Rateb Shallah, the former president of the Damascus Chamber of Commerce, has died. He was 92. His history and that of his illustrious family tell plenty about the history of Damascus and its business community over the past 100 years. Foreign journalists visiting Damascus prior to the present war always strove for a rendezvous with the doyen of the Syrian business community—a cosmopolitan and highly educated man who spoke impeccable English, was always soft-spoken, politically accurate, and dressed to designer perfection.
Tall and dignified, he had big dreams for his country and ambitions of nation-building through trade, commerce, and industry, which all crumbled when war broke out in 2011. However, his story cannot be fully understood without first understanding that of his father, Sheikh Badr al-Din—a titan of the Damascus business class, who died in 1999.
Badr al-Din was born into the Damascus upper middle class in 1905 and began work at a very young age with their father, Salim Shallah—a ranking member of the Damascus Chamber of Commerce. The chamber was one of Syria’s oldest institutions, dating back to the 1830s. By the time Badr al-Din became a member in 1942, it had already survived Ottoman rule, World War I, French occupation, and was in the midst of the Second World War. Badr al-Din traded with Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Egypt, rising to fame in the 1940s as an ally of then-president Shukri al-Quwatli.
When al-Quwatli called for an Arms Week to raise funds for the Syrian Army in the mid-1950s, Shallah responded promptly by donating an entire building owned by him and his brothers. A famed philanthropist, he bankrolled the construction of mosques and served as a board member of charity organisations and the Damascus Municipality.
Like many of his contemporaries, the elder Shallah was badly hit by the socialist measures of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser during the short-lived Syrian-Egyptian union, first with the Agricultural Reform Law of September 1958 and then by the nationalisation decree of July 1961 that confiscated all major factories and private banks in Syria.
Shallah and Hafez al-Assad
In January 1965, Damascus merchants staged a strike in the old souks, protesting a new nationalisation law by then-president Amin al-Hafez, who punished them with arrest and a complete freeze on activities of the Damascus Chamber. It would remain virtually powerless for the next four years, when shortly after assuming power in 1970, President Hafez al-Assad had it revamped, bringing Badr al-Din al-Shallah on its board. Two years later, Shallah was elected president of the chamber on 18 March 1972 and would remain in his post for ten consecutive rounds until 1993.
His era witnessed a return of the Syrian private sector and the creation of several joint-stock and public-private enterprises, like the Cham Hotel, whose shares were sold in public for the first time since nationalisation under Abdel Nasser. In 1982, Badr al-Din al-Shallah made headlines by breaking a strike called for by the Muslim Brotherhood in Damascus. Wearing a long white coat and his hallmark tarboosh, which never parted him, he walked through the empty markets of Damascus, knocking on the doors of shopkeepers and commanding them to end the strike.
His immense influence in the ancient bazaars paid off, and the strike was aborted, thanks to Shallah. President al-Assad returned the favour by visiting him at the premises of the Damascus Chamber in the Harika Market, and on every prayer after that, during Ramadan and the two Eids, he would be seated next to the president as a representative of the Damascus business community.
From father to son
In 1990, Shallah began the first part of his three-volume memoir. It was riddled with photos of him with Arab heads of state like King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, King Hussein of Jordan, Sheikh Zayed of the United Arab Emirates, Presidents Nasser and Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt, and US President Jimmy Carter, who visited him at his farm in the Damascus countryside during a trip to Syria in the early 1980s, after leaving the White House. When Badr al-Din al-Shallah retired in 1993, the leadership of the Damascus Chamber went to his son Rateb, then at 61.
The younger Shallah was of a different creed from his father, having been educated at Oxford University and the University of Berkley. Unlike Badr al-Din, who had received a modest education at the kuttab—ad hoc class of Quranic studies in Old Damascus—Rateb had travelled the world and studied finance, economics, and banking. He also taught at both Damascus University and the prestigious American University of Beirut (AUB). During his early career, his father refused to give him a penny and did not pitch in when he went bankrupt in 1969. Many years later, he would say: “Had I helped you back then, you wouldn’t have become the man you are today.”
He pushed for liberalisation of the Syrian economy and phased dismantling of socialism that had been dominant since the 1960s. In 1991, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, al-Assad issued Investment Law #10, which encouraged investors to put their money in Syria, promising that it would be tax-free for seven years and that they could transfer part of their profit outside the country. Syrian expatriate and Gulf money poured into the country after Syria’s decision to take part in the 1991 Gulf War for the liberation of Kuwait.
When President Bashar al-Assad came to power in 2000, Rateb Shallah’s role increased as economic liberalisation went into effect, which led to the opening of private banks, private universities, and subsequently, a Damasus bourse called the Damasus Stock-Exchange, on which he served as its first CEO. He was also CEO of the Bank of Syria and Overseas (BSO) and president of the Federation of Syrian Chambers of Commerce. He would remain in office at the Damascus Chamber until stepping down voluntarily in 2008, citing old age and a desire to make way few for a new generation of Syrian businessmen.
When fighting broke out on the outskirts of the Syrian capital and mortars began landing on Damascus in 2012, Rateb al-Shallah moved quietly to Beirut but continued to visit Damascus weekly every Wednesday. He would cater to his business interests, meet with old friends, and give advice— when asked—about how to deal with the collapsing Syrian economy.
