The true story of Layla, the beautiful daughter of a Syrian war hero

A life shrouded in rumours

This is where all authoritative information about Layla al-Azma comes to an end; everything else about her is based mostly on bazaar gossip and social media posts lacking any credibility.

What we do know for sure is that she was born in 1915, named after her grandmother Layla al-Shurbjai (Yusuf al-Azma's mother), and died in Istanbul in 1971. Since her passing, rumours have spread about her life, sparking heated debate in the Syrian parliament.

Some said that the Syrian government suspended the allowance allocated to her by King Faisal, while others claimed that she died a poor and severely ill woman, blind on the streets of Istanbul.

That rumour, in particular, spread like a forest fire, and many have frequently mentioned it to show how unappreciative contemporary Syrian leaders have been towards heroes like a-Azma who sacrificed their lives for the sake of their nation.

Some further said that Layla refused to set foot in Damascus after her father's death in 1920, while others accused her – and her father – of being Ottomanists at heart who had nothing to do with Syrian nationalism.

Adherents of this theory claim that Yusuf al-Azma fought the French at Maysaloun not for the independence of Syria but rather, in support of the Turkish nation that had been defeated by the French during World War I.

In other words, he fought the French to restore the Ottoman Empire, rather than to challenge the French Mandate.

Malicious and baseless accusations

In more recent years a new accusation has surfaced, often used to denigrate al-Azma by saying that his wife (Layla's mother) was none other than the daughter of Djemal Pasha, the dreaded commander of the 4th Ottoman Army in Syria, best remembered for executing 21 Arab nationalists in the public squares of Beirut and Damascus in 1916.

Driven either by ignorance or malice, those who spew these accusations against al-Azma often forget that he reached the rank of general in the Ottoman army and served briefly as commander of a unit in the Balkans, in addition to serving as military escort to Enver Pasha, one of the ranking officers of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP).

These were no ordinary positions and yet, when Syria got its independence in 1918, he left all of that behind and returned to Damascus, putting himself at the disposal of Faisal I, who was crowned king of Syria on 8 March 1920.

Al-Azma returned to his native Shaghour in cobbled alleys of the Old City, where he worked on translating military textbooks from Ottoman Turkish into Arabic, in addition to helping build the Syrian army from scratch before being named Minister of War on 5 May 1920.

And it was then-prime minister Hashem al-Atasi who chose him for his post, who in addition to many traits, was a good judge of people with a sharp eye for talent and character.

Al-Azma's attempted suicide in 1920

In a 1996 book on the Faisalian Era, Damascus University professor Ali Sultan recounts the following story, based on a conversation with one of the relatives of Sharif Hajjar, a top general in Faisal's army.

"Yusuf al-Azma returned home and pointed a gun to his head, wanting to commit suicide. His young daughter Layla walked into the room and prevented him from killing himself."

This story requires serious reconsideration, given that when somebody wants to take his own life, he usually does it in seclusion, away from his family and children. He certainly wouldn't have done it in a room next to his five-year-old daughter, giving her ample time to walk in and prevent him from shooting himself.

Layla's mother

As for the peculiar story about al-Azma's marriage to Djemal Pasha's daughter, it too can easily be discredited since it is well-documented in history books that the Ottoman general had only one daughter named Kamran, who was born in Istanbul in 1908 and died in 1974.

Layla, however, was born in 1915 and had Kamran been her mother, then that means that she gave birth to the child at the tender age of seven.

As for al-Azma's real wife, a native Turk by the name of Munira Hanim, she continued to live in Syria until the mid-1920s, helping establish an NGO called Nour al-Fayha, which catered to the education of young girls.

In 1922, she signed a petition for the release of Abdul Rahman Shahbandar, a former colleague of her late husband, who was being jailed at the Citadel of Damascus for having defied the French Mandate regime.

The real story of Layla

Layla al-Azma eventually moved back to Istanbul with her mother where she studied at French schools. She lived her teenage years with her mother's family, but was anything but poor, given that annual revenue from the al-Azma family estates in Damascus provided steady income for her and her mother.

The al-Azmas were Damascene notability and owned large tracts of land in al-Ghouta, the agricultural belt surrounding Damascus, and in the orchards of al-Shaghour.

Contrary to the rumours, the Syrian government continued to pay her a monthly stipend which was put into law by President Shukri al-Quwatli in 1947.

Presidential decree 288 provided 2,000 Syrian pounds (SP) for Layla Yusuf al-Azma, followed by another decree, numbered 982, which allocated a one-time stipend of 1,000 SP.

Prominent members of the al-Azma family would visit her occasionally in Istanbul, like defence minister Nabih al-Azma in 1946 and prime minister Bashir al-Azma in 1962.

In other words, she never cut ties with the al-Azma family.  

Layla died an old woman in 1971, warm in her bed, not on the streets of Istanbul. She was as beautiful as her father and married Javad Acar — a wealthy textile merchant who owned a shop in Taksim Square in the European quarter of Istanbul.

They had one child, Jalal, in 1943 who is Yusuf al-Azma's only grandchild. And contrary to everything said since then, she did visit Damascus — and so did her son in 1952.

In this picture, published exclusively for the first time by Al Majalla – Jalal can be seen at the graveside of his grandfather at Maysaloun.

Another never-before-seen picture shows her with her new family in Istanbul. 

She seems healthy and content, certainly not haggard and poor.