In 1959, Saddam Hussein was implicated in an assassination attempt on Iraqi prime minister Abdul Karim Qassim. This was 20 years before he became the president of Iraq.
When the assassination failed, he fled to neighbouring Syria and tried enrolling at Damascus University Faculty of Law. The Sorbonne-educated university president Ahmad al-Samman looked at Saddam’s poor academic history and gently turned him down, advising him to look elsewhere for a higher education.
Damascus University 1960s
Furious, Saddam snapped: “But I am a loyalist to President Gamal Abdul Nasser.” (Syria at the time was part of the short-lived Syrian-Egyptian union, known as the United Arab Republic, headed by President Nasser.)
Samman smiled politely and replied:“Then let him enroll you at the University of Cairo, if he wishes. This is the University of Damascus, and our history prevents us from accepting anybody who is not up to our standards.”
Then let Saddam enrol at the University of Cairo if he wishes. This is the University of Damascus, and our history prevents us from accepting anybody who is not up to our standards.
Ahmad al-Samman, former Damascus University President
Back then the university was only 37 years old, but al-Samman knew that it was the finest Arabic-teaching institute of higher education in the Middle East.
Today, Damascus University turns 100, although the institution is actually 20 years older than that and was first founded as a faculty of medicine under Sultan Abdulhamid II back in 1903.
Damascus University 1923-1946
A sultan's admiration
The sultan's decision to establish a top-notch medical school in Damascus was directly related to his admiration for the city, which the Ottomans called Sham Sharif.
But more importantly, it was due to his pressing need to support the state-run medical school in Istanbul and challenge the two private ones in Beirut — Jesuit University and the prestigious American-run missionary school; the Syrian Protestant College (later renamed the American University of Beirut).
Studying at any of these three schools was costly for local Syrians and not very attractive for conservative Muslims, who frowned at being educated by Christian clergymen.
Students from Damascus had to lodge at dorms while living in either Beirut or Istanbul, therefore, a school in Damascus was extremely convenient, relieving them of the hardships and cost of travel.
Damascus University 1950s
Suspicious of European motives
The sultan had been in power since 1876 and was very suspicious of the covert activity of European diplomats scattered throughout the empire, whom he believed, strove to implode his state from within.
He detested foreign schools that had mushroomed throughout the empire in the second half of the 19th century. In the vilayet of Syria, for example, there were eight papal schools, 12 British ones, and seven Dutch. Additionally, 20 American institutions were already operating in the empire, along with 40 Russian institutions.
As far as Abdulhamid was concerned, they were breeding grounds for espionage and the uncontrolled influx of "dangerous" foreign ideas.
As far as Abdulhamid was concerned, they were breeding grounds for espionage and the uncontrolled influx of "dangerous" foreign ideas.
One way of controlling their influence would be to establish an Ottoman institution in Damascus, which would rise to challenge and, one day, outdo all foreign missionary schools in the empire, he believed, or hoped.
On 27 September 1901, Sultan Abdulhamid decreed the establishment of an institute of medicine in Damascus. The school would offer two degrees in biology and pharmacy, free-of-charge to all Ottoman subjects.
The language of instruction would be Turkish and yet proper command of French was a must, since this was the language of medicine. Pharmacology would be a three-year academic programme while studying medicine would take up to six years.
The institute's budget was set at 10,000 Turkish pounds — equal to 230,000 French Francs. Authorities at the Ottoman Treasury cautioned that they did not have enough money for such an endeavour, saying that it would completely drain coffers of the central government.
Undaunted, the sultan levied a piaster tax at slaughterhouses throughout the empire to raise money for the Damascus project. The institute would be opened in the southern section of a grand hospital in the Baramkeh neighbourhood of Damascus, near the fabled Barada River.
Named after the Ottoman Sultan, the Hamidian Hospital had been constructed overlooking a splendid mosque built on the orders of Suleiman the Magnificent in the mid-1550s. It was eventually to become the Syrian University Hospital, and this is where medical students would train and work.
Faculty of Law
An auspicious launching date
The new school was to open on the 27th anniversary of the Sultan's enthronement, on 1 September 1903.
The premises, still under construction, forced the school administration to temporarily lodge at a spacious white palace in the Salhiyeh owned by a member of the powerful Azm family. The temporary lodging ended up being not-so-temporary after all, lasting for an entire decade.
Electricity came to Damascus in February 1907. The first building to be lit was the Umayyad Mosque, followed by the Grand Serail and the School of Medicine. Tramcars started operating in the city, and stopped near the medical school, making travel easier for students.
Faculty of Medicine
The unfolding of major historical events
In July 1908, a coup was staged in Istanbul, greatly curbing the sultan's powers before overthrowing him completely in April 1909.
Within weeks, most Ottoman doctors employed at the medical school were recalled to Istanbul forcing the Ottomans to begin hiring local Syrians to teach replace them, who began to teach their courses in Arabic.
In July 1908, a coup was staged in Istanbul, greatly curbing the sultan's powers. Within weeks, most Ottoman doctors employed at the medical school were recalled forcing the Ottomans to begin hiring local Syrians to teach replace them, who began to teach their courses in Arabic.
The Ottoman school of medicine remained in operation for a total of 15 years, from 1903 to 1918. It briefly shut down during the outbreak of World War I and then again when the last Ottoman troops left the city on 26 September 1918. Over this period of time, and against all odds, it managed to graduate a total of 240 doctors and 289 pharmacists.
In 1913, the school moved to its current premises in al-Baramkeh and a new school of law was established, originally in Beirut. With the school of medicine, it would form the nucleus of the Syrian University 10 years later.
Damascus University 1950s
The outbreak of World War I led to a huge drop in student enrollment, with one year having no more than three students at the law school, prompting Ottoman authorities to move it from Beirut to Damascus in 1914. It was given temporary premises at an old teacher's centre on the banks of the Barada River, not very far from the medical school.
The two schools closed during the final months of World War I. When Ottoman rule came to an end in 1918, Syrian students petitioned Syria's new ruler, Emir Faisal Ibn al-Hussein, asking him to re-open both.
Eighty of them had been on the verge of graduation when the schools shut down with the Ottoman evacuation in September 1918.
The medical school re-opened on 23 January 1919, while the law school did not start teaching again until 25 September 1919. Emir Faisal appointed a six-man committee to re-open the two institutions, renaming them as the Arab Academy of Medicine (Ma'had al-Tib al-Arabi) and the Arab Academy of Law (Ma'had al-Hukuk al-Arabi).
Rida Said
Arabisation of curriculum
They were also charged with Arabising the curriculum and translating everything from Ottoman Turkish to Arabic. Dr. Rida Sa'id, an ophthalmologist who headed the Hamidian Hospital during the Great War was appointed dean of the Arab Medical School and would eventually become the founding president of the Syrian University in 1923.
Under his presidency (1923-1936), the university got its grand auditorium, library, and printing press, which published academic books and the Faculty of Medicine periodical, al-Maja al-Tibiyya.
During the academic year 1930-1931, 81 students were enrolled at Syria University, including seven girls. One was Laurice Maher, the first female at the Faculty of Medicine, who graduated in June 1930.
In the souvenir photo, she is pictured in the back row of a crowd, carrying her university diploma, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with men in black suits and colourful medals wearing their crimson red Ottoman fez. She went to class unveiled, and mingled well with male students, with no discrimination against her sex.
The two schools were merged into the Syrian University on 15 June 1923, at the orders of then-president Subhi Barakat, and were only renamed Damascus University during the short-lived Syrian-Egyptian union in 1958.
In 1928, the university lost its independence and came under direct control of the Ministry of Education, only to be moved to the Ministry of Higher Education after it was established in the early 1970s. It has since been a state-run university, with presidents appointed by the president of the republic.
