1. Shukri al-Asali was a prominent Syrian politician, nationalist leader, and senior inspector in the Ottoman government, in addition to being a ranking member of the Council of Notables.
11 Facts About Shukri al-Asali
1. 2.
Shukri al-Asali served in the Ottoman parliament from 1911 until April 1912.
3.
Shukri al-Asali was executed with other Syrian nationalists by the Ottoman governor Jamal Pasha.
4.
Shukri al-Asali graduated in 1902 and began his service in the provincial bureaucracy of Syria.
5.
Shukri al-Asali condemned the alleged reticence of the CUP to appoint Arabs to high-ranking administrative posts; no government ministers or provincial governors were Arabs and one percent of high-ranking bureaucratic posts were filled by Arabs.
6.
Shukri al-Asali raised this matter backed by the aforementioned statistics in a parliamentary debate on 5 April 1911 and was lauded for it by activists in Damascus and Beirut and the Syrian community in Cairo.
7.
The Syrian intellectual Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar stated that Shukri al-Asali had done away with the image of meek Arab parliamentarians who simply stood by state policies without a voice of their own.
8.
Shukri al-Asali further accused the CUP of brutality in its suppression of popular disturbances in the Hauran and al-Karak and for failing to prevent the Italian invasion of Libya.
9.
Shukri al-Asali later called for some of its leaders and the pro-CUP ex-prime minister Hakki Pasha to face trial for allegedly neglecting their duties to protect Tripolitania province.
10.
Shukri al-Asali subsequently lost in the parliamentary elections of April 1912.
11.
In March 1913, Shukri al-Asali turned down an offer to serve as mutesarrif of Latakia by Hazim Bey, the governor of Beirut Vilayet.