S. Kanya-Forstner, The Climax of French
Imperial Expansion, 1914 – 1924 (Stanford, CA, 1981), pp. 230 – 40;
C.M. Andrew and A.S. Kanya-Forstner, ‘The French “Colonial Party”: its
composition, aims and influence, 1885– 1914’, The Historical Journal, 14/1
(1971), pp. 99 – 128.
89. Al-Ghayati, ‘La Syrie et la Societé des Nations’.
90. Ibid.
91. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 4/S-D 58, French Consul in Geneva to MFA, 4 July
1921.
92. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 4/S-D 58, French Consul in Geneva to MFA, 18
September 1921.
93. CADL, E-Levant/C 412/D 1A/S-D 210, French Consul in Geneva to MFA,
Paris, 22 December 1922. This was ‘Ali Fahmy Kamel, a nationalist and the
brother of nationalist leader Mustapha Kamil. See Ziad Fahmy, ‘Francophone
Egyptian Nationalists, anti-British discourse, and European public opinion,
1885– 1910: the case of Mustafa Kamil and Ya‘qub Sannu’, Comparative Studies
of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 28/1 (2008), pp. 170– 83.
94. AN-P, F/7/13411, Special Police Commissioner in Annemasse to Director
Surêté Générale, 24 April 1922.
95. Ibid.
96. Ibid.
97. CADL, E-Levant/C 412/D 1A/S-D 210, French Consul in Geneva to MFA,
22 December 1922.
98. Despite a limited number of printed copies, the newspaper could spread
through casual café conversations, as was seen with respect to the domestic
Damascus press. The Tribune d’Orient listed public places in Geneva where it
could be freely picked up, thus underscoring the importance of the early
twentieth-century newspaper as a medium both read and shared; among the
places were the Hotel d’Angleterre, several cafés, the Crèmerie de Rio de
Janeiro, the Réstaurant Ivanoff, the Cèrcle Masonique and the Réstaurant
Oriental Mahmoud.
99. CADL, E-Levant/C 412/D 1A/S-D 210, R. Reau, French Consul in Geneva to
MFA, 22 December 1925. This agent shared the name of the son of prominent
Lyon legal scholar Edouard Lambert, though he was said to have died in the
World War.
100. Shakib Arslan, ‘Lettre Ouverte au Général Gouraud’, La Tribune d’Orient
(8 February 1923).
101. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, Ali Al-Ghayati, ‘Si la France voulait
[. . .]’, La Tribune d’Orient, N.53 (25 September 1925).
102. La Tribune d’Orient, N.62 (5 November 1925).
103. ‘Les Evénements de Syrie’, La Tribune d’Orient, N.62 (5 November 1925).
104. The role of the secularist Captain Carbillet as the spark of the Druze Rebellion
in 1925, a signal event which led to the Great Revolt, has been the subject of
extensive commentary. The Republican-minded Carbillet had justified his
governorship against his critics, claiming that his methods, including the
extension of private property and democratisation of education, had been
necessary to remove the oppression of the average people by Druze feudal
chiefs. See Capitaine Carbillet, Au Djebel Druse: Choses Vues et Vécues (Paris,
1929); Jean-David Mizrahi, Genèse de l’État Mandataire: Service
des Renseignements et Bandes Armées dans les Années 1920 (Paris, 2003),
pp. 35 – 7; Daniel Neep, Occupying Syria Under the French Mandate: Insurgency,
Space and State Formation (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 70 – 3.
105. Anne Karakatsoulis, ‘La droite Franc aise devant le Mandat en Syrie et au Liban:
Le Cas de la Revue des Deux Mondes (1920 – 1940)’, Chronos: Revue d’Histoire
de l’Universite de Balamand, 1 (1998), p. 111.
106. Lenka Bokova, ‘La Révolution Franc aise dans le Discours de l’Insurrection
Syrienne Contre le Mandat Franc ais (1925 –1927)’, Revue du Monde Musulman
et de la Méditerranée (1989), p. 208.
107. Maurice Barrès, Une Enquête au Pays du Levant (Paris, 1923), pp. 44 – 7.
108. René Ristelhueber, ‘Les Maronites’, Revue des Deux Mondes, 25 (1915), p. 188.
109. ‘Jours de Guerre’, Le Monde Illustrée, N.3037 (4 March 1916), p. 148.
110. Karakatsoulis, ‘La droite Franc aise’, pp. 113– 14.
111. Anonymous [Robert De Caix], ‘L’Organisation de la Syrie sous le Mandat
Franc ais’, Revue des Deux Mondes, 6 (1921), pp. 633 – 63, 643. For more on De
Caix’s role in the administration see Robert De Caix, La Syrie (Paris, 1931);
Stephen Helmsley Longrigg, Syria and Lebanon Under French Mandate
(Oxford, 1958), pp. 82, 129; Gerard D. Khoury, Une Tutelle Coloniale: Le
Mandat Francais en Syrie et au Liban: Ecrits Politiques de Robert De Caix (Paris,
2006).
112. Ibid.
113. Ibid.
114. ‘Dans le Levant’, Le Temps, N.22040 (7 December 1921). In Autumn 1921,
Aristide Briand’s government had been forced to make territorial and military
concessions to avoid any Kemalist attempts at invading northern Syria. See:
Thomas, ‘French intelligence-gathering’, p. 10.
115. M.Y. Bitar, ‘La Vraie Syrie Franc aise’, Mercure de France, N.422 (16 January
1916), pp. 217– 19.
116. Khairallah’s important role in shaping French public opinion has been
examined in: Samir Khairallah, Samir, ‘La France et la Question Arabe de
l’Empire Ottoman, K.T. Khairallah et son Temps (1882 – 1930)’ (Ph.D. thesis,
University of Paris, 2011). Khairallah was for a reformed Ottoman system

rather than Arab Revolt.
117. K.T. Khairallah, ‘La Vraie Syrie Franc aise’, Mercure de France, N.424
(16 February 1916), pp. 762– 6.
118. Eugene Lautier, ‘Le Succès de M. Poincaré en Orient et la Politique en
Occident’, L’Homme Libre, N.2269 (10 October 1922), p. 1.
119. Maurice Figuerolles, ‘L’Insurrection Druse: Ce Qu’il Faut Prendre et Laisser
des Nouvelles de Syrie’, L’Homme Libre, N.3320 (26 August 1926), p. 1.
120. Emile Laloy, ‘Ouvrages sur la Guerre de 1914’, Mercure de France, N.688
(15 February 1927), p. 243.
121. ‘Protestation de Mgr [Monsignor] Doumani et des Catholiques Syriens’,
La Croix, N.11348 (19 March 1920).
122. Jean Guiraud, ‘La France en Syrie’, La Croix, N.11292 (16 January 1920).
123. ‘Un Appel du Pape’, La Croix, N.12440 (4 October 1923).
124. ‘Le Problème Syrien’, La Croix, N.17083 (14 July 1922).
125. ‘Lettre des États-Unis’, La Croix (25 November 1925).
126. ‘Lettre de Syrie’, La Croix, N.13278 (23 June 1926).
127. CADL, E-Levant/Syrie-Liban/C 313/D 4/S-D 56, De Caix to MAE, 24 July
1920.
128. CADL, E-Levant/Syrie-Liban/C 313/D 4/S-D 56, Service de la Presse, H-C
Beirut to MAE, 24 May 1921.
129. AN-P, 594/AP/2, P. Andre to Colonel Bremond, 7 May 1920.
130. As Jennifer Boittin notes, this was part of a pattern of attempts at blocking the
exchange of information between metropole and colonies using such tools as
libel laws alongside outright censorship. See Jennifer Anne Boittin, Colonial
Metropolis: The Urban Grounds of Anti-Imperialism and Feminism in Interwar
Paris, (Lincoln & London, 2010), pp. 137, 257 fn.15.
131. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, HC Gouraud to MAE, 5 July 1922.
132. ‘Une Nouvelle Revolte aux Environs d’Alep’, L’Homme Libre, N.3313
(19 August 1925), p. 3.
133. ‘“Tout va bien” en Syrie’, La Croix, N.13039 (14 September 1925).
134. ‘En Syrie’, La Croix, N.13211 (5 April 1926).
135. CADL, E-Levant/Syrie-Liban/C 313/D 4/S-D 56, MFA to Gouraud, 17 January
1921.
136. CADL, E-Levant/Syrie-Liban/C 313/D 4/S-D 56, De Caix to MAE, 19 January
1921; CADL, E-Levant/Syrie-Liban/C 313/D 4/S-D 56, De Caix to MAE, 20
January 1921. According to De Caix, the Egyptian press had interpreted the
continuing existence of Ottoman citizenship for Lebanese citizens as a signal of
French disengagement from Syria.
137. C.M. Andrew and A.S. Kanya-Forstner, ‘The Groupe Colonial in the
Chamber of Deputies, 1892– 1932’, The Historical Journal, 17/4 (1974),
pp. 837– 66.
138. ‘Le Guêpier Syrien’, La Lanterne (28 November 1924).
139. Ibid. Louis Cattin was the chancellor of the Faculty of Medecine at Saint
Joseph University during the Ottoman years. See Chantal Verdeil, ‘Un
etablissement Catholique dans la Société Pluriconfessionnelle de la fin de
l’Empire Ottoman l’Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth’, Cahiers de la
Méditerranée 75 (2007), pp. 28–38. Available at https://cdlm.revues.org/3373
(accessed 16 January 2018); Rafael Herztein, ‘Les Phases de l’Evolution de
l’Université Saint-Joseph à Beyrouth: Les Premières Décennies (1875 – 1914)’,
Historical Studies in Education. Available at http://historicalstudiesineducation.
ca/index.php/edu_hse-rhe/article/view/3469 (accessed 16 January 2018),
p. 25.
140. Ibid.
141. Ibid.
142. La Dépeche de Toulouse, cited in ‘La Mission de M. Henry de Jouvenel’, Le Matin,
N.15207 (7 November 1925).
143. Tareq Y. Ismael and Jacqueline S. Ismael, The Communist Movement in Syria and
Lebanon (Tampa, FL, 1998), pp. 7– 14.
144. Even before the outbreak of the Great Syrian Rebellion, as the mandate
authorities were recovering from the Lesser Syrian Insurrection, the Comintern
was distributing pamphlets that denounced French imperialism and said that
the ‘struggle of the Syrian rebels is joined by the struggles now being waged in
France by the mining, textile, and engineering workers’. See ‘Extracts from an
ECCI Manifesto Against French Imperialism in Syria [11 May 1924]’, in
Jane Degras (ed.), The Communist International 1919– 1943 Documents Vol. II
1923– 1928 (London, 1971), pp. 93– 4.
145. AN-P, F/7/13411, Central Police Commissioner Nantes to Minister of the
Interior, 21 November 1926.
146. Jacques Doriot, La Syrie Aux Syriens! Discours Prononcé par Doriot, à la Chambre
des Députés, le 20 Décembre 1925 (Paris, 1926).
147. ‘L’Action du Comité Mixte de Lyon’, L’Humanité, N.9792 (1 October 1925).
148. ‘Conference Générale des Femmes de la Région Parisienne’, N.9788 (27
September 1925).
149. ‘Le Congrès Communiste de Glasgow’, L’Humanite, N.7871 (2 June 1925).
150. ‘Le Régime Militaire en Syrie’, L’Humanité, N.6536 (15 February 1922).
151. ‘En Syrie’, L’Humanité, N.6711 (10 August 1922).
152. CADL, E-Levant/ C H12/ D 1A/S-D 208, Director of the Surêté Générale to
MFA, 17 November 1923.
153. ‘Une Protestation du “Parti du Peuple”’, L’Humanité, N.9765 (4 September
1926).
154. ‘Une Nouvelle Lettre. La Revolte S’Etend. Prise de Soueida’, L’Humanité,
N.9762 (1 September 1925).
155. ‘Sultan El Attrache Répond aux Provocations de l’Imperialisme Franc ais’,
L’Humanité, N.9770 (9 September 1925).
156. ‘La Syrie aux Syriens!’, L’Humanité, N.7747 (28 January 1925).
157. ‘La Syrie Revoltée’, L’Humanité, N.6804 (24 April 1922).
158. Kanaan was the leader of a group bringing together eight of the 12 counsellors
of the Mount Lebanon Sanjak who had sought to defect to Faisal in July 1920,
just before the Battle of Maysalūn. They were planning to escape Lebanon to
Europe in order to organise opposition to the French mandate. Among them
was the brother of the Maronite Patriarch. See Gérard D. Khoury, La France et
l’Orient Arabe: Naissance du Liban Moderne 1914– 1920 (Paris, 2009).
159. ‘Le Régime Syrien’, L’Humanité, N.6833 (29 January 1923).
160. ‘Le Capitalisme Colonialiste a Fait Banqueroute en Syrie’, L’Humanité, N.6697
(27 July 1922).
161. ‘Les Interpéllations’, La Croix, N.13107 (2 December 1925).
162. ‘Les Balles pour nos Propres Généraux’, La Croix, N.13208 (1 April 1926).
163. Andrew and Kanya Forstner, ‘The French “Colonial Party”: its composition,
aims and influence, 1885– 1914’, The Historical Journal, 14/1 (1971),
pp. 99 – 128.
164. Stewart Michael Persell, The French Colonial Lobby 1889– 1939 (Stanford, CA,
1983), p. 27.
165. ‘Comment la Presse Coloniale Déforme la Vérité’, L’Humanité, N.6834
(11 December 1922).
166. The Union Economique was: ‘the most important organization of French
capital in Syria’. It coalesced metropolitan, North-African and Levant-based
French commercial institutions. See Geoffrey D. Schad, ‘Colonialists,
Industrialist, and Politicians: The Political Economy of Industrialization
in Syria, 1920 – 1954’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2001),
p. 94.
167. J.M., Pourquoi Nous Devons Rester en Syrie (Paris, 1926).
168. ‘Sources et Debouches’, Le Mercure Africain, N.28 (15 March 1923), p. 52.
169. ‘La Conference de M. Venard’, L’Echo de Bougie, N.1496 (11 April 1926).
170. ‘Notre Colonisation Africaine’, Annales Africaines, N.35 (20 December 1920),
p. 657.
171. ‘Le Voyage De M. Paul Laffon Au Maroc’, France-Maroc, N.56 (July 1921),
p. 112.
172. ‘Petite Lettre Du Bled’, Annales Africaines, N.13 (6 July 1928), pp. 253– 4.
Chapter 7 Internationalism: The External Press

1. ‘L’Unité de la Syrie’, Le Temps, N.21016 (14 January 1919).
2. ‘Liban et Syrie’, Le Temps, N.21028 (1 February 1919).
3. ‘Les Evenements de Syrie’, N.15206, Le Matin (6 November 1925).
4. ‘Les Rebelles Font la Guerre non à la France mais a la Syrie, Declare, a Alep,
M. De Jouvenel’, Le Matin, N.15243, 13 December 1925.
5. ‘The State of Syria’, The Nation and the Athenaeum, 26/16 (17 January 1920),
pp. 536 –7.
6. ‘The Syrian Mandate’, The Nation and the Athenaeum, 39/3 (17 April 1926),
pp. 63 – 4.
7. The committee/congress was set up in Cairo and Geneva by Prince Michel

Lutfallah, Rashid Rida’a and Shakib Arslan. See ‘Syro-Palestinian Congress’, in
R. Bidwell (ed.), Dictionary of Modern Arab History: An A to Z of Over 2,000
Entries from 1798 to the Present Day (London, 2010).
8. CADL, E-Levant/C 412/D 1A/S-D 210, French Consul in Baghdad Maigret to
MAE (10 December 1923).
9. ‘The Syrian Situation: How the Outbreak Started’, The Times of Mesopotamia
(4 September 1925). French suspicions of British press activity in Iraq were
echoed by a Russian journalist, writing in Izvestia, who suggested that the
Iraqi press was entirely under British control and was publishing
denunciations of French policy in 1922. Astakhov, ‘La France et L’Angleterre
Dans le Proche-Orient’, Bulletin Périodique de la Presse Russe, Juin et Juillet
1922, N.106 (6 September 1922), 3 – 4.
10. CADN, 1SL/V/949, SR, ‘RP de Damas des 18 et 19 Novembre 1923’.
11. CADN, 1SL/V/949, SR, ‘La Propagande Anglo-Arabe en Syrie’, 1 October
1923.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. CADN, 1SL/1/V/1618, Ministère des Colonies – Service des Affaires
Musulmanes, ‘RP et des Questions Musulmanes’, 31 December 1926.
15. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, Barakatullah Mandarie, editor of
Al-Islah to MFA Briand, 10 November 1925.
16. The L’Orient Affair peaked just before the outbreak of the Great Syrian Revolt
which occasioned a League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission
session scrutinising French repression. Its head, the Marquis Theodoli, had
informed the French that the Commission would be scrutinising the
mandatory power’s response. ‘La S.D.N. et la Situation en Syrie’, L’Homme
Libre, N.3379– 3380 (24 and 25 October 1925), p. 1.
17. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, French Consul in Jerusalem Maugras to
MFA, 18 May 1925.
18. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, French Consul in Jerusalem Maugras
to MFA, 18 May 1925; CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, HC Sarrail, to
MFA, 14 May 1925. This was a demonstration of diplomatic acumen; the
French Consul in Palestine had wisely replaced the word ‘Syria’ for ‘France’,
when noting French authorities’ role as the originators of censorship in
Palestine.
19. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, Anonymous Telegram, 28 April 1925.
20. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, French Consul in Baghdad Maigret to
MFA, 24 May 1925; CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, HC Sarrail to
MFA, 14 May 1925.
21. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 4/S-D 58, MFA to HC, 30 November 1921.
22. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 4/S-D 58, De Caix to MFA, 19 December 1921.
23. Fribourg had a regular column in Les Annales. The words deemed by High
Commission general-secretary De Caix to have been anti-French were mild.
He wrote: ‘In Syria, the administration is far from being immune to criticism.
A new sum of 326 million [francs] was asked for by the Foreign Minister [. . .]
yesterday’. Georges-André Fribourg, ‘La Situation’, Les Annales Politiques et
Littéraires, N.1985, 10 July 1921, p. 23.
24. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, HC Weygand to MFA, ‘a.s. du Journal
L’Orient’, 30 November 1924.
25. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 2/S-D 292, Jerusalem Consul Gaston Maugras to
HC Sarrail, 16 January 1926. The British Consul in Aleppo was unlikely to
accept French claims that they had no involvement in reprinting the story
since it was based on a source suspected to be derived from French intelligence
because the article had cited a Turkish consul’s private speech.
26. TNA, FO 684/3, British Consul in Aleppo W. Hough to Foreign Office,
15 January 1926.
27. TNA, FO 684/3, British Consul in Damascus W.A. Smart to Foreign Office,
23 January 1926.
28. TNA, FO 684/3, Smart to Foreign Office, 27 January 1926.
29. TNA, FO 684/3, Smart to Foreign Office, 26 March 1926.
30. ‘La France et l’Angleterre dans le Proche-Orient’, Bulletin Périodique de la Presse
Russe, Juin et Juillet 1922, N.106 (6 September 1922), pp. 3 – 4. It is unclear if
this was a young future Air Marshal Fedor Astakhov.
31. ‘La France et l’Angleterre’, pp. 3 – 4.
32. ‘Le Débat sur l’Orient’, L’Humanité, N.6822 (29 November 1922).
33. CADL, E-Levant/C 412/D 1A/ S-D 210, ‘Complot Terroriste en Syrie’,
10 October 1925. The People’s Party tended toward representating Aleppo’s
commercial class. See Amos Perlmutter, ‘From obscurity to rule: the Syrian
Army and the Ba’ath Party’, The Western Political Quarterly, 22/4 (1969),
p. 828.
34. CADL, E-Levant/C 412/D 1A/S-D 210, Gaston Maugras, French Consul in
Jerusalem to MFA, 16 December 1925.
35. BDIC, Fonds Syrie, F Delta/947/1-6, ‘Bulletin No 2 de la Société Litéraire
Russe de Damas’, 15 October 1923.
36. BDIC, Fonds Syrie, F Delta/947/1-6, ‘Bulletin No 5 de la Société Litéraire
Russe de Damas’, 1 December 1923.
37. BDIC, Fonds Syrie, F Delta/947/1-6, ‘La Syrie Vue par les Voyageurs Russes
des Temps Anciens’, Bulletin de la Société Litéraire Russe de Damas, N.7,
1 January 1924.
38. BDIC, Fonds Syrie, F Delta/947/1– 6, ‘Bulletin No 6 de la Société Litéraire
Russe de Damas’, 15 December 1923.
39. Nicault, La France et Le Sionisme 1897 –1948. Une Rencontre Manquée? (Paris,
1992). It is sometimes forgotten that the July 1917 Paul Cambon Letter was
sent by a French Foreign Minister to French Zionist Nahum Sokolow before
the famed Balfour Letter. On British impressions of Zionist abilities to sway
American public opinion, see James Renton, The Zionist Masquerade: The Birth
of the Anglo-Zionist Alliance 1914– 1918 (Basingstoke, 2007).
40. CADL, E-Levant/Syrie-Liban/C 313/D 4/S-D 56, MFA to HC Gouraud,

March 1921.
41. CADL, E-Levant/ C H12/D 1A/S-D 208, Gouraud to MFA, 18 September
1922.
42. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, HC Jouvenel to MAE, 17 December
1925.
43. CADL E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, Berthelot, MAE to French Ambassador
in Germany, 21 December 1925.
44. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, French Ambassador in Spain Perretti de
La Rocca to MFA Briand, 23 December 1925.
45. ‘La Situation de Syrie’, L’Echo Annamite, N.463 (21 December 1925), p. 1.
46. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, André de Laboulaye, French Chargé
d’Affaires in Berlin to Briand, 28 December 1925.
47. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, Émile Daeschner, French Ambassador
in the United States to MAE, 19 December 1925.
48. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, French Consul in Jerusalem to MAE,
22 December 1925.
49. Daeschner to MAE.
50. ‘L’Avenir Possible de la Radioéléctricité dans le Domaine Economique’,
L’Effort Algerien, N.13 (2 July 1927).
51. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, French Ambassador in Washington
Daeschner to MFA Briand, Paris, 21 November 1925.
52. ‘Christians Routed, Southern Lebanon at Druses’ Mercy’, Washington Post
(21 November 1925).
53. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, P. Suzor, French Consul in Vancouver to
MFA, 29 November 1925.
54. ‘France in Syria’, The Daily Province (28 November 1925).
55. ‘France’s Syrian Rule Berated as “Tyrannical”’, New York Herald Tribune
(n.d.).
56. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, ‘French Parade of Rebel Dead Held
Cause of Damascus Riot’, New York Herald Tribune (n.d.).
57. ‘The Damascus Massacre’, The Literary Digest (14 November 1925).
58. Lloyd O’Connor’s grandfather was muckracking journalist Henry Demarest
Lloyd. Her father, William Bross Lloyd, owned part of the Chicago Tribune,
for which she also sent stories from the League of Nations in 1926, though
she reputedly believed these to be ‘fluff pieces’. See Kathleen Banks Nuter,
‘O’Connor, Jessie Lloyd’, in S. Ware (ed.), Notable American Women:
A Biographical Dictionary Completing the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA,
2004), pp. 477 – 8.
59. New York Public Library Manuscripts and Archives Division (hereafter
NYPL)/Jessie Lloyd O’Connor Papers/ Box 5/ Folder 5.1, ‘Jessie Lloyd, 6 Rue
St. Victor Geneva, 9 December 1926’.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid.
62. ‘Les Evènements de Syrie’, Bulletin Périodique de la Presse Sud-Américaine et la

Presse Mexicaine du 26 Séptembre au 28 Octobre 1925, N.118 (19 December
1925), 4.
63. See inter alia: Sarah Gualtieri, Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the
Early Syrian American Diaspora (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 2009); Hani
J. Bawardi, The Making of Arab Americans: From Syrian Nationalism to U.S.
Citizenship (Austin, TX, 2014), pp. 54 – 158.
64. Maria del Mar Logroño Narbona, ‘The Development of Nationalist Identities
in French Syria and Lebanon: A Transnational Dialogue with Arab Immigrants
to Argentina and Brazil, 1915– 1929’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of California
Santa Barbara, 2007); Camila Pastor De Maria y Campos, ‘Inscribing
Difference: Maronites, Jews and Arabs in Mexican Public Culture and French
Imperial Practice’, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 6/2 (2011),
pp. 169 –87.
65. Andrew Arsan, Interlopers of Empire: The Lebanese Diaspora in Colonial French
Africa (Oxford, 2014).
66. Philipp Thomas, The Syrians In Egypt: 1725– 1975 (Stuttgart, 1985).
67. Fred Halliday, ‘The Millet of Manchester: Arab merchants and cotton trade’,
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 19/2 (1992), pp. 159– 76; Walter
P. Zenner, A Global Community: The Jews from Aleppo, Syria (Detroit, IL, 2000),
pp. 63 – 76.
68. On broader British propaganda efforts that recognised the importance of US
public opinion in shaping the country’s involvement in the World War, see
M.L. Sanders, ‘Wellington House and British Propaganda during the First
World War’, The Historical Journal, 18/1 (March 1975), pp. 119– 46; Philip
M. Taylor, ‘The Foreign Office and British Propaganda during the First World
War’, The Historical Journal, 23/4 (1980), pp. 875– 98.
69. CADL, E-Levant/Syrie-Liban/C 313/D 4/S-D 56, Liebert, MAE to French
Consul in New York, 12 January 1920.
70. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 4/S-D 132, A.R. Conty, French Ambassador in Rio
de Janeiro to MFA Aristide Briand, 2 April 1921.
71. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 4/S-D 132, Conty to Briand, 31 March 1921.
72. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 4/S-D 132, Ambassador Conty to Aristide Briand,
31 March 1921.
73. Ibid.
74. CADN, 1SL/V/1684, EGL, ‘Journaux du 16 Décembre 1924’, 16 December
1924.
75. CADL, E-Levant/Syrie-Liban/C 313/D 4/S-D 55, ‘Note sur le Projet
d’Organisation du Contrôle Administratif à Exercer par la France en Vertu
du Mandat qui lui Sera Confie sur la Syrie’, 30 April 1920. In some locales,
these funds went unused by local embassies; Havana and São Paulo both
returned their funds for lack of use. Santiago and Cairo both replied to Paris
suggesting that proposed funds be removed as they judged their use to be
inopportune. Argentina too removed a forecast subsidy of 1,000 francs for the
newspaper Sada Al-Sharq. All in all, savings of 11,000 francs were worked out
˙
that could be redeployed in other attempts at subsidising pro-French
newspapers abroad.
76. CADL, E-Levant/Syrie-Liban/C 313/D 4/S-D/56, De Beaumarchais French
Ambassador in Mexico, to Deputy Director of Asia Section, 13 November
1920.
77. CADL, E-Levant/Syrie-Liban/C 313/D 4/S-D /56, Claudel, French Consul in
Rio Di Janeiro, Telegram to Paris, 18 April 1918.
78. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, Salim Akel, São Paulo, to Shukri
Ghanem, Paris, 13 March 1924.
79. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 1/S-D 286, Gouraud, to MFA, 11 January 1924.
80. Ignacio Klich notes in contrast that the Ottoman press covered the
development of the mahjar community in Argentina. See Ignacio Klich,
‘Argentine-Ottoman relations and their impact on immigrants from the
Middle East: a history of unfulfilled expectations, 1910– 1915’, The Americas,
50/2 (1993), pp. 177– 205, 181.
81. AN-P, 19940494/58, Interior Minister, Paris, ‘Arrêté Générale’, 21 January
1919. These included the Mara’at Al-Gharb, Al-Rian and Linsarien, all
published in the US; the Argentino, Al-‘Alam, Al-Osman, Al-Hur and
Ash-Shama, all published in Buenos Aires; Amrika Al-Jadid published in São
Paulo; Al-Kawab and Al-Qiblat published in Cairo and Mecca, respectively.
82. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, A.R. Conty, French Ambassador to
Brazil to MAE, 12 May 1925.
83. As Johann Strauss has noted in the case of the late Ottoman period, newspapers
played an important role in publishing book reviews that went beyond simple
political articles. Johann Strauss, ‘“Kütüp ve Resail-i Mevkute”: printing and
publishing in a multi-ethnic society’, in Elisabeth Özdalga (ed.), Late Ottoman
Society: The Intellectual Legacy (London, 2013), p. 225.
84. BL, L/PS/11/126, George Grahame to Lord Hardinge, 20 August 1917.
85. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 4/S-D 126, French Chargé d’Affaires in Haiti Agel
to MFA, 12 May 1921.
86. CADL, E-Levant/C 412/D 1A/S-D 210, R. Reau, French Consul in Baghdad
to MFA, 22 December 1925. This is borne out by one article in the French
daily Le Matin which claims Ihsan Al-Jabiri had been refused an audience with
Eric Drummond, secretary-general of the League. See ‘Le Secretaire-Générale
de la S.D.N. Refuse de Recevoir des Délégués Syriens’, Le Matin, N.15240
(10 December 1925). Both of these accounts seem to confirm the assertion
made by Susan Pedersen that the League’s mechanisms were open only to hear
representations of mandated peoples that went through the mandate power’s
channels, thus limiting the possibility of initiating action by the Permanent
Mandates Commission against the mandatory powers. Yet, in spite of these
limitations, Syro-Lebanese activists still managed to get their voices heard,
something that Pedersen notes when she writes of how the ‘League proliferated
and legitimised information-gathering, including from non-governmental
sources’. See Susan Pedersen, ‘The Meaning of the Mandates: An Argument’,

Geschichte Und Gesellschaft, 32/4 (2006), pp. 560– 82, pp. 560– 73. When
Emir Amin Arslan was blocked from being heard by the Permanent Mandates
Commission hearing in Rome, French newspaper Le Matin reported that he
nevertheless ‘attacked’ France in the international press. ‘Les Intrigues des
Emissaires Syriens’, Le Matin, N.15310 (18 February 1920).
87. CADL, E-Levant/Syrie-Liban/C 313/D 4/S-D 56, MAE, ‘Extraits et Analyse de
la Kibla No 321 du 6 Mai 1920’.
88. Ibid.
89. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 4/S-D 58, Carlier, Adjunct G-S of the H-C, to MFA
Briand, 6 July 1921.
90. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 4/S-D 58, Carlier to Briand, 18 July 1921.
91. Ibid.
92. Ibid.
93. French Consul, Bahia to MFA Briand, Paris, 30 August 1921 [MAE Nantes/
Bahia 79].
94. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/D 4/S-D 58, Ambassador Conty to MFA, 4 August
1921.
95. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, ‘Note par le Cabinet du Ministre
(Service de la Presse)’, 10 July 1922.
96. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, Ambassador Conty to MFA,
20 September 1922.
97. CADL, E-Levant/C 313/ D 4/S-D 58, De Caix to MFA Raymond Poincaré,
March 1922.
98. Ibid.
99. Joseph Fehmi, ‘Des Sentiments, des Pensées et des Actes’, Le Positiviste, N.13
(December 1922/January – February 1923).
100. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, P. Viet, French Consul Salonica to
Poincaré, 3 May 1923.
101. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, Maurice Herbette, French Ambassador
in Belgium to Poincaré, 20 February 1924.
102. ‘Bloc-Notes’, Le Positiviste, N.13 (December 1922/January – February 1923).
103. Ibid.
104. Ibid.
105. Ibid.
106. However, it is worth noting that L’Homme Libre reported that Maalouf had had
his right leg amputated and suggested the letters spoke of such raving topics as
the Greco-Turkish War, cultured pearls and a girlfriend named Sylvie.
‘Le Suicide du Syrien’, L’Homme Libre, N.2243 (14 September 1922).
107. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/ D 3/S-D 293, HC Sarrail to MFA, 1 July 1925.
108. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, Clausse, French Ambassador in
Argentina to MFA, 9 June 1925.
109. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, HC Sarrail to MFA, 29 September
1925.
110. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, HC Sarrail to MFA, 20 October 1925.
111. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, French Consul in New York to MFA,
26 January 1926.
112. Ibid.
113. CADL, E-Levant/C 417/D 3/S-D 293, French Consul in New York to MFA,
8 December 1925.
114. AN-P, 62/AJ/65, ‘Maintien ou Abondon Progressif du Mandat de la France en
Syrie’, n.d.
115. CADN, 102PO/B/79/Consulat Bogota, J. Des Longchamps, Ambassador in
Chile, to Alfred Planche, Ambassador in Colombia, 6 October 1931.
116. CADN, 102PO/B/79/Consulat Bogota, Nagib Constantin [Haddad], Bogota,
to J. Des Longchamps, 15 July 1931.
117. The term ‘Islamicate’ was used by Marshall Hodgson to describe the broad,
diverse and malleable world-civilisation in the Islamic world-system which
existed alongside a more legally circumscribed Islamic socio-political order.
See Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, Volume 1: The Classical Age of Islam
(Chicago, 2009), p. 58.
118. Thomas, The Syrians in Egypt, p. 79.
119. Fruma Zachs, ‘“Cross-Glocalization”: Syrian women immigrants and the
founding of women’s magazines in Egypt’, Middle Eastern Studies, 50/3,
pp. 353 –69.
120. ‘La Presse Musulmane’, Revue du Monde Musulman, XXXVI (1918– 19).
121. CADL, E-Levant/Syrie-Liban/C 313/D 4/S-D 56, M. Gaillard, Diplomatic
Agent in Cairo to Georges Leygues, MFA, 25 November 1920. Another
example of the weight given to the Egyptian press is evidenced by the fact that
the British Colonial Office ordered copies of Al-Mokattam, for a variety of its
consulates around the world, including Tunis, Tangiers, Dakar, Rio and
Buenos Aires. TNA, CO 323/866, Sarruf, Nimr & Makarius, Editors of
Al-Muktataf & Al-Moqattam, Cairo, to Ministry of Information, War Office,
˙˙
1 July 1921.
122. CADL, E-Levant/Syrie-Liban/C 313/D 4/S-D 58, HC Gouraud, 21 April
1921.
123. CADL, E-Levant/Syrie-Liban/C 313/D 4/S-D 56, French Consul in Egypt
Defrance to MFA Stéphen Pichon, 16 May 1918.
124. Ibid.
125. CADN, 353PO/2/Consulat Le Caire 116, Ambassador Henri Gaillard to
Gouraud, 17 June 1922.
126. CADL, E-Levant/Syrie-Liban/C 313/D 4/S-D 56, Pontalis, MAE to Consul in
Cairo, 21 January 1920.
127. CADN, 1SL/V/949, SR, ‘Contre l’Administration Franc aise en Syrie’, 9 March
1923.
128. Ibid.
129. ‘Contre l’Administration Franc aise [1923]’.
130. Ibid.
131. The Damascus-based patriarch had been a Russian Empire surrogate in the
World War years. ‘Personalities: Syria [1917]’.
132. CADN, 1SL/V/949, SR, ‘RP Etrangère’, 15 December 1923.
133. CADN, 1SL/1/V/1618, Ministry for the Colonies, Service of Muslim Affairs,
‘RP et des Quéstions Musulmanes’, 31 Décembre 1925.
134. CADN, 1SL/V/1842, H-C’s DEA, ‘Rapport Trimestriel - 3ème Trimestre’,
November 1921.
135. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 9 Janvier 1924.’ Censorship
was not uniformly decried. Lissan Al-Hal, for instance, denounced the
wholesale republication of news regarding Syria’s frontiers, lifted uncritically
from Egyptian newspapers, which it said hurt the national interest. CADN,
1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth des 25 et 26 Mai.’
136. In February 1924, 241 copies of one Egyptian newspaper were seized upon entry
in Syria. CADN, 1SL/V/1675, EGL, ‘Renseignements’, 7 February 1924. The
Egyptian newspaper Wadi Al-Nil was banned from entering the Syrian Mandate
from 1 May 1922 until 12 August 1924. CADN, 353PO/2/Consulat Le Caire
116, Gouraud to French Ambassador in Cairo, 20 August 1920.
137. CADL, E-Levant/C H12/D 1A/S-D 208 Ministry for the Colonies, Service of
Muslim Affairs to MFA, 30 October 1923.
138. Ouahes, ‘Une “ceinture”’; Altuğ and White, ‘Frontière et Pouvoir’,
pp. 91 – 104.
139. ‘Incidents à la Frontière Syrienne’, Bulletin Périodique de la Presse Turque, du 27
Mars au 18 Juin 1924, N.35 (July 1924).
140. Archivo Historico de España, Madrid/Mo Exteriores/H/1881 Beirut, Juan
Server, Spanish Ambassador in Istanbul to Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Madrid, 17 September 1925.
141. ‘France et Syrie’, Bulletin Périodique de la Presse Turque du 1 er Août au 15 Octobre
1923, N.31 (November 1923).
142. CADL, E-Levant/C H12/D 1A/S-D 208, Barthe De Sandfort, French Consul in
Adana to MFA Raymond Poincaré, 11 October 1923.
143. Jean-David Mizrahi, Genèse de l’État Mandataire: Service des Renseignements
et Bandes Armées dans les Années 1920 (Paris, 2003), p. 138.
144. CADL, E-Levant/C H12/D 1A/S-D 208, Service Centrale de Renseignements,
‘Renseignements’, 13 December 1923.
145. AN-P, F/7/13411, Special Police Commissioner in Annemasse to Director
Surêté Générale, 2 June 1926. See also Zafer Toprak, ‘Bolşevik İttihatc ılar ve
İslam Kominterni - İslam İhtilal Cemiyetleri İttihadı- İttihad-ı Selamet-i
İslam’, Toplumsal Tarih, 43 (1997), pp. 6 – 13.
146. Jacob Anton De Hass, Foreign Trade Organization (New York, NY, 1923),
p. 157.
147. CADL, E-Levant/C H12/D 1A/S-D 208, Central SR, ‘Renseignement’,
4 November 1923.
148. CADN, 1SL/V/1843, H-C’s DEA, Civil Services, ‘Rapport Trimestriel: 1er
Trimestre 1923.’
149. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth du 15 Février 1924.’

150. CADN, 1SL/V/1682, EGL, ‘RP de Beyrouth des 17 & 18 Fevrier 1924.’
151. AHE Madrid/Mo Exteriores/H/1881 Beirut, Juan Servet, Spanish Ambassador
in Istanbul to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Madrid, 16 November 1925.
152. CADN, 1SL/V/1593, ‘Lettre Ouverte aux Patriotes, aux Réprésentatifs du
Pays et aux Journalistes’, April 1926.
Chapter 8 General Conclusion

1. CADN, 1SL/V/1561, Rene De Feriet, ‘La Syrie, Son Organisation Actuelle, le
Mandat Franc ais’, 8 January 1925; Martin Thomas, Empires of Intelligence:
Security Services and Colonial Disorder After 1914 (Berkeley and Los Angeles,
CA, 2008), p. 294.
2. Ibid.
3. AN-P, F/7/13411, Anonymous, ‘Suite au Rapports des 26 Décembre 1925, 25
Janvier et 19 Février 1926, au Sujet des Renseignements sur les Populations
Musulmanes’, 1926.
4. Ibid.
5. AN-P, F/7/13411, H-C ‘La Situation en Syrie’, 9 June 1927.
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INDEX
Concepts French public (official), 92 – 7, 100,

101, 105, 127
claims of culture, 8, 9, 11, 22, 24, 25, German missionary, 19, 92
28 – 9, 32, 35, 37 – 9, 42 – 3, 52, Greek Catholic, 105, 118
55, 63, 65, 71, 73 – 74, 76, 88, Greek Orthodox, 92 – 3, 102, 105, 118,
112, 128– 9, 160, 162, 179, 181, 252, 257
184, 195, 218, 221, 224– 7 Italian missionary, 92, 266
opportunity structures, 2– 5, 34 – 5, Jewish, 93, 118
225 Mahjar, 133
orientalism, 8, 9, 10, 23, 32 – 3, 38– 42, Maronite, 105, 118–20, 123, 125
50 – 1, 63, 66, 68, 75, 85, 86, 90, military and police, 110, 111, 263
95 – 6, 108, 130, 134, 139, 140, and newspaper commentary, 105– 7,
161, 170– 1, 183, 206, 226, 237 114, 148, 165, 179, 221
Ottoman, 62, 95, 101– 2, 112–13,
Education 122–5, 128, 148, 221, 261,
266
agricultural, 100, 109, 113, 131 Sunni and Islamic, 70, 95, 97,
Alawite, 97, 165 100–5, 124, 126, 129– 30, 250,
American Missionary, 42, 54, 92, 115, 259
135, 266, 271 teaching standards, 93, 96 –9, 101,
antiquities, 8, 42 – 3, 46, 47, 73, 109 114, 127
112, 242 technical, 68, 73, 106– 8, 109,
Armenian, 93 –4 112–13, 115, 128, 130,
Bedouin, 118 148, 264
British Missionary, 201, 266 universities – American, 54, 83, 95,
bursaries and funding, 93, 95, 102, 115, 134– 6, 206
117– 26 universities – French, 42, 54, 56, 102,
curricula, 90 – 107, 259, 266 107–9, 128, 133
Druze, 94, 97, 118, 179 universities – Syro-Lebanese, 122, 130,
French missionary, 42, 81, 92 – 3, 147
101– 2, 105– 6, 108, 119, 123, women’s, 95, 98 – 100, 105, 124,
124, 127, 133, 135, 182, 261, 270 126–7
Entities/Organisations tourism – French office, 77, 79

tourism – local government office,
associations – cultural, 10, 53, 67, 71, 78– 9, 81
74, 79, 80, 86, 126, 130, 133, welfare – American, 22, 115
203, 174, 177, 178, 203 welfare – British, 22, 24, 115
associations – political, 132, 135, welfare – Syro-Lebanese, 71, 103 119,
171– 3, 178, 213, 279 126, 129, 260
cafes, 19, 221, 281 Whitehall (British Government), 13,
Communist Party – French, 172, 188, 28, 40, 58
189
Communist Party – Syro-Lebanese, Ethnic Groups
188, 203, 252
exhibitions – metropolitan French, Alawite, 20, 23, 28 –9, 92, 94, 97 –8
81 – 7 146–7, 165, 185
exhibitions – Syro-Lebanese, 84 – 7 Armenian, 24, 94, 184, 216, 255
hotels, 57, 76 – 7, 79, 252, 281 Assyrian (Chaldean), 24, 165
intelligence – Central Service in Beirut, Bedouin, 18, 22, 41 – 2, 49, 76, 85,
16, 32, 41, 105, 120, 127, 130, 118, 183, 186
140, 226, 227 Circassian, 85
intelligence – French military, Druze, 7, 10, 16, 20, 23, 27 – 8, 30, 49,
70, 103, 110 118–19, 121, 126– 7, 179, 183,
masons, 127, 145, 189, 281 206, 208, 265, 282
museums – American, 50 Greek-Orthodox, 24, 26, 92 – 3,
museums – British, 49 – 50, 71, 76 102, 118, 127, 133, 172, 219,
museums – French, 49, 54, 71, 82 – 3 252, 257
museums – Lebanese, 46, 48, 61 63 –4, Jazairi (Algerian), 73, 109 127,
67, 69, 72 – 5, 79 159, 275
museums – Ottoman, 43 – 4, 63 Jewish, 12– 13, 130, 141, 146, 155,
museums – Syrian, 46, 48, 61 – 4, 205, 214
67 – 70, 72 – 3, 78 Kurd, 20 – 1, 27, 85, 106, 148– 9
parliament – Aleppo, 147, 148, 156 Mahjar, 19, 74, 132– 3, 137, 152, 172,
parliament – Damascus, 126, 131, 196, 209– 17, 290
151, 156 Maronite, 7, 9, 22– 3, 27, 30, 41,
parliament – French, 10, 30, 31, 167, 57, 65, 73 – 4, 96, 105, 108, 119,
171– 2, 187, 189, 190, 236 123, 125, 137, 155, 165, 167– 8,
parliament – Lebanese, 57, 99, 114, 156 172, 180, 210, 215, 224, 239,
parliament – State of Syria, 222 276–7, 285
parliament – Syrian Federation, 106 Shia, 23 – 4, 96, 248
Quai d’Orsay (French Foreign Office), Sunni, 16, 24, 28 – 9, 30, 74, 97,
30 – 1, 40, 86 – 7, 164, 169, 100, 105, 130, 184, 194, 250,
186– 7, 200– 1, 212 273, 275
scouts, 81, 129–30, 135, 268 Turkmen, 85
St Charles Street (British Foreign
Office), 13, 201 Key Figures
Syrian People’s Party (Hizb Al-Sha‘ab),
129– 30, 190, 203, 287 diplomats – American and other, 53,
Syrian Union Party (Hizb al-Ittihad 80, 86, 133, 141, 174, 221, 287
Al-Suri), 131– 2, 135, 159, 172, diplomats – British, 45, 145, 151,
174– 5, 198, 221, 269, 280 174, 201
INDEX 307
diplomats – French, 68, 74 – 5, 98, punishments, 11, 21, 31, 76, 102– 3,
109, 133, 163, 176 – 7, 180, 119, 132, 135, 143, 145– 6,
198, 200 – 1, 204 – 6, 210 – 11, 152–4, 157, 180, 200, 271, 280
213 – 18, 221 – 2 treaties, 14, 16, 19, 22, 26, 45, 87, 181,
French – General Secretary Robert 186, 189
De Caix, 11, 29 – 32, 84, 86, 87,
110, 113, 120, 123, 170, 180 – 1, Locations
185 – 7, 201, 207 – 9, 212, 219,
255, 283 Aleppo, 2, 7, 16 – 17, 22, 24, 27 – 28,
French – Levant High Commissioners, 47, 48, 64 – 5, 67 –9, 70, 72, 76,
7, 16 – 17, 26, 29 – 30, 41, 54 – 6, 85, 92 –3, 96 – 8, 100, 106, 111,
59, 64, 67, 75, 82 – 6, 109, 119, 113, 136, 140– 1, 143, 145– 52,
121, 124, 128, 130, 134– 5, 143, 154, 156, 163, 181, 186, 201,
149, 158– 9, 165– 70, 173, 178, 222, 273– 4, 276, 287
180– 1, 186– 90, 194, 199– 204, Alexandretta, 16, 17, 28, 69, 93 – 4,
207, 211– 13, 215– 16, 222, 225, 96– 7, 109, 147, 149– 50, 221– 2,
227, 267 273
Syro-Lebanese – ‘Abd Al-Rahman Algiers, 2, 77, 193, 262
Shahbandar, 127, 129, 132, Ankara, 221
135– 6, 153, 159, 185, Annemasse, 132, 174– 7, 269
190, 270 Antioch (Antakya), 27, 50, 69, 98, 113,
Syro-Lebanese – Emir Shakib Arslan, 146, 219, 221– 2
57, 132, 160, 174– 5, 178, 191, Baalbek, 80
212, 216, 244, 291 Baghdad, 2, 29, 136, 197– 8, 200, 218
Syro-Lebanese – Muhammad Kurd Beirut, 2, 7 – 8, 10, 16, 22, 24, 26,
‘Ali, 61, 62, 72 – 4, 98 – 9, 28– 9, 31 – 2, 36, 41 – 2, 48 – 9,
106, 122, 128, 143, 154, 50, 53 –4, 57, 60 –1, 63, 65, 67,
201, 250 69, 71 –4, 76 – 9, 82 – 4, 86 – 8,
Syro-Lebanese – Sultan Al-Atrash, 91, 93, 95, 100, 102– 8, 110– 11,
17, 22, 27, 29, 119, 190 118–19, 121, 124, 126– 7,
129–30, 137, 139, 141– 2, 145
Law 160, 162– 4, 185–6, 188, 196,
203, 212, 216, 218, 220, 225,
antiquities, 44 – 7, 49, 54 – 5, 88 227, 233, 237, 250, 255, 261,
censorship, 11, 32, 36, 90, 141– 3, 147, 263–4, 268, 272, 279
151– 60, 166, 168– 70, 172, 176, Beqaa, 16, 197, 252
186, 190, 198, 200–2, 204, 208, Berlin, 1, 71, 132, 175, 203, 205,
218, 222, 225, 272, 293 216, 221
Islamic (Waqfs), 35, 71 – 2, 73, 86, 99, Bern, 175
248, 254 Bogota, 1, 217
League of Nations, 1, 7, 8, 11, 26, 30, Boston, 133, 207, 216
37, 44 – 7, 49, 54 – 5, 57, 63, 76, Buenos Aires, 1, 133, 211, 213,
87, 88, 107, 116, 122, 132, 151, 216, 290
159, 160, 172, 174–6, 178, 185, Cairo, 2, 13, 43, 74, 136, 141, 164,
189, 191, 193– 5, 197– 8, 202, 175, 190, 193, 198, 209, 214,
206– 8, 210, 212, 215, 224, 230, 217–19, 254, 269, 271, 276, 286,
244, 286, 288, 290 289, 292
Open Door Policy, 40, 46, 88, 227 Chicago, 63, 76, 141, 204, 212
press, 151– 2 Cilicia, 16, 66, 69, 182, 186, 188, 221
Damascus, 2, 7, 10, 13, 16 – 19, 22, 24, Raqqa, 48, 101

27 – 30, 32, 41, 49, 53, 61, 65, Rio de Janeiro, 1, 7, 102, 213
67 – 70, 72 – 3, 80, 82 – 4, 91, 98, Rome, 291
103, 106, 110– 11, 118– 19, 122, Santiago de Chile, 1, 217, 289
127– 31, 140, 142, 145, 146–8, São Paulo, 210– 11, 289– 90
150– 3, 156, 158– 60, 170, 173, São Salvador de Bahia, 74, 212
178– 9, 184– 5, 191, 194, 197–9, Sidon (Saida), 41, 43, 53 – 5, 63, 67 – 8,
201, 204– 7, 216, 252, 254, 265, 105, 159, 238, 243
273– 4 Tripoli (Trablūs), 72, 93, 130, 135,
Dar‘aa, 70, 273 184, 219, 269
Deir Ez-Zor, 24, 64, 67, 101, 147 Tunis, 218, 292
Detroit, 207 Tyre (Sūr), 51, 54 –6, 60, 63, 67,
Geneva, 1, 7 – 8, 26, 36, 57, 132– 3, ˙ 109
96,
160, 162, 171, 174–8, 194– 5, Washington DC, 204– 6
207, 211, 222, 244, 280– 1, 286
Glasgow, 189 Newspapers and Media
Hama, 17, 93, 105, 111, 113, 130– 1,
136, 147, 173, 178, 198, 273 British, 196– 7, 199
Havana, 289 censorship (see under Law)
Homs, 7, 50, 56, 70, 76, 104–5, 111, Egyptian, 78, 199, 217– 20
130– 1, 145, 159, 198, 273 French – colonial, 48, 77, 86, 192– 4
Istanbul, 2, 42, 63 – 4, 136– 7, 141, French – Communist, 188– 92
174, 221– 2, 254 French – liberal, 51, 56, 99, 113,
Lattakia, 67, 69, 92, 94, 107, 113, 165, 179–83
185, 199 French – right-wing, 55, 67, 77,
London, 2, 19, 71, 193, 197, 207, 221 183–8
Lyon, 55, 77, 83, 85, 189, 281 German, 204– 5
Madrid, 174, 205, 214 Iraqi, 198, 202
Manchester, 209 Jewish, 141, 155, 205
Marseille, 2, 82, 173, 189, 197 Latin American, 209
Mecca, 178, 211, 212, 290 Lebanese Arabophone, 57 – 8, 60, 79,
Mexico City, 210 83, 93, 98, 103, 106, 125– 6, 135,
Montevideo, 209 139–45, 153 –9, 167, 169
Moscow, 1, 202 Lebanese Francophone, 57, 157,
New York, 1, 7, 13, 74, 115, 133, 186, 163–70
204, 207, 211, 213, 216 Mahjari, 159, 171, 174– 9, 209– 17,
Paris, 2, 7, 10, 13, 19, 29, 31, 36, 40, 218
46 – 7, 49 – 51, 53 – 4, 59, 71, North American, 204– 9
77 – 8, 81 – 6, 95, 98 – 9, 102– 3, Palestinian, 199– 201
109, 118, 120– 1, 128, 133, Russian, 202– 4
137, 143, 160, 162, 166– 7, Swiss, 176– 9
169, 170– 3, 178– 9, 184– 7, Syrian – Aleppine, 111, 145– 51, 222
189– 90, 193, 199– 201, 203, Syrian – Damascene, 19, 103, 106,
205, 208– 16, 219– 20, 223, 122, 126, 145– 51, 153, 155,
225, 227– 8 158, 222
Philadelphia, 13, 207 Syrian – other, 145– 51, 159
Rabat, 2, 84 –5, 194 Turkish, 221– 2
‘This excellent study is a welcome addition to the scholarship
Idir Ouahes

SYRIA AND LEBANON
Cultural Imperialism and the Workings of Empire
on the inter-war mandates of Syria and Lebanon.’
Syria and
Patricia M.E. Lorcin, Professor of History and Samuel Russell Chair in
Humanities, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
‘Ranging from classrooms and museums, to archaeological

sites and vernacular journalism, in this richly evocative text
Idir Ouahes reveals how Syrians contested the imposition
of French mandate rule in the realms of cultural heritage,
Lebanon
Martin Thomas, Professor of Imperial History, University of Exeter
French protectorate established through centuries of cultural activity:
archaeological, educational and charitable. Initial French methods of
organising and supervising cultural activity sought to embrace this vision
and to implement it in the exploitation of antiquities, the management and
promotion of cultural heritage, the organisation of education and the control
of public opinion among the literate classes. However, an examination of
the first five years of the League of Nations-assigned mandate, 1920–25, Cultural Imperialism and the
reveals that French expectations of a protectorate were quickly dashed by
widespread resistance to their cultural policies, not simply among Arabists Workings of Empire
but also among minority groups initially expected to be loyal to the French.
The violence of imposing the mandate de facto, starting with a landing of
French troops in the Lebanese and Syrian coast in 1919 – and followed by
extension to the Syrian interior in 1920 – was met by consistent violent revolt.
Examining the role of cultural institutions reveals less violent yet similarly
consistent contestation of the French mandate. The political discourses
emerging after World War I fostered expectations of European tutelages
that prepared local peoples for autonomy and independence. Yet, even
among the most Francophile of stakeholders, the unfolding of the first years
of French rule brought forth entirely different events and methods. In this
book, Idir Ouahes provides an in-depth analysis of the shifts in discourses,
attitudes and activities unfolding in French and locally organised institutions
such as schools, museums and newspapers, revealing how local resistance
put pressure on cultural activity in the early years of the French mandate.
Idir Ouahes is Lecturer in History and International Relations at MIUC

Spain. He received his PhD in History from the University of Exeter and
also studied at SOAS, University of London.
Cover image: General Maxime Weygand, Commander in Chief Levant,

French mandate in Syria and Lebanon. Outside the church in Beirut,
Lebanon, after a Te Deum sung in his honour.
Idir
(Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)
www.ibtauris.com
Ouahes
Ouahes/Syria and Lebanon artwork.indd 1 18/07/2018 17:12

Syria Lebanon: Under The French Mandate

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‘This excellent study is a welcome addition to the scholarship

under the French Mandate

‘Ranging from classrooms and museums, to archaeological

Idir Ouahes is Lecturer in History and International Relations at MIUC

Cover image: General Maxime Weygand, Commander in Chief Levant,

Ouahes/Syria and Lebanon artwork.indd 1 18/07/2018 17:12

‘Resisting the imposition of French imperial control in 1920s Syria was

Copyright q 2018 Idir Ouahes

References to websites were correct at the time of writing.

ISBN: 978 1 78831 097 0

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

Typeset in Garamond Three by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India

Map and Figures xi

Introduction Cultural Institutions and the Struggle to

1. Antiquities Protection and Excavation 37

2. Controlling Cultural Heritage: Museums, Tourism and

3. Classrooms, Curricula and Content 89

4. The Politics of Pedagogy 117

5. Surveillance, Subsidies and Censorship: The Domestic

6. Subservience and Sanction? The Francophone Press 162

7. Internationalism: The External Press 196

8. General Conclusion 224

For the ﬂow of writing, certain interchangeable ofﬁcial names are

People and Organisations Archival Locations

DGL Délégation du High CADN Centre des Archives

Examining cultural institutions operating during the formative years of

imperial hubs of Paris and London were of evidently primordial

Discursive and Political Opportunity Structures

The old questions of traditional analysis (what links to establish

Foucault’s answer to the problem of the biases inherent to overarching

historiographical sense sought out ‘discernible identities, analogies, sets of

Unity between ‘spontaneity’ and ‘conscious leadership’ or

In contrast to Foucault’s focus on discourse, however, Gramsci’s view of

The historical unity of the ruling classes is realised in the state

control [. . .] 4. The formations which the subaltern groups

These somewhat dense historiographical points can be more concisely

Prakash notes that local peoples’ ‘“minor” knowledges and subjugated

By looking at culture and imperialism [. . .] we may discern the

Whoever speaks of culture speaks of administration as well,

Despite these challenges, a degree of cohesion in examining the

The Formative Mandate Years: 1920– 5

Defining the meaning of this mandate was thus a fundamentally

The discussions among French cultural representatives, political

nationalist, violent or international disputes, clientelist contestation in

I believe, the duty to become the interpreters of [Syro-Lebanese]

For Talih, High Commission general-secretary Robert De Caix had

acknowledged. After outlining the challenges to French implementation

their regions, thus requiring integrated British troops and thereby

Syria, a reference to the Aleppo-Damascus press’ rivalry (to be discussed

Historiography of the Mandate

description of their French bureaucrats.54 Several works have examined

An examination of the theme of violence unites studies by Lenka

style style methods that had been widely understood to be a betrayal of

clientelism, Lebanese Shias were negotiating their path between the

leaders [. . .] in cultural institutions [. . .] whether in a small community

1930s from what she characterises as ‘simple opposition to French rule’

uprisings occurred. The Ibrahim Hanano revolt in Aleppo in 1919 – 20

Al-Rifaii noted the great influence of the press protests in the

The Shifts in Early Mandate Administration

Spéciales in the Levant Army. Callum intimated that this Alawite

1922 rebellion had been sustained with the help of a Transjordan-based

claimed that bureaucrats were driven by self-interest, particularly in

general-secretaries and the various functional central departments (for