Faisal of Arabia

The forgotten story of how Faisal I of Iraq helped shape the modern Middle East.

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
The forgotten story of how Faisal I of Iraq helped shape the modern Middle East (photo credit: JERUSALEM POST)
The forgotten story of how Faisal I of Iraq helped shape the modern Middle East
(photo credit: JERUSALEM POST)
‘I have to say that it is my belief there is no Iraqi people inside Iraq. There are only diverse groups with no patriotic sentiments.”
This statement, true enough in 2014, was made by the first modern king of Iraq, Faisal I, in 1932.
The king was not totally resigned to failure. He sought to create programs and to fashion ideas that might mend the divisions in society so that a modern state would emerge. Unfortunately he died in 1933, leaving the country with the problems that it still faces today.
Most people recall Faisal I, if they recall him at all, as a minor player related in some way to the adventures of Lawrence of Arabia. However, what has been forgotten is the integral role he played in fashioning the modern Middle East.
Ali A. Allawi’s book Faisal I of Iraq is notable in that the author himself plays a key role in modern Iraqi politics. Allawi was born in Baghdad in 1947, but went into exile after the rise of Saddam Hussein. His family, although Shi’ite, had been close to the ruling Sunni kingdom. His father had been a young man studying at the first modern university in Iraq.
“My father’s respect and admiration for Faisal was mirrored by nearly all who shared with him their formative experiences in Iraq of the 1920s,” writes the author, who received degrees from MIT and Harvard and lectured at Oxford before returning to his home country to become minister of trade in 2003. He remained in the Iraqi government until 2006. This makes his knowledge of Iraqi history a major part of his understanding of Faisal, and all the more pertinent for the reader, who receives an insider’s account from someone with a deep attachment to the success of his country today. In telling the story of Faisal, one feels, Allawi is yearning for a modern Faisal to rescue Iraq from its stagnation.
Faisal was born in Mecca in 1885, the son of the sharif of Mecca and descended from a dynasty of overlords of the Muslim holy city who traced their lineage to the prophet Muhammad’s wife. The Ottomans endowed them with a form of autonomy to run the Hijaz areas and safeguard the pilgrimage to Mecca. However, the outbreak of World War I found them chafing under the Turkish yoke. They rose in rebellion, and the British dispatched aides, the most famous of whom was T. E. Lawrence.
What Lawrence found was a tribal rabble.
“Incredible feats of bravery were mixed with slovenly, even cowardly, behavior. Looting and the never-ending quest for booty in a society that lacked nearly all material possessions were never far from the surface,” writes Allawi.
Faisal led the army of the rebellion that confronted the Turks in what is now Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria between 1916 and 1918.
When it comes to Lawrence, however, Allawi is scathing, considering his role minimal. In the famous attack on Aqaba depicted in the film Lawrence of Arabia, Allawi notes, “in all Arabic accounts Faisal emerges as one of the earliest and keenest proponents of the strategy.”
But Faisal was no military commander. He outsourced the endeavors of the army to various Arab officers who had formerly served in the Ottoman army, such as Ja’far al-’Askari, who would go on to be defense minister of Iraq.
The book is a well-written and easily accessible account. The author highlights some of the important roles that Faisal had in dealing with the British and in his quest to create a giant Arab state with a base in Damascus after the war. He was frustrated in that attempt and exiled before the British installed him in Baghdad as a king of this invented country, Iraq. The author is kind to Faisal, claiming he supported democracy and was flexible in his dealings with the Shi’ite ayatollahs and the Jewish and Christian minority.
But Allawi should have been more judgmental. At one point, a force of Wahhabi raiders, loyal to Ibn Saud in Saudi Arabia, invaded Iraq.
The Iraqi army was too weak to do anything. Later, in 1923, the Turks invaded northern Iraq, and once again “the Iraqi army was in no position to repulse any invader from the north.” That was because Faisal didn’t care about it and was a tool of the British. But Allawi doesn’t want to focus on his incompetence.
This is the main weakness of this volume. In wanting to provide a model for a good king of Iraq and to rescue Faisal I from history, the author seems afraid to be critical. In the end, Faisal was a tragic figure who lost one kingdom and became the king of a pseudo-state. Perhaps he meant well, and he was no religious fanatic, but to what degree he shaped his own destiny is unclear.