20 Facts About Sami Droubi

Sami Droubi was a Syrian politician, career diplomat, writer, translator, university professor and philosopher.

Sami Droubi worked as a Syrian diplomat throughout the 1960s, serving, succession, as the Syrian ambassador to Brazil, Morocco, Yugoslavia, and Egypt and the Arab League, Spain and the Holy See.

Sami Droubi was known to be a staunch supporter of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and is regarded as "one of the most acclaimed philosophers of Arab nationalism" in Syria, according to historian Sami Moubayed.

Sami Droubi was born in Homs, central Syria in 1921, during the early years of the French occupation.

Sami Droubi was raised in the city, but moved to Egypt to study philosophy at the King Fuad University in Cairo.

Sami Droubi later attained his graduate degree in philosophy at the University of Paris.

Sami Droubi returned to Syria in 1946 to teach at the University of Damascus.

Sami Droubi immediately became one of its most influential leaders in the country.

Sami Droubi increasingly preached pan-Arabist ideas and worked towards Arab unification, as well as call for the establishment of socialism in Syria along the lines of Egypt under Nasser.

When Syria and Egypt united to form the United Arab Republic in 1958 under Nasser's presidency, Sami Droubi was appointed director of the Culture Ministry, and then was assigned to the UAR's embassy in Brazil to serve as its cultural consultant between 1960 and the union's dissolution by a military coup in Damascus in 1961.

Sami Droubi was a member of the National Council for the Revolutionary Command, which effectively served as the country's interim parliament.

Sami Droubi kept his position in the NCRC and on 19 June was part of a high-ranking delegation that included Bitar, Aflaq and Chief-of-Staff Ziad al-Hariri, the official leader of the 1963 coup, making a state visit to Algeria.

Sami Droubi remained in Algiers for a while longer, but returned to Syria later that month.

Sami Droubi was highly critical of the purges and condemned the lack of progress in restoring the UAR.

Sami Droubi's nomination was intended to prevent him from having influence over decision-making in Syria where he was a leading voice of opposition to Jadid's de facto rule.

Sami Droubi condemned the expulsion of Aflaq and Bitar from Syria.

Nasser died in September 1970, and Sami Droubi was recalled to Syria in November by President Hafez al-Assad, who ousted and imprisoned Jadid and Atassi.

In October 1975, Sami Droubi resigned from his diplomatic post and retired out of health concerns.

Some works translated into Arabic by Sami Droubi include those of the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, and the works of Yugoslav author Ivo Andric, including The Bridge on the Drina and The Bosnian Story He translated the entire works of Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky and French thinker Jean-Paul Sartre.

Sami Droubi co-wrote al-Mujaz fi Ilm al-Nafs with Abdullah Abd al-Daim and wrote a number of his own works including Ilm al-Nafs wal Adab, published in Cairo in 1971.