Abdul Rahman al-Yusuf: The Syrian pasha who was killed three times

One Senegal soldier shot at an armed Syria standing at the platform, who immediately returned the fire. Chaos came next and excessive gunfire was exchanged, which led to the killing of innocent passengers.

The pasha was heard shouting: "Bring us your notables so we can talk." He then got off the train and headed to the station, trying to reach Damascus for reinforcements.

He was apprehended and shot while trying to reach the second floor, and so was Prime Minister Droubi. As for Interior Minister Ata al-Ayyubi, he narrowly escaped death when a Damascene merchant from al-Midan took him to safety.

Fearing a resumption of violence, France cut off the main road between Damascus and Dara'a, and the corpses of the two pashas, Droubi and Yusuf, remained in Khirbet Ghazaleh until 20 September 1920.

Only then were they returned to their families — in wooden coffins— wrapped with the flag of France. Yusuf's coffin stopped at his family mansion in Souq Sarouja for the women to bid a final farewell, and was then buried at the family cemetery in al-Dahdah.

He was given an official funeral, attended by Syria's new prime minister Jamil al-Ulshi, Syria's grand mufti Sheikh Atallah al-Kasm, and leaders of different Christian sets.

History of the Yusuf mansion

After his assassination, Abdul Rahman Pasha's mansion in Souq Sarouja was inherited by his children, among whom was Hasan Sami, who studied at the American University of Beirut and worked in agriculture before co-founding the National Party in 1947.

Another son, Mohammad Sa'id, would study at an elite school in Vienna before becoming governor of Damascus in 1949. Members of the Yusuf family continued to live in the mansion until 1964 when its final occupants closed its doors.

The cost of maintenance was simply too high to bear for a family that has lost all its wealth under the socialist regime of President Gamal Abdul Nasser, back in 1958.

Many would return for special family events, but the house since then has been shuttered, until it was burnt down with a massive fire that broke out in Damascus on 16 July 2023.

The mansion itself dates back to the mid-19th century when the pasha's father bought it from a wealthy notable named Salim Clairamini. Yusuf would go on to expand and upgrade the premises in preparation for a landmark visit of Kaiser Wilhelm II to Damascus in November 1898.

The German emperor was invited to stay at the Yusufs, but another notable, Ahmad Rafiq Pasha al-Chamaa, offered to host him as well, saying that his palace in Bab al-Jabieh was bigger, bestriding three alleys in the Old City.

It was eventually decided that the two pashas would host him separately, and during the banquet held at the Yusuf mansion, Wilhelm was given splendid rugs, jewellery, and Arabian horses. He reciprocated with a chandelier, which continued to decorate the Yusuf home for years.

Who was Abdul Rahman Pasha?

Abdul Rahman al-Yusuf was born in 1871 into a Kurdish family hailing from Diyarbakir. Private tutors were brought in from Istanbul to educate him before he inherited the emirate of al-hajj from his grandfather at the tender age of twenty in 1891.

He supported Sultan Abdulhamid II fully until the latter was dethroned by the coup of July 1908, after which he switched allegiance to the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Yusuf was to head the CUP office in Damascus and would eventually be voted into its central committee in Istanbul.

He was subsequently voted into the Ottoman parliament, and then 1914, appointed to the Council of Notables in Istanbul. He was an intelligent man who foresaw the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, due to the rapid developments of World War I. 

He must have been gravely worried by the sheer chaos that engulfed him, along with souring misery and poverty on the streets of Damascus. But never for one did he think about abandoning the Ottomans or supporting the Great Arab Revolt that broke out against them in 1916.

And after the collapse of Ottoman rule in 1918, he successfully managed to re-invent himself, despite his major reservations about Emir Faisal, the new ruler of Syria.

Yusuf founded a political party in Damascus called the Syrian National Party and was elected MP in the Syrian National Congress (parliament) of 1919. He would soon become deputy to Hashem al-Atasi's president before becoming head of the Shura Council on 26 July 1920, less than a month before his assassination in Khirbet Ghazaleh.

During his career, the pasha became the uncrowned king of Damascus, known for his power, authority, and philanthropy. The gates of his family mansion would open daily to ordinary people seeking a good meal, or one of his favours with Ottoman officialdom.

And he was the first to donate in times of famine and need, presenting 3500 gold coins to the Ottoman government at the start of World War I, with five thousand kilos of wheat. 

And with the start of the 20th century, the pasha was reportedly the richest Arab in the Ottoman government, with 24 villages to his name in the Golan Heights, three in al-Ghouta, the agricultural belt surrounding Damascus, and five in the Beqaa Valley.

That, in addition to owning the entire eastern shore of Lake Tiberius, made him an extremely influential person in the Ottoman order.

Influential legacy reduced to a footnote in history

Sadly, however, all government-printed schoolbooks since 1920 have referred to him and his assassination in passing, often with no more than a footnote. And when he is mentioned, it always says that he was killed by the rebels because of his abandonment of King Faisal — failing to mention that he and Faisal were never close.

Such erroneous information seemed to satisfy everybody, and no one ever bothered to check it or verify its authenticity. None of Syria's post-1920 governments ever condemned the assassination of Abdul Rahman al-Yusuf and Alaa al-Din Droubi, nor did they name any street or school in their honour.

Additionally, none of them bestowed upon him the religious title of shaheed (martyr), like that given to Fawzi al-Ghazzi, author of Syria's first republican constitution, who was killed nine years later.

It seemed as if a collective decision had been taken – without ever being said – to eliminate Yusuf from the collective psyche of the Syrian nation.

His only mention today is on a marble plaque at the entrance of Ibn al-Nafees Hospital near Damascus, whose land was presented to the Syrian government as a gift by the Yusuf family in the 1930s.

There is also a wax statue of him at the Azm Palace, standing next to Mahmal Al-Hajj – the hajj caravan – whose name has been forever associated with that of Abdul Rahman al-Yusuf.

Less than a year after the Khirbet Ghazaleh murder, French High Commissioner Henri Gouraud barely survived an assassination attempt while visiting al-Qunaytra, the principal town in the Golan Heights.

Colonial France moved heaven and earth to track, arrest, and kill his assassin, but no such efforts were put into the pasha's murderers. It didn't even publish their names or the motifs behind the murder.

No interrogation took place — neither with the soldiers on duty who disappeared during the train attack, nor with French officers onboard.

On 21 September 1920, the government's official gazette al-Asima ran a small story on its inside pages, saying that three men had been hanged for Yusuf's murder. It didn't mention their names, or when and how they were executed. A brief statement was issued by the prime minister's office, saying that the "Houran events" have been "closed."

None of that seemed to convince Yusuf's children, who tried – with no luck – to reopen the case, but mandate authorities would not let them.

They would continue to ask why the pasha's private bodyguard Mustapha al-Ayyubi, was asked to stay back in Damascus by French authorities, who claimed that there was enough security onboard the train for the entire delegation.

Killed three times

Many of Yusuf's contemporaries left behind meticulously detailed memoirs, yet only one of them mentions the events of Khirbet Ghazaleh, being the judge and minister Yusuf al-Hakim in his seminal work Souriyya wa al-Intidab al-Faransi (Syria and the French Mandate).

Others simply make passing reference to the murder, even failing to agree on what happened. Then-finance minister Fares al-Khoury puts it at 31 August while Abdul Aziz al-Azmeh (brother of War Minister Yusuf al-Azma) says that it took place on 20 August.

Everybody in Lebanon knows exactly when prime ministers Riad al-Solh, Rashid Karami, and Rafik al-Hariri were killed. Everybody in Jordan knows when and how King Abdullah and Prime Minister Wasfi al-Tal were killed. The same applies to Egyptian statesmen like Mahmud Fihmi al-Nockrashy Pasha.

Only in Syria is the date of a prime minister's assassination, and that of the president of the Shura Council, up for debate. That leads us to conclude that Abdul Rahman Pasha al-Yusuf was killed three times.

The first was when unidentified men fired bullets into his body in 1920. The second was when Syrian officialdom dropped his mention after the year 1920. The third was when his family mansion was burnt in 2023, erasing whatever remained of his memory in Syrian society.