1906 – 1998
Syrian lawyer-politician, born in Aleppo, from landowning, scholarly Sunni family.
During the French mandate, Nazim al-Kudsi (or al-Qudsi) was one of the leaders of the Nationalist Youth (al-Shabab al-Watani), an elitist organization that began to take shape in Damascus at the encouragement of Fakhri Bey al-Barudi, a Damascene notable. Al-Kudsi’s class origin and the advanced Western education he received in Beirut and Geneva enabled him to acquire a number of political positions: leader of the Aleppo-based People’s party; member of the Syrian parliament; foreign minister and prime minister for brief intervals in 1949, 1950, and 1951; president of the Syrian parliament from 1951 to 1953 and from 1954 to 1957; and president of Syria following the dissolution of the Egyptian-Syrian union in 1961. Following the Baʿth party coup of March 1963, al-Kudsi withdrew from political life and left Syria to live in Lebanon from 1963 to 1986, later taking up residence in France. He died in Jordan in February 1998.
Bibliography
Seale, Patrick. The Struggle for Syria. A Study of Post-War ArabPolitics, 1945 – 1958. London: Tauris, 1986.
Early career
After university education in Beirut he returned to Syria in 1935 and joined the National Bloc, the leading anti-French independence movement, and became one of its prominent members in Aleppo. It was a political organization aimed at the emancipation from French control through diplomatic means rather than armed resistance. In 1936, he ran for Parliament on a Bloc ticket and won. He clashed with the Bloc leadership that failed to prevent the annexation of Alexandretta to Turkey in 1939, and resigned from Bloc ranks. Kudsi created a coalition of Aleppine intellectuals around himself and Rushdie Kikhia, another lawyer who shared in his views, and the two men nominated themselves for Parliament in 1943, winning with ease. They lobbied against the election of Shukri al-Kuwatli, a National Bloc leader, as president, but Kuwatli was voted into office in August 1943. To appease the opposition, the new President appointed Kudsi as Syria’s first Ambassador to the United States. Kudsi founded the Syrian Embassy in Washington, D.C. from scratch, and on 19 March 1945 presented his credentials to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1947, he and Rushdi al-Kikhiya founded the People’s Party in Aleppo. It was inaugurated as an opposition movement to the Kuwatli regime and created to counter-balance the political weight of the National Party, the successor to the National Bloc, loyal to Kuwatli. The People’s Party founders were mainly notables from Aleppo who aimed at creating union between Syria and Iraq, maintaining a democratic government, and advocating stronger ties with the West. The Hashemite royal family in Baghdad supported the party and funded many of its activities.
In 1947, Kudsi ran for Parliament on a party ticket and won. His election was repeated in 1949, 1954, and 1962. He voted against the re-election of Kuwatli as president, but a parliamentary majority pushed through the election. On 29 March 1949, the Kuwatli administration was toppled by a military coup d’état, launched by Chief of Staff Husni al-Za’im. Syria’s new ruler asked Kudsi to form a government but he declined, claiming that the Za’im regime was unconstitutional and arguing that despite his faults, Kuwatli was a constitutionally elected president while Za’im was an “illegal” one. As a result, Za’im had him arrested and the People’s Party was shut down. He was released shortly afterwards and placed under house arrest in Aleppo. He became highly critical of Za’im when the latter closed Syria’s border with Jordan and Iraq and threatened to go to war with both countries, accusing them of being agents of Great Britain in the Middle East. On 14 August 1949, he supported a coup that toppled and killed Za’im, launched by General Sami al-Hinnawi, an old friend of the People’s Party and an ally of the Hashemite royals in Baghdad. Hinnawi created a political committee to run political affairs in the absence of an official government and appointed Kudsi to its top leadership. Kudsi also served on the Constitutional Assembly that drafted a new constitution for Syria and became Minister of Foreign Affairs in the first post-Za’im cabinet of Prime Minister Hashim al-Atassi (an ally of the People’s Party as well as a founding member and former president of the National Bloc). His ally Kikhiya became Minister of Interior while other posts were distributed accordingly to members of the People’s Party. Kudsi conducted talks with Crown Prince Abd al-Illah of Iraq for creating immediate union between Syria and Iraq and made numerous journeys to Baghdad for the purpose. He formulated an agreement that called for federal union, preserving independent governments in Damascus and Baghdad while coordinating military, economic, social, cultural, and political affairs between the two states. He then went to Cairo and proposed a similar program for all Arab states at the Arab League on 1 January 1951.
