Faisal I of Iraq

Faisal I bin Hussein (20 May 1885 – 8 September 1933), known as Faisal bin Hussein and by the kunya Abu Ghazi, was the third son of Sharif Hussein bin Ali, commander of the Northern Army in the Great Arab Revolt, then King of the Arab Kingdom of Syria (March–July 1920) and first Hashemite King of Iraq (1921–1933), as the Arabic article describes him. ^{1 2} He entered Damascus in October 1918, led the Arab delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, was expelled from Syria by the French after Maysalun, was chosen at the Cairo Conference to rule Iraq, fostered unity between Sunni and Shia Muslims in a pan-Arab policy, presided over Iraq's independence in 1932, and died of a heart attack at Bern, succeeded by his son Ghazi. ²

The English and Arabic articles agree on his Gregorian dates — 20 May 1885 to 8 September 1933 — and differ on the birthplace: the English article says Mecca, the Arabic says Taif and adds that he was raised among the Utayba tribe in the Hejaz desert, schooled with his brothers Ali and Abdullah, and taught Turkish, horsemanship and fencing; the Urdu article also gives Taif but the year 1883, and Wikidata carries all three years (1883, 1885, 1886) and both places — the whole disagreement is stated in his record, not merged. ^{2 1 3 4} In 1896 he travelled with his father to Istanbul at Sultan Abdul Hamid II's invitation, to be kept near and under watch; he lived in the Palace of Justice with a private tutor, mastered Turkish and English and some French and history, was taught the Quran by his father, and married his cousin Huzaima bint Nasser there, in the Arabic article's account. ¹ He returned to Mecca with his family in 1909, after his father's appointment as Sharif; his father made him commander of the Arab detachments that suppressed tribes rebelling against Ottoman authority, and he was elected to the Ottoman parliament as deputy for Jeddah — the English article dates the election to 1913 — gaining wide political experience at Istanbul. ^{1 2}

When the Ottoman Empire declared war on the Entente, his father sent him to Constantinople to discuss the Ottoman request for Arab participation in the war; on the way he met the Arab secret societies al-Fatat and al-'Ahd at Damascus, received the Damascus Protocol, and joined al-Fatat. ² The Arabic article adds that he was in Damascus when Djemal Pasha's death sentences on Arab activists were issued, interceded for a pardon in vain, and saw the executions of 6 May 1916 in Marjeh Square and Beirut before returning to Mecca a month before the revolt, concealing his anger. ¹ On 23 October 1916 he met Captain T. E. Lawrence at Hamra in Wadi Safra, and from 1916 to 1918 he headed the Northern Army: Aqaba was liberated in July 1917, the advance continued toward Ma'an and Wadi Musa, and after the long siege of Medina his forces entered Damascus on 1 October 1918, where he set up an Arab government under Ali Rida al-Rikabi. ^{2 1} In 1919 he led the Arab delegation to the Paris Peace Conference with Gertrude Bell's support, and on 4 January 1919 he signed the Faisal–Weizmann Agreement, conditionally accepting the Balfour Declaration; by late 1920 the agreement was a dead letter. ² On 8 March 1920 the Syrian National Congress proclaimed him King of the Arab Kingdom of Syria; San Remo gave France the Mandate for Syria, General Gouraud issued his ultimatum on 14 July, and after the Battle of Maysalun on 24 July 1920 the French expelled him. ^{2 1} In March 1921 the British Cairo Conference judged him a good candidate for Iraq; after a plebiscite showing 96 per cent in favour he landed at Basra on 23 June and reached Baghdad on 26 June, and was crowned King of Iraq on 23 August 1921 — the coronation deliberately falling on 18 Dhu'l-Hijja, Eid al-Ghadir, as the English article notes of his care for Shia feeling. ² In his reign he encouraged a pan-Arab nationalism meant ultimately to unite Syria, Lebanon and Palestine with Iraq, knowing his power-base was Iraq's Sunni Arab minority and working to unite Sunni and Shia around a common Arab identity; he developed desert motor routes from Baghdad to Damascus and Amman, took interest in the Mosul oilfield and a pipeline to the Mediterranean, and tried and failed to impose universal military service. ² He attended Friday prayers at the al-Sarai Mosque, ordered the reconstruction of Sufi shrines in Mosul such as the Shadhili tekke, met the chief rabbis of Baghdad and Mosul, helped fund Muharram commemorations, visited Najaf and Karbala, received poets — Ma'ruf al-Rusafi wrote in his praise and Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri joined his court — toured Muslim, Christian and Jewish schools, and twice, in 1927 and 1933, withdrew school textbooks by Syrian émigré officials that glorified the Umayyad caliphate in terms offensive to the Shia. ² He saw the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930 as an obstacle to his pan-Arab views, and in his Palestine memorandum of 7 December 1929 he accepted the Balfour Declaration only in the most minimal sense — a Jewish national home, not a Jewish state — proposing a federation of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine under his leadership. ² In March 1932 he wrote his celebrated memorandum on Iraq's missing national identity, describing Iraq as "a kingdom ruled by a Sunni Arab government founded on the wreckage of Ottoman rule", as the English article quotes it. ² On 3 October 1932 the mandate ended and Iraq entered the League of Nations independent; in August 1933 the Simele massacre of Assyrian Christians strained relations with Britain, and Faisal cabled from Baghdad that all was normal despite his broken health, having visited London in July 1933 to ask the British to limit Jewish immigration and land purchases in Palestine. ²

Faisal died of a heart attack on 8 September 1933 at Bern, Switzerland, at the age of forty-eight — Wikidata also carries a 7 September statement — and was succeeded by his eldest son Ghazi; his remains were carried to Baghdad by way of Haifa, where a square bears his name. ^{2 4} In Baghdad an equestrian statue of him stands in Faisal Square at the end of Haifa Street; it was knocked down after the monarchy's overthrow in 1958 and later restored. ² He has been portrayed on film several times, most famously by Alec Guinness in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and in Queen of the Desert (2015) among others. ²

This section is read as a presentation of positions reported from the sources, not as a verdict of the museum.

His contacts with Djemal Pasha in December 1917 and again in spring 1918, offering to rule Syria and Mosul as an Ottoman vassal, are among the most debated episodes of his career: Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom glossed them as an attempt to divide the CUP, while the historians Efraim and Inari Karsh question Lawrence's account and reinterpret the dispute within the CUP; the museum states the disagreement as the English article presents it. ² During the Great Syrian Revolt of 1925 he was not particularly supportive of the rebels — through British pressure, caution, and hope that the French might restore him at Damascus, a hope the article says the French merely played along with until the revolt was crushed. ² Around his death the article reports, with its own caution, questioned details: symptoms of arsenic poisoning noted by an accompanying British nurse, and an Indian woman in his hotel whose whereabouts were unknown after his death was announced; these are reported claims, not findings. ² The sources' disagreements about his birth are set out in full in his data record: the place (Mecca in the English article against Taif in the Arabic and Urdu) and the year (1885 in the English and Arabic Gregorian dating, 1883 in the Urdu, matching the Arabic article's own Hijri year 1300). ^{2 1 3} His faith is recorded as unknown as to school in his data record: the English article describes his policy, not a personal school — fostering Sunni–Shia unity, and al-Rihani's remark that his faith "reflected all Islamic dominations" and made him tolerant of all religions — and notes that Iraq's Shia considered his father "a Sunni Muslim from the Hejaz", a perception of the father, not an attestation of the son; the Arabic and Urdu articles name no school for him, and Wikidata gives only Islam generically. Policy, practice and family background never count under the museum's rule, so the value stays unknown under the two-source rule and the doubt rule. ^{2 1 4}

• The defined sources cited above, registered in data/source/.
• Later translations and edits of this article need periodic review with clear update dates.